Category: Family

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.

 

“Mom, come quick!” I hurried outside to see what my daughter wanted. She pointed up at the shed. “Look, mom!” There, on top of the shed, were three turkey vultures. They were the same vultures that we’ve seen over the past few years. They seem to be very curious about our outdoor activities and don’t seem to be afraid of us at all. My daughter and I watched them watching us, and by the time I went back to the house to get my phone to take a picture, they’d become bored and flew off to other areas.

However, yesterday, when I was outside placing wood in my Ooni Pro to make some pizza, my daughter said, “Mom, the vultures are back!” And she was right. This time, they were in a nearby tree, watching my fire stoking skills intently. I called a greeting to them, one that was slightly apart from his companion cocked his head a bit, and considered me carefully. We watched each other for a few moments, me chatting with them and telling them how adorable they were, while they looked down at me curiously. Then, my attention went back to my pizza oven, and when I looked up a few moments later, they were gone.

I’ve always liked turkey vultures. I vaguely remember watching a documentary about them several years ago. From that documentary, I know they are brilliant; they can live up to 60 years, they aid in reducing the spread of disease, and they smell things from a respectable distance. Since it rained today, I wasn’t outside to see if they’d pay me another visit. I must say that I’m enjoying seeing them on our property. They seem to be very curious and seemingly are pretty interested in my outdoor activities. This week will be another busy work week, however. I tend to step outside during the day when I take a break from work or pause for lunch. I’ll be on the lookout for my feathered friends, and hopefully, I’ll see them soon.

Vultures: Georgia Outdoors

Science Cafe: Vultures

In other news.

It’s been a busy weekend, and I finally started winding down about an hour ago. I did a lot of meal prep, work around the house, running errands, and of course, spending time with my daughter. Do you know what I enjoy? I don’t dread Sundays anymore. Why did I dread them? Because I knew that I would have to go back to work on Monday. Those feelings are a thing of the past. Don’t get me wrong; I’m busy at work. Yes, I now work remotely, but work is work. However, I enjoy my job, and it’s evident that this company truly cares about its employees. That’s important. I’ve always taken pride in my work, worked smart/hard. Having a supportive boss and genuinely caring about how I am as a person goes a long way in instilling loyalty and contentment within your working environment, and for that, I’m thankful. How a company treats its employees goes a long way in enhancing your employees’ morale, and it reduces the turnover rate. When it comes to interactions, my rule has always been to treat others how I want to be treated, both in my personal and business exchange.

 

My goodness, where has this week gone? It truly feels like yesterday was Monday! It’s been another intense workweek, and my brain feels fried. Although it’s incredibly challenging, I’m enjoying the ride. We have an excellent instructor/facilitator, and my classmates are friendly. I’m thoroughly enjoying working from home once again, and as I mentioned, I can’t see myself going back to working out of the house. This morning the Assistant Vice President virtually paid us a visit in our daily huddle. He talked about himself, his history, and we went around the virtual classroom introducing ourselves.

Since my workday doesn’t start until 9:30 am, I allow myself to go to bed later. Once I’m out of training, my workday will be from 10:30 – 7:00. I cannot say that I have too many issues with that since I’ll be working from home anyway. If I were working out of the house, that would be a different story. Additionally, if I don’t like the schedule, I can eventually adjust the hours.

Of course, now that I’m working from home, even the little things that I do, such as popping in to see my daughter, interacting with our dog Bella, or even using our bathroom, are appreciated. Not to mention heating my food. No need to do anything differently since I’m out of the home and outside of formal meetings like the one we had today and the one I’ll have with my manager tomorrow; I can dress in casual clothes. While that’s the case, working from home is not mean I’m lazy. That was never the case with me, and I’ll continue to work the same way. Naturally, you’ll have people that abuse working from home; however, I’m not one of those people.

In other news

The Brain Needs Space title comes from a blogger that I used to follow. His blog had the same name. Daniel was/is a fantastic storyteller, and I was a bit disappointed when he stopped writing. I first discovered him from his older blog called Big Red Kitty. He played a hunter in World of Warcraft, and his pet was a cat. There was a hunter talent called enraged beast, and the hunter’s pet would turn red and be immune to certain effects while it attacked its target, hence the name big red kitty. WoW is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) created by Blizzard. I had many great memories of playing that game for years. I developed friendships and with others who played the game and even introduced my daughter to the game. I stopped playing it as frequently about six years ago, although I would still log on and play sporadically with my daughter and people that I’d developed friendships with over the years. When Activision bought World of Warcraft, I stopped playing as much, and at the beginning of this year, I canceled my subscription since neither my daughter nor I saw any value in the game.

Interestingly enough, I have seen Activision Bizzard in the news recently with numerous allegations of inappropriate behavior towards women and minorities. I’ve followed the story a bit, and it’s interesting to see that some of the popular WoW streamers have also left the game based on the allegations and tepid response from Activision Blizzard. If the allegations are true, I hope those who are guilty are fired and held accountable for their actions, and hopefully, those who step in will start treating all their employees with respect.

My first whole week working remotely has come to an end, and I must say that it was terrific. Even before I began at my new company. My badge and computers arrived days before I began my new job. I had eight people from management reach out to me to make that transition seamless, and it continued after I started on Monday when I logged onto Microsoft Teams.

My first meeting was with my manager and three other people coming on board within her department. It continued a half-hour later when we immediately went into an hour-long session and were introduced to managers from different departments and the director. Immediately after that meeting, I hopped into the training room with our trainer.

