I was on a call with a few colleagues when one of them said, “that was a bit of a round ball, perhaps.” At least, that’s what I heard. I was wondering whether it was some kind of sports expression well known to football enjoyers, like “a game of two halves”, until someone else echoed him and said, “not a ramble at all.”

An interesting detail is that the person I misheard has a Standard Southern British accent, while the person whom I actually understood has a Glaswegian accent. According to stereotype, Glaswegian is considered to be a difficult accent to understand, but I don’t find that to be true generally and especially not in this case. The Glaswegian pronunciation has far greater contrastive differences between the STAND and MOUTH vowels than does SSB, where it’s /a/ versus /aw/ with the latter tending towards /a/ in fast speech.

I cycled over to the climbing wall on Wednesday lunchtime, looking forward to taking advantage of a couple of hours free of meetings and the discount day for locals. I got as far as checking in when I realised I had forgotten my wallet. I turned around and went home. I didn’t have enough time to go home and back again, so I didn’t go climbing.

I had a visual migraine on Wednesday evening. No pain, just a scintillating scotoma. I suspect that stress over the past few weeks might be to blame. It came on over dinner, so once I had finished eating I sat on the sofa with a guitar and played until I had distracted my stupid brain to the extent that it forgot about it completely. There is some evidence that playing music can decrease pain; perhaps it’s also useful for other undesirable mental experiences.

I did my tax return. It only took me an hour or so, although that’s partly because after many years I now know which records I need to keep to make it easy on myself.

Microsoft continues to be the bane of my life. This week, I have been finding it difficult to sign in, which is especially inconvenient when my client’s systems are configured to force me to re-authenticate several times a day. Most computer systems will ask you to sign in, and then you are signed in. Sometimes, you might get an interstitial page saying, “signing you in”.

Microsoft is, at least, realistic about its capabilities and presents you with a screen saying, “trying to sign you in”. Trying, yes. Succeeding, not so much. The cycle generally goes, “Trying to sign you in”, followed by, “Hang on a moment while we sign you out”, which quickly refreshes to, “You signed out of your account. It’s a good idea to close all browser windows.”

A good idea? A good idea? You know what would be a really good idea? Software that actually works.

I hate Microsoft so much, and I’m not alone, judging by this image that has been doing the rounds online with a modern take on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I’m not sure who made it originally. I’ve traced and redrawn it because all the versions I’ve seen have been low resolution versions with multiple generations of JPEG artifacts and your eyes deserve better.

A mock version of the pyramis of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The layers from bottom to top are: 'Not having to use Teams' and 'Not having to use Jira' ('Basic needs'); 'Not having to use Salesforce' and 'Food, shelter, water' ('Psychological needs'); 'Money, love, etc.' ('Self-fulfillment needs')

Hierarchy of needs

I also have to use Jira. It’s also very bad, but that’s a rant for another time, perhaps.

Just a few links this week: