An interesting week

Since Labour Day, I've been a stay-at-home worker. This has had several benefits: I've driven less in the past week than a single-day one-way commute in Toronto. I've worked more regular hours (my tendency before was to go to work late, and stay late, to avoid rush-hour traffic), and my co-workers are able to reach me at 9:00AM!

I am a bit more isolated from the hussle and bustle of daily office work. If I'm not there to grab, I can't be distracted as easily from my primary tasks. And finally, I can keep the temperature in my home office as cool as I want, without pissing anyone off. I work for a small company, and the owner hands out hand-written paycheques every two weeks. I'm still not sure whether he'll be writing/mailing in advance of payday, whether I'll be getting paid later than others, or whether I'll be expected to come in every two weeks to visit the office and pick up my paycheque. That last scenario will get old very quickly. I don't want to make a 500 mile trip every two weeks to pick up a cheque and make an appearance - it wastes an entire day of work-time, and I'm not the best at extended highway driving on boring (straight/flat/featureless) stretches of road.

Strange things have been happening with the new network setup at home. Not viruses or anything... just some sort of compatibility glitch that ultimately required that I reformat my wife's hard drive. Sure, we made a backup... it's the restore that's gonna kick me in the ass. After the format and reload of original OEM software, our computer was working OK. That reinforces that there's nothing wrong with the hardware; and that our hodge-podge of software is to blame. The hardest part will be progressively restoring programs from the backup, without causing the original problem to reappear.