Tag: telecommute

I Am So Tired

18 minutes left in the work week. I am completely exhausted. I thought I got a decent night’s sleep last night, but right now I am completely out of gas. I have nothing left.

17 minutes until the weekend. I’m looking forward to going to bed early tonight and sleeping late tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be nice? Sounds like time well spent to me! I might be a smidge bias though, I’m not sure.

Not that it matters, but I am just going to mention that I spent my lunch break wrapping xmas presents today. I didn’t get through everything I needed to, but I am feeling pretty good about what I did get to. Time well spent, indeed.

15 minutes to go until quittin’ time. I am so ready.

Bring me that weekend!

Home

I did it. Three days in the office. Not only that but three days in the 2nd farthest office from my house.

Tomorrow is Friday and tomorrow I’ll be working from home… finally.

Next week our Wednesday in the office day happens on Tuesday because reasons. I’m not thinking about that tonight though. I am just happy that I can work from home tomorrow. Insert the sound of a super emphatic sigh of relief right here.

As much as I am looking forward to not driving 73 miles to Foxborough tomorrow morning, I am even more looking forward to getting past the work day and getting to the weekend. There will be much xmas gift wrapping this weekend. Also… guitar playing… it’s a moral imperative.

Two Down, One to Go

Tuesday in the office? Check.

Wednesday in the office? Check.

Thursday in the office? Still to come.

I drove the 70+ miles to Foxborough this morning. I attended a couple of meetings, one of which was in person and the whole reason I made the commute. When it was over I packed up my stuff and drove home and finished the day here. Literally right here at this desk that I am sitting at as I type this masterpiece of a blog post right now.

Tomorrow might be different. The in person meeting I am driving the 70+ miles for runs from 12-2:00. Is that too late in the day for me to drive a little more than an hour to work from home for the last couple of hours of the day? I’m definitely not staying in Foxborough, but I could drive to my actual office building in Westwood and finish the day there. I don’t want to do that, but from a self guilt stand point that might be the way to go. I will see if I can bring myself to run the two options (home or Westwood) past my boss and see if he even cares which choice I make.

All of this means that I have one more day this week where I have to get up extremely early so that I can get my morning exercise in before I leave, and still leave early enough to drive the hour and a half it takes to get to where I need to be. It is stressing me out big time, but at least I should be back to one day in the office each week for the next few months. Come March though… mandatory two days. Shit.

Okay then, it’s 8:00pm. I finished dinner about half an hour ago. I am still feeling pretty full in my little tiny faux stomach gastric bypassed pouch. Today is supposed to be national ice cream day. I can’t eat real ice cream anymore, but I have a sugar free ice cream-esque thing in the freezer that I can have. That will allow me to get in on the ice creamy celebration, and it also has five grams of protein! Bonus!

I think I’ll watch an episode of Deep Space Nine and then see if I am hungry enough for a snack. I probably will be. What I should do is try to write some music, but I don’t think I have it in me tonight. It was a long day in what is amounting to a very long week.

I’ll survive… somehow… day by day.

One Down, Two to Go

I am home after a long day at work in the office. I drove the 13513533752 miles to our Foxborough building this morning (actually, it’s 73 miles, it just feels like a zillion and a half) for our group’s holiday party/meeting. Yankee swap and then lunch. After that I drove about half way home and finished the day in my regular building in Westwood.

Tomorrow is day two of three straight Foxborough days. This time it’s for my manager’s monthly meeting with his staff. Since I only have to be in the office one day each week, when this meeting ends at around noon I will probably be able to drive home and finish the day here. That only works if nothing pressing comes up tomorrow morning. Finger crossed.

Thursday brings me back to Foxborough for a third straight day. This time for a training in the morning, followed by my manager taking his direct reports out to lunch. I didn’t check everyone’s calendars to see if there was a reason why the group meeting and the group lunch aren’t both happening on the same day, because I am sure there is something going on to keep everyone from being available. It’s not a big deal, really. I have three long morning commutes in a row, but that’s still better than going in to my usual, closer to home, office five days a week, right? Again, if nothing goes wrong I will be able to head home for the second half of the day following the group lunch. Fingers crossed again.

In reference to a post from yesterday, the collared shirt I wore to the office today has been washed and hung up to dry. It should be ready to go on Thursday. That will do for today.

Camera Workflow

I have a new workspace for telecommuting. I had a desk in the cellar that had a work computer section and a personal computer section. When I took my photo a day pic at lunch time or whatever, I could plug my Nikon Z5 into my personal computer, a MacBook Pro, and pull the RAW file into Apple Photos, convert it to a PNG, and then upload it to Flickr.

On the new desk, I don’t have the Mac next to me. It’s just Windows. That means I don’t have a way to convert from RAW to something else. I suppose I could find an app to do it, but I don’t want to install anything on my work laptop. Instead, I changed my camera workflow a little. Instead of saving RAW files, I am not saving a RAW file and a JPEG. I’m also saving the two formats to separate memory cards. RAW goes to the card in slot one, and JPEG goes to the card in slot two. That means I can put the JPEG card into my USB card reader, and upload to Flickr directly from the card. That way I am not saving anything to my work computer, and I can still take care of my photo a day thing during the work day.

