Tag: telecommuting

Crazy Town

On a crazy scale from 1-10, today has been a 467037471509436.2.

Holy crap, has it been a crazy day!

You know what though? I tested negative for Covid-19 today. Neh-gah-tiv. Zero Covid. Zip, zilch, nada. Nothing. Covid free since ’93, to paraphrase Mr Ted Mosby.

The love of my life and I are going to have dinner together tonight instead of having dinner at the same time in separate rooms. It’s going to be awesome. On multiple occasions today there were spontaneous hugs and smooches. It was awesome.

Granted, everything else about today was absolute insanity, but the non-quarantine stuff ruled.

Now the question is, what do I do about my work desk. We had talked a little of moving my work day desk out of the bedroom into one of the kids rooms (obviously moving it back to the bedroom when they come home). At first I was not happy working in Harry’s room, but the windows make it a winner. He has two windows that face the back yard. I have had them open for every second that I’ve been quarantinied in here. It’s kinda glorious. The windows in our bedroom face the street, which is nice, but facing the back yard is so much nicer.

Naw, as nice as the air flow in here is, I think I’ll move my work desk back to the bedroom. That’s the spot for me.

Happy No Covid/No More Quarantine Day!

WOOHOO!

Back At It-Ish

The five day weekend is over. Not that I had a five day weekend, but I digress. I’m still isolating in Harry’s room, and today is the first day that I will be on video conferences with folks at work. I’m going to have to explain the Harry Potter book cover poster on the wall behind me. It’s actually not a poster, it’s a puzzle. Harry was able to put it together and hang it up without having it fall apart. How amazing is that? What the camera can’t see is the Star Wars poster off to my right. That one would need no explanation.

I have the windows open and the mini USB fan on low. The goal is to keep the air moving. Something about all of that time at my parents house in the sweltering heat with fans blowing right on my face all day has made me really want to have the air moving around me as I work.

I closed all three exercise rings yesterday. I weighed myself today. Closing the three rings once did not magically reduce my weight at all. What the hell? It was my first weigh in since mid August and I was up a pound and a half since then. I think we can probably attribute that to stress eating over the weekend so I think maybe what I have learned is that Intermittent Fasting is helping me hold my weight steady more than it’s helping lose weight. I will take that as a huge win. Now the exercise can start lowering that astronomically high weight total, and then we can throw in some diet and some bariatric surgery to get it down the rest of the way. Wait, what?

Okay. Punching in to work. Have a good Tuesday, everyone. Labor day is past, summer is over, it is officially winter in New England. Bite me, Mother Nature.

Until next time……

Long Day

I’ve been tied to my desk pretty much all day. I did do a shit load of laundry and I cleaned up lake asshole. It’s currently small puddle asshole but the floor in the main cellar still has water under the tiles that bubbles up when you step on the right spots. The water is still coming in from somewhere. I’m guessing the water heater is leaking somewhere but I need a plumber to take a look. With yesterday’s Covid scare we won’t be inviting anyone into the house for a week or so, so the clean up will continue unabated. At least I won’t be out of the house for 24 hour stretches so I will be able to keep on top of things… in theory, at least.

Tomorrow will likely be the same deal. Lots of shit going on that I have to keep up with. Opportunities to stray from my desk are likely to be few and far between. I need to get a good nights sleep. I need to do the exact opposite of what I did last night. With the Covid semi-quarantiney we’re doing around these parts it means I am couch bound. Last night I forgot my CPAP machine. That plus the uncomfortable sectional left me with not a lot of sleep, and the sleep I had was pretty awful. I’ll have the CPAP tonight so what sleep I get should be better. I’m hoping being exhausted yet again might mean that I’ll sleep no matter how uncomfy the couch is.

