Category Archives: the ongoing saga of my job

pandemic, the ongoing saga of my job Leave a comment

Return To Worksite

Today was the day.

After 17 weeks of working from home, I drove in to the office for my first half-day on-site since the pandemic forced us all to quarantine.

My Totoro calendar says I was last at my desk on Monday, March 16.

I was one of three people present today in my team of nine total. To maintain appropriate distancing, we’re all rotating days in the office. I’m planning to be in the office on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, and more often when I can.

When the Stay-At-Home order was enacted in Ohio, and my department started working from home full-time, I wasn’t sure how I was going to take to it. Even after the first four or five weeks, when I finally got myself into a proper routine, I was chomping at the bit to get back into the office. It would have been quite a stretch for me to believe I’d get to a point where I prefer working from home… yet, here I am.

For one thing, I find that I’m more productive in the afternoons when I don’t have to plan around my evening commute. Working from home gives me as much time as I need to finish the last task of the day without needing to wrap up all the loose ends and prepare myself to come back to it later. I can’t just stay late in the actual office downtown, even though I might like to, because I need to get home and be the responsible parent to my almost-nine-year-old once his Dad leaves for work.

I’ve really been enjoying the extra sleep I get every morning from not having to get up in time to wrangle my son and then drive to work. My internal clock has gotten surprisingly good at waking me up around 7:10am.

Alas, that’s now when I wake on weekends, too.

Having the option to work in any spot in my house is a luxury I’ve taken for granted. I’ve gotten used to being able to choose my setting: the sunroom, the home office, the kitchen table. I found myself wishing for a change of scenery this afternoon, and for some fresh produce to snack on.

I go back in tomorrow, then work from home Thursday-Friday, then I’m in the office all next week while Connor’s at science camp. It’s going to be weird.

Everything is weird now. Even the things that used to be normal.

geekspeak, the ongoing saga of my job 1 Comment

HDMI

This is what it looks like when you really don’t want to move your monitor to plug in a new HDMI cable.

Behind-the-monitor selfie

Working from home for EIGHT WEEKS STRAIGHT OMG prompted me to buy an HDMI splitter for my widescreen monitor. It arrived this afternoon, and I can already tell it’s going to make my situation at least a teensy bit less inconvenient.

Granted, Skype is still going to be confused about where my microphone and speakers are every time I plug in the monitor, but at least I know WTF is going on now, and what settings to change back.

Working on code, data validation, report design, or pretty much anything that I do for work is SO much easier with multiple monitors. And plugging my laptop into a splitter is so much easier than unplugging the cable from the back of my tower — and then trying to plug it back in when I actually want to use my home desktop.

health & fitness, the ongoing saga of my job Leave a comment

Not Working Through My Lunch Today

I’ve developed a new habit that I need to break: eating at my desk and working through my lunch.

Used to be that I had something booked for every day of the week over my lunch hour: WW (the program formerly known Weight Watchers) on Tuesdays, lunch out with co-workers on Wednesdays, two fitness classes a week, and one day for either walking outside or blogging at a coffee shop or other non-desk location.

Since I’ve started taking Krav Maga twice a week, I don’t take the kickboxing class on Mondays anymore — two butt-kickings a day is one too many. I still do WW on Tuesdays (unless I have a looming deadline) and Girls’ Lunch on Wednesdays (unless my cohort N is out of the office), and sometimes there’s a fitness class on Thursday or Friday I’ll want to take… but not always.

I’ve also been heads-down on a major project at work for the past… well, several months, anyway. I’m learning more about DAX and Power BI the more I develop and the further I get into the project, and I’m enjoying it overall… but there are more than the usual quota of roadblocks in this project, it seems. Ambiguous requirements, changing requirements, interpersonal issues, and other various unexpected roadblocks have really prolonged this release. All of us on the project are ready for it to be over… and it still has a few phases planned for after we get the current release submitted for QA testing.

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