Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Separation of spaces

One of the reasons I actually like physically going in to work is the separation of spaces. There’s zero chance of mixing up whether I’m working or doing home stuff. The different location allows me to mentally switch to another mode soon as I enter or leave a space. I know I’m done for the day when I depart from campus. I don’t get triggered by Slack notifications when I’m home because I know for sure those hours are outside of work.

Due to the omicron strain of COVID because super virulent, our campus operations got shut down last week. We all had to work from home, something I haven’t done since last September. There goes keeping work and home life separate! I tried my best, however: instead of logging into work portals from my own MacBook Pro, I took home a 13-inch MacBook Pro from campus. Even though I have a gorgeous 32-inch Pro Display XDR, I rather stare at a much smaller screen than integrate work back into my home tech ecosystem.

Working from home also meant eating lunch at home (again, something I’ve not done since last Fall). That’s when I realized I really should stop eating at the same computer desk - I don’t have a dining table. It’s cumbersome to have to move my computing peripherals off the desk in order to have the room to put the dishes and bowls. Eating noodles (which I often do) can get a bit splashy, too, which doesn’t bode well for the monitor in front of me.

To have separation of spaces, it was time to get a table specifically to eat on. As I’ve written before, I’m one person living by myself, so I don't need something huge (not that I have the space anyways). A small kitchen island, plus one singular high chair will suffice. Off to IKEA! But there’s a problem: due to the never-ending supply chain issues, the closest IKEA location with the items in stock was in West Sacramento. Three hours roundtrip, $50 in gas, and $14 in bridge tolls wasn’t going to stop me. The sad thing is, I had already made the same trip a week ago to buy the stands for my new TV…

Hopefully I’m done needing stuff from IKEA for a long time!

Here we go again

The omicron variant of COVID 19 is contagious as heck!

I am confined to working from home until the end of this week. In fact, our entire department has paused in-person service on campus for the same duration. On a similar vein, classes at San Francisco State is going completely remote for the first three weeks of the Spring semester. It seems like we’re going backwards in terms of progress, but it’s the correct decision given the amount of infections and close-contacts.

Both my housemates tested positive last week, which is why I am staying home this week. San Francisco Department of Public Health guidelines state that if you’re vaccinated (in any capacity) and you’ve come in close-contact with a COVID infected person - but you have zero symptoms, you actually don’t have to quarantine! Wear a proper mask and you can go about your business as normal. I guess we’re playing it more cautiously when my supervisor told me to go home last Thursday.

I would have been perfectly okay with continuing work on campus.

Anyways, I’m getting a PCR test later this morning. Thankfully it’s the saliva method and not the one where they stick a thing way up your nose. My friends who’ve had the latter said it was not a pleasant experience in the slightest. Fingers crossed it returns negative.

It’s another weird start to yet another year. 2020 we were looking at bad news from Asia and Italy, and doing nothing ourselves to prepare for the eventuality. 2021 we were rejoicing at the availability of the vaccines, (falsely) thinking we were going back to normal fairly soon. 2022 looks like it’s pseudo lockdown part two, electric boogaloo.

A rare sight: a clean first-generation Ford Focus!

Why autonomous cars?

I was listening to The Smoking Tire Podcast with guest Missy Cummings, an expert and professor in autonomous technology. At one point, host Matt Farah asks a really poignant question: why the need for autonomous cars? Why are companies spending billions on chasing this technology? The answer is simple: to save time.

Or rather, take back time. The countless hours stuck in traffic on a commute could be better spent doing something else, if the car is able to drive itself without any user input. Take a nap, perhaps, or read a book. What would I do in the hypothetical reality where autonomous cars are possible? Cook and eat a really nice meal. Induction, naturally. Open flame in a moving car just spells disaster.

Anyways, the want to regain the time lost in traffic illuminates an obvious solution that’s far easier than figuring out self-driving cars: get rid of the commute. One of the best things I've done last year was move within walking distance to work. Never again will I have to sit in traffic to and from the campus. The reason a sizable amount of people are clinging to the work-from-home lifestyle even as we are opening back up? (Delta variant notwithstanding) There’s no commute working at home!

We are lucky to even have this discussion. The entire service industry don’t have the option of telecommuting. Though it seems some teachers unions are keeping on the Sisyphean fight to the end.

It’s sitting in traffic for hours that really sucks the soul. Instead of waiting for autonomous technology (one that may never materialize in cars) to save us from our misery, employees can and will instead opt to work for companies that allow remote work indefinitely. Or, they can move closer to work as I did. Either which way, the solution is there. It’s better for the planet, too, with less cars on the road during peak hours.

WFH on rainy days

The best days to work from home are the rainy days, when I am comfortably indoors with a hot cup of tea. The flowers are blooming this time of the year, so the view outside my window is rather lovely. The BMW M2 is getting a free car wash courtesy of the rain. The clouded skies means the sun isn’t shinning directly into my eyes during the afternoon. I have window shades, but I prefer to keep a view towards the outside.

Rainy days are great when you don’t have to go outside. One thing I didn’t calculate for when I moved closer to work is that I would have to walk through the rain to get to campus. Even the strongest umbrella cannot prevent the bottom half of my body from getting wet. The brief 10 minute walk is enough to completely soak the shoes. I really need a pair of rain boots, or shoes that are somewhat weatherproof.

