Tag: telecommuting

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 2 (Preempted)

I had a second episode of The Stir Crazy Files all lined up and ready to go and then something came along to negate the need for it.

Yesterday my love came up with a plan to take a tiny little bite out of the cabin fever and also fight against the lack of exercise we are bound to suffer from during our social distancing.

She asked me if I wanted to take a walk around the block.  I said sure and off we went.  It only took about 15 minutes or so and it just felt great.  I mean, the exercise was just exercise, you know?  But actually spending a few minutes outside of the confines of our house just really hit the spot.

Normally I would be 100% in favor of not going outside for any reason, but now that The Man is telling us to stay in it just felt so good breathe fresh air.  We both felt invigorated and we agreed we’d do the same thing every lunch time until The Man sets us free.  Weather permitting, of course.

Can you see where this is going now?

When we woke up this morning it was pouring rain.  When we started working it was pouring rain.  When I looked outside after my morning meeting it was pouring rain.

Damn it.

When 1:00 came I didn’t even bother looking outside, I just went to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich.

Then… a minor miracle.

Jen had a meeting end around 1:00.  As I was sitting down to eat my sandwich she asked if I wanted to go for a walk.  But… but.. I thought.  Then I looked outside and wonder of wonders the rain had stopped!  It was still cold as ass, but at least it wasn’t raining!  We went outside and went for a walk.  Oh happiness!

So instead of writing a post about feeling stir crazy again, I get to write a post about not feeling stir crazy again.

Sweet.

Now go and wash your damn hands.

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 1

Our toaster is a fickle minx.

Prior to the concept of social distancing taking over the known universe, my sweet, angelic, brilliant, beautiful, beloved wife Jennifer started having a hankering for English Muffins.  I get it.  Every once in a while I go through a phase where I can’t get enough of those muffins.

I like them on the well-done side.  Jen and the kids like them on the just-barely toasted side.  What ever your preference, our toaster can do it… it just doesn’t want to.  There is a sweet spot setting but it’s so hard to find it.  When I make toast it’s either just a little too done, or just a little too underdone.  No matter what I try it’s always just barely not-quite perfect.  That’s not to imply the English muffins don’t come out delicious, put some peanut butter on one of those little suckers and it’s bordering on bliss, it’s just that they could stand to be a tiny bit perfecterer.  Dig?

Yup… it’s only day four of the working from home/social distancing experiment and I am feeling rather stir crazy.  Hold on, kids.  It’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

Still Not Real

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I use the podcast app on my iPhone to queue up a whole slew of episodes and I just let it play.  I play it in the car, I play it while I work, I play it while I’m cooking dinner, and so on and so on.

When I work from home I don’t use my iPhone.  If a podcast is playing and my phone rings, the podcast keeps playing in my ear while I’m trying to listen to the person on the other end of the call.  Tres annoying.  When I work from home I either use my MacBook, or my iPad, or my iPod Touch… yes, I am King Apple Fanboy the First.  After the work day ends I go in and edit my running podcast playlist on my phone so that it doesn’t try to play a podcast I’ve already listened to.

On Monday, the first day of social distance telecommuting, I didn’t listen to anything.  On Tuesday I did.  Just a couple of episodes (The Walking Deadcast and Grumpy Old Geeks) before shutting it down.  I used my iPad.

Here’s the sad part of the story….

After I punched out for the day I picked up my iPhone so I could update the queue for the next day’s commute.

Meaning, I was setting it up for this morning’s drive to work.

You see the problem?  There is no drive to work.

At my core I have still not accepted the changes our society requires from us.  In my heart of hearts, yesterday was just another day.  Yesterday was not a lock down to try and slow the spread of a virus that is going to fuck up our health care system and overrun our hospitals.  The company I work for sells software to hospitals.  The division I work in within the company supports new customers as they implement our software.  Even before most of the tech companies around here started talking about keeping their full staff at home I was hearing that some of our customers, hospitals, were telling our training staff to stay away from them.  They were implying that their lives were about to get really difficult and they didn’t expect to have time or energy to deal with anything other than their own patients.

This is real.  Don’t you doubt it.  Still… my tiny little wisp of a brain isn’t evolved enough to take that information into itself and impose a new, albeit temporary, reality onto the old reality.

Crud.  This sucks.

Wash your damn hands and stay home.

Music and Money

I’ve mentioned that at the start of March I decided to curb my post-RPM Challenge blues by doing another RPM Challenge.  I’m still working on it though it is very easy to be distracted by other things right now.  I’ve got two songs done, six more partially done, and I still need two more.

