I Think the Skype Sale Is Good News

As a person who uses a SkypeOut number as her primary office phone number I was glad to see that EBay decided to just sell Skype rather than let it languish and die. Even though it wasn't useful to allow auction participants to talk to each other (um, isn't that the whole point of using the EBay? The stuff sits out there, you answer questions when it's convenient for you, and then when it's over your ship the crap to whomever won the auction?), Skype is very useful for me.

So good deal, I think.

"This Page Intentionally Left Blank"

Five words that always crack me up, because, by their very presence they nullify what they are intended to indicate. Like this cake. I recommend that you look at all the cakes on Cake Wrecks, and pause to reflect.

I Really Don't Mean to Harp on This

But if you're not thinking about telecommuting as a key component of your pandemic influenza preparedness planning, I don't even know what to say about it. When you have the tools for people to be in touch and productive from wherever they are, that's a good first step. But you also need to empower people to STAY HOME when they first feel iffy, rather than soldiering through another day a little bit achy.

Dig it: when you're a little bit achy (but not that sick) you are most likely at your most contagious.

So you come into work a little under the weather but still functional, and then you proceed to touch stuff and breathe on people all day until you give up. Then the next day you have a fever and you're really sick, but friends, the damage is done.

As an alternate approach, you could have access to robust telecommuting tools that allow you to be as good out of the office as you are in. You have a laptop, you can connect to your phone system and forward your desk phone to where you are, your VPN is pre-installed and all you need do is connect to see all your network stuff just as though you're there. And your boss knows this and will expect you to be in touch just like you are in the office as long as you're only mildly ill.

You're home just infecting yourself and your family. And that's better for the rest of us.

Feeling Lonely?

This is an interesting idea: a virtual portal. It's like having a little window into your office with a friend at the other side. This piece from LifeHacker suggests that you do it with sound, but you can also use a video-only+IM solution to have that sense of "someone else" with you without disturbing each other with the quiet swearing under your breath and keyboard clacking that might happen if you have a live mic and camera going all the time.

This would also be good practice for people like me who have to go back to the Real Office on a regular basis. Because when you're all by yourself all day it's easy to forget that removing shoes, applying lotion to your feet, and then putting your shoes back on to enjoy the fabulously moisturized feel between your toes is not something you can do in your Real Office. With people around. Who can see you.

Just saying.

Forcible Telecommuting

Most of the time, Stella hears from people who desperately want to convince their management to allow telecommuting. Now it turns out that companies are trying to save money by shutting down facilities and making people telecommute. Big call centers, companies where most of the staff is out in the field selling or servicing products, and of course, technology companies are all finding that they can maximize the savings that come from their telecommuting programs by making everyone do it.

You. Out of the office. Go on now, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

I think this is great -- on the one hand people may feel lonely, and what not. But it's on the employer to make use of tools that help connect people virtually -- low cost ad hoc videoconferencing and instant messaging, for example, or occasional ice cream socials for people who are remotely co-located.

I don't even know what remotely co-located really means. But you get the idea.

Stop Using Specs as a Weapon

One of the things I've been working on is specs. I think of myself as being kind of good at the functional spec -- I'm not always clear on the precise technical means to accomplish the things that people want to do with systems and services but I'm very articulate about what we're trying to get done. I love writing specs, and I find them to be useful tools to

• prompt questions from the non-technical customers and the programmers alike, all of which can make the project better
• make it clear what we're doing and what we're not doing
• avoid heartbreak and disappointment at the end of the project

Specs are great. But in the wrong hands, they can be deadly. Like when they're treated as a legally binding contract and are invoked to defend programmers against dissatisfied customers: But dude, you didn't say you wanted it to record the transaction in the database, the spec says "accept transactions" and the system doesn't throw an error message on submit, so it's working as we defined. Uh. Right. Don't get me wrong, customers are guilty of throwing the spec up in the programmers' faces, too.* Maybe you can't have a helicopter, and maybe you didn't hear the people say that a helicopter wasn't going to work.

So as the spec-gal, you also need to make sure that the customers and the programmers know that the spec is a living document, and features may be added or removed, but everyone's gotta know about it and agree to it.

*Yes, I know this conversation isn't about a computer programming project, but I think the common elements are easy to see: unrealistic expectations, the technical execution staff going off and not communicating with the customer thoroughly, with a hearty dose of mental illness. Pretend instead of "helicopter" they're talking about "dynamic form handling widgets" or somesuch.

Just So You Know

This is what Stella looks like when she doesn't do her normal morning routine. Without the designer dress, but with the high heels and odd hair.

FYI.

I Did The Unthinkable

This morning, Stella did a couple of unthinkable things. First of all, I completely slept through and/or sleep-disabled my alarm clock. I attribute this to action-adventure dreams that I was having where there was so much gunfire in my dream that I might not have noticed my alarm clock's plaintive cries or perhaps just turned it off with a kung fu move in the dreamscape.

Be that as it may, the automatic coffee maker did its job in the kitchen and entered my dreamscape in the form of a pause in the action to sit in a cafe. My brain noticed this was unusual enough to wake up. At that point the smell of coffee in my conscious brain was enough to make me look at the time, and realize it was ten after six. And I'm usually at my desk by six. Whoops.

My second unthinkable act: I went to work in gym clothes. I did not do my usual morning routine of shower, put on a happy face, comb hair, smell decent, and so on. I just brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, and that's where my morning ablutions stopped.

You know what? The world didn't end. It was okay. I had meetings and the smell-o-vision wasn't functioning, and I was alert all day, and it was fine.

