After six and a half years of remote work, my employer has decided that we should all return to the office. Feelings about that aside, I have to solve the problem of transportation.
We downsized a bit during my time working at home, to a single car. My wife’s piano studio schedule has her working from 3 - 7 pm most weekdays. With parking on campus at the University a bit of a nightmare, any kind of drop off and pick up scheme won’t work most days. So I need transportation.
Either a car or an eScooter or a motorcycle. While a scooter or motorcycle is attractive, riding to work introduces weather as a concern.
Enter AI. I asked Claude for a count of work days in the past 12 months, that were above freezing and had no rain at 7 am or 4 pm. Claude wasn’t able to directly provide an answer, but it did produce a Python script that queries a public database of historical weather data.
Python is a mess, between python and python3 and the associated pip installers. So I asked for a Bash version. The Bash script worked the first time.
Out of 262 week days checked over the past 12 months, there were 180 eScooter friendly days. Roughly 68%. Not too bad all things considered.
More Claude queries gave me a list of eScooters with both the roundtrip range, and hill climbing abilities. My commute would have a 400 foot elevation drop plus a 200 foot climb going to work, and the reverse of that coming home. My next project will be to research eScooters.
When the COVID 19 pandemic happened, my employer had a trial “work from home” day. Leadership wanted to find out if it was feasible, possible even, for the University to function with a large portion of its IT workforce working remotely.
That was March 12, 2020. I haven’t worked in the office since then.
Working as a Linux system administrator, primarily on AWS hosted servers, one could argue that I work remotely even in an office setting. Remote work, worked. The team I am on was arguably as productive, if not more productive, as a distributed team. We weathered a ransomeware attack—three weeks of 18 hours days—while remote.
The advantages to the worker are numerous. No commute saves time and gas money. Some of my teammates gained two or more hours per day not having to commute. Interruptions are no longer a problem. That person who insists on coming to your desk to ask if you saw the email they sent two minutes earlier can’t do that anymore.
I am privileged in that I have space for a home office. A spare bedroom with a wonderful view through the window, a very good chair, and a wooden teacher’s desk I made in 1993. Having a dedicated place to “go to work” in my home greatly helped to set some boundaries.
My wife owns a private piano studio and has her studio in the walkout lower level of our home. Her work day is skewed toward the after school hours, but she spends time during the day preparing lessons and doing studio-related work. She works at her desk in the studio or from a small desk in our living room.
We both cherish the ability to interact with each other during the day. For us, my working from home had nothing but upsides.
All of that is coming to an end, unfortunately. The upper leadership at the University has changed in the past six and a half years. Support for fulltime remote work hasn’t only waned, it has evaporated. The building we were housed in is no longer available. Space on campus is tight; even with a mandate to return to the office, there wasn’t a place for us to return to.
Yesterday we learned that there is now enough space in one building on campus for the team I am on to return to the office. The expectation is that we will all have transitioned back to campus within the next 3-4 weeks. All the arguements about the downsides of working on campus fell on deaf ears.
Rank and file employees have to pay to park on campus ($250-ish per year). Working on campus will mean an “L” shaped desk in a coner of a room that has two or three other occupied desks. I’ll have to redevelop the social calluses that make it possible to accept or endure the sounds, smells, and other intrusions that come from working in close contact with other people. I’m an introvert, I’m not shy, but I do tire from constant exposure to other people. Six plus years with near total control over my environment will have atrophied my social skills and my tolernace for little or no control over my workspace.
Prior to learning about losing my remote work status, I was planning on retiring in May 2028, when I am 67 years old. My retirement plans may be accelerated, should I find the return to office work requires personal sacrifices and lifestyle changes I am not willing to prolong. The earliest I can retire is the end of September 2027, one year from now.
Losing privilege is never enjoyable. I am grateful that I was allowed to work from home for so long. I am unhappy about that time not lasting until I retired.
