Posts under ‘Work’

This Christmas marks the first time Tara and I have been able the holidays together. We were both looking forward to it all year really. And it was a wonderful time, I must say.

Bascially what we’re going to do is switch every year, and since we’re saving up for the wedding, it made sense to have Tara stay here this year and we’ll go to her familys place next Christmas. This was a little hard on Tara as it was the first time she’d been away from home for Christmas, but that’s where ‘project awesome’ came in.

What I had done is secretly arrange to have her brother get a webcam setup with Skype and I did the same here, so that on Christmas morning Tara could login to skype and see her family.

I got an A for effort and idea, but a D for presentation. See, since her family is 3 hours behind us, the best time for them would be noon, and that means 3pm here. At which time we were napping. But her Mom called, I answered, and quickly went to set everything up. By the time we had it set(there was some technical problems on the other end) Tara had fallen asleep again, but I didn’t know. So when I went into the room with the laptop and the webcam, I woke her up without knowing, and she was all groggy and didn’t really want to be looking into a webcam.

But she loves me for the idea and effort, and that’s what counts. Maybe a resolution for myself is to work on my timing

Tara got me the gift of learning this year. She knows that there’s a ton of stuff that I want to do, so what she did was get a bunch of different course catalogues, highlight some courses she thought I would like, and then offer to pay for one of them. It was a little overwhelming to be honest, and I might have gotten something in my eye. There was a lot to choose from, and the main contenders was boxing and guitar lessons. I finally chose guitar as, well, it’s somethign that I do want to do, and I also want to exercise with Tara as incentive to us both. So sometime soon I start my lessons, and I’m really looking foward to them

The rest of the time was spent taking it easy. We both had to work the week between Christmas and New Years, but really, it wasn’t working. I spent time catching up on presentations that I need to review anyway for the new version of the product, and it was really quiet for Tara at work as well. But the week went quickly, like we hoped it would.

For New Years Eve, we decided to go out and see a comedy show. The show was later and they stopped just a little early to hand out party favors, hats and champaign. Then we all counted down to midnight and made noise and drank. I’m not 100% sure it was worth the $40/each, but it was a nice night out and we’ll have to do something like that again for next year. Mind you, I don’t know where I’ll be next year(not sure how much vacation we’ll both be taking at that time).

But now, Tara is trying to nap away a nasty head cold, and I’m catching up on blogging and TV. I’m invested in Heroes, and I’ll watch it until the end. And I finally saw the rest of District 9. Good times.

We were planning on going to Upper Canada Village tonight, but not sure if that’ going to be possible. Tara really isn’t feeling well and I’d rather her sleep and be better than drag her out into the cold just to see some lights. But it’s on for another few days so we still have a chance.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!

It’s been roughly one week since I started working from the kitchen.

The last two days I’ve spent the whole day here, and before that it was just the afternoons.

Monday is an exception as I had time off, so I worked in the office and then did nuthin

I have to say that I think I’m liking this whole kitchen office thing. There’s way less distraction here and I can focus on work when the work is there to focus on.

That’s part of the trick I guess. If I’m not 100% busy, then I drift. But with the kitchen, it’s really easy to drift back. I think I need that.

That, and the real distraction is up stairs, so I have to get up and go, and with a dodgy laptop, I might not always hear the instant message pings, so I never stray for long. That’s also good.

Upstairs has become an ‘out of sight out of mind’ kinda place, so I really don’t think of going up there.

The odd part is that I hardly spend any time in that room anymore.

Now, because the main system is up stairs, I’ve had to make some changes. Normally I would listen to music or podcasts, and I suppose I could just copy them down locally, but that would be too easy and oddly inconvenient.

So I stream. Which is easy with Winamp and Shoutcast, but controlling that stream isn’t as easy. So I installed this plug-in WAWI(WinAmp Web Interface) which allows me to control winamp(most of it) via a browser.

It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. I think I have to set up proper playlists or something. I can browse to other locations on my hard drive, but can’t always play the files because of odd file names or some other reason.

Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking;  Why isn’t he using VNC or something like it.

For some reason it’s not working so I had to do something else. Not sure what the problem is, but I’m sure I’ll sort it out.

I still don’t like using my laptop to run the VM images, but it’s better than nothing. And until I can get VNC working again, it’s all I got. The machines at work are decent, but it’s either a slow connection or slow computers, running the vm images there is just mostly painful.

Could be that I just need my laptop reloaded, and I’m in the process of getting that done, it just takes time to schedule I guess.

I like the wooden chairs in the kitchen. It keeps me conscious as to my slouching, which has become worse and worse.

And I’m keeping the kitchen cleaner, at least for now. I have to do something while things take forever to load

I’ve also started a tea time thing. Sure, it’s been two whole days, but still, I like the idea.

A little light snack, mostly cheese and some pickles, with good tea. Tried the tetly red tea today, and the first cup wasn’t great as it wasn’t steeped enough, but the second cup is better.

I’m going to keep this up and see how long I can hack it. Tara has a new job starting Monday and the hours are a little earlier, so getting her to the bus on time might mean I start work at 8 or earlier. Not that I mind, with any luck that means I’m off earlier as well

I’ll keep you all posted. I’m sure you’re at the edge of your seats with anticipation

I’m starting to wonder if I should stop working from home, or at least cut it down.

Yes, it’s incredibly convenient to work from home. There’s no commute and I can get some other house stuff done while working.

The problem is that all the distractions that I’ve collected over the years happen to be in the same room where I’m trying to work.