What other unimportant thing can I write about? Last night I posted a blurb saying that when I start working from Harry’s desk we can expect more time lapse candle videos. Well I worked from Harry’s desk today and my iPad is taking a time lapse as I type this. The thing is, I can’t remember when I started it. I want to say it was 11:00am, which is 11 hours ago. It might have been more like 12noon. Either way… that’s a long ass time to shoot a time lapse. I want to let it run until just before I go to bed, so that will probably be around 11:00pm, maybe 45 minutes from now. I’m sure you’re over come with anticipation.

Okay. I’m watching the last episode of season two of Titans right now. I’m going to wrap this up so I can watch that. Then I am going to upload that time lapse to youtube. I know, I know, you can’t wait. I promise you’ll have that adrenaline rush before I sleep tonight.

Sleepy

There was a stretch of time there overnight when I was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to get to four hours of sleep. I didn’t get to bed until a smidge before 1:00am and it was a little before 5:00am and both of my parents were up and about. Mom was making breakfast and dad was using the bathroom. I would guess I was at about three hours and 45-50 minutes. Almost made it. Then my father went back to bed and a few minutes later my mother was back in bed too and shortly after I was asleep again. The total sleep time ended up being four hours and 35 minutes. I was up before 6:00 and I tried to get my morning bathroom routine done before they got up again. I almost made it. My mother’s bladder interrupted me. That was okay though.

Now at 7:12am I have a load of their laundry running and I am setup for work. I am going to cleanup my sleep station a little and then try to sneak in a little of last night’s The Walking Dead episode (season 11, episode 2). I think I can get it all in before work starts, but I will have to stop a few times for parent duties.

I was out of the office on Friday so I will have some hectic catch up to do once I sign in. That’s normal on the first day back after being out. I know I have some stuff that needs to be done for tomorrow, but I am hoping things are quiet today. I got enough sleep to be able to handle whatever the universe throws at me. It’s just a question of when I run out of gas. I am going to try to conserve enough energy to make it to 9:00-10:00pm tonight.

Fingers crossed, my dear readers*.

*In my silly attempt to paraphrase Stephen King’s regular greeting to his readers (what does he write? Loyal readers? Something like that) I misspelled “readers” as “reasers” and left it that way through a full proof read even though the Chrome spell check flagged it as an error. Oh yeah, we gone have a fun wun tuhday.

It is Not Friday

Why is it that every time I work from my parents house I manage to convince myself that it is Friday. The last time I worked here it was Friday, but today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday and here I am thinking about the things I want to do tomorrow when I don’t have to work because tomorrow is Saturday.

No, asshole. Tomorrow is not Saturday. Today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday and tomorrow is Thursday.

My parents are both watching TV. Dad’s in the living room. Mom is in the bedroom. They are watching the same show. He is watching the HD channel. She is watching the SD channel. There is a fraction of a second delay on one of them (I can’t tell which) so the audio isn’t lining up. It’s close, but it’s off, and it is driving my auditory nerve up the fucking wall.

I have a meeting in two minutes. Headphones, blessed headphones, save me from this noise!

Back at it Tonight

I am going to be back at my parents house tonight. I’m trying to be optimistic and keep my head together but there are a couple of things going on at work that are seriously getting under my skin. I’m trying to be helpful but it’s just not working. I don’t know why or how, I just know that I’m about to take a nutty off the deep end of life.

I’m trying to eat my lunch but the universe just won’t let me. To make matters worse, I just dropped a pretzel on the floor. What a sad waste of a delicious snack food.

Oh, and the Red Sox are playing the Yankees right now and the Yankees are up 2-0 after two innings. Yippee.

On the up side, another small step toward a solution to the parent health care problem is scheduled to happen later today. It’ll be wrapped up before I get there so I will be sending red head vibes and crossed fingers from home.

I don’t want to be in a perpetual state of freak out, or an endless state of annoyed. I just want things to be manageable, you know?

Okay, I am going to finish my lunch now. Wish me luck.

I Love My Family

I love my family. They are the best. You will never meet finer people.