Here is proof that it works:

99/365
99/365

Success, babie!

Good to Go

I still need to bring a headset mic upstairs to use for conference calls, and I need lightbulbs for the two little lamps on the shelf. Other than that I am good to go. The swapping between monitors didn’t work the way we’d planned, but I found a work around that is almost as good. I am going to work here tomorrow and see how it goes. If nothing else, I will be a ton warmer than I am when I work down cellar.

I have a few more changes I want to make to this setup, but for now it’s good enough.

ADDENDUM: Light bulbs, candles, a foot rest, and iTunes.

Home Office

Back story: When the pandemic first hit and we all started to work from home, Jen and I both had a desk in the same home office. Quickly we realized that we were in each other’s way and I moved my desk to our bedroom. We stayed like that until I had a minor covid scare in September of 2021. At that point I moved into my step son’s bedroom to quarantine. I slept and worked there for a few weeks and then moved back to the bedroom.

In the spring of 2022 we had our cellar redone and in April I moved my desk downstairs. I’m still there. Over the course of this working from home journey, both of my step kids have moved into apartments in Burlington, VT. I promised them that they would always have a place in our house if they needed it, and that includes a place to sleep when they come to visit. Due to that, their bedrooms will remain their bedrooms forever.

When my step daughter moved out she left most of her furniture here. When my step son moved out he took all of his furniture with him. Jen and I have been trying to figure out a way to re-furnish his room. So far we’ve only put a day bed in there. He used it when he was home for a visit last week. That worked out well. What else can we do though?

The next move is going to be adding a computer desk to his room. In fact, I think I am going to move my work from home office in there. My plan is to work from the desk in his room when he’s not here, and work at my current desk in the cellar when he is. That means I am literally going to have two home office spaces. I will keep my music nook setup in the cellar as well. I make all of my guitar noise there as well as doing all of my morning exercise. That’s too much ruckus for upstairs next to Jen’s workspace, so that clearly stays downstairs. Everything for my work space though is going to be duplicated upstairs.

We found a desk online that looks like it will be perfect. We have a couple of monitors we’re not using that will be perfect. Jen has a keyboard and a laptop stand I can use. We ordered a wireless mouse and a webcam and a USB hub today. It’s going to take a week or two to put all of this together so I will keep working from the cellar for now, and then right about the time it will all be setup my step son will be on Christmas break so he’ll be coming home for part of it. While he’s home he can use the desk too. I might even look to put a cheap desktop machine there for him to use and for me to use for any non-work stuff that might come up while I’m in there. That seems like a decent plan.

Now we just have to make it all happen.

Work is Done: Time to Go To Work

The work day is wrapping up. I guess it’s time to go to work.

Because numb nutz over here forgot his laptop charger in the office yesterday and has to drive the 40 miles to the office to go get it. Or to hopefully go get it. It’s possible someone could have taken it off the desk I used yesterday. Here’s hoping it’s still there.

Numb nutz.

Three Years Today

Three years. Bullshit.

Today is March 13, 2023. On March 13, 2020 we left the office in Waltham at 5:30pm and the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown started. I mean we all had our own individual experience as we did not have a functioning Federal government at the time, we just had a nazi cunt in the White House pretending to run a Federal government. We were all sort of left on our own while more civilized societies worked together. Yeah, I ‘member.

So Jen’s company sent everyone home after work on Wednesday and my company sent us home after work on Friday. The kids both came home around the same time. Bellana was on Spring Break and they just had everyone stay home. Harry was still in high school so his experience was more closely similar to mine. Just one day he was told to stay home and telecommute.

So that’s how it all started. Today? Today the pandemic is still a thing, but our society is more or less ignoring it. Very few of us are still wearing masks. Most of us in the Tech industry are still working from home for the most part, but we’re being pulled back into the office more and more often. My company has us coming in once a week. My fingers are crossed that at some point soon we’ll eliminate that requirement, but that hope is not based on any actual evidence. Jen’s company closed their buildings, but they are still pulling people in to temporary work sites now and then. I don’t know anyone who is still 100% working from home.

In my family, we’re all vaccinated up the wazoo, and every time a booster is made available we jump on it. It hasn’t stopped anyone from contracting Covid-19 but it has drastically reduced the severity for most of us. Jen and I haven’t caught it at all. Three years of precautions have been successful for us. Sure, we’ve over done it and we continue to over do it to some extent, but we’re still Covid-Free.

And that, folks is the long and the short of it. They told us to expect to be working from home for a couple of weeks and it’s turned into three years. It’s not even unusual anymore. It’s not even “the new normal” anymore. It’s just normal now. As Bruce Hornsby and the Range once said, that’s just the way it is.

Happy third quaren-versary, folks. Do something fun at home by yourself to celebrate.