Dan Q

Tag: teleworking

Chicory, Coffee, and Code

Now that we’ve finished our move into the Chicory House, I have for the first time in over two months been able to set up my preferred coding environment… with a proper monitor on a proper desk with a proper office chair. Bliss!

A white man with blue hair tied up in a ponytail sits at a basic pine desk in a garden office, decorated with wallpaper showing toucans. In front of him are two laptops and a large monitor. He holds a black mug in his hand, as if about to drink from it.

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Unpacked Kitchen

Today’s mission in what we’re calling the Chicory House – our home while our actual house gets repaired – was to unpack the kitchen. I think it’s looking pretty good!

A moderately tidy kitchen with faux-marble countertops, under free on which an open large cardboard box can be seen. In the distance, a conservatory contains a small dining table cluttered with computer equipment.
The cardboard box you can see contains pans we brought with us that turn out to be incompatible with the induction hobs at the Chicory House, boo!

Next weekend’s mission will be to set myself up a workspace that isn’t the conservatory dining table. 😬

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Garden Office

I’ve lived in a LOT of different places these last few months while we’ve been arranging a place to live for the next six months or so of our house repairs. Each new AirBnB has had its pros and cons (and each hasn’t felt like “home”).

Two laptops on a glass desk in an attractive garden office/summer house, bathed in bright afternoon sunshine.

But man, I really like the “garden office” at our current one. So nice to work in the sun!

(I don’t like the slow WiFi as much, but yeah… pros and cons!)

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Horse Gym

My current temporary home – and, necessarily, office – is directly next door to some kind of “horse gym”: a contraption a little like a huge revolving door to encourage one or more horses to exercise by walking around it:

Every now and then my peripheral vision registers that there’s a horse outside the window and, for the dozenth time, I look up from my work and glance around to barely catch it vanishing off on yet another lap.

Note #27316

This post is part of 🐶 Bleptember, a month-long celebration of our dog's inability to keep her tongue inside her mouth.

Just a mini-blep this Twenty-Sixth of Bleptember, from a certain attention-seeking doggo who insisted on a cuddle from me while I sat in a Zoom meeting.

A French Bulldog in a teal jumper lies on her back in the arms of a white human, alongside a desk with a computer keyboard. She looks contented and sleepy, and her tongue is slightly sticking-out.

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Firstup Day 1

Off to my first day at Firstup. Gotta have an induction: get my ID badge, learn where the toilets are, how to refill the coffee machine, and all that jazz.

Except, of course, none of those steps will be part of my induction. Because, yet again, I’ve taken a remote-first position. I’m 100% sold that, for me, remote/distributed work helps me bring my most-productive self. It might not be for everybody, but it’s great for me.

And now: I’m going to find out where the water cooler is. No, wait… some other thing!

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Team Desire in Istanbul

With visa complications and travel challenges, this is the very first time that my team – whom I’ve been working with for the last year – have ever all been in the same country, all at the same time.

You can do a lot in a distributed work environment. But sometimes you just have to come together… in celebration of your achievements, in anticipation of what you’ll do next, and in aid of doing those kinds of work that really benefit from a close, communal, same-timezone environment.

A group of men sit on chairs, a sofa, and the edge of a desk in a comfortable large office space.

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Work Slippers

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This post is also available as a podcast. Listen here, download for later, or subscribe wherever you consume podcasts.

Last month my pest of a dog destroyed my slippers, and it was more-disruptive to my life than I would have anticipated.

A French Bulldog looks-on guiltily at a hand holding the remains of a pair of slippers that have been thoroughly shredded.
Look what you did, you troublemaker.

Sure, they were just a pair of slippers1, but they’d become part of my routine, and their absence had an impact.

Routines are important, and that’s especially true when you work from home. After I first moved to Oxford and started doing entirely remote work for the first time, I found the transition challenging2. To feel more “normal”, I introduced an artificial “commute” into my day: going out of my front door and walking around the block in the morning, and then doing the same thing in reverse in the evening.

A mixture of flatscreen and CRT monitors, plus a laptop and a webcam, on a desk. The laptop screen shots a view of an office at the "other end" of a webcam connection.
My original remote working office, circa 2010.

It turns out that in the 2020s my slippers had come to serve a similar purpose – “bookending” my day – as my artificial commute had over a decade earlier. I’d slip them on when I was at my desk and working, and slide them off when my workday was done. With my “work” desk being literally the same space as my “not work” desk, the slippers were a psychological reminder of which “mode” I was in. People talk about putting on “hats” as a metaphor for different roles and personas they hold, but for me… the distinction was literal footwear.

And so after a furry little monster (who for various reasons hadn’t had her customary walk yet that day and was probably feeling a little frustrated) destroyed my slippers… it actually tripped me up3. I’d be doing something work-related and my feet would go wandering, of their own accord, to try to find their comfortable slip-ons, and when they failed, my brain would be briefly tricked into glancing down to look for them, momentarily breaking my flow. Or I’d be distracted by something non-work-related and fail to get back into the zone without the warm, toe-hugging reminder of what I should be doing.

