Who is Nick?

Asking all my life.

  • Weeknotes 2025-01-10

    I’ll keep if brief.

    How I feel at work

    How I feel at home

    Update: Haha! it’s 2025, not 2024. Let’s change that title shall we. I’ve since typed 2024 10,000 more times by accident.

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  • Weeknotes 2025-01-04

    You know, sometimes you start the day tripping over something in the dark trying to get up quietly no to wake anyone up. Then you bang around and the whole house is awake?

    That feels like the beginning of my year.

    I’m not going to jinx it, because I remember that on those day’s, while it take a bit, I do get some semblance of recovery.

    Missions

    My weeknotes for work ( I do them on an internal blog ) was about setting missions. I used to do Chris Brogans 3 Words. But right now, that seems much to much. I’m going to focus a but more low key on smaller missions this year. What’s my mission today? this week? Nothing more, nothing longer.

    The goal, if I choose to accept, is simply complete the mission.

    Is work not that into me?

    One mission I have is to get people at work sharing. There’s something about our communication that feels too silent for a relatively small, all remote, growth stage company.

    Part of the difficulty of working all remote, is something you feel like “they just aren’t that into me”. Which most of the time that’s not the case. Silence, when you don’t want it, is probably the hardest part of remote working. You go a bit zany. The more asynchronous communication processes you can instill, can help with those moments.

    Right now, I’m feeling it.

    And I want to fix it.

    Designing my life

    My outside work mission? To get into the drivers seat to design my life. There’s a few exercises I’m stuck on, but one foot in front of the other. I’ll get there. I’m saying it out loud on a blog on the internet, so it must come true – By the end of the year I’ll be prototyping and experimenting with life idea’s.

    Happy 2025!

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  • Weeknotes 2024-12-27 +1

    Missed it by that much

    This week has been health and family first. The rest can wait.

    I’ve had several conversations over the course of the week that have me thinking about repackaging a couple idea’s into an upcoming post:

    • The Literaty – the idea that there will always be a deep underground group of active readers.
    • Proficiently Literate – that as the US drop below 50% proficiently literate, what’s going to happen?
    • The rise of government during the rise of literacy = the reduction of oligarchy as literacy rises. What happens in the other direction?
    • I want to learn more about serfdom. I have a feeling there’s something in there that has some parallels to what we’re seeing in the world. I just can’t put my finger on it.
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  • Weeknotes 2024-12-20

    Make a mess clean a mess

    I tell my kids this all the time. This week I made the mess. Long story short, with Power Pages and Power Platform I was given the choice of “blue door” and “blue door” and I investigated, thought I experimented and when it came to click and squint…. I picked the wrong “blue”. 

    When doing so, it brought in a flood of things into the “solution” we didn’t want.

    Clean up was just as slow. Do you want to remove the purple thing or the purple thing. Luckily, I was able to find a way ( through a series of 4 clicks… over and over… ) which which was which.

    The Team Onion

    Read The Team Onion this week in search of more comms ideas for the day job. I bought it right before postal strike, I was the silly one who picked “regular mail”.

    I thought I would never read it, but today, I finally got the book!

    It’s one of these things that deceptively simple, but breaking down has some very interesting applications.

    Time to throw it against the company wall, and see if it sticks.

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  • Weeknotes 2024-12-13

    Rocky week. I’ve been suffering from Vertigo all week, for some strange reason. Sooo dizzy from it all! 🤢

    All my memories of the week have splashed out overboard from my brain so we’ve lost a few good souls on this weeks cruise.

    • I keep bugging work on Internal Communications. I feel like I’m screaming into the void at this moment.
    • Going to give the old Twenty Twenty Five theme a college try.
      • There’s a few things that don’t quite translate.
      • I’ve lost a bit of functionality and customizations. Where’s the custom css?
      • Do I really need to make a whole block plugin to prefix my name with a single character? That doesn’t seem right.
      • I feel like tinkering when I can.
    • Really thinking about ActivityPub, just no time…
      • Replacing Scrobble with something federated
      • Mixing MusicBrains with something federated
    • Trying to find tinker time, it’s just not top of the list… which is long… and now a bit rocky and flailing in the wind.

    Have a good week folks. I’m going to keep taking drugs and holding onto anything sturdy.

    Photo by ZENG YILI on Unsplash

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  • Weeknotes 2024-12-06

    So long and that’s for all the follicles. That’s a wrap to Movember.

    This week I came across GitLab’s Handbook! How have I not seen this or read this before!? It’s amazing from an org comms perspective.