This morning there was a post on the RPM Challenge Facebook group (I didn’t check the actual RPM Challenge website, it might be there too) suggesting we all take advantage of being stuck at home indefinitely and do another RPM Challenge in April.  Good idea!  I mean, I was already planning on it, but I don’t have to do it alone.  Why not?  Why not use our stay-at-home time to do something creative?  I’m all for it… but I would have been without a global pandemic to lock me in the house so I guess I’m not the target audience there.

Turning to politics, remember when Andrew Yang was running for president and proposed giving everyone in the USA a $1,000 stipend every month?  I thought it was a good idea.  A creative way to help those in need as well as to stimulate the economy.  I also loved the implied, “you think Sanders is a socialist?  Wait till you get a load of this” vibe.

Yesterday Mittens Romney threw out a similar proposal.  Today Joe Kennedy did as well, though he provided some actual details with his idea.  Now it sounds like the fucking white house is jumping on the wagon.  They may be considering a plan similar to Yang’s.

First off, let me get it out of the way… if the dickless president really wants to make being anti-socialist a platform in his campaign, then giving away money isn’t a good way to do it.  I expect that anyone who ever said a negative word about socialism should refuse that money, right?  Just like they refuse public schools and public fire departments, and trash pick up, and police, and snow plows, and highways, and all of those other socialist things.

Second, can we just make Andrew Yang president now?  Like, let’s all vote today and just give him the job.  The proposal he made that everyone laughed at could very well be law within days.  Good work, Mr Yang.  Smart leadership is what we need and it is literally the furthest thing away from what we have.

So as for the social distancing, today is my second day working from home.  Yesterday felt like a normal telecommute day.  All day long I had this idea in the back of my mind that I would be back in the office tomorrow, same as any other telecommuting day.  It really wasn’t until I got up this morning and didn’t drive to work (I drove to the super market instead) that it really started sinking in.  Things are different.

There is a little sense of stir craziness, sure, but mostly what I am feeling today is the sense that this is going to be really hard to do.  Some how removing the commute and the office from the work day equation is going to make things more difficult?  I don’t get it, but that feels like where this is heading.  I wish I could explain it, but I can’t.

There is so much wrong with the world right now, and I’m not even talking about that textbook nazi prick in the white house.  There is so much out of wack that I can’t figure out what to focus my worries on.  I’m trying to only worry about things I can control like stocking the pantry and working from home and making sure everyone has what they need to do their work/school work without driving each other to drink (wink).  I don’t want to worry about all the other shit.  I don’t want to worry about the projections or the infection rates, or the mortality rates, or the stock market, or layoffs or closings, or the fact that I am weeks overdue for a haircut and now can’t get one (anyone want to lend me their flowbee?).

Positivity used to be the hardest thing in the world for me before I met Jen.  It’s still not easy, but it is closer to my normal mindset.  I am trying real hard to stay positive through all of this.  I may need to bash my guitar around in order to pull it off, but I owe it to everyone to do my best to keep the ship upright.  (I typo’d ship as shit and somehow that sounds better to me, hehe)

So keep your shit together, planet Earth.  I have faith in you.  You can do it.  Now let’s all celebrate St Patrick’s Day in our self imposed isolation by listening to some Irish music.  No, not U2.  No, not Makem and Clancy…

Rory Gallagher (I wanted the Irish Tour album but those pukes at Spotify don’t have it)

The Pits

Want to know what the worst part of working from home while one of the kids is home sick?

He’s in the living room watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix right now.  I’m next door in the dining room starting my lunch break.

I really want to go into the living room and watch the movie with him.  Not being able to is just the pits.

An Unusual Thursday

Today has been a weird telecommute day.

I came home from dropping the kids off before school and put on a load of laundry and filled up the dishwasher.  I made myself a little breakfast and sat at my computer looking into blogging options (svbtle isn’t a free service?  It used to be free, wasn’t it?).  I read a news story about Pixies front man Black Francis.  I read up on the Orion launch situation.  At about quarter to nine I logged into work for the morning.

At lunchtime I made myself a half cup of quinoa and a bowl full of green grapes.  I also took a shower.  I usually sacrifice my morning shower time slot to my step daughter on telecommute days.  I then told a Comcast door to door salesman that I wasn’t interested in switching off of FiOS and folded that morning’s load of laundry.  Now I am writing this in the last few minutes of my break before getting back to work for the afternoon.

Now you may be asking yourself, what’s so weird about all of that?

Well, I’ll tell you.

I haven’t tried to write or record even a single note of music.  Since February 1st all of my free time at home on telecommute days was spent working on a music project.  It’s December 4th now and I haven’t started a new project.  December has been free of original music so far.  I don’t know if it’s going to stay that way or not, but it might.  I have a left over song from November, another from October, and that big 20 minute sucker from September.  Maybe I’ll finish those this month.  Maybe not.  I’ve thought about re-recording a couple of songs from the distant past.  I’ve also been thinking about covering a Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd song.  Maybe I’ll do it.  Maybe I won’t.

