Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Working from Home

Yesterday marked one full week of working from home. It's been ... interesting. I live in a teeny tiny studio apartment with my husband, and, to his credit, he's been taking this very much in stride. Well, he was. Now he's come down with something and pretty miserable, though that does mean it's quieter for me while I'm working...

He had offered to leave the apartment while I'm in remote meetings, but yesterday he took naps instead. That also works. I haven't had trouble keeping busy, even though the regular work isn't very high volume right now. It's the perfect time to catch up on all those projects that we keep trying to put off to summer, and then, when summer arrives, it ends up turning out that we're actually pretty busy. But now, there's a good amount more time for those projects, so they're getting some time and attention.

I have managed to get my tower and monitors to fit in our spartan space. We have a big desk, but it was occupied by our topo maps, home computer and other assorted odds and ends. Once I moved all of that out of the way, there was room to setup a reasonable facsimile of my office space. I must say, I like the view here a bit better. A scoop of critter feed on the stoop really brings a lot of distractions.

First the ducks...

Then other birds and a squirrel...

And these two were on cleanup. 
I'm also eating pretty well at lunch, considering I have a full kitchen at my disposal. Ambrose might even be inclined to help out with lunch prep now and then when he's feeling better. It's much easier to get a quick shower after doing a workout during my regular exercise release time. The commute can't be beat.

Despite all those positives, I don't really like it. It's a symptom of a situation that will probably get scarier before it calms down. And it's weird to be in my home but at work. Hm, yeah, no, the first one is definitely the bigger problem of the two.

I'm glad that I'm able to temporarily transition to working from home. It is a handrail in this time of rapidly changing circumstances, as well as a way to support us. One day at a time, and I'll be back in the office before I know it.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Prepping to Work from Home

Well, the university where I work decided to convert all classes to online for the remainder of the semester. Students are encouraged to go home, but allowed to stay on campus. Employees were also encouraged to work from home, but I still had to go in on Monday and Tuesday. We spent large chunks of Monday and Tuesday preparing for working from home. It was kind of an adventure, equal parts exciting and scary. Well, maybe a bit more on the scary side.

But there were problems to solve, and my team was on it. We walked other coworkers through the processes of downloading, installing and connecting to a VPN. We had to work out how they would do the work that they normally do with two large monitors from a tiny laptop screen, while at home. At first, we tried to get some work-specific software installed on the laptops, but our tech support area at the university is slammed by people trying to go remote, so we got the standard answer of "use remote desktop instead of the laptop itself." Which, to be honest, is actually a really good idea.

We just had to get all the end users comfortable with the idea. Well, that was mostly Monday's plan. Tuesday upped the ante a bit. The decision was made to allow employees to take home their towers and monitors, if they so desired. Some of them did, others did not. I did not, because I live in a studio apartment and there's really not enough space for another computer, let alone the two large monitors. I'm going to give it a go with my laptop for a while and maybe I'll be able to figure out the space issue.

It's going to be interesting doing all meetings virtually and trying to get work done with my husband in the same room. Oh, man, we're going to have to figure out some sort of truce on the music front. I know what he likes to listen to during the day, and, for the most part, it's not what I would want to work to. Especially because I like to sing along to songs, and since I'm not in the office, I can do that. And I'll have to ask him to be very quiet during virtual meetings. And I'll either have to say my conversation isn't private or literally ask my husband to leave the house during meetings. He says he doesn't mind, but it's still funny to me.

I don't know how long this situation is going to go on. I don't know when I'm going to see the people that I'm accustomed to seeing every work day again (at least in person - virtually, we'll be online later this morning). I feel like everything is changing so quickly, and also standing still. I have felt some moments of random panic, even though, to be honest, there's nothing to panic about - yet. We're taking precautions. We're trying to be safe and responsible. But unless everyone else does the same, our efforts could be for naught.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

The Vote

I voted in the Democratic primary yesterday.

