Month: August 2021

Today, I took unexpected time off of work due to unforeseen circumstances. Since we’re working remotely, I reached out to my facilitator, and boss via Microsoft Teams and filled them in on what was happening. Later today, I discovered that I could pop into work although it was only for 2.5 hours. Flashback to my prior job, there is no way I would have even worked, if I was going to be out of the office. I imagine I would have felt the same way if I was working remotely also. However, the environment, my boss, and my team make it all worthwhile. I had my weekly 1:1 sessions with my manager. I must say that I’m truly appreciating the hands-on approach she has with us during our Onboarding. There is so much to learn, and it’s nice to bounce ideas off of her and get to know her more as a person. Once week 10 hits, I won’t be meeting with her weekly.

There’s still a lot to learn, and I’m doing my best o understand the insurance lingo used when talking about the various coverages that my department works with. I’m working with the Small Commercial side; Workmans Compensation, General Liability, Auto, and all the extras like additions like BPP, COI, Umbrella, fraud, and many other additions that a small business owner can have.

In other news…

Today I was drilling holes in this pot. This terra-cotta pot came with a plant that was planted inside a plastic pot. This lovely container served as the cachepot.

The plant’s leaves were a bit crispy in its feel. This is a plant that I purchased last week. However, giving the plant a long drink of water, and draining well, has brought the leaves (almost) back to normal.

With my potted plants, I like using saucers under my planter pots instead of placing the plant pot inside a larger cache pot.

One of the reasons that I’ve occasionally chosen the latter was because the pot that I might have liked to use with a saucer, did not provide sufficient drainage for the plant even though it had a drainage hole.

Speaking of drainage holes and planter pots, the one challenge I face with them is that there’s one hole at the base of the pot. I’ve always thought it would be smarter to have a few more holes so that the drainage would go by much faster. Unfortunately, I’ve never encountered ceramic planter pots with multiple holes. Well, there’s an easy fix, you can add holes to your ceramic pots. The majority of the planter pots that I use are made from ceramic. Research, several months ago, showed me that I could create additional holes at the base of the planter pots if I used a drill and diamond drill bits.

Initially, I’d thought about using my trusty Dremel; however, after some deliberation, this morning I purchased a WorkPro drill from Amazon.

I also ordered diamond drill bits. I ordered them both today and received it about five hours later.

For my pots, I used the smallest diamond drill bit that was included (6mm) to create the holes. When I started using the drill in the base of the pot, I started drilling at an angle, once I’d created a rivet, I slowly brought the drill to an upright position. I paused several times to spray the indention/drill bit and also suck away the dust with my handheld vacuum. In no time I’d created holes at the base of my planter pots. Hooray, mission accomplished. I must say that I’m pleased with my drill purchase, and I now have planter pots with several holes in the base of the pot.

I just completed week six of my new hire training, and I have more weeks of training. In reality, onboarding continues several months after the official training is completed with my current position, which lasts a little over three months. I have no complaints. I must say, out of the places that I’ve worked, this is definitely the most organized training that I’ve encountered. If more companies put this much time/effort into their new hires, I imagine employee satisfaction/confidence would be much higher for jobs that require an extensive skill set. I’ve worked within the insurance industry before; however, that was health insurance.

I’ve made a career change late in my career, and I must say that I’m happy with my choice. It’s something I’ve thought about for the past few years, and I finally decided to take that leap. Yes, it can be a bit unnerving, adding a new skillset on top of what I’ve already known. However, I’ve always enjoyed a challenge. What’s helpful is being surrounded by a supportive team, having a fabulous boss that I talk with weekly via virtual meetings, and feel appreciated. That goes a long way in making the transition easier since I have to learn the terminology and become familiar with the numerous systems that I must navigate during my workday. The fact that we do have such a supportive team makes the hurdle to learn a new skill set a bit easier.

My daughter’s college schedule begins Spring 2022

In other news, my daughter is preparing for college. She decided to wait until the spring semester to start college. Initially, she was hesitant about telling me her desires; however, I told her that she can always tell me anything. After she shared her thoughts while taking a car ride, she told me she was relieved since it had been on her mind. She’s taking a few courses this fall; however, the bulk of her classes won’t begin until early next year. I told her that I thought it was fabulous that she realized that she needed to take some time to step back, reflect, and focus on the path that she’d like to pursue in college. She met with her guidance counselor towards the end of last week and left the virtual meeting excited and with a much clearer idea of what courses she wants to pursue.

