Working from Home...

It's been almost a year since my wife and I (and five cats) moved to the farmhouse. As far as work goes, we both went from commuting to work, to a new life telecommuting from the house, which we never seem to leave. Ever. I now know why people work in an office outside the home.

There's the isolation factor. Sure, you talk to colleagues on the phone, through e-mails and via instant messaging. Then you look up from your desk and see a cat walking past and you realize you're not "at the office" any more. And you realize you miss that human contact you had at the office.

Then you think about the distractions... the conversations over the cubicle walls; the rotten commute when the idiot on Route 128 cut you off so he could swerve from the far left lane to the exit he almost missed; the co-worker who just wants to chat when you have a deadline to meet.

Then there's the spouse factor. It's one thing when only one spouse works at home; it's something altogether different when both do. There are pluses and minuses with this. Having a partner working at home greatly lessens that feeling of isolation: we've had more lunch dates in the past year than we ever did in 16 years of marriage prior. But when your partner wants to chat and you are focusing on work, ...well, let's just say a spouse is much harder than a co-worker to dismiss lightly...

There were times last winter (remember last winter when it snowed every three days for months?) when we both seemed to be in a scene from The Shining. ...

"Here's Johnny!"

Well, nothing that serious, but you get the picture...

But then, when the day's stress level at the office grows beyond anything humans should have in their normal lives, there's no cat there to pick up and pet. Nothing beats a purring cat for stress relief.

I think I'll consider myself very lucky and keep on working from home. Besides, you can't beat the commute....

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

Abby's gone. No other way to say it really. The constant companion for my wife and I for the last sixteen years is no longer with us. The cat who would be human, (not to insult her in any way), had to be euthanized. We will miss her every day.

She was the second kitten we brought into the family, only a week after finding Emmy, by accident, at a church fair in Vermont. Emmy turned out to be a little ankle biter and we quickly decided she needed a playmate. We were getting tired of pulling Emmy off our legs first thing every morning. My wife found Emmy and it was my turn to look in the animal shelters for a companion kitten.

There was really only one choice as I walked into the holding area at the shelter, with the barking dogs and older cats trying to ignore their situation. Mind you, I could have taken them all home with me then and there, but, living in a small apartment in Boston, that wouldn't be practical. And then there was Abigail.

She and her brother shared a cage together. She was a ball of grey fluff, and as I walked toward her cage, she stuck her paw out and tried to grab me towards her. I could almost hear her saying "Pick me! Pick me!" Of course I did. No choice really.

As she grew into an adult cat, Abby and my wife created a bond I never thought possible. Abby worshipped at the feet of her goddess, Donna. There really was nothing in the universe for Abby; life was waiting for her goddess to appear. Then all was right with the world. Oh, I was OK, and could be a good substitute, but I was a mere priest to the cult of Donna, who could sustain her until her goddess appeared.

Another amazing thing was her gaze. While you were petting her, she would stare directly into your eyes. Break that gaze to do something else, and you would feel a gentle pat of a soft grey paw on the arm or shoulder, reminding you to make contact again. A new book on living with cats states you should never make eye contact with your cats, that they don't enjoy it and feel threatened by it. Nonsense. Don't believe it. All our cats look you straight in the eyes, and for Abby, it was a form of non-verbal communication. For her, it was a necessary as that taste of milk every morning.

Abigail was the only vegetarian cat I've ever known. She would walk away in disgust from the plate of canned cat food we might give the other cats as a treat. Tuna fish? Horrible. Cooked Turkey? Blech! We never had the heart to tell her the dry cat food she ate contained meat products. No, her favorite treats were milk, cereal at the bottom of the bowl (with milk of course), and oatmeal cookies with raisins.

Let me just say, as a public service announcement, that raisins are not good for cats. Pre-internet, we didn't know this when Abby was a kitten. While I was eating some raisins one day, Abby decided the scent was too much to resist and tried to poke her face in the box. Not knowing better, I gave her one. She scarfed it down and asked for more. I gave her a few, but it just didn't seem right so we stopped giving her any more. We were lucky she showed no ill-affects from it. But it became her obsession the rest of her life to sniff out raisins.

Over the holidays just past, while Abby grew sicker from a combination of inflamed bowel disease (IBD) and lymphoma, I baked cookies to give away. One batch attracted her — Oatmeal cookies. She found a cookie I was nibbling on and she tried to nibble too. So I broke her off a few tiny pieces (without raisins, of course) and she ate them down and looked for more. This at a time when she had slowly stopped eating. Those few crumbs got her excited about food for the first time in weeks. And I will say she must have found one last stray raisin on the coffee table, which went suddenly missing.

So, there will be no more gentle pats for attention, no more snuggles in my arms while falling asleep at night (positioned so she could see her goddess at all times), no more long gazes while in my lap (while her goddess was out of the room), no more furry toys carried with mewling noises and dropped at our feet — apparently because she thought we just couldn't feed ourselves properly.

No more trips to the vets for her (no more vet techs sent to the hospital for stitches), no more struggling to find the best position to sleep (when she could sleep), no more pain killers, no more fluid injections, no more struggling attempts to spoon feed her high-fat canned pet food to keep her weight up when she stopped eating. Just no more.

