Week 47: Index Cards, Intune and Gaming
November 16 – 22, 2025
I have felt inspired by Joel Chrono to try my hand at weeknotes here on my corner of the web. Somewhat inconsistently I’ve already kept brief notes in similar fashion for a while, as part of my organization and notes system on index cards (detailing that will be its own series of posts!), so this feels like a natural evolution for the shareable daily life stuff.
I started working on a bit of an evolution to how I am archiving my daily notes in my index cards system, inspired by ✱Forever Notes✱, I might even use photos of index cards into an actual Apple Notes system of the same design as my backup.
Continued my fights and adventures with Microsoft Intune and Autopilot at work this week. Overall it has gone very well, to get a clear start and image, we’re factory resetting existing laptops a few at a time and setting them up via Autopilot. The only hitch was few laptops have corrupt restore file before the option to cloud download vs local files...so they need a USB Windows 11 re-install/repair...and we’re work from home based.
Had a bit more time for some gaming later this week, the house is emptier than normal with some trips and travel, so managed to squeeze in a bit of gaming, which in general has been harder to come by.
I have a FiiO Echo Mini for a portable music player, and it’s an awesome little device for what little I’ve used it for so far. I am still working on building out some playlists now that I have all my music in better hi-res Flac formats.
Finished up some winter prep tasks outdoors, as I am on an acreage in northern Ontario. Had a few more things to put away around the yard, cover to stretch over old RV Trailer, and pre-winter checks on the Jeep.
Reading
Not a huge volume of reading this past week, but I managed at least better consistency than in the past:
Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations – I long since lost track reading daily, but am making progress, finished the dailies in May and got up to about June 10th, with some good notes captured along the way.
Buy Back Your Time – I am corporate IT, not an entrepreneur, but this has been a good read so far, as plenty still applies. I am still not far into the book, about page 55, but managed a lot of that in this past week after it sat to the side for weeks.
Gaming
As mentioned, in general I have not had (or made time) for a lot of gaming, that is something I am working on, but made a bit more time this week for some progress, so this is at least what I touched on:
Need for Speed: Payback (PS5)
This game in the Need for Speed franchise has been a slow burn for me, I’be been playing it a bit on and off for probably two years, but keep enjoying it for the not-so-simulation driving mayhem it offers, but hey, it lets me have some really fun classic cars, I’ll get some pictures for the next time I write about it.
God of War: Ragnarok (PS5)
I started this finally on Friday, it came bundled with my PS5 when purchased, but I never got around to playing it. Granted, I have never played the other God of War games, but was always interested in the concept. They have a cool recap on the main menu that tries to summarize the story (ish) enough to have a starting point. Managed a few hours and had a blast, so I’ll keep playing this yet.
Banished (PC)
Banished is now an older game by comparison, came out back at the start of my post-university career, but one I return too often to start new games and just relax with the early survival building stages. I’ve always enjoyed their music track, and while it is too slow for some, I enjoy playing it on 1X speed and just letting the people mill about their lives, and the graphics still hold up incredible. Of note, this is played on PC via Steam on my Fedora 42 Workstation.
Movie & TV
I don’t know to what consistency I’ll keep this section, but currently I sometimes capture what I’ve watched, in which case it has a place.
Grand Tour
Mostly while working on some notes in the evening, I worked this week through some fun re-watches of some season 3 and 4 episodes of The Grand Tour. I started with the Mongolia special, which is just an amazing episode, and a cool way to see that country. I followed it up with the first two season 4 episodes (after they went to road specials only), covering boats in Vietnam, and then driving incredibly rough roads of Madagascar in search of treasure. They’re always fun to re-watch with the antics of the old Top Gear gang.
Around the Web
This section is a pretty straight copy from Joel, depending on the week I may read a bunch online, or watch a bunch of video’s, and sometimes not so much.
Articles & Blogs
52 Weeknotes Later – I had already come across his weeknotes earlier to plant the idea, but this post and some of it’s linked posts helped push me to give this a try.
Why I Remain a Skeptic Despite Working in Tech – Interesting read I generally agree with, I likewise work in Tech, have precisely one automated light bulb and live heavily on paper and Index Cards. Granted, I am fairly invested in the Apple Ecosystem these days. Food for thought for me to write on later!
Videos
This Practice Will Put You Ahead of 99% of People: Matt Ragland – I will admit, my entry to this video was mostly seeing Index Cards in use, much like my notes and system, but it was a good entry point for some reminders and improvements on my system, and avoid perfection.
Five Life Changing Journal Techniques: Matt Ragland – This was a follow-on link at the end of the video above, but likewise, right up my alley. It was a good reminder however of useful and healthy methods for journalling, many I intend to trial and implement further.
Don’t Set a Goal for 2026 Until You Watch This: Bullet Journal – I started my journey back into paper with Bullet Journalling, before shifting into Index Cards, but with a lot of bullet journal concepts in my design. This video had some great learning on Intentional Goals, instead of shoulding yourself goals.
I would say there we have it, for the first published weeknotes, it feels like it was a bit on the long side, but it’s also nice to have a reflection around the week as it blows by rapidly! I enjoy that it got me to spend some time writing, one of the activities I want to partake more in.