Just thought you'd want to know.

How Did You Celebrate?

Yesterday was National Telework Day! How did you mark the occasion? I did what I always do: took a shower, got a big cup of coffee and shuffled across my patio in flip-flops to work. I talked to folks on the phone, sent email like a fiend, cranked out work, took a break to go to the gym and do the family thing, and then I did a little more work that night.

Celebrate good times, come on!

Telecommuting To The Rescue

When a big influx of people comes to a region, even if there are two or three years to prepare, not everything is done in time. This is the case with the Base Re-Alignment Commission (BRAC) work that is bringing a ton of workers to the Ft. Meade area in Maryland. There were road building projects in the works, but with this and that (major economic meltdown and loss of tax revenue?) the projects won't be done.

Officials are anticipating a bit of a traffic nightmare when all those people start coming to work at Ft. Meade.

One of the answers to this problem: telecommuting. As with all parts of the federal government, the military is interested in encouraging telecommuting, especially where their base realignments are going to cause epic traffic.

Yay, telecommuting!

Could Your Business Handle 40% Absentee Rates?

What's that you say? Having nearly half your people out sick at any one time would cripple your business? I thought that's what you said. It's time to get really serious about those business continuity plans, and figure out how you could handle a bunch of your employees being sick, but not so sick that they can't be a little bit useful from home.

That is you must PLAN WAYS FOR THEM TO BE USEFUL FROM HOME.

Seriously, kids, a pandemic of some kind is coming your way at some point. Maybe it's H1N1. Maybe it's something else. Maybe a bridge will fall down, or something else terrible will happen. Whatever it is that is going to keep mass quantities of your workers from showing up, it really shouldn't be a surprise to you, and you really should be prepared.

Like the state of Florida is. Although I would hope that a hurricane-prone state like Florida would have lots and lots of business continuity plans.

Headphone Fatigue

If you're like Stella, you spend a lot of time with headphones on your head. I use my Logitech wireless headset for phone and video conferencing on Skype, listening to music on Pandora, checking out webcasts, and a host of other things all day long. And then I fold up shop and go to the gym where I jam earbuds in my ears and listen to music whilst working hard to be able to continue to wear my work costumes when I go into the real office.

Frankly, my ears get a little tired.

I'm trying now to be a little more disciplined about not just sitting there with my headset on all the time. On the one hand, it's a great way to stay isolated and focused, especially during the summer when the eldest Commute daughter is home from school and prone to practicing violin in the middle of the day. But ending the day with a splitting headache because your pinnia have been pinned to the sides of your head all day isn't good. So my good headset ergonomic checklist includes:

1. Only use your headset when you need to. Can you listen to Pandora on the speakers? Do so.

2. Make sure you have breaks throughout the day. If you get up to go to the bathroom or make a snack, don't keep the cans on -- take every opportunity to give your head rest.

3. Vary your headsets. Sure you could use the same bluetooth stereo headset for everything, but in the same vein as giving yourself a break, going from a pair of cans to buds and back again can help change things up.

4. Of course, listen at the lowest possible volume. Preserve your hearing!

Just When You Think Your Dedication to Outmoded Technology Is Out of Control

You see someone who has it much much worse. Now, don't get me wrong, I like new stuff as much as the next American who does his or her best to prop up the economy through shopping. But Stella Commute does much of her non-tech shopping at thrift stores, and Mr. Commute buys the technology as old as he can. Witness our hi-fi stereo rig, pictured here. Yes, that's an LP record, kids, Steely Dan "Can't Buy a Thrill" on vinyl. And an 8-track tape recorder. So we can burn our vinyl to 8-track.

We're dorks. Yes. But we're not this bad.

People Are Still Getting Flu

Now that the CNN-fueled panic has settled down about the H1N1 flu (no more Sanjay Gupta in a mask in Mexico City) you should know: people are getting the H1N1 flu all the time. They're being forced to stay home for seven to ten days, and unless you have some way for them to continue working through what is, for most, a mild disease, you're losing out.

What? You still don't have a business continuity plan for pandemic flu?

You're joking, right? No?

Good lord, get a VPN right now! Stop reading this and go, set it up and get it ready. Fall is coming, and this thing might could get worse when we get into real flu season. Come on people, don't make Sanjay Gupta come to your office with his little mask on.

Creating Connections to Physical Places from Afar

I have been a terrible poster* lately. Stella is not unaware of how she is neglecting her duties, and she apologizes, but every living brain cell has been going toward work work lately. That said, I've soldiered through a number of all-consuming projects (all of which came due at roughly the same moment) and now I'm trying to cast my brain on figuring out how to use the web to produce meaningful connections to a location without having people physically be there. And it seems I have some insight into this because of my own (remote) location.

I work in the fund raising and alumni relations arm of an eastern university. Not east coast. Eastern. In fact, it's in a place with a reputation as a snowy wonderland that is nearly impossible to get to by plane without making at least one connection, a reputation which is not entirely undeserved, honestly. But that said, it's also a wonderful place where people make lifelong connections and where really cutting edge research in a number of important areas is happening. A gem. We're gearing up to get a lot more people engaged and involved in the institution, and we're working to use the web to make it easier for people to be a part of the fun, without losing their luggage.

I'm thinking web video stuff. But what, and how, and what kind of production values do we want? The best, I'm thinking. I've seen the Parkinson's Foundation's use of the webinar, and I think this is a great thing -- a meld of important content, unique expertise, and a clear focus on the audience. But what other great uses are out there? Any ideas?