Weeknotes by Mo Morgan

• I asked her to marry me, and she said yes!
• There’s a bit more texture to that: I asked her to consider it and she didn’t have to answer straight away. But she more-or-less did, having stipulated that she would not wear a big white dress. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d far prefer she wore lots of outfits of her choosing throughout the course of the marriage; each one different from the one the day before. And whichever one she chooses for the first day, I’m okay with it.
• This took place over a lovely lunch at Takumi in Birmingham, where we enjoyed the finest fare since we were in Japan.
• With institution comes legacy. Marriage comes with a whole bunch of patriarchal bullshit. So in the coming months will be thought and effort to weed all that out and define how it’ll be fit for us.
• This weeknote will be slightly delayed in posting, as there are still some people that we’d rather tell face-to-face. This is supposed to be “this week, I learned”, not “this week, you found out” 😆

• Had a couple of positive work moments, all of which have offered surprised and learning opportunities. One client has all sorts of considerations upon their decision-making, and the courteous thing to do in those instances is present a choice between a safe approach and a more radical one. And would you believe it, they went radical. It’s great when they feel the confidence. Another client asked for a couple of specific proposals, both of which point to some interesting and impactful outcomes. And a third client agreed to some proposed outcomes, if not the process to get there, so that’s pretty close.
• I’ve been doing a ton of research into workplace ED&I: specifically, how to allow people to think about inclusion as more than just getting a better mix of genders and skintones sitting at desks. I learned the term ‘wellness-washing’ to describe the kinds of short-termist approaches to inclusion that lead to tokenism and fruitbowls. I also learned the term ‘frozen middle’, whereby insufficient focus is placed upon giving those with marginalised identities the experience necessary for them to advance, or the power to influence change. Plus I codified my thoughts around psychological safety which, it turns out, has much more research around it than I anticipated.

Bass notes

[In which Mo learns the bass guitar]

• It’s going to be a while until the bass comes back. As I’m asking Andy to fit a drop-D tuning mechanism to a short-scale bass, he has views about what strings it’ll need and has asked me to source a custom set. They’d take two weeks to make before Andy can continue the set-up, and the specification process was far from straightforward. So against his advice I’ve asked for an off-the-peg set. If it’s dreadful, I’ll look into it again.

• My Mac came back. Hardware issue fixed but, annoyingly, they took it upon themselves to wipe the thing and reinstall the OS. How that helps with a blown speaker I do not know. Recovering a 2TB volume is a long and tedious series of niggles.
• My back has been hurting for a few days, so went to the fancy hotel in town for a massage. A lovely use of an hour on a Sunday afternoon but, sadly, didn’t do the trick.
• By coincidence, we also took delivery of a new mattress. God, I wish we’d done so sooner. A new mattress is always keen to point out how bad the old one was.
• Succession is back. Love it. Lots of good TV going on right now: The Last of Us, Ted Lasso, Taskmaster and The Mandalorian. Also a new Wes Anderson film is coming up in a couple of months, which I expect I will love.
• I realised I had a spare phone, identical to my dying Pixel 3 but with a cracked screen and missing power button. The battery, though, is still sound. I didn’t fancy Frankensteining the two together, but then it hit me: I could just remap the buttons and put up with the good-battery bad-screen combo for a few months.
• During the week, almost nothing else happened apart from work and a trip to the local McDonalds for a McPlant and fries. It’s been that kind of week.

Bass notes

[In which Mo learns the bass guitar]

• I took my bass to Andy the local luthier. He has been booked near-solidly since I bought it in January. I assumed he might have been dealing with a Covid-induced backlog but, it turns out, the lockdown kept him busier than ever. With everyone staying in, folks went up into their lofts and dug out their neglected guitars so that they could follow lessons on YouTube. So he has never been busier, and is making his way through piles of guitars needing his attention.
• Instrument-makers are my kind of people. It’s the kind of pursuit that is part science, part art and, candidly, part blind faith. The first 90% of any service is procedural, but the magic happens in the final 10%. But there’s no real way of knowing how much time or effort will be needed to find that magic, so I have no sense of when I’ll get my bass back. It’s going to be measured in weeks, but then you can measure any period of time in weeks.

• My phone is limping along now. No longer supported by its maker and with a seemingly unreplaceable battery, it is obsolescence in the palm of my hand. But it’s hard to bring myself to change it.
  • I stumped up for a decent spec and I’ve been pretty happy with it. Good screen, great camera, more than enough storage and I’ve never found anything it isn’t powerful enough to do.
  • The main thing wrong with it is the limited service you get from the manufacturer. If it can be supported for three years, it could be supported for ten. And constantly-good battery, i.e. swapping them over if need be, would be more valuable to me than runtime between charges. They could get me to pay for that and I gladly would.
  • A new phone is a fair chunk of change, particularly when I wouldn’t be unhappy with mine if it were better supported. It’s hard for me to trash a good phone to get another good phone. And the new phone will be more than this one was, presumably because they add capacity for things. But I’d be fine as I am. By pushing me back into the market, I’m going to consider other manufacturers. And if I’m paying out then I’ll probably choose one of the other makes. I assume these short lifespans are to keep me buying, but it’s backfiring. I’d keep buying service and support for the one I have, if I could. If I’m buying new, anything could happen.
  • I’ll probably wait for the next iPhone. I don’t like how expensive they are. I don’t like the stupid proprietry socket. I still don’t approve of removing headphone sockets. Built into its purchase price is a whole bunch of stuff I will immediately disable. But I don’t like how stock Android is clearly watching me, despite all efforts to stop data being harvested and sent back to The Mothership. I’d probably put up with it if I didn’t have to replace the thing, but it’s enough to stop me buying another.
  • I loathe phone-maker bullshit.
• Also took my Mac to meet its maker, with 54 days of Applecare left. For a while the righthand speaker has had an irritating buzz. The repair, outside of Applecare, would be an amazing £575.
• This also means my weeknotes will be written not published this week, as I can’t get Publii to work on my other Mac.