A quiet but (kind of) productive week
I did some work on the Saturday chapter of Mannerley. Mrs Lenoir was wan, Lord Wimberley took Julia into dinner. It still needs work.
I also wrote a new short story for Flash Tales/ FFF that you can read here. And this week's prompt looks interesting enough for me to have a go at later.
So, writing was pretty good this week.
I've also added a 4 minute Chi Gong routine to my morning. The chap in the YouTube video promises 'tremendous health benefits' but I haven't noticed any great changes yet! The principle here, though, is to increase the amount of exercise that I do. I'm thinking of using November to change my writing time from morning to evening, which would free up some time in the morning for yoga/ tai chi/ chi gong. I'm not going to 'do Nano' as such but I am going to do some intensive work on Mannerley.
So far, so good.
I also finished redrawing the SDLC for projects at work. The diagram is much more compact but also contains more information, so I am super chuffed with it. I now need to review all of our documentation and possibly get some of this stuff onto our webpages *gasp* Now that WOULD be an achievement.
And last but not least I got excited/ depressed about UPK. I realised that the 'how to get started' topics were waaay out of date and, since nobody else is going to update them, I've made a start on redoing them. I can't express how happy it makes me to see something old and with limited use come back to life. I'm thinking that I should let JR know, since he nominally 'owns' UPK. But therein lies the real problem.
He runs a service team. That service team does make a LOT of use of UPK but neither he nor they have any time to think about the strategic direction of UPK, how it should be deployed, how people should be trained in developing, publishing, etc. The training still falls to me because I'm the 'go to' person for the product. The other service team could probably do it and, perhaps, I should try to push it over to them. But I actually like doing it.
I did manage to push back on the upgrade so that A wasn't hassling me about it ALL the time and asking deeply technical (at least as far as I'm concerned) questions about it. But then, nobody else was fulfilling that role, either. JR's attitude was 'if it needs an upgrade IT Services' should handle it'. Which is probably right, but that's not the attitude of a system 'owner' is it?
Ideally, I'd like to take on that role (with suitable remuneration, of course!), probably within Staff Development since, at the end of the day, it's a training tool. I could keep track of the latest developments and all the funky new functionality, schedule upgrades, train people, trouble shoot, manage the library, promote it right across the University so that it became the 'go to' tool for training in new systems (rather than 'we will write those topics - eventually')... *sigh*
The good news here is that I think I've identified some of the source of my recent frustrations. UPK is a tool that I love, that I can see the benefits of - and I can pass those benefits on to other people. BAing is something I still feel all at sea with AND don't feel I'm getting any real support in developing - it's more, 'we'll write your JD and then you'll do more BA and that will be good'. The trouble is, whilst LOTS of people see the benefits of UPK, nobody wants to take the time to manage it properly. And even though I want to, I'm not in a position to make it happen because my immediate superiors don't know enough about it.
Perhaps it's something to bring up in my 1-1 next week? Need to think about how to pitch it.
And finally... I bought some new, snuggly, fleecy throws for the living room that will keep us all very cosy in the winter and met with the approval of both son and husband! So, that was a success.
I also wrote a new short story for Flash Tales/ FFF that you can read here. And this week's prompt looks interesting enough for me to have a go at later.
So, writing was pretty good this week.
I've also added a 4 minute Chi Gong routine to my morning. The chap in the YouTube video promises 'tremendous health benefits' but I haven't noticed any great changes yet! The principle here, though, is to increase the amount of exercise that I do. I'm thinking of using November to change my writing time from morning to evening, which would free up some time in the morning for yoga/ tai chi/ chi gong. I'm not going to 'do Nano' as such but I am going to do some intensive work on Mannerley.
So far, so good.
I also finished redrawing the SDLC for projects at work. The diagram is much more compact but also contains more information, so I am super chuffed with it. I now need to review all of our documentation and possibly get some of this stuff onto our webpages *gasp* Now that WOULD be an achievement.
And last but not least I got excited/ depressed about UPK. I realised that the 'how to get started' topics were waaay out of date and, since nobody else is going to update them, I've made a start on redoing them. I can't express how happy it makes me to see something old and with limited use come back to life. I'm thinking that I should let JR know, since he nominally 'owns' UPK. But therein lies the real problem.
He runs a service team. That service team does make a LOT of use of UPK but neither he nor they have any time to think about the strategic direction of UPK, how it should be deployed, how people should be trained in developing, publishing, etc. The training still falls to me because I'm the 'go to' person for the product. The other service team could probably do it and, perhaps, I should try to push it over to them. But I actually like doing it.
I did manage to push back on the upgrade so that A wasn't hassling me about it ALL the time and asking deeply technical (at least as far as I'm concerned) questions about it. But then, nobody else was fulfilling that role, either. JR's attitude was 'if it needs an upgrade IT Services' should handle it'. Which is probably right, but that's not the attitude of a system 'owner' is it?
Ideally, I'd like to take on that role (with suitable remuneration, of course!), probably within Staff Development since, at the end of the day, it's a training tool. I could keep track of the latest developments and all the funky new functionality, schedule upgrades, train people, trouble shoot, manage the library, promote it right across the University so that it became the 'go to' tool for training in new systems (rather than 'we will write those topics - eventually')... *sigh*
The good news here is that I think I've identified some of the source of my recent frustrations. UPK is a tool that I love, that I can see the benefits of - and I can pass those benefits on to other people. BAing is something I still feel all at sea with AND don't feel I'm getting any real support in developing - it's more, 'we'll write your JD and then you'll do more BA and that will be good'. The trouble is, whilst LOTS of people see the benefits of UPK, nobody wants to take the time to manage it properly. And even though I want to, I'm not in a position to make it happen because my immediate superiors don't know enough about it.
Perhaps it's something to bring up in my 1-1 next week? Need to think about how to pitch it.
And finally... I bought some new, snuggly, fleecy throws for the living room that will keep us all very cosy in the winter and met with the approval of both son and husband! So, that was a success.