Knowing that I am going to be at my parents’ for two whole days and that I won’t see them at all during that time, they asked me if I wanted to play a game of Ticket to Ride Online with them. We all have it on our iPads and figured it would be a nice thing to do together even when we aren’t together. Look me in the eye and tell me that isn’t the nicest thing anyone has ever done. I mean, seriously. How wonderful are Jen and Harry? I know Bellana’s not a big fan of that game, but maybe we can find something we can all play, assuming we can sneak it in around her work schedule as she is working up a storm in the final weeks before school starts.

I’m not sure who setup the network at my parents house, but I am pretty sure they have a firewall of some kind that is blocking online games. I’ve mentioned my troubles with World of Warcraft in the past, and tonight I had to switch from the wifi to my iPhone’s hotspot in order to connect to the game. I know my sister’s kids were doing some of their remote school here last year. I wonder if they put something in to keep them honest.

Speaking of online games, Jen and I have been playing World of Warcraft for the last month or so. WoW is owned and operated by a company called Blizzard. Blizzard has been getting demolished with charges of various kinds of sexual misconduct in the work place. I believe their CEO resigned over it recently. Karmically speaking (I do not believe in Karma, but the principal still applies) we are both starting to feel uncomfortable supporting the company so we’re looking for something else to play. Jen was looking into Star Wars: The Old Republic today. She won’t have to twist my arm to play that one. A game where I can be a Jedi? Sure! A game where I can get in touch with my dark side and be a Sith? Sure! I’ll have to download that one when I finally get home from this nana/papa sitting shift, sometimes in 2043 or so.

Last time I was here I mentioned that the only place I feel comfortable doing my “exercise” is in the cellar, and I don’t like going down there and leaving my parents alone without having a legitimate reason to go down stairs. There is laundry to do tonight, so I have my reason. I didn’t have a chance to start it until a little after 9:00, and only had five out of 30 minutes done, but I think I can close the ring. I have been down stairs once and I got my time up to 15 minutes. I think I will have two legitimate reasons to go into the cellar before midnight and I think I can get in the 15 remaining minutes. We’ll see. It’s really hot here and the humidity is unreal. We’ll see.

I left work for the day at 3:30 today so that I could spend some time with Harry before I came to my parents house. We watched the first episode of What If…? It was really good. I can’t wait for more! While we were busy with the Marvel fun, an email was sent to the whole company saying that our return to the office policy was changing again. Our requirement to come in approximate once a week has been temporarily put on hold due to the increasing Covid-19 numbers (which reminds me, I haven’t updated my spreadsheets yet). My boss called me a little while ago to make sure we were all on the same page. It’s looking like going into the office is off the table until (probably) mid-October. Obviously that could change at any time, but I feel much safer. It was pretty uncomfortable being there the last couple of times. I didn’t feel unsafe per se, I just didn’t feel comfortable. Tonight’s announcement was like a sigh of relief.

Okay, I need to update my MA and US Covid-19 numbers spreadsheets, and then I need to mix a song. All of that sandwiched around laundry and “exercising” and actually going to sleep and stuff. Here’s hoping the quiet night stays quiet. Fingers crossed.

Things I Forgot About

It has been 482 days since I last worked in the office. March 13, 2020 to July 8, 2021. Thanks, Covid-19 (you prick).

I just wanted to make a quick note of some of the things I’ve forgotten about over that time, and a couple of things that changed without my consent.

  1. The noise level. We work in an open concept space. There are only 6-8 people within sight right now, but there are probably four times that many desks, at least. We don’t have walls between us. It’s nice when you have a bunch of people on the same team within earshot of each other so if staff member is talking about an issue, staff member #2 sitting 15-20 desks away can hear the issue and chime in to help. It’s nice, right? Today though, there are two of the four members of my group here, and three more off in the distance who work on the same application. The rest of the people are unrelated and some of them have been on conference calls all day. I forgot what that felt like. If Jen’s on a call while we’re both at home we just close the doors. Problem solved. Not so in the open concept workspace. I hear everyone’s everything whether it affects me or not.
  2. This one is simple. Locking your computer. Get up to the to the bathroom while working from home? No problem. Just do it. Get up to go to the bathroom while working in the office? Lock your computer. The first time I had to walk away from my desk I forgot. I surprised myself. I’m usually much more vigilant about such things.
  3. Diet Coke. Oh yeah. My company is awesome about the soda machines. We only pay the deposit, $0.05. It’s wonderful. Unfortunately when it comes to diet soda I am a Diet Pepsi guy and we’re a Coca~Cola shop. For every other soda I prefer the Coke product. Diet soda? The one thing I will let myself drink? Pepsi. Damn it. I forgot about that.

