I'm back at work in the office for the first time in weeks.

That's a little different than working at home, in New River or up in Colorado. For one thing, they have these little boxes called "cubes". They're really very nice - it's all of the room that a fellow needs to do his job, and I don't even have to clean it up - they pay somebody else to come by later and clean it up for me.(Ethel makes me clean up my own office at home).

                   

It's really a very nice idea. For instance -

* I don't have to make my own coffee (or clean my own coffeepot)- they have somebody doing that.
* Lunch is catered and subsidized - I can't eat at home nearly as cheaply, nor as well, as I can eat just a few minutes' walk from my "cube".
* I don't have to forward my phone - calls come right to my desk without me doing anything.
* I get to write on the wall (Ethel hates it when I do that at home).
* There's no dog hair in between the keys on the keyboard.
* Nobody ever asks me to go outside and spray the swimming pool concrete while it's curing.
* At home, I only have two monitors - here I have FOUR.
* Somebody else backs up my desktop.

I can only come up with two real disadvantages to my "cube" -

1) I have to drive there (and drive back home).
2) There are people around to talk to.

The driving to and from is a real disadvantage - I've not been able to come up with any way that I can avoid that, other than living at the office - which has its own set of problems (there's nowhere near enough room in my file cabinet for all of my shoes).

And having other people around is really a downside. I have no idea how many times today I've told the (abbreviated, abridged, edited and condensed) story of my motorcycle wreck. And not only that, but people say things to each other, like "hi" and "howya doin'" and such, and you're supposed to come up with responses - not only is ignoring them considered rude, but you're supposed to initiate such protocols yourself.

At the house, there's none of that. After Ethel and I go through our morning acknowledgments, we're done unless something comes up - she wouldn't expect me to say "Hi! Howya doin'?" every time I saw her in the hall.

Now, if the other people around me were people that I actually worked with, it might be different - but the only folks that I work with consistently, I don't work closely enough with such that being co-located would help - my job is such that I might be working with any development group on any project, product or bit of infrastructure anywhere in the company, so it would be impossible to locate me near all of those folks.

So telecommuting really works for me.

If I could just get Go Daddy to install my cube in my house.....

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