Maybe I’ll take December and January off from writing projects and stick to learning songs for the band.  We’ll see.

Mondays Suck

Today was the third Monday I’ve worked since getting promoted (already?) and losing my second telecommuting day. It’s the first one that hurt though, for two reasons.

Jen and I over slept this morning. Not much, just a little. Hell, it wasn’t even enough to make me late for work. I left at the usual time, but I had to skip packing my lunch. The kids were at their fathers this weekend. Had I been able to work form home today I actually would have been able to stay in bed for two more hours. That hurt. That hurt in a big way.

The second way not telecommuting hurt is sillier. Season four of The Walking Dead is winding down. On a tele-Monday I would have watched last night’s episode before work. Even with driving in today, I still tried to watch before work. I said I left home at the normal time, but today is St Patrick’s Day as well as the Boston-only holiday, Evacuation Day. Traditionally it is an easy drive day. I downloaded last night’s episode onto my phone in the hopes I’d get to work fast enough to watch it in the parking lot.

The file is 43 minutes long. I parked in the lot at 8:20. Ssssssso close. I started watching, but after 17-18 minutes I stopped and went inside. It was cold, the screen is small, the show was dark (literally as well as figuratively) and hard to see. I watched the rest when I got home. I’m glad I waited for a bigger view.

Oh. My. God. That was the most difficult story since Sofia came out do the barn. Mind blowingly awesome. Brutal and terrible and heart destroyingly painful, but awesome. Television does not get any better,

So now I sit here, in between periods of the Bruins vs Wild game. Wishing I’d gotten an extra chunk of sleep and wishing I’d watched some great tv in one sitting. I miss my second telecommuting day. Indeed I do.

Telecommute

I will not be telecommuting tomorrow.  I will be going to new supervisor orientation, but that’s not what this is about.

In my division, Programmer/Analysts with a certain amount of tenure get to telecommute twice a week.  As of last week I am no longer a Programmer/Analyst.  As of last week I am a Supervisor.  Supervisors in my division get one day of telecommuting per week, regardless of tenure.  Well, you have to be there for three years before you get your one day of telecommuting, but that is company wide, regardless of division.  But you get the gist here.

I don’t get two days at home anymore.  I get one.  No more Mondays working at the dining room table.  I hope this move is a good one.  I hope an extra day of driving to Westwood doesn’t drive me out of my mind.  I don’t think I made a mistake.  I mean I’ve been filling the Supervisor’s roll for the most part for five months already, how much worse can it be?  Still… I hope I didn’t make a mistake.

Hanging in There

I went to bed last night at about 3:30 or so. Maybe a touch later. Our alarm clock goes off at 5:00. I managed to sleep through the snoozes until a bit before 6:00.

I’m an idiot.

I put in for a couple of hours worth of time off in the afternoon and it was granted. Thanks, boss. So I get to sign out at 3:30. It’s not as good as it looks on the surface. You see, I did something today that I have not done in the past. Ever. Today is a telecommuting day. I dropped off the kids and then stopped at a convenience store for some caffeine and was back home by 7:30. Ideally those 90 minutes between getting home and starting to work are spent working on recording projects. Normally it’s spent either writing useless blog entries (like this one!) or watching the tube.

Today was different. Today I logged in and started working. Yeah. I think something is wrong with me. Stupid responsibilities and stuff and going a little above and beyond and things.

I’m an idiot.

Terrible Time Management

Last February there was a very important change to my daily routine that more or less allowed me to finish the RPM Challenge. Telecommuting. I worked from home on Thursdays. That allowed me to do a hefty chunk of musical work before work in the morning, and then during my lunch break. There were other contributing factors too, but Thursdays at home was a big part of finishing on time.

Now that I am trying another album-in-a-month deal I have the added benefit of telecommuting two days a week (for now at least), Mondays and Thursdays. This week I didn’t do anything musical on Monday morning before work (I watched the previous night’s episode of The Walking Dead instead. Priorities, man) but I did spend my lunch break working on a rhythm guitar part.

How about today? How’d I do?

Well this morning before work I sat on my fat ass on the couch eating Coca Puffs and watching Futurama on Netflix. At lunch time, I drove to Burger King because my ass obviously isn’t fat enough.

When it comes to music in November, my time management skills just plain blow.

On the upside, I did a little work on my iPad last night. It’s probably going to be short, the tempo is pretty fast, and I don’t know where I’m going to work the 12-string into it, but it’s a new work in progress. I can’t tell how many I have going now. At least three. Well, two if I take two of the three and stitch them together. There are other things, but I haven’t looked at them in about five days. So let’s say two actual works in progress. Pretty crappy progress, but still more than I had done on 11/30/12, right?