Bath robe? It’s best to dial in to boring meetings completly nude in my world.
Hal, this is for you. Hal at his next teleconference (now 100% sheep free)
Gratz, Hal!
A lot of the work I do is customer support, of the variety where nothing happens for days and thenallofasuddenyougetacallandit’surgenturgenurgentandthat’swhyYOUgotit (level 3)… wish I could do it from home at least part-time!
Just go into work with the bathrobe to clean out your desk.
Could you theoretically go to work to get away from work?
Yaknow, just spend a few hours around lunch just hanging out by the water cooler in the office talking to folks?
Yeah I had a sheep joke too, but you weren’t fired so I can’t use it ( it was also weak.)
For those who work at home, how do you find it? Do you have difficulty seperating home life from work life? Do you work on your days off because it is there and needs to be done? Do you skive off when you should be working?
FANTASTIC video. I needed a laugh. Ruby nailed this, and for me this is a huge adjustment. One I’m not doing too well with yet, so I solicit help here.
I’ve been a freelancer for 27 years. Out of the house, WITH a crew of folks, working face to face every day to make something happen.Different locations, cities, countries, jobs, total change every time a new job starts. Perfect for a man with A.D.D.
At the end of the day, or the week, or the project, voila- a movie or t.v. show or music video or somesuch was made. We all get paid, we all go away- hopefully, if we liked working with each other- to come to work together again one day.
I now get up, walk downstairs with my sweatpants, t-shirt and untied back hair and sit down and some days I go to work immediately. I enjoy a lot of this but holy MOLEY I cannot get a grip on so many things that the days slide by and I have no sense of balance. I also am starting to resent my home office, which is unhealthy and I know it. I love this cluttered messy room. I always have. Now it is starting to feel like a prison instead of a window on the rest of the world.
My schedule is nominally a 24/7 committment. I do not keep the cell on overnight, but from 7am to 11pm EST I have to be able to answer. I’m not tied to the computer and desk. My boss knows I have the phone on and I can get emails on it. The upside is when the cat is sick or the son’s car needs work ( both things happened yesterday), I can walk out usualy and get things done in town while still “on the job”.
I’m gonna get cabin fever, I fear. I put in Wireless Internet this past winter and when it’s nice out, I plan to work off the laptop sitting on the back deck.
What do you folks do? Force periods of time during the day out of the house? Upstairs, reading the paper or doing other things? Do you try to make a schedule for work and play time? I’m feeling less guilty about surfing the Dope during the day, as I work at the computer. Between calls and emails and crisiseses ( what is the plural for many crisis at once? 
), I get to surf.
Back to the O.P. Since " Go To My P.C. dot com" already exists, I say we use a clever reverse-search engine to embed a newly launched piece of software called, " Get Into Hal’s PC dot com ". We embed it in his machine, and we watch him- just as the corporate flacks watched the home-worker get seduced by the woman- as Hal goes about his day. In his Underoos. Which damned well better have sheep on them.
“Death Ray”, with my blackberry I am able to work from where ever I am at, doing whatever I want. I return emails in the middle of the night to Japan, dial into meetings while shopping, and catch up with customers at the factory at the start of their shift at 6 in the morning. Then go back to bed. My laptop has a cellular connection, so I do heavy duty stuff like spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations prep work from a coffee house.
I work 24/7, but given that I do not have to drive 90 minutes a day to an office where I would just sit around waiting for something to happen is a great relief compared to jobs I have had in the past. I do go into office on a regular basis, but I am not tied into core hours. I am given (and take on) task to complete and my company knows that the work will get done. I love my job and the fact that they treat me like an adult. So many places I was at before sucked because I had to be there everyday a a certain time or face the wrath of some brain dead supervisor. It feels good to have finally grown up and gotten a "real job".
Time for a nap now.
1920 and Cartooniverse, those periods when I’ve worked from home have been:
9 months while writing my “undergrad thesis”. I was at my parents’ and went to see my advisor, uhh… the initial meeting, then three more times, then a couple of meetings leading to the defense. It was all computer work; once I’d been able to actually get a computer, I kept it running pretty much 24/7 (I wanted to graduate before my brothers had grandkids). My friends still kid me about being in the middle of a DnD game and zooming off to check whether the 'puter was done with whatever it was running 
That area was “work only” except for half an hour every day when I used it for gaming (between serving Dad’s lunch and doing the dishes). I had a fixed-ish schedule and after a few growls Mom was fine with letting me go to the grocery (which got me out of the house) whenever it was convenient within my work schedule; I never went so late that the menu had to be changed.
The other times, it’s been for short periods. A translation job which took me about a week and a half; I’m fast enough that I could let my schedule go “flexi” if I wasn’t feeling like working, but still I had specific times when I’d sit down and write something, even if it was one paragraph; usually that’s enough to get the ball rolling. Times at consulting jobs when I was doing Data Cleansing (obtain hugeass extract… open it in word… tell it to substitute all double-paragraph-breaks for single ones… come back 4 hours later and it’s still not done) or when we were in “remote support mode”, so that as long as one of us was available to answer questions on instant messaging, the rest could be at the movies or doing laundry; in both cases I made sure to get my ass out of the house at least once a day for a half-an-hour walk because staying in for a whole week is Bad For You.
and a new SDMB deabte is born: Work from Home Dopers, PJ’s or the nude?
PJs.
I telecommute one day a week, soon to be two days a week. I get SO MUCH MORE WORK DONE when I don’t have, y’know, people dropping by to bother me.
(FWIW, I remember reading an Alvin Toffler book back in the 80s — Third Wave? probably — where this practice was predicted and discussed, and I could not imagine how it was going to work. Now, it’s the most natural thing in the world.)
They said the same thing about free love and Velcro.
Sweats and a T. Pale blue eyeliner. Glitter along the cheekbones. A small nylon barbell piercing the hollow of my throat. Bad posture. Think Larry King meets Dr. Frank. N. Furter.
Emphasis mine. :eek: :eek: :eek: <shudder>
Just remember, hitting the “Tab” key will not get you a soda. And be sure to release radioactive gas from time to time, or the reactor will explode.
–sniff-- I always saw you as more tolerant than that.
And people questioned the need for careful hyphenation in modifiers! Foolish mortals! All of you – those with untied-back hair AND untied back hair!
Sailboat
So that’s what they’re calling it these days.
Thanks for the congrats, all! Keep in mind that I’ve been working at home for 15 months now, so this isn’t anything new. Of course, this desk-cleaning-out brings a nice air of permanence to the whole thing.
As to how I manage productivity and such, it’s not really any different from working in the office. When I was there, I’d spent an hour or two each day screwing off, yakking about football with my coworkers. Now I spend an hour or two each day screwing off, playing Madden '07. And in both cases I spent way too much time on here. But all in all, the work gets done, so no complaints.
And I actually generally don’t work in my bathrobe. I have to take The Littlest Briston to day care before I start my shift, and the day care folks don’t care for me showing up there in my robe.
Oh, and you really floored me there jayjay. Many obscure reference points for you. (Unfortunately, the bitchknocker in that story has really failed her way up – she’s now my boss’ boss’ boss. Of course, that means she really doesn’t have time to directly piss me off anymore)
And of course the thread title was misleading…that was part of the point!
Hey mods. I thought “misleading thread titles are frowned upon on the SDMB” link. Or is that only when the so-called “moderator” has a personal beef with the poster? :dubious:
In your case Weirddave your misleading thread title was followed by a misleading OP. Quite the opposite in this case.
That wasn’t intolerance - I don’t care if you leave your back hair untied! But I’ve made a mental note not to go to the beach with you…