{"id":32506,"date":"2020-03-19T19:14:47","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T00:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=32506"},"modified":"2020-03-19T19:14:47","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T00:14:47","slug":"diving-in-on-day-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=32506","title":{"rendered":"Diving in on Day Two"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=32504\">the first day of working from home<\/a> was a strange and new and exciting experience, the second day felt more routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I got out of bed at 7:30, though I&#8217;d been awake for several hours before that.  It was another night of rough sleep; it was difficult to get comfortable temperature-wise (take a blanket off, get too cold; throw a blanket on, feel too warm).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I put the coffee on to brew, took the last donut from a pack I&#8217;d bought for St. Patrick&#8217;s Day, sat down, and wrote out my bullet journal to-do list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Upload liquid.txt (VPN)<\/li><li>Prep Comics A-D for layout (VPN)<\/li><li>Retailer Incentives<\/li><li>Set up UK spreadsheet<\/li><li>Collectibles text (VPN)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=32504\">Like yesterday<\/a>, I wanted a mix of things to do, some that would require connecting to the office in the remote desktop, some that I could do without needing access to the office computer.  Everyone needs variety; the same grind, day after day, grows old, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ProfAishaAhmad\/status\/1240284544667996163\">a Twitter thread<\/a> I read this morning had some ideas for avoiding burnout in this strange, new world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But first, and this I did not write down, I really needed to clean off my desk  The desk belonged to my grandfather and, though he died twenty years ago, there&#8217;s still this amazing smell when opening the file drawers.  Unfortunately, the desktop was piled high with&#8230; <em>stuff<\/em>.  Piles of CDs.  Piles of paper.  Pens.  Paperclips.  Binder clips.  Story cubes.  A broken Master Chief figure.  A Snoopy-as-Sherlock-Holmes keychain.  I needed working space, so I grabbed an empty box, starting going through what I had on the desktop, and decided what to do with everything that would be to my left.  (The computer itself sits to my right.)  Did I need it?  Did I have a place for it?  Or could I toss it?  Things I could toss went in the box; that I would take to the dumpster later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A fortuitous find &#8212; an outline for a short story that I wrote last summer.  I knew I had this handwritten outline <em>somewhere<\/em>.  I think it got lost in the shuffle when I was hospitalized last year.  Hopefully, I&#8217;ll be able to do something with it soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By nine o&#8217;clock I had a working space, my to-do list on a clipboard, and a mug of coffee.  I was even dressed in a Charlie Brown t-shirt, blue cargo shorts, sneakers, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap.  (This is the Nationals cap I had with me in the hospital when the playoffs began, so it&#8217;s the only one I wore during the post-season, and it&#8217;s the one I wore to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=32362\">the World Series parade<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/20200319_110127-640x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-32507\"\/><figcaption> <em>The writer, at his desk, in his environment<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I checked my email &#8212; which I can do without connecting to the remote desktop &#8212; and discovered a new task.  I added that item &#8212; Import Toys text (VPN) &#8212; to the bottom of my list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I went to log in&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Connection error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried again&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Connection error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I repeated this for about half an hour, drinking my coffee, getting frustrated.  So I moved on to something else &#8212; the Retailer Incentives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Today&#39;s WFH lesson: Be flexible. If you can&#39;t do something (ie., you can&#39;t log into the office VPN), move on to something you can do then circle back later. Hopefully, circumstances will have changed.<\/p>&mdash; Allyn Gibson (@allyngibson) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/allyngibson\/status\/1240633062138019841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 19, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Retailer Incentives are a document we produce every month of, as the name suggests, incentives for comic retailers.  It&#8217;s a bit of a chore to do &#8212; basically, I take this information directly from the monthly order form, discarding all of the information in the order form I <em>don&#8217;t<\/em> need, then formatting what&#8217;s left &#8212; which is why it&#8217;s never very high on my priorities list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since St. Patrick&#8217;s Day was two days ago, I put some Dropkick Murphys on, and I rocked through it in about an hour and half.  I made the three files I needed &#8212; a Word file, a plain text version of the Word file, and a CSV file &#8212; emailed the Word file to a designer, and X-ed off &#8220;Retailer Incentives&#8221; on my bullet journal list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was now about 10:30.  I took the box of junk to the dumpster; I needed to get up and walk around.  I tried the VPN again.  This time I was able to log in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I checked Microsoft Teams to see if there was anything department-related I needed to be aware of.  There wasn&#8217;t.  I closed Teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I put some files on the web server and X-ed off &#8220;Upload liquid.txt.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yesterday afternoon I had been emailed a version of the Comics A-D text file that had been edited and marked-up by the Purchasing team.  I opened up that file, opened up the database, then went through and made sure the changes the buyers had indicated had been made in the database.  I also found several errors that <em>I<\/em> had made that they had <em>not<\/em> marked, and I corrected those.  