I am a white, college-educated male, in the technology field, living in America. My life difficulty setting is as low as it could be without adding the “inherit obscene wealth” power up.
The next 12-20 months will pass and I’ll continue to be privileged. Less so than before, but still way ahead of the curve.
The vehemence and vitriol that AI brings out in some people is both surprising to me, and exhausting. I don’t remember a technology topic as divisive or polarizing.
The first code I wrote was BASIC in the mid 1970s. I was self-taught and I was privileged enough to have a father who brought home a portable terminal that could connect to his employer’s mainframe, giving me access to a small collection games that the IT staff there had created. Later he bought an Apple 2 computer, which is when I really got into programming.
As a senior in high school I talked my way into a COBOL programming class at the local community college. One other high school student was also there, the rest of the class were all adults looking to change careers.
Over the course of my career I have worked in COBOL, and Nomad (an early 4GL). I used KnowledgeWare’s ADW, a CASE tool combined with MicroFocus COBOL to generate code from module action diagrams. Later I worked with Forté, an object oriented client-server development platform. I used UML and IBM’s WSAD tooling. I’ve gotten to work with and explore a lot of fascinating technology.
Today I work as a system administrator on Linux servers, both on premises and in the AWS cloud.
I have used different editors, different frameworks, and different debugging tools. Every handful of years there would be a new project management philosophy and so I did waterfall, and SDLC, and Agile, and TDD.
There have always been tools or technologies that caused debate. Some have become set pieces: Vim vs. EMACS or tabs vs. spaces. While there may have at times been impassioned discussions, it always felt like each side could at least see the other side.
AI has brought a new level of zealotry to the table. Those oppose to it are vehemently against it. There’s no middle ground. I understand there are ethical issues, and environmental concerns. I have mixed feelings about where the whole AI craze is going. At the same time I find use, both for agentic coding and chatbots, in my work and personal life.
Having so much negative energy focused on AI, while I am using it, has created a reverse kind of “fear of missing out” or FOMO. Maybe I am blind to the evils of AI and should shun its use. Or maybe, like every other sea change in technology, it still has some rough edges and needs lots of maturing before we will know the true scope of what it brings, both positive and negative.
I am within 2 years of retiring. The technology treadmill has only gotten wider and started moving faster in the four and half decades I’ve been making my living as a programmer. Part of my is glad that I’ll be stepping off the need-to-keep-current-professionally treadmill, and only staying on the what-interests-me treadmill. I will miss the challenge of staying current and of learning new, often complex, new tools and processes. I won’t miss the relentlessness of it all. And I won’t miss at all the divide that AI has created.
At the risk of being a curmudgeon, I need to rant about tipping with regard to carry out food orders.
When we carry out from someplace that has sit down dining, where I would tip the server at the end of the meal, I add a tip to the carry out order. If it is a fast food place where I wouldn’t leave a tip even if I ate there, I don’t leave a tip.
So, Panera Bread, no tip. Olive Garden, tip.
The problem with this is the order of events. When you have a sit down meal in the restaurant, you have the entire experience before the bill comes and before you leave a tip. You can adjust the amount however you want. When you carry out the food the bill, and tip, are collected ahead of time. With the advent of curbside pickup at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, paying and tipping, before even getting the bag of food, meant you were tipping for an unknown quality of service.
Tonight, for example, I tipped for an incorrect order. One meal was correct and the other wasn’t. Thanks to summer road construction it is a 40 minute round trip. So I opted for a credit on my card, and had a frozen meal from the freezer.
My solution is to stop using curbside pickup. And I’ll stop paying in advance. I’ll go into the restaurant to collect the order, and inspect it on the spot. Then I’ll pay and tip. If the online order process forces me to pay ahead of time, I simply won’t tip.
It’d be better if American restaurants paid a decent wage and didn’t force wait staff to hustle for tips to offset the miserly hourly wage. That is a cultural change I doubt will happen anytime soon.