In other news

My nephew was in town last week. Thursday – Saturday. However, I’ll write about that in another post and share a few pictures of some of the places we visited while he was here. Oh, we’re also thinking of visiting family in South Carolina this Thanksgiving. We’ll see! I’ve chatted with my favorite Aunt, and it appears that a lot of them will be “going home” this season. I mentioned before that my mother came from a large family. There were sixteen of them. Fourteen of the siblings are still alive. I imagine one of the reasons for wanting to make sure they go this year, is they are getting older, two have passed away. The last one that died was about eight years ago. However, the oldest is nearing 80, and the youngest are in their late fifties.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my daughter and I have a few errands to do; however, we’ll be taking it easy for the most part.

This morning Xfinity (Comcast Cable is the parent company) came back to our home and installed a residential cable line. In addition to the line, they also installed one video surveillance camera for self-monitoring. We already had Comcast Business; however, I wanted to take advantage of Comcast/Xfinity Home Security.

Initially, I planned to get the residential service Comcast provides for my remote work; however, additional research showed me that might not be a great idea. Comcast, like many residential cable service providers, throttles this service. However, this does not happen with their business clients. Therefore, their internet isn’t throttled. Additionally, since I have a business account, I’m assigned an account representative. If I experience issues with my service, they’ll send out a technician the same day. Since that service isn’t provided to their residential customers, I installed Comcast Business about a month ago.

I wondered if I could take advantage of Xfinity’s 24/7 monitoring even though I was using Comcast Business. After all, Comcast is the parent company. In fact, a few years back, their residential cable was called Comcast also. Xfinity is new and was added to the parent company a few years ago. I want to say they made the separation between the two services offered when they started offering cable to their business clients.

Since I could not find any information on the video monitoring packaging on the Comcast Business website, I suspected that this was not an option; however, I reached out to my Comcast Business representative by email to see if this was an option. He responded within a few hours and told me that was not an option. I think it’s a shame since post-pandemic, you are seeing a lot more people working remotely. It would be a great option for remote workers who choose one of the Business accounts for their internet connections. However, it most likely is more of a headache than they are willing to deal with at the moment. So, whatever. I wanted the service, and it makes sense to have the residential cable.

This fall, my daughter will be starting college locally. Because of that, I told the technician to set up the cable in her room. This way, she now has a dedicated cable line. She now has the option to connect wireless or directly by ethernet. She’s already tested the speed and is thrilled that it’s much faster than the connectivity she received via a Wi-Fi connection to Verizon Wireless. We’ll most likely be canceling Verizon wifi soon. There’s no need for three different internet services! Initially, I had planned on self-monitoring for few months. However, Comcast’s website’s note made me decide to get that done sooner rather than later.

Do you see the above message? It says, “Ability To Purchase Xfinity Home Varies Due To COVID-19: Offers are only available in areas where we can provide professional installation at this time.” I don’t recall that message being there a month ago.  However, that’s what’s appearing on Comcast’s page about home security now.

Although we do live in a sleepy rural community, and nothing seems to happen around here. I think it’s best to be cautious. I chose Xfinity’s Ultimate Home System package. Although I’m here during the weekday, I honestly cannot take time from my workday to meet with the technician like I did this morning.  So next Saturday, Xfinity will be making another visit to our home.

Worklife is still busy; however, since I’m working at home. I honestly don’t mind it since I no longer have to compete with traffic and the office politics that can rear its ugly head now and again. But in some ways, I am working in an office setting. Our company uses Microsft Teams, and a large part of our day is training. Our company uses Microsoft Teams exclusively for their remote training. We do have labs; however, all that is in a virtual environment. Technology is amazing. We’re all on camera, so we see each other in real-time. After the oddity of interacting this way wore off, we’ve made connections, and we’ve grown to enjoy interacting with each other. I must say that I will genuinely miss the group once our training ends and we all move to our permanent teams.

We’re slowly gaining momentum; I find that I’m thinking of ways to keep track of my performance. I’ve constantly challenged myself and demand more of myself than anyone else, so this is no surprise. With what I have in mind, I’m leaning towards creating a database in Microsoft Access. I used to use that program religiously when I worked in the health insurance field in the early 2000s. I made numerous reports for the departments that worked under my division, and in fact, they named many of those reports after me, and they were sent out daily to the organization that was our contractor. The thing is, I haven’t used Access in years. About 20 minutes ago, I logged onto Access to familiarize myself with it and see if there was anything new. At first glance, it looks similar to the database that I became I loved. When I did some quick research, it appears there was some speculation if Microsoft Access would become obsolete. I find that hard to believe, and further digging seems to support my thoughts. To catch me up with what’s new in Access, I do think I’ll purchase this book and perhaps a few others.

My “me time” will be spent reacquainting myself with an ‘old friend’ Microsoft Access this weekend. So, besides spending additional time with my daughter this weekend, it looks like I have something else to occupy my “free” time.