Ebb and flow (with an emphasis on flow)

When I started this blog, I was hoping to post weekly, or fortnightly. Unfortunately, at this point, my last post was over two months ago!

It’s just been a busy couple of months.

I’m really grateful that we were able to increase capacity in our team some time ago, but I know I’ve got a lot of work to do on myself, to make sure that I hand work over and delegate it correctly — while my role doesn’t have the responsibility of managing people, I do manage workstreams for my area of Infrastructure, and I need to take on less myself when I have a really hardworking, skilled and helpful team.

Our biggest project at the moment is rethinking how our laptop and desktop computer estate is managed. We are planning to move our device management from the traditional Microsoft Configuration Manager to the modern Microsoft Intune, in line with Microsoft’s shift of management workload withing their products — my team and an increasing number of volunteers from ICT are testing Windows 11 managed by Intune. DC staff might already have heard of Intune because we have used it to manage work smartphones, tablets, and our “bring your own device” offering for many years now.

We’re on the cusp of getting other teams in ICT involved in the management, and we’re going to do our utmost to make sure our colleagues (in ICT and the wider council) are supported through the change. We all have a lot to work on day-to-day, and I want it to cause as little disruption as possible.

Yes, you can move the Start button back to the bottom left corner of the screen, but I’ve been using Windows 11 for a long while, personally and professionally, and I think you should give it a chance before you change it back. 😉

Since I’ve worked in Infrastructure for the last goodness knows how many years, even before we started working from home, I didn’t go out on site a lot like I did when I was an apprentice. During the previous week, I visited several libraries to help some colleagues check over the ICT, with my perspective being cyber security (including physical access to devices).

I think it’s actually been particularly good for my mental health to get out and do something a bit different, and it’s been in the company of different colleagues that I don’t always work with directly, but I’ve known for years and consider good friends (not to say I don’t feel the same way about my own team!) Also, is there any public building more fascinating and relaxing than a library? 🥰 We have such an interesting variety of buildings and the Library Service staff are always lovely. I’m looking forward to visiting some more libraries in the next weeks.

As an aside, have you ever seen or heard of the John Rylands library? It’s beautiful and well worth a visit if you’re in Manchester!

There’s lots more that I’m working on, including taking more responsibility for our licensing, and staying on top of Microsoft 365 and infrastructure changes so I can help advise ICT and Digital colleagues and their customers (I’m grateful to have a great relationship with our User Adoption team), as well as keeping us secure — I’m also part of the internal cyber security team as an additional role.

Oh — I’ve also been involved in procurement for a new system as a technical expert, which isn’t something you necessarily expect when you go into ICT as a career. I had to complete procurement evaluation training before I could start scoring suppliers, to make sure everything is done fairly and legally. It’s interesting to learn about other functions and processes of the council.

In terms of training, I’ve been trying to do at least one lab every two weeks on Blue Team Labs Online — where you get to investigate a simulated compromised computer environment and analyse the evidence after a cyber incident. This has flagged to me that I need some more Linux familiarity, so I’m trying to find time to run through the Linux Fundamentals course on Pluralsight. I took the “Skills IQ” test first to see what my current knowledge level is and came out at “emerging proficient” which I think means I could work my way around the command line with trial and error, but I’d prefer to be more adept!

And as always… there’s plenty of Microsoft products I need to refresh my knowledge on, or new ones to find out about! I would hate to be asked about a product and have it be news to me.

On the personal front, other things that have been prioritised over blogging:

• I’m studying Japanese hard daily but I’m on the fence about retrying the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) N4 exam in December. This is something I do for personal achievement only. I attempted N4 last December and unfortunately had brain fog from flu — rest assured I wore a mask in the exam room — and struggled with the vocabulary section of the exam because I discovered I know quite a lot of kanji meanings, but not necessarily how it’s said or written phonetically. I passed the N5 exam in December 2018, so it’s been a while!
• I’ve already smashed my “books read” target of 50 for this year — I’m currently sitting at 54. I think my “favourite books I read in 2023” blog post in the new year is going to be a difficult one to decide on. Currently inhaling Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin which I think is highly likely to make the list.
• My husband and I been travelling a lot! We’ve visited friends and family in the northwest (with more trips up there to come in the next few months), had some of those friends to stay, and just generally seemed to be busy every single weekend for several months. I don’t think it’s going to slow down until at least November.
• We’ve also taken up daily walking again, like we started during the UK lockdowns and I think fizzled out in the months before our wedding last summer. Just a 20–30 minute circle around our neighbourhood after dinner, but it’s good to get out when we both work in ICT jobs and our hobbies include computers and gaming.
• I’ve been playing Splatoon 3 daily on the Nintendo Switch to complete a seasonal “catalogue” of in-game items, and let’s not forget the new Legend of Zelda game came out in May. I’ve also been replaying some older Nintendo DS/3DS games that I enjoy.

Finally, a shout out to Guide Dogs UK; our friends who came to stay are caring for this beautiful little lady until she’s 12–16 months old and goes back to the Guide Dogs charity to be trained for service. 🙂 You can find out more about volunteering to care for Guide Dog puppies here.