This is causing a problem.

I guess it’s always been a problem, but when I’m busy enough I don’t worry about the distractions becaue I’m keeping so many plates spinning.

But, and this is the catch, when it’s a little slower…I…drift….to the other computer.

And the other computer, which is my main home PC, has all sorts of fun things on it that I can waste soooo much time on.

And I do. And because of this other things get missed.

It hasn’t happened a lot, but it’s happened, and it’s starting to get noticed. And that’s bad. So I need to nip it before it get’s worse.

So what do I do?

Should I work in the office everyday? This is the best and worst solution.

• Yes, it would help keep me focused on work because there is very little else to do in the office(other than drink bad coffee).
• I do have multiple machines to run the VM images that I need to get my work done.
• It get’s me out of the house(good and bad really).
• Creates a wall between home life and work life. This is also good as I never really ‘log off’ when I’m not working.
• Doesn’t let me start dinner early
• Doesn’t let me do a little housework if I need to
• Generally inconvenient

You know, I’m looking at the downside of working in the office all day and they’re not looking that bad.

Next idea is 50/50. Tara suggested this and I’m starting to like it.

• work in the office in the morning
• get’s me focused and is a good start to the day
• work from home in the afternoon
• I can VNC into my work machines, so no need to use the home PC
• I can work at the dinner table, no computer there(just a cat and dog) to tempt me
• can still do light housework/dinner prep
• smaller monitor, but I could live(I think)

I think the second option is best.

This week I’ll be in the office all week as I’m in training and just want to stay focused.

Maybe I’m just being hard on myself, but really, I do have the attention span of a three year old, and I’m all good when nothing else is around to take my attention. But when it does…

When it comes right down to it, I can be distracted by just about anything and I will search it out if tempted, but if I remove the obvious problems, then I think I’ll be better off.

Suffice to say I’m gonna keep this post at a lower profile than normal, meaning it won’t go out to Twitter and therefore Facebook, but I’m not going to go out of my way to hide it.

I guess I just did

On training all week, and I found out that it’s all based on recordings of older classes.

This is interesting as there’s going to be lab work…and I have no lab. Oh well, there’s a meeting on it at 2 so we’ll see.

The weekend was sad. Tara’s mother jetted off home and Tara misses her mom. Other wise it was a partially crappy weekend as I was working most of it.

Well, not so much working the whole thing, but at least on call so I couldn’t actually go anywhere, which sucked. Tara and her mom bopped around town, and I was at home. Poopy.

Thursday was dress shopping day, and her, my mom, her mom and two of Tara’s friends went out to a couple of places to look at dresses.

I’m told that Tara picked one, but they could be pulling my leg.

However, on Saturday, Tara’s mom apparently found one that she really liked at a good price, which is great.

The entire week was spent with Tara’s mom, and it was a really good week. She reminded me how much I like tea and I really should be drinking it more often. Maybe I’ll make a tea time in the afternoon

So everything is good, and this week, while possibly a little dull work wise, will be helpful for me to be a better support dude, so that’s always good

So I had my 6month review with my manager yesterday. Well, not so much a review as a ‘check in’ to see how things were going, if there was anything that I wanted to bring up, etc.

For the most part I was doing just fine, there was one hickup that was already addressed and all was good.

One of the questions that was asked was the usual ‘where do you see yourself in 3-5 years’?

Ummm…working?

This is a problem I’ve always had, I don’t have a 3 or 5 year plan. My plan in 3-5 years, regarding work, is to still be working. That’s the way it’s always been, I’m just a worker bee.

I like to be kept busy, because if I start to get bored, I’ll slack and that causes problems down the line. So I work.

Just after that question was a statement from my manager: “Most people don’t want to be working support forever, sure, some might, but most don’t”.

I do. I like support. I like helping people. Makes me feel like I’ve done something. But she was partly right. I don’t think I want to do software support the rest of my life.

So that’s what I said. I don’t think I totally blindsided her, but I think I grazed her a little

Mostly because I said I was thinking of deskside support. I did that job for a few months when I worked for EDS, and I really liked it. Now, that could have been because of the team, but still, it was more personable(which was good and bad) and I was actually doing things.

The problem she had with this is that she wasn’t sure how she could help, since there were no direct links from software to deskside. In fact it was a whole other major division of the company. But she did throw in a few suggestions that I hadn’t really thought of, like server support, performance support, hardware support, that kind of thing.

All of which did intrigue me somewhat. I think the most important thing was change. And not just the usual change. I’ve worked software support for the last (OMG) 6 years, and during that time with 4 different teams/products. And it’s really the same old thing. And I think I need a departure from it somewhat.

Mind you, for all I know, hardware/server support isn’t what I want to do, but now it’s sounding interesting.

It won’t really be a step up as it’s more a step to the left, and then I get to move up.

But I’m not really all that concerned with that. I’m concerned with being happy at work. I don’t see the point of being totally miserable or unfulfilled at work no matter how much money I make. I mean, this is 8 hours of my day, 5 days a week, for the next 30+ years. At the very least it’s 62,400 hours, and all the money in the world isn’t worth it if I’m miserable for that amount of time. Being miserable for that long will bleed over into my personal life, and I don’t want that either.

No job will make you happy all the time, but if it can make you feel good or at least keep you interested most of the time, then that’s the ideal job.

In my mind anyway.

So yea, nothing right now, but I’ve put the bug in my managers ear, and she’ll keep her eyes out for opertunities for me. I’ll try to do the same.