I’m sure there are others, but those are the stand outs. Honorable mention goes to the VPN. It was downright odd to not connect to the VPN today. I’ll probably forget when I’m at home tomorrow.

Now, a couple of things that changed while I was away.

  1. I’ve mentioned this a bunch of times before but it is such a huge thing that I feel the need to mention it again. My building is gone. Sold. History. I worked for this company for a decade before I was able to have a desk in a building that is North of the Mass Pike (pardon the super local nature of that statement, but fellow Merrimack Valley folks will know of what I speak). This morning as I drove to work I could see that building from the highway as I cruised on by. They sold our building a few months ago and I’ve been moved to another building. We have a little two building complex right off of route 128. I used to work in building #2. For a few years at least. Now I’m in building . At the very least it’s the next closest building to home now that the closest building has been sold.
  2. Trash cans. A few years ago one of our buildings started a pilot program where all of the little trash barrels at everyone’s desks were removed in favor of a few centrally located barrels. There was a reason for it but it wasn’t my building so I more or less forgot it happened. When I was unpacking my stuff this morning I noticed none of the desks had barrels, and there were a few centrally located barrels around the space. Aw shit. They took our buckets away. Damn it.

Once again, I am sure there are other things but I can’t think of them right now. We don’t have a cafeteria. Well, we do still have the cafeteria room and all, but we don’t have a catering company selling us lunch anymore. We knew that though. That’s a Covid-19 casualty that will probably come back eventually. No big deal, I want to brown bag it anyway.

I’ll probably write follow up posts as I think of more stuff to write. Suffice to say, being back in the office building is weird. Very weird.

Welcome to July

Happy July 1st, everyone. Summer in full swing. The forecast calls for a high of 80 degrees today with rain every day for the foreseeable future. Hooray.

Today is the day that my company’s Covid-19 lock down kind of comes to an end. Prior to Covid I worked in the building four days per week and at home one. Now it’s sort of the opposite. It’s not in the office once per week, it’s more like in the office an average of once per week. Flexibility is our friend. It’s actually in the office 20% of the month… so about once per week.

I was hoping to make my first day back July 13th as my last day before lock down was March 13th and it would be funny for it to be exactly 16 months. Nope. My nana sitting schedule will not allow that. I need to sneak in at least once before the 13th.

Change of subject, I went to sleep around midnight last night and woke up a bit before 5:00. I felt okay, even though I failed to get even five hours of sleep, but my SleepWatch app is telling me my heart rate dip was garbage. It says I was in restful sleep for about three quarters of the night though, so I’ve got that going for me. It’s going to be a long day.

The 50/90 challenge starts in four days. Are you ready to be bombarded with posts regarding awful, pointless, idiotic music, guitar playing, song writing, and recording? I strongly suspect this year’s challenge will end in a crash and burn, and it will likely happen quickly. As of this moment though, I am still thinking I am on board. In fact, I was thinking about swapping out my amplifier. I don’t want to go with a two amp setup like last year. I don’t want to take up that much room in the bedroom anymore. I have been using my Vox AC15 for the last few months. This weekend before things kick off I might swap it for my Fender Bassbreaker 15 again. We’ll see.

Did I mention I have an eye doctor appointment on Saturday? Does it make me sound like an old fart when I say I am seriously looking forward to it? Probably. Okay (son of) boomer.

Right, time for my Nana Sitting duties. I need to bring her the 8:00am meds.

Until next time.

Good day, eh?