We lost our best friend, in this human/cat herd we call home. There's an empty spot now, as we pick up and put away her favorite cat toys. Life goes on. The other cats keep reminding us of that.

 

Teching It In Maine

I have to say I am amazed at my ability to work full-time from western Maine over the Internet with my workplace in Massachusetts, testing software and leading a team of testers in Ireland, India, and Canada. It makes you wonder why there is a need any more for any centralized office. Especially with gas prices the way they are now (and no real change in sight for lower prices any time soon.)

I'm not saying every company should send their employees home to work remotely; let's face it, not every company could. If you manufacture widgets, you need a centralized widget factory. If you work in the customer service industry, you need to be at a location where people come to you. But there are a lot of new, innovative ways to meet the work requirements in many jobs these days.

My work, for instance, as a Quality Assurance Lead, tests software that supports a number of projects for an insurance company. From the initial concept of the project, to its design, development, testing and implementation, all of it can, and is, currently done by a number of people working as a team around the world.

No need to gather people at one site; now we have the ability to work collaboratively, each bringing separate skills to the internet table. The potential gain for businesses is immense, with work circling the globe, as one part of the world ends its workday, and another part just beginning.

The up side is an expansion of jobs around the world; the downside is the very real possibility companies move jobs where skills are similar but labor (temporarily) is cheaper. (But that's another blog article...)

And what about teaching? We keep hearing, here in Maine, about consolidation of school districts, which result in longer bus rides for the kids and a whole lot more in the budget that needs to be found for gas for all those extra bus rides.

What about remote teaching? Consolidate the teaching but let's keep the kids local, where they belong.

Imagine an investment up front in the technology of our schools to allow kids in classes across Maine to hook up with a teacher in Bangor, or Skowhegan, or Portland.

Imagine the possibilities for the students, taking an advanced class in Maine schools, taught by a professor at Cal Tech, SMU, University of Chicago or Harvard?

Imagine the choice available to the students — school for them might even become a positive experience, and not a drudgery it's become with standardized testing. Nothing boxes in kids' minds more than forcing them to test to the average. Then again, maybe that's what Bush wanted all along... But I digress...

And what about small businesses in Maine? Frankly, some form of Internet presence is a must for anyone starting a business today. Remember that widget factory I mentioned earlier? Ten years ago, they were just fine with no internet presence, selling through the various media outlets of the time.

Today, many people turn first to the Internet to find their widgets and gewgaws, not so much newspapers, mailings and television any more.

Yet, how many people know how to get involved in the electronic media? You'd be surprised. How many of you reading this article have built a web site, know what an ISP provider is, or how to upload your new site to the web? Not as many as you'd think. This techie, esoteric knowledge intimidates most people from even trying. Yet it can be a large part of a small business's presence these days.

Maine can do more on this front. From encouraging programs for small businesses to expand their web presence to aiding cities and towns to provide wireless technology, free to their residents.

Colleges and universities should get in on this also, by doing what they can to expand their own tech services beyond their collective walls. Imagine low-tuition aid offered to Maine entrepreneurs for tech classes. Imagine those centers of learning working cooperatively with the towns where they reside, helping to plan and build those networks, wireless or cabled.

Public libraries, already struggling to reinvent themselves in the electronic age, can be a part of the wireless hubs, attracting people back to the real information resource. And best of all, let's keep those libraries full of books and expand them with desks for laptops and desktops. Our libraries could become a cooperative meeting place, if librarians are provided with the technical skills to make it happen.

And that means planning for it and funding it at the state level. In the end, (and it won't happen overnight), Maine could become the next hub for information technology workers, with skills that will encourage more businesses to locate here, or set up satellite offices. Well-educated, skilled workers with a strong network infrastructure established; and not just in a few cities, but all over Maine.

And the nice thing about this: no need to go through the industrialized factory stage. We could skip right over it, like Ireland did in the last 10 to 20 years, going from a rural agricultural culture to high-tech, with little urban sprawl, factories and pollution.

Hmmm... sounds like just what Maine needs...

Just a thought.

It's a Wonderful Life?

We all remember the scene from the movie where the crash of '29 occurs and there's a run on the bank, and there's Jimmy Stewart using his own money to keep the bank afloat. And remember how he describes how one depositors' money isn't in the bank, but in his neighbors' homes? So, how did we end up right back in this mess when the message was so clear? Remember the other movie line we seemed to revel in recently? "Greed is good." Only for the greedy. Greed, yes. But a lot more.

It's easy to see who are the good guys and the bad guys in Bedford Falls. After all, it's all in black and white. There's the Baileys and the good ol' Savings and Loan, and Potter, with his me-first greed, and the bank examiner wanting to be home for Christmas.

And there's George Bailey, scrimping and saving his entire young life to go off and see the world. Sure, he could have tried to secure a loan on the promise to pay it back at a later date. But he didn't. If he'd wanted that loan in the past 10 years, he'd have got it, so long as he was still breathing when he walked through the bank doors. In some banks, they wouldn't even have checked for a pulse.

