The DisFort's Chit Chat Cafe

[mickeyfan0805]

Governor here in MS has removed mask mandate here effective tomorrow evening at 5pm.

Enjoy vacation Chris. Sounds like it'll be a busy one.

Our mandate is currently set to expire on March 20. It's been extended multiple times before (and rescinded through court order, then put back in place, etc.). So, there's really no telling what the rules will be in a few weeks. That said, we've never had travel restrictions/quarantines, or other similar measures, so we haven't had to manage those considerations in the same way others have.

 

[FtW Mike]

Governor here in MS has removed mask mandate here effective tomorrow evening at 5pm.

Enjoy vacation Chris. Sounds like it'll be a busy one.

You might want remind your Gov. to exercise some more Caution he may incur the wrath of Fearless Leader of the P.D.R. o C.

 

[jbrostek]

@PaHunter At least you can make use of the time? Glad the restriction is lifted, that helps with vacation planning right?

I other news, so far since going back into the school building another teachers (and friends) entire family tested positive for covid, all have various degrees of symptoms. The teacher is teaching on zoom, her in class kids have a proctor and virtual kids only see a chance in background. My WFH status hasn't changed, though we shall see as we get closer to July what that will look like.

I did have to take the truck to the Ford dealer this week to get my sync system looked at. Turns out to be a bad module, also found my extended service plan just expired.....just in time for me to have a coolant leak in the primary radiator. Not a cheap repair, but no more expensive then if it was a gas engine. Either way it's 5 hours labor to remove the stack of radiators and coolers. There goes the tax return.....

 

[mickeyfan0805]

I did have to take the truck to the Ford dealer this week to get my sync system looked at. Turns out to be a bad module, also found my extended service plan just expired.....just in time for me to have a coolant leak in the primary radiator. Not a cheap repair, but no more expensive then if it was a gas engine. Either way it's 5 hours labor to remove the stack of radiators and coolers. There goes the tax return.....

Ouch! Sorry.

 

[jbrostek]

Ouch! Sorry.

5 years of ownership 36k miles with 80% of those miles towing and only maintenance/wear items I really cannot complain. Though the hit to the wallet sucks no matter what. In case anyone is wondering, it's around 1500 to replace a 6.7 diesel primary radiator.

 

[FtW Mike]

Governor here in MS has removed mask mandate here effective tomorrow evening at 5pm.

Enjoy vacation Chris. Sounds like it'll be a busy one.

Now that Feckless Leader has chimed in , are you all mandated to change to insurance so easy A Caveman can do it? Asking for a friend

 

[tiggerdad]

Not yet.

 

[jbrostek]

Thursday was our Quarterly all hands meeting at my job. That's when our CEO said he was extending our WFH posture beyond July 5th 2021 through at least January 18th, 2022. My old desk and chair had served me well enough. I decided with the extension of work from home to invest in a better office setup. I bought a new sit/stand desk and a new chair. The desk arrived today so we spend the afternoon reconfiguring the office. I had a sit stand desk at the office and having the choice was nice dealing with my foot and giving my lower back a rest.



I used to face the window with my monitors just to the left of it. Now I can look out the window. I keep my current setup where I use my personal laptop for personal email and and browsing and then jump over to the dual monitors for work.

Right now I don't know what travel I can do over the summer and still work, we are still tied to home with Melissa's back in the classroom, but it does not mean we cannot look at some adventure over the summer.

 

[bama_ed]

You need a bigger window, jbrostek IMHO. Nice setup there though!

Ed

 

[PaHunter]

Well today finds me back in the land of the living. Yesterday, slept most of the day and night. Had a low grade fever, but that broke middle of the night and feeling better today. DW has been awesome at taking care of me. So today will be rest and rehydration, which will not be hard as it is currently 18 degrees outside.

 

[jbrostek]

You need a bigger window, jbrostek IMHO. Nice setup there though!

I chose the basement for my office. when I get on call escalations at 3 am I don't wake the house. Melissa's library was setup as an office when we viewed the house. Though I felt that would wake the house if I was dealing with a work issue in the middle of the night.

