Working from Home - Day 5

Our team concluded it’s first completely remote week at 17:30 EDT. The front-end developers really made progress on the application. The back end development is mostly done, we are now focused on providing automated infrastructure deployment using Terraform. This was a pairing event today, I am used to building databases with the tool. We have done some basic AWS infrastructure with it in the past, but today’s goal was to build the entire stack with a single command. We made it.

We have a voluntary video conference today over lunch. We peaked at around nineteen out of fifty or so in the company. It was nice to just share how things are going. We even tried to do a Brady Bunch photo, which worked better than I expected. We have a "Virtual Happy Hour" next week. My team ends the day with one each evening, but we became drinking buddies back when we still had beer taps in the office. Today was not an exception. Most have craft beers, I still prefer my Molson Golden.

I enjoyed the week at home. Communication is a little more difficult, but the benefits are pretty sweet. I liked the ability to run an errand after our stand up today. It did take longer than anticipated, but I think I can optimize that. A walk at lunch really helps break up the day, although I miss the mid-afternoon walk with the team.

I took a little time off this morning to run into town and spend some time at Kroger. If I go after work, the meat and produce are cleaned out. They have individual limits but you still need to get there earlier in the day. The only thing on my list today that I could not obtain was bread flour. I did find a sack of all-purpose flour, I learned to make bread this way so no big deal. I have become lazy as I get older though and bread flour works better in the bread machine.

Spending time with the four other members of my household is actually better than I had hoped. Today I moved my office to our back porch. We replaced the screens with screens and windows a couple of years ago. It is now my favorite "room" in the house. It was above sixty degrees (Fahrenheit) for most of today so I opened the windows and listened to the birds and the kids next door this afternoon. We make supper before sunset, and I even have time for walk with one of the kids afterwards.

Although I have to accept the risk of going into town each week, I still feel like I am better off working from home. Next week I think I will invite each of the kids to shadow me while I work. None of them really have a plan for their lives, which may not be bad. I thought I was going to go into chemical or civil engineering when I was their ages. Turns out I liked math, English and computation. Each are important in my professional life.

The other blessing at this time of the year is additional time to spend in the garden. I will risk another trip into town tomorrow to get seed for the cole crop, and order the starters for the garden. I may even use the extra ninety minutes a day to break ground for more corn. The deep freezer ran out in January. I would like to triple the harvest this year.