All told, this took a good hour, and once I finished that I had to do another pass through the database and set art flags.  Finished, I emailed the edited Word document to the designers, and &#8220;Prep A-D for Layout&#8221; wax X-ed off on my list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now quarter to twelve, I felt like stretching my legs again.  I went outside.  It was foggy and rather grim.  I went to the mailboxes and, on the way, met an older neighbor who lives across the way.  I stopped where I was, a good twelve feet distant from her, and, gesturing with my hands to indicate space between us, said, &#8220;Social distancing.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She gave me a quizzical look.  &#8220;What?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Social distancing,&#8221; I said, still making weird hand gestures.  &#8220;You know, the virus.  I don&#8217;t want to infect you if I have it.&#8221;  I didn&#8217;t add, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want you to infect me if you have it.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Realization dawned on her face.  &#8220;Oh.  Oh, yes.  That&#8217;s good.  Yes.  They don&#8217;t want me to come into work for the next two weeks because of it.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;That&#8217;s a good idea,&#8221; I said, nodding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She passed well clear of me, and when she entered the laundry facility I continued down the steps to the mailboxes.  There was no real mail to speak of, just the Dallastown biannual newsletter.  I didn&#8217;t even look at it, as it certainly lists activities for the next two months that aren&#8217;t likely to happen now.  Would the Dallastown Memorial Day parade even happen? I wondered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I looked to the other hill, but it was lost in the fog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2400\" height=\"1350\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/20200319_130934.jpg\" alt=\"Yoe, lost in the fog\" class=\"wp-image-32508\"\/><figcaption>Yoe, lost in the fog<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I fixed some cereal for lunch, took leftover chili out of the freezer to thaw for dinner, and put on a pot of water to boil for tea.  Then I went back to the &#8220;office&#8221; and started in on my next task, writing the text for the collectibles section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I won&#8217;t describe the process as it&#8217;s tedious, but it went quickly.  It was only 38 items, and probably a half dozen of them were lanyards.  Just as I wrapped up my work on the section and crossed it off my list, ready to send it to the buyer, I received an enamel from the buyer that she had another ten items or so to add, and would that be a problem?  No, of course it wasn&#8217;t, I replied.  Just add them, and email me when they&#8217;re in the database, and I&#8217;ll go in and fix them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of five o&#8217;clock, these ten items still weren&#8217;t in the database.  The bulk of the work on my end is done, though, and I&#8217;ll probably only need another fifteen minutes tomorrow for it to be well and truly done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Import Toys would not be done as quickly; that section has almost three hundred items.  I dove into that without expecting to finish it today.  If I reached the halfway point, that would be a good outcome  I listened to a number of things as I worked &#8212; Carbon Leaf, Sarah White, Kari Johnsrud&#8217;s jazz album of Mr. Rogers songs, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p03n0rj7\">a BBC Radio 4 documentary on The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band<\/a> hosted by Neil Innes.  And by about 3:30, I <em>had<\/em> reached the halfway point in the imports section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I&#8217;d been working on imports, an email came in the games section was ready to be written. Since I&#8217;d reached the goal I&#8217;d set, and since for mental health I felt I should work on something else, I moved over to the games.  It seemed like a lot at first &#8212; about a hundred items &#8212; but about half of them, all miniatures of various sorts, could be grouped together easily into about five listings.  They were at the end, but I did those first, then looped back to the beginning and worked my way back to where I&#8217;d started.  I took a word count, saved the file, and emailed it to the buyer.  All told, working on the games took about an hour and half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was now close to 5:30.  I&#8217;d been a busy little beaver; the day&#8217;s word count stood over 15k.  I wrote my editor an update on where I was on my various projects.  I then opened up Microsoft Teams and left my department a single line status before &#8220;leaving&#8221; for the day:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Nostromo&#8230; signing off&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background has-vivid-cyan-blue-background-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Always remember to give love, light &amp; peace \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hWmM0CXg2q\">https:\/\/t.co\/hWmM0CXg2q<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BVdwgmwC9F\">pic.twitter.com\/BVdwgmwC9F<\/a><\/p>&mdash; George Harrison (@GeorgeHarrison) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GeorgeHarrison\/status\/1240360362932748289?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 18, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If the first day of working from home was a strange and new and exciting experience, the second day felt more routine. I got out of bed at 7:30, though I&#8217;d been awake for several hours before that. It was another night of rough sleep; it was difficult to get comfortable temperature-wise (take a blanket<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=32506\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Diving in on Day Two&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[4845,4741,4842,3968,4846,4843,4233,4830,4847,95,4100,4848,4849],"class_list":["post-32506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work","tag-burn-out","tag-carbon-leaf-2","tag-covid-19","tag-dallastown","tag-diamond-comic-distributors","tag-diamond-comics","tag-fred-rogers","tag-george-harrison-2","tag-kari-johnsrud","tag-neil-innes","tag-snoopy","tag-the-bonzo-dog-band","tag-the-bonzo-dog-doo-dah-band","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}