I don't really mind it either, I think if I had more sunlight I would end up closing the blinds anyway due to glare on my screen. At least down here I have good light positions that avoid glare.

@PaHunter Glad to read you might be on the mend. And yes its cold out this morning. Started first thing loading up the trailer to start a dump run.

 

[Part-Time Paradise]

Thursday was our Quarterly all hands meeting at my job. That's when our CEO said he was extending our WFH posture beyond July 5th 2021 through at least January 18th, 2022.

That's crazy that they've made the call to extend conditions through January already. Though I wonder how many companies are going to make telework the new standard since they are seeing how they can still maintain productivity and lease/buy smaller office footprints.

 

[Teamubr]

We got an email earlier in the week that said they would have a staged process to return to work, but that would not start until "at least" the 4th quarter. I think the next few months will give an indication on how the virus is doing and how well vaccinations are coming along.

j

 

[jbrostek]

That's crazy that they've made the call to extend conditions through January already. Though I wonder how many companies are going to make telework the new standard since they are seeing how they can still maintain productivity and lease/buy smaller office footprints.

My industry/career can be done 90% remote no matter who I work for. The only staff that I need to rely on is Data Center Operations, so as long as they are in the building I can do my job effectively 100%. Even when I was in the office DCO did most of my hands on work, I was in an office 10 miles away from the data center.

Even after January 18th it will be a phased approach to return depending on what that looks like. I really think the full extension to 1/2022 is just to take the stress off families. If we don't have to stress over when we will get access to the vaccine for entire households which not just those that get priority before general populace. What school will look like in the Fall, really everyone is envisioning back to 2019 normal. I just don't see that till there is clear picture this vaccine is as effective as they believe it is and that kids are not suffering or facing issues if they do contract it.

Really if my company can go 2 fiscal years without stepping foot in the office, I can see envision them selling the main building or just maintaining some flex use space for meetings with teams or clients and lease out the rest. Our team even agreed it will be hard for them to ask us to come back full time, though none of us are against once or twice a week of working in the same building.

The trend at this point in internet infrastructure companies is to go 85/15 remote/in person. AT&T has been doing it for at least a decade for everything except their regional NOC is mostly telework and maintaining a sales/team meeting workspace in Oakton, VA. The building can handle a few hundred employees when they have about 3k in the local area. When industry leaders like Salesforce announce last month:

Salesforce on Tuesday announced that its employees would have the option to work remotely full time, even when it's safe to return to the office. The new guidelines, which Salesforce is calling "Work From Anywhere," offer employees three options for how they'll work going forward: flex, fully remote, and office-based."
https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/creating-a-best-workplace-from-anywhere/
I suspect more will follow.

 

[Part-Time Paradise]

Sounds good to me. More opportunities to park the rig somewhere with good internet and take nice long trips across the continent.

I'm seeking a job in a couple years that will allow me to do flex or full remote. We want to see so many things, but budgeting 4-7 days to get there and back doesn't leave much for the destination. Being able to shut the laptop off at 4 or 5 and then go hike in the Redwoods sounds much better.

 

[tiggerdad]

Stats show there is better productivity when people work from home. Multiple studies have proven it.

Take into account the business is not paying extra water bill for the bathroom use, fountains, etc. Not paying extra to heat and cool the space or have to keep all the lights on, so there's more utility savings.

Now this won't apply to all, or even 1/3 of workers but that is money saved and I do believe this will trend in the future.

 

[bama_ed]

Sounds good to me. More opportunities to park the rig somewhere with good internet and take nice long trips across the continent.

I'm seeking a job in a couple years that will allow me to do flex or full remote. We want to see so many things, but budgeting 4-7 days to get there and back doesn't leave much for the destination. Being able to shut the laptop off at 4 or 5 and then go hike in the Redwoods sounds much better.