Weeklong training

I’m back working in insurance. It’s an industry that I’ve been out for several years; however, I missed my time away, and now I’ve returned. This first week and the upcoming eight weeks will be training. This first week, I did not handle any “live” documents. All my training was conducted within Microsoft Office Team meetings, and virtual training was conducted in a simulated program environment. I must say that everything that has to be done is a lot to wrap my head around, and I’m grateful for the nine weeks of training that I’ll receive. Even after the training is over, I’ll be working with a mentor for quite some time before I’ve fully “mastered” my position.

During the week, I was able to see firsthand how my company handles difficulties. One of the ladies within our department was having issues with her laptop computer. It was slow, not responding. She could still hear and see the instructor, and so she watched and took notes.  Within a few hours, the help desk reached out to her to troubleshoot and fix the issue. Once they took her laptop through all of its paces, they overnighted a new laptop to her, and she was able to actively follow along and do the assignments with the class. Before this happened, management had reached out to her and would have let her start at a later date; however, she had bonded with the instructor and us (classmates), so she was adamant about staying within our class. They allowed her to do that, and in 1.5 days, she had a working computer.

Downtime activity

I only have one HR video to complete. I already watched over eight hours of video. At the end of most of the courses, I was graded. I received 100% on the majority and high 90’s on the three that I did not receive perfect scores. Currently, I only have one video left to watch, and that is two hours long. I most likely will hold off watching that video for a while. For several of the videos that I watched, I had 90 days to complete; however, I wanted to get them out of the way quickly to focus on getting familiar with my job in my downtime.

I much prefer working remotely

As I’ve mentioned before, I have worked at home several times throughout my career. Our instructor stated that this was one of the largest classes. Our instructor was filling in for a trainer that was on vacation this week. She’ll be returning next week. It’s a lot of information to process; however, the trainers/mentors made the transition easier. I don’t miss dealing with 695 traffic, and I don’t see myself going back to working within the office setting.

 

 

 

 

I’m happy to say that the technician from Comcast was out to the house this morning, shortly before 8:00 AM, to install the cable for Comcast Business. The truck says Xfinity; it’s owned by Comcast. Xfinity handles all the residential cable installations.

In total, it took the technician about two hours to complete the installation. He had to add a phone plate to the room and run an additional cable. Before he left, he mentioned some issues with the phone line, and a technician would be coming out later today. It turns out there were a total of two separate technicians that came to troubleshoot the issue. Unfortunately, since the problem was at the telephone pole, they did not go into the house. However, I will follow up with my contact to ensure that everything is working smoothly. It seems to be doing fine. After all, I’m using Comcast Business to write this current post.

How’s the speed? Judge for yourself. Fios is available in our part of town; however, it isn’t- sighs in our small rural community, perhaps someday. However, for my new job, the upload and download speed is more than adequate! My company requires that I be directly connected to the router, and that’s how I’ve connected my laptop. I used an ethernet cable.

A former co-worker’s husband is also working remotely and uses Comcast Business for work. She stated that he had had nothing but good things to say about his experience. The only time the cable has gone out was when there was a terrible accident in their area. Just like them, we also live in a remote location.

Years ago, I had Comcast residential; however, I canceled the service and swapped to Verizon because the service was awful. Their internet service was down  lot. From my research, it appears that they’ve made significant improvements, and since my new job requires that I have a cable connection and not DLS as we have with Verizon, it’s what prompted me to start researching my options. Interestingly enough, it led me back to Comcast. Who would have thunk?

In other news

My office furniture arrived yesterday, and so this was the last hurdle that I had to do on my end. I followed up with the Talent Agent for where I’ll be working. When I talked to “A” last week, she mentioned that I could start on 7/12/21. I asked what was going on, and she told me to follow up with her once everything had been completed. It’ll be nice to be back working again. I’ve been off for almost two weeks, and while I’ve enjoyed my time spending time with my daughter and just being in a different space. I must admit that I’m ready to start my new job; however, if I have to wait until my official start date of 7/19/21, well, that’s fine also. I’m stoked that I’ll be working remotely.

 

 

Shortly after 8:00 this evening, my Bose 700 Noise Cancellation Headphones arrived via Amazon. I’d purchase headphones along with a few other items earlier this afternoon. About six hours later, my Bose headphones arrived. Bose makes excellent products. I bought these headphones because of the sound quality when taking calls and the noise cancellation feature.

In a little over a week, I’ll be starting to work from home remotely. I’ll be making and receiving calls and participating in meetings. Therefore, I thought that it was high time that I invested in a good quality hands-free device headset that would allow me to continue working on the computer while taking calls. Once I finally narrowed it down to Bose, I watched other videos to determine which model to purchase.

Since I want to maintain a “professional” work environment while at home, I chose the Bose 700 Noise Cancellation Headphones, I live in a rural area, and our house isn’t noisy. However, I still chose these since the noise cancellation also blocks out the occasional noise I might hear from our dog Bella.

The Bose headphones are the first of a few work items that I’ve purchased for my office space. I ordered the bulk of the things today on Amazon, and as I already mentioned, the headphones were the first item that arrived. I believe I’ll be spending about $1,600 to get my designated space office-ready. The only reason that I’m investing money in the setup is that I will be participating in a few meetings weekly. Since I’ll be on video, I do want to have my space looking like an office. I already spent a little over $1000, and I have one more item to purchase; an indoor portable generator. I’m still researching that. We do have an outdoor generator; however, it’s not the type that automatically turns on once the power is out. We don’t have too many power outages; however, if we do have heavy storms (such as what we had last week), the chances of the electricity going out is high since we live in a small community surrounded by trees. Also, in our state, the phone cables and power lines are above ground.