The ultimate first world solution would to actually drive to work when it rains, even though I only live two longish blocks away. My parents would never dream of being so wasteful, but what’s the point of making money if not to make our lives more convenient? More so than the cost of gas, I’d be more worried about such a short trip having a negative effect on the engine. Advantage to electric vehicles: there aren’t any internal fluids to get up to temperature.

But there’s a problem: the distance from the school’s parking lot to the building where I work is precisely the same distance as that building from my home. I would literally gain nothing from driving. Perhaps those boots are indeed the way to go.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy working at home in front of the window on these rainy days. As the vaccines proliferate, pretty soon I’m going to have to say goodbye to this pandemic work lifestyle.

Going back to work

As we march towards the finish line of COVID, and normalcy is (finally) in our sights, we start to ponder about what work will be like once we physically go back. Those of us with the immense privilege of being able to work for home - and keeping employment - have enjoyed the positives rather nicely. Going back to the regimented eight-hour work day is going to be quite the shock.

No longer will you be able to do a load of laundry while you work, or run some errands whilst monitoring from the Slack app. It’s so nice to sneak a workout in during the times of the day when things are slower. The freedom of completing projects at your own pace, without the prying attention of your colleagues and senior report, is very nice indeed. Perhaps you want to clock in and out earlier on a particular day; working from home allows you to do that with ease.

All of that will be gone once we physically go back to work. The clock will seem interminable now that we are forced to be there for the full eight hours (plus lunch). Of course, from a macro level we should count our lucky stars that we still have jobs. But problems are still problems, no matter how first-world they may seem.

I think employers would do well to keep some of the flexibility brought on by working from home. For example, I should be allowed to go home if the day’s work is done, no matter what time it is. There’s no reason to wait out until 5:00 PM simply for the sake of it. Or let me go home period, if a particular project can be done entirely remotely. Introduce some asynchrony whenever possible, and I think the transition back to physical work will be much smoother and happier for all parties.

Practically since the pandemic began, I’ve been working on campus for about half the work week. Therefore, there isn’t going to much of a transition for me to make, which is nice. The days I can work from home are indeed more leisurely, I have to say. I’m going to miss them.

Internet usage

One thing lost in the work-from-home shuffle is how much additional Internet bandwidth we use while we’re all stuck at home. The lucky few may have unlimited Internet (hello, friends with Sonic fiber), but I bet most of our Internet service providers implement data caps. For example, my provider Comcast has a one terabyte monthly limit, with each additional block of 50 gigabytes costing $10 dollars (extortionate). Under normal situations our family of four would never approach that limit, but during these COVID times with many Zoom meetings and extra Netflix sessions, bandwidth gets used up rather quickly.

Due to the ever kindness of Comcast (ha ha!), it eliminated its data caps for the three months after the coronavirus outbreak began back in March. In support of people working from home and children learning remotely, customers like us were able to use as much data as we like. Which explains why it never entered my mind that all this extra usage would cause a problem in the future. July marks the first month the unlimited data is no more, though Comcast increased the typical one terabyte cap to 1.2, surely a result of having done the calculations, and the slight increase should cover a vast majority of customer usage patterns.

Comcast will also show customers how much bandwidth they have used during the initial quarantine months, so they can have a sense of scale and if needed, cut back now that the data cap is back in place. Unfortunately for my household, the stats are not so good: for the three months since March, we went over the one terabyte cap in all three; two out of the three we’ve even gone past the new 1.2 terabyte allowance. Now that the data restrictions are in effect, I’am going to have to keep an eye on our consumption and adjust accordingly.

This massive increase in data use is not something we’ve been talking about, though I suspect it will become an issue for people now that caps have returned. Companies expect employees to work from home, but what they don’t compensate for is the additional bandwidth needed to support that task, and if doing so pushes someone over the data limits, it can get really expensive. Unlike the self-employed, we don’t get to itemize home Internet as a business expense; I think one can reasonably argue it has become just that in the times of COVID-19.

Of course, I am incredibly lucky to still be employed and able to work remotely.

No silence for the wicked

After the tranquilness of physically being at work yesterday and the absolute silence that comes from being one of the few people there, today was such a dramatic drag. I’m once again back working at home, and the loudness of the neighborhood - and from my family members who are also stuck sheltering at home - is especially grating today. I can practice zen buddhism as much as I can, but some days it’s difficult to ignore the things I can’t control; today, it’s the ambient sounds of where I live.

The kid that lives downstairs from us just so happen to decide that this day would be a good day to ride a super loud motorcycle around the neighborhood. Lovely.

Peace and quiet is what I want, is that too much to ask? Some days I am this close to risking it all and moving myself to the middle of nowhere out in the woods, to find my own version of Walden pond. I would gladly swap the sounds of city-life for the sounds of nature; the former can be hugely grating, and the latter is evergreen serene until eternity. What it must be like to be able to finish a thought without yet another car driving by with its stereo blaring way too loudly. I’m not annoyed most days - I wouldn’t have been able to live here for nearly twenty years if it did - but some days it’s simply impossible to keep a clear mind and focus.

How am I suppose to be meditative under such annoyance?

What does help to refocus the mind and keep calm is to remember that there are others out there who has it worse than me, that their surroundings is magnitudes more difficult than the mere noise pollution that I’m experiencing. Commiseration - even if it’s imagined - helps also: surely I’m not the only one who is bothered by the loud motorcycle whizzing by when the kid is riding it over the many streets of the neighborhood. It’s suddenly not so bad when I realize it’s not only me who is suffering.

This too shall pass, and as it always is with mental health, it’s a constant work in progress.