The thing about being among the redwoods is a reliable internet connection of sufficient throughput. With SpaceX's Starlink coming on line, that might no longer be as big an issue. I got an email from their beta testing and the service is available in my area now for $99 a month (50-150MB service down) but you have to pay $500 for the dish and router. But if you can be in a campsite and stretch the cable out to get a clear view of the sky in the right place where the satellites are, the opportunities will open up. You can roll the rv/camper to a new location and roll the cable out and set up the dish to establish a new signal. Couple that with YTtv or Hulu+Live TV for football season, and the options really open up.

I am seriously considering Starlink because I HATE the local cable company who offers internet in my area.

Bama Ed

PS - however, the redwoods might STILL block a Starlink signal. You never know.

 

[Part-Time Paradise]

The thing about being among the redwoods is a reliable internet connection of sufficient throughput. With SpaceX's Starlink coming on line, that might no longer be as big an issue.

We live in the sticks and we're on a AT&T cell based router. We looked into Starlink, but since the big up front costs right now, possibility of intermittent service during the beta, and it's assigned to a specific address, we're holding off for awhile. If it means I can be generally free to roam, I'll shell out the big bucks for the appropriate internet connection.

ALSO, once this "wanderer" plan comes to fruition the kids will be out of the house and YouTube will no longer strangle my bandwidth daily and nightly.

 

[bama_ed]

ALSO, once this "wanderer" plan comes to fruition the kids will be out of the house and YouTube will no longer strangle my bandwidth daily and nightly.

I feel your pain. All my kids share their NetFlix and Disney+ accounts and I got one kid left at home...

... for a few more months anyway ....

And I can tell when she is streaming. She tries to explain it away because she's "only" streaming a live walk-through of Magic Kingdom et cetera and

<at this point in the conversation I'm hearing the Charlie Brown teacher voice in my head> so I bet you know the drag it puts on the rest of the bandwidth demand in the house. Because the stream HAS TO BE in HD, natch.

DW says I will miss them when the last one moves out but I'm not so sure, Jack. Can't wait to go visit them at THEIR place someday. Plug in and set up the camper in their driveway. Raid their refrigerator. Flush half a roll of TP down the toilet. Take the trash to the curb in my Cousin Eddie bath robe and dark socks. Every single day.

And stay for two weeks. At least.

Ed

PS - at least if you're on the move after they leave, you can tell them they have to FIND you first and THEN they can come visit. By which time, of course, you will have moved on with no forwarding address.

 

[Part-Time Paradise]

And I can tell when she is streaming. She tries to explain it away because she's "only" streaming a live walk-through of Magic Kingdom et cetera and

<at this point in the conversation I'm hearing the Charlie Brown teacher voice in my head> so I bet you know the drag it puts on the rest of the bandwidth demand in the house. Because the stream HAS TO BE in HD, natch.

Mine aren't big enough yet to know that I've throttled all of their devices. On a good day I'm pulling about 25 Mbps down. I have them sharing 4 Mbps. They don't get a choice on HD or nah. I fear the day when their tech savvy exceeds mine (as it happened with me to my parents), but at least I'll have some experience in that arena!

DW says I will miss them when the last one moves out but I'm not so sure, Jack. Can't wait to go visit them at THEIR place someday. Plug in and set up the camper in their driveway. Raid their refrigerator. Flush half a roll of TP down the toilet. Take the trash to the curb in my Cousin Eddie bath robe and dark socks. Every single day.

And stay for two weeks. At least.

Ed

PS - at least if you're on the move after they leave, you can tell them they have to FIND you first and THEN they can come visit. By which time, of course, you will have moved on with no forwarding address.

My two kids have WAY too much of my genetics in them. They are knuckleheads, no doubt. I wouldn't trade 'em for a herd of goats though. That said, I absolutely plan to Cousin Eddie the crap out of them. The "throw me a hose and an extension cord" was a huge seller to DW for why we wanted to get into RVing. We remember the places we lived in college and early marriage. I'm not sleeping on a blow up mattress like my parents did.

Also, I do like the thought of the kids catching up to us while we're roaming. The dually will fit in the airport pick up lane no problem.