I'm disappointed that Elizabeth Warren had already exited the race before I had the opportunity to vote for her. She was my plan. And while her name was still on the ballot, I voted for a candidate who remains in the race instead.

I think it's hard for people who have always seen themselves represented to understand how it feels not be represented. I, deeply, want a woman to be the president of the United States. Heck, I was excited when my local university finally got a female president.

I do believe that it helps when I can see someone doing something that I want to do, and I can know that they are like me. For example, I look for women to follow on Instagram who are doing awesome fitness things in part because I want to find one who comes from a similar background to my own (that is, being absolutely unathletic until late twenties). That helps me see that I can accomplish my own fitness goals. That what I'm striving for isn't actually impossible, even if it's very difficult.

While I'm proud to take part in the democratic process, I wish I could have been voting for a woman whose plans and passion I believed in.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Books Don't Expire

I read the blogs of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, but I took a bit of a break from them at the end of last year. I pretty much didn't read them from August to February. Kris posts less, so when I decided to catch up, I started with hers. Once I caught up to current, I started working through my backlog of Dean.

Now, Dean has a long streak of blogging every day, so I knew it would take longer to get through. Although many days are just a quick update or recap of available workshops starting up that don't take very long to read, there are some blog posts that touch on an aspect of the writing and publishing business. Not only do those tend to be longer, they also tend to have a long comment section. The mobile version doesn't do very well with nested comments, so I'm reading it in desktop format on my phone, which is a bit of a pain because I need to zoom in every time just to read the text, but worthwhile because I don't have to try an interpret a comment that is so narrow that only one letter displays on each row...

One of the things that I missed from not reading the blogs in those months was a Kickstarter for Pulphouse magazine. There was even a reward on how to write a Pulphouse story. I was actually kicking myself a bit for missing out on that. And I go curious and decided to look and see if the original Pulphouse fiction magazine was available through the library.

In the past, I've viewed old issues of science fiction magazines online through a library login. I figured maybe they would be available in a similar fashion.

I was half right. A local library did in fact have Pulphouse magazine, but it was not at all digital. Instead, I checked out a bound periodical (which is a term I learned when I checked the book out). It's exactly what it sounds like, a whole bunch of magazines bound into a hardcover like a textbook. I started reading it, mostly skipping the articles to focus on the fiction. If I couldn't get in on the how to write a Pulphouse story workshop, then I'd just have to figure out what a Pulphouse story was by reading them.

I started trying to read every story, but I could only take the book out for a week. There were three novel serializations in the first issue. One of them was okay, something that I might continue to read if I had time to go through every issue in the bound periodical. Another was not to my taste - a flavor of self referential story telling that I just don't enjoy. But the third one... I got caught up in it.

I ended up devoting most of my reading time to just reading that novel, because I wouldn't have long to read it, and I wouldn't be able to buy my own copy without spending an exorbitant amount of money for a used out-of-print hard copy of either that book or a trilogy omnibus.

Dean often writes about how traditional publishing puts an artificial "freshness" limit on books. A book that isn't a bestseller in the first month or three is a failure; and, in the past, the book would go out of print. Books published now will likely include an ebook copy that won't go out of print. But this book is from the early 90's. There is no ebook, and probably won't be, because whoever owns the rights to it isn't interested in making that investment. And, since the first book in the trilogy is available as an ebook, and one of the authors is still living, I'm guessing that the authors did not retain the rights that would allow them to create an ebook.

So I've now read a book that could be gaining readers every year, but instead can only be found in libraries, whether in bound periodicals or paperback copies that have survived. Sure, someone could buy a copy, but the prices are high for someone who is just browsing. Those are more likely to be purchased by people who had read it before.

I really enjoyed reading Starseed by Spider and Jeanne Robinson. How many more books are out there, hiding in libraries, out of print, but no less quality for having been published 30 years ago?

It can take time to find an audience, but it can be done - as long as the books are available.