Last night I checked off a concert box I thought I’d never get to see. Rush.
When Neil Peart died in 2020 everyone thought that Rush was done. He was their drummer and he was unparalleled in his ability to play the drums.
Last year Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson announced they were going out on tour again. They had found a touring drummer named Anika Nilles. There was a lot of speculation and anticipation as the opening dates in June approached. The tour, in a word, has been tremendous. The support of, and acceptance of, Anika by the Rush fans has been overwhelmingly positive. She embodies the spirit of play that Neil had, and presents the iconic drum fills with power and grace and enjoyment.
I’ve watched the videos on YouTube but nothing prepares you for actually being in the arena enveloped in the sound. Everyone on stage was having fun. Geddy and Alex had big smiles on their faces, obviously enjoying playing their music live once again. Anika simply owned the drums. To coin phrases from Rush lyrics, “She has assumed control” and she was “grace under pressure”. I cannot imagine anyone else capturing the support and love from the fans as she has done, nor can I imagine anyone out playing her.
I am privileged to have seen the show in Chicago with my oldest friend. I am doubly privileged to get to see them again in Boston about six weeks, again with my oldest friend.
Sometime in the early 1980s I discovered the David Eddings books in the local bookstore. There were 3 on the shelf that appeared to be a trilogy. So I bought them. Imagine my dismay to reach the end of book three only to learn the story would be continued in book 4, and then book 5. I spent a couple of years hoping the author didn’t wander in front of a moving bus.
I have on my shelf two incomplete series that I fear will never be completed. George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice”, and Patrick Rothfuss' “Kingkiller Chronicles”.
I believe that the HBO show “A Game of Thrones” took the wind out of Martin’s sails. It has now been longer since he published that latest book in the series than it took to publish all the previous books.
The “Kingkiller” books are fantastic. Both the first two of the trilogy, and the shorter books that are offshoots of the main story. However, while Martin does insist he is working on the next Song of Fire and Ice book, Rothfuss has gone silent.
Maybe I should have a shelf on my bookcase for really good book series tha unfortunately will never be completed.
I am probably not 100% neurotypical. There are places in my life where my atypical traits show more than others. One such place is book covers.
Specifically book covers for a series. Iain M. Banks wrote 9 “Culture” novels. I have 7 of them published by Orbit books, that all use the same color palette and same overall design. The last two, even though they are from Orbit, not only have a different aesthetic, they are a different size too. I know this is a small thing, but it bothers me.
Makes me wish there was a way to order books with a specific cover/jacket design.
On a similar note, I’m glad I bought “Wool” long before the Apple TV “Silo” television show. My cover is the original, and not one inspired by the show. I’m pleased with the show’s interpretation of the story, but I don’t need marketing/branding on the cover of the book.
The WiFi icon in my menu bar has been gray for sometime now, regardless of signal strength or connection. Some glitch in the Matrix no doubt. The solution I found is to restart the “ControlCenter”, i.e., the right-hand end of the menu bar.
killall ControlCenter
At least for now, my WiFi icon is working as expected.
On July 20th I’ll be in Chicago to see the Rust “50 Something” tour. I never had the opportunity to see them with Neal Peart. All the reviews of the 50 Something tour have been good, so I am excited to see them. In September I’ll be in Boston to see the same tour a second time. I’ve only done that once before; in the 1980s I saw the same Genesis tour twice.
Here, in order of concerts attended is my list of shows seen.
| Artist | Concerts |
|---|---|
| Genesis | 6 |
| Peter Gabriel | 5 |
| Rush | 2 |
| Phil Collins | 1 |
| Yes | 1 |
| Kansas | 1 |
| Foghat | 1 |
| Blue Oyster Cult | 1 |
| Heart | 1 |
| John Melloncamp | 1 |
| - | - |
| Yo-Yo Ma | 3 |
| Itzahk Perlman | 1 |
| Yamoto Japanese Drums | 1 |