It wasn’t a huge impact. But it wasn’t nothing either.

A pair of brown slippers, being worn, in front of a French bulldog asleep in her basket, her tongue sticking out.
The bleppy little beast hasn’t expressed an interest in my replacement slippers, yet. Probably because they’re still acquiring the smell of my feet, which I’m guessing is what interested her in the first place.

So I got myself a new pair of slippers. They’re a different design, and I’m not so keen on the lack of an enclosed heel, but they solved the productivity and focus problem I was facing. It’s strange how such a little thing can have such a big impact.

Oh! And d’ya know what? This is my hundredth blog post of the year so far! Coming on only the 73rd day of the year, this is my fastest run at #100DaysToOffload yet (my previous best was last year, when I managed the same on 22 April). 73 is exactly a fifth of 365, so… I guess I’m on track for a mammoth 500 posts this year? Which would be my second-busiest blogging year ever, after 2018. Let’s see how I get on…4

Footnotes

1 They were actually quite a nice pair of slippers. JTA got them for me as a gift a few years back, and they lived either on my feet or under my desk ever since.

2 I was working remotely for a company where everybody else was working in-person. That kind of hybrid setup is a lot harder to do “right”, as many companies in this post-Covid-lockdowns age have discovered, and it’s understandable that I found it somewhat isolating. I’m glad to say that the experience of working for my current employer – who are entirely distributed – is much more-supportive.

3 Figuratively, not literally. Although I would probably have literally tripped over had I tried to wear the tattered remains of my shredded slippers!

4 Back when I did the Blog Questions Challenge I looked at my trajectory and estimated I wouldn’t hit a hundred this year until a week later than now, so maybe I’m… accelerating?

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Coaching in the Library

I decided to take my meeting with my coach today in our house’s new library, which my metamour JTA has recently been working hard on decorating, constructing, and filling with books. The room’s not quite finished, but it made for a brilliant space for a bit of quiet reflection and self-growth work.

Dan, a white man with a ponytail, wearing a black shirt and jeans, sits in a rocking chair in front of an open laptop at a long desk; he has a notebook in his hand and holds a pen near his lips. He's in a domestic library with deep red walls, balanced-arm lamps, a woven rug on a wooden floor, and the wall behind him entirely covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A grassy lawn and sapling trees can be seen through a window, bordered by floral curtains and two clumsily-placed WiFi routers that sit on the window ledge. On the corner of the desk lie various hand tools, suggesting that light construction work has recently taken place.

(Incidentally: I might be treating “lives in a house with a library” as a measure of personal success. Like: this is what winning at life looks like, right? Because whatever else goes wrong, at least you can go hide in the library!)

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Dan Q found GC4MHJ0 Octo (MK Artwalks)

This checkin to GC4MHJ0 Octo (MK Artwalks) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Today’s the last of three consecutive days that I’ve spent working in Milton Keynes. On each day I’ve taken a short walk while I’ve eaten my lunch to find a nearby geocache. This was today’s.

After admiring the sculpture I snapped a selfie while I waited for my GPS signal to settle. The coordinates and the hint made the location seem obvious, yet somehow I did three laps of the hiding place before I reached down to what by all accounts was, indeed, an obvious hiding place!

Muggles weren’t too multitudinous, so I soon had the cache hidden again back in its snug little spot. TFTC!

Dan poses for a selfie in front of a figure-8/moebius strip sculpture, on a sunny day.

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Dan Q found GC2GR3Z The Brass Bands of MK – Secklow Brass

This checkin to GC2GR3Z The Brass Bands of MK - Secklow Brass reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

I’ve been working in Milton Keynes the tail end of this week while my kids attend a ski camp at the X-scape centre. While eating my lunch today I came out for a walk to find this geocache.

Approaching from the direction of the car park was definitely the right route and I was soon standing at GZ alongside a likely host. I had to search for some time, though, before I found this surprisingly we’ll-concealed cache.

(I was hindered perhaps by my own eagerness to check the hint, which left me searching several feet lower down than the container eventually turned out to be!)

Right, back to work for me! TFTC.

Dan Q found GC4NX9Y Light Pyramid (MK Artwalks)

This checkin to GC4NX9Y Light Pyramid (MK Artwalks) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Found the host easily, but had to wait for a gap in thir lunchtime dog walkers to be able to mount a good search. After checking in a few obvious places I picked something up and there was the cache!

Took a walk up to the Light Pyramid where I snapped the attached photo of me pointing towards the X-Scape centre, where I’ve been working today (my kids have ski lessons, so I’ve been sitting in the cafe with my laptop with the exception of this, my lunch break!).

On which note, I’d better go find myself a sandwich! Thanks for bringing me up here, and TFTC.

Dan, near a white pyramid-shaped sculpture, points at a distant hill-shaped building.

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