    I’m starting to see if I can make changes to the day job to veer this way. It’s gonna be tough, but I think worth it. Here’s some of the hurtles:

    • The team doesn’t default to share.
    • Git will probably not fly with most of the company – unlike at GitLab were if you don’t at least understand basic git, you have bigger problems.
      • Day job has SharePoint, but SharePoint? Can SharePoint work??? 🤷
        • Hint: I tinkered, and it might be possible.
        • We’ve got Microsoft 365 and I’m trying to champion the toolset. I’m a use-it-if-you-got-it, use-it-more-if-you’re-paying-for-it kinda guy.
    • We are all-remote, and prefer synchronous work
    • No one seems to write anything that comes across my desk at least.
    • Did I mention the team doesn’t default to share?
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  • Weeknotes 2024-11-29

    Movember is coming to an end. Thank you to everyone whose donated.

    Let’s see…. this week 🤔… this week 🤔…

    • I used my todo list
    • Get new phone. I’m feel like the only person who won’t go big, sticking with the iPhone SE ( now 3rd gen )
    • New cell provider. It’s time. The old one was way to much. And I’m Canadian, so that’s way way way way too much.
    • Keep reading. Agile Conversations
    • Keep designing my life. Still hung on Odyssey plan. More an issue with making time at this point I think? My therapist might disagree.
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  • Yo mamma is so…

    … agonistically toned!

    Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

    “No, you’re agonistically toned!”

    In, Ong’s, Orality & Literacy, I have to admit for me, “Agonistically toned” was one of the lesser argued characteristics. Perhaps it’s because his use of laser specific language; it’s name has more punch? It sure wasn’t the generic references to old plays and stories such as Iliad, Beowulf, and The Mwindo Epic.

    What is agonistic?

    Not agnostic.
    Not antagonist.
    To the dictionary!

    2. Argumentative

    3. Striving for effect

    4. Relating to, or being aggressive or defensive social interaction between individuals usually of the same species 1

    While “Argumentative” maybe a doomsday definition you may lean toward, it’s also “striving for effect.” What Ong continued to point out, is it is also about being boastful; peacocking and bloating chests.

    Bragging about one’s own prowess and/or verbal tongue-lashings of an opponent figure regularly in encounters…

    Based off the old plays, this may seem oddly over the top and, perhaps to literate society, could come across as “insincere, flatulent, and comically pretentious.”

    Recently Agonistic


    Rap battles are a great example of agonistic tone. Two rappers slinging saturated, insults at each other while making themselves larger than life. But what else in modern culture could be considered agonistically toned?

    Here’s a quick list of other recent examples

    • Every “character” in a reality TV show
    • The more questionable Minecraft YouTube show hosts my son sneaks
    • Every Xitter post from it’s owner
    • The 45th, now, 47th US President-Elect

    Good or Bad?

    What I find interesting about this characteristic is, Ong, is careful not to say an oral culture is simply agonistic, but agonistically toned. Meaning that while they sounded agonistic, they may not physically be.

    Reading Orality & Literacy, there is attention to stay unbiased, to have no opinion on better or worse between literate and oral culture. While others might exclude “tone” from the characteristic and go towards tribalism and the darker natures of our past coming back; while perhaps Ong had a personal opinion, he gently stays out of that fight.

    Does a highly agonistically tonned society lead to agonistic behaviour 2? Could there be a future where Agonism is everywhere?

    1. Note: I’m not sure what “usually of the same species” has to do with anything. But sure, we’ll go with it. ↩︎
    2. Ah… that explains the specific species language. Many of the studies are not on humans. ↩︎

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  • Weeknotes 2024-11-22

    I’ll admit – I’m struggling a bit. Which is expected with the B-Day coming up. I spin into a well every year questioning everything, wondering where I’ve been and where I’m going.

    Was I the navigator I hoped for?
    Nope

    Will I be next week?
    Probably not

    Am I ok with that?
    Meh 🤷

    Can I do anything about it?
    These weeknotes, listen to good music, love my kids, keep working on Designing my Life, movembering, general fun, playing with various fediverse sites

    Here’s an interesting idea
    Replace Scrobbling with something connected to ActivityPub. It can ingest Scrobble and then let you do more.

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  • Weeknotes 2024-11-15

    I was not the captain this week. I was a deckhand being ordered about from bow to stern, trying to stay standing as the ship rocked heavily on the ocean.

    I dreamt for the next dock. The sound of the waves and wind are beautiful, but after too long is tinnitus that requires a long, long silent sit on dry and solid land to get reprieve.

    Maybe next week I can at least be the navigator I think to myself.

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