So, what happened? Reaganomics. Deregulation of the banking industry was seen as a good thing, but what few seemed to realize is we left the fox in charge of the hen house. Clarence never showed up to stop the Baileys of the world from jumping and Potter really did take over Bedford Falls.

No one watched the banks for the last 30 years and my money was no longer in my neighbors' homes. It was on Wall Street being bundled into mortgage-backed securities with insurance (that wasn't insurance) against failure. The old shell game of the street corner moved up-town to the board rooms.

So, now we have to scrape a little deeper and come up with $700 billion to keep the excess of greed afloat. European governments are doing the same on a smaller scale, but with a twist: the cost to do business is accepting government oversight again. Banks there will get the loans needed as long as the government owns a share of the banks, no CEO windfalls for leaving the banks, and no dividends until the governments are repaid. Will the U.S. follow suit? Only time will tell. And with a presidential election in its final weeks we could be promised the moon.

George Bailey promised the moon also, and it worked out well for him. Let's hope we do as well... and Clarence is around somewhere...

 

Why We Need Universal Health Care...

I've learned a lot from my cats over the years. Play hard, sleep often. Nothing is so important it can't wait until after a nap. When you are really comfortable, purr loud. When someone ignores you, purr louder.

Well, I'm beginning to learn another series of lessons from one of our cats. Abby is quite ill. As I write this, we are waiting for the results from a battery of tests that can result in Inflamed Bowel Syndrome to any type of feline cancer.

For a period of ten days, Abby has slowly declined. After three days not eating, we rushed her late one Sunday night to an emergency medical clinic, open nights and weekends (yes, there is such a thing). Blood tests and x-rays showed her intestinal tract thickened and irritated. Yet everything else in the blood test was relatively normal, with the exception of indications of hyperthyroidism.

Our vet started her on a steroid pill treatment that should have relaxed the intestinal tract and allowed her to eat again. No such luck. Abby still would not eat. Each day we watched her sleep more and more, and interact with us less. Yet with a reserve of strength each night, Abby would follow her normal routine of curling up next to me until I fell asleep and then she would wander off. She has been doing this for years, and I can tell no matter how sick she feels, this is too important for her to give up.

When she wasn't improving our vet referred us to a specialist veterinary clinic in Portland, where they could biopsy her intestinal tract to test for possible lymphoma or verify IBS. My wife spent a very long day with Abby in Portland while the tests were run, and both were exhausted when they got home late yesterday. Abby was given a large dose of steroids to relax her intestines and we are waiting this morning to see if she'll start eating on her own again. Meanwhile, we await the test results.

And the cost of all of this? Lots. As any pet owner knows advances in human medicine has led to advances in animal medicine (we humans are just animals, after all.) Those advances have led to prolonged lives for our pets, as well as ourselves. But at what price?

If there is one thing I've learned through all of this from Abby, it's that we need universal health care (for humans — the universal pet health care will have to come later...) With the economy in a mess and a possible bailout looming to financial institutions that don't deserve it, we can't lose sight of this need to give the best health care possible to those who need it, not just to those who can afford it. We can not run business as usual when it comes to our health care. Good people die every day that might have been saved, but for one underlying reason — they couldn't afford the medical costs. All because of greed. We need universal health care, and we need it soon.

As for Abby, we'll do what we can to get her better. We made a commitment when we rescued her from a shelter to take care of her, and we will. But that'll cost us. Losing her before her time would cost us even more. What are we losing as a society when we lose good people every day because the rest of us can't commit to the need for universal health care?

 

The Hawkeyes and BJs of Instant Messaging
(Warning! Tech Content ahead!)

Most of us today are familiar with Instant Messaging (IM) services at work. If you use it, you love it or hate it — often at the same time. Working at home from Chesterville, I live on IM, as it is a great way to stay in touch with co-workers around the world in real-time — no waiting for emails to be answered. But it has its annoyances...

There you are, working away, deep in thought, writing that report that's due yesterday. Then — ping — up pops the IM screen from a co-worker. You have a quick conversation; all questions answered, all issues resolved. Then comes the hard part — how to end the message.

There's a great M*A*S*H episode where BJ accuses Hawkeye of being unable of ending a conversation without getting in the last word. BJ is, of course, right. Hawkeye has to have the last word. Yes, there are many IMers out there who are Hawkeyes. (You know who you are...)

Typical close of an Instant Message with a "Hawkeye":

You: OK, so we're set?

"Hawkeye": yes, all set

You: OK, talk later

"Hawkeye": Have a good day

You: you too

[You think you're finally done]

"Hawkeye": Bye

You: See ya

"Hawkeye": Talk soon

[You have now entered the third circle of IM hell...]

Your only choice is to walk away from the keyboard and hope this doesn't happen:

"Hawkeye": Hey, you still there?

You [reluctantly]: Yes

"Hawkeye": Oh. OK. Bye.

IM users need to pick up on the jargon created for early radio communication. Maybe I'll just have to end all my IM communication with:

"Roger. Over and Out"

That'll fix those Hawkeyes...