This has been the hardest week so far.

There are been far more downs than ups this week.

Monday was good. Got some final bug fixes done for my project and got a build out. Felt good. Had our second work virtual pub quiz which was a lot of fun and then went to bed.

Tuesday morning I needed to reboot my laptop for various reasons. Clicked the option to restart as normal, looking at my desktop for what I now know to be the last time. My laptop never recovered. It got stuck in a reboot, encryption, blue screen of death indicating hard drive failure loop. Not what you need, and very much not when you are remote working!

I rang the IT support number and they were amazing. The IT manager was in the office and he sped up a build of a temp laptop. I drove over to the office after lunch and swapped it over. Now it’s not the best and I’ve had issues with it but it got me through the meetings, admin and presentation prep I needed to do before going “on holiday” for Easter.

I’m going to pick up a new one next week.

Due to the amazing setup we have at work I was able to log into the Ring Central apps on my Surface Pro 2 and mobile phone and continue my meetings and communication routes to various people etc. it was just the data which had gone. The important work had been checked in which was good but it was the sample/demo work I had been working on which I’d lost. Not the end of the world, just frustrating.

Now the whole thing has been a bit surreal up until this point. Feels a bit like living in a movie. Until I heard this week that a friend at works husband had been transferred from his nursing home to hospital. This under normal circumstances is never good but with the current situation was worse.

We heard that he had contracted Covid-19 and on Thursday he passed away :-(

My thoughts and prayers are with them during this time.

When the whole situation impacts people you know it becomes more real.

The amazing work that the NHS and key people are going is invaluable. We will only get through this with them doing what they are doing and the rest of us staying home.

Stay home. Keep safe.

Happy Easter.