A Work At Home Opportunity for the Apple Enthusiast

Love your iPhone? Want to work at home on the phone? Maybe this job is for you. Stella won't speculate about what it means for what happens next with ye olde iPhone. But whatever.

Climate Control for the Home Office

It's getting to be the summertime in most places. I understand from speaking with my colleagues in the Real Office that there was frost in their neck of the woods a couple of nights ago, but here in Stella-Land it's pretty glorious. And that means one thing:

My office is hot.

I know, how can I possibly complain about six windows and a skylight. And glorious sunshine every day. But really, it gets warm as soon as the angle of the sun reaches a certain point in the sky. And I worry about the health and well-being of my laptop, of my conferencing box, of my printer, everything. I don't want to cook their little computer brains, you know?

So I cool my office independently from the rest of the house. I have a unit in there that does a good job, and I also aim a small fan at the computers themselves to help them circulate air. What do you do to keep things cool when you're working in non-office settings?

Thank God I Work At Home

Stella had a humdinger of a weekend. She spent Friday night dealing with a very vomitrocious child, and then spent her own Saturday night mewling in her bathroom with exactly the same terrible virus. I was still a wreck on Sunday, and I'm not yet one hundred percent.

Thankfully I work a few steps from my bed. And so rather than try to put on a happy face this morning, I'm able to get some stuff done and not risk infecting those around me. Because trust me, you don't want what I had.

Not even a little bit.

Laptops Are Too Hot for Your Lap Anyway

Stella has had a lot of work to do lately, and in order to get it all done, her workday has sometimes intruded into her evenings. Alas.

For a while, I was de-coupling my laptop from my office desk and dragging it into the house so that I could work and at least be in the physical presence of my family, but since I added a ginormous new monitor to my rig in the office, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a reason why I would want to burn my legs and use a tiny screen rather than bask in the glow of all those delightful pixels.

Mmmmm, pixel-y.

Between the screen real estate and the full-size keyboard and mouse, it seems my interest in wandering the earth with my laptop is waning. I am a bit more isolated when I'm working a lot, but really it's not that bad. I am frankly glad to still have a job, and beyond grateful that when I have to go in on the weekends and in the evening, I don't have to go further than my back porch.

Feeling More Philosophical About Swine Flu

Now that Stella is out of the airports and away from places that had suspected cases of H1N1 flu (is this a virus I can get from R2D2's firmware or something? Jeeze.) she is feeling a bit more sanguine about the whole pandemic thing. I'm safe in my little home office again, and as long as no one chases me in here and sneezes on my slippers, I should be okay.

But what about the rest of my Real Office colleagues? They're still coming into close contact with each other. What if there really is a real outbreak of something that is dangerous and needs containment? Well I'm here to tell them that everyone with a laptop and the VPN installed can pretty much do whatever they need to do from wherever they may be quarantined. Even if they don't know it yet, it really can work.

PC World notes that telecommuting can be a good way to avoid getting sick. And generally speaking this is definitely true. So keep it in mind if things get sneezier out there. Mkay?