• How To: Work From Home, Be Productive and Stay Sane

    How To: Work From Home, Be Productive and Stay Sane

    I just spent a few minutes looking through my draft posts for inspiration to restart blogging.

    I came across the oldest draft in my queue, dated November 11, 2009.

    I missed 11/11 1:11 by 6 minutes!

    The post read as follows:


    I’ve worked from home for 6 of the past 8 years in a variety of workspaces. Initially I worked in my parents basement, I briefly worked in my mother-in-law’s dinning room and for the past 2 years I’ve worked in the common space of a 2 bedroom apartment, with a toddler. Over this period I’ve maintained a 35 – 50 hour work week and managed to stay sane (and reasonably productive). Now that I’ve had my own dedicated works space for a couple of weeks I’ve had some time to reflect on a few of the ways I’ve been able to make it work.

    1. Good Employer
    2. Keep A ToDo List
    3. Don’t Answer The Phone
    4. Set “Business Hours”
    5. Don’t Follow Them
    6. Be Distracted

    Reflecting on this now that we’ve all been covidworkingfromhome for the past 18 months (or is it 32?) and have just started a permanent remote positions, I’d say that list of advice still rings true.

    1. Good Employer

    Simply put: you need an employer who trusts you to work from home. One who understand that things might come up throughout the day and doesn’t have a problem with that.

    If you’re having trouble finding an employer like this in 2021, imagine how rare it was 12 years ago.

    During COVID, even bad employers didn’t have a choice but to begrudgingly let their employees work from home. Good employers will differentiate themselves from by ones by allowing their employees to continue working from home into 2022 and beyond.

    2. Keep a To Do List

    What I really meant by this was “be organized and focused.”

    I still prefer physical to do lists. I like crossing things off with a pen and crumpling up the list at the end of the day.

    Organizational tools and apps have really matured and keeping a physical to do list is not really necessary.

    Don’t forget to include personal/home things on your to do list. Writing everything down is a great way to keep yourself from getting distracted.

    3. Don’t Answer the Phone

    “The phone” is much less of a thing in 2021.

    Better advice would be “don’t read text messages, or non-work DMs”.

    4. Set “Business Hours”

    Over my years working from home this has come to be the main key to success.

    Setting business hours adds the structure that I need to stay focused. It also sets expectations with my family. They’ll know not to interrupt or distract me between 8 – 5 unless it’s urgent.

    Having an office door that you can closes helps, but it’s really not as crucial in my experience.

    5. Don’t Follow Them & 6. Be Distracted

    These two rules are really the same thing “allow yourself to be distracted.”

    I’ve found that giving myself permission to break the rules has been the key to staying “sane.”

    Take a long lunch, grab a coffee, go to the store.

    Just don’t stray too far, too often.


    In 2021, I would only add two additional pieces of advice to this list.

    7. Wear Pants

    Get dressed for work.

    I’ve found that it really puts me in the mindset to get to work.

    This has been a rule I’ve always followed, I don’t know why I didn’t add it to my original list.

    8. Have an Amazing Partner (or I guess, live alone?)

    I couldn’t have made it this far without an understanding wife.


  • LIBTYFI – Leave it better than you found it

    LIBTYFI – Leave it better than you found it

    Some of my fondest memories from childhood are the times my dad let me tag along on his weekly trips across the expanses of Northern Ontario in his 18-wheeler. As you might imagine, a daily ritual on these trips was one of washing up in some dingy restroom1 before eating a greasy breakfast (“two eggs sunnyside up, bacon soft, rye toast please”).

    All these years later, the biggest lesson that stuck with me was “leave it better than you found it.” In other words, not only “clean up after yourself,” but also “clean up the mess you found.2” After all, the next guy’s going to appreciate a clean space to start his day.

    Old code is like a dirty truck stop restroom.

    As part of working on code guidelines for my day job, I read a bunch of the code standards and adjacent posts. None of the documentation, blog posts and idioms (DRY, KISS, etc) really touch on legacy code. I suppose it makes sense since they are generally aspirational documents. At the same time, I think these documents are incomplete without touching on it.

    As programming languages and platforms mature and fads of the moment fad away, it’s becoming more and more common for developers to run into old code. Maybe even code that’s predates code standards in a given language. This is certainly the case in my day-to-day.

    While it’s relatively straightforward to install IDE tools to format you code properly and keeping it simple can be easy when you don’t have to consider a decade of backwards compatibility. It’s less obvious when you’re not working with a clean slate. What do you do when you encounter ugly code? What about when repeating yourself it the shortest path to a complex fix? Should you re-write an entire library because doesn’t hold up to code standards?

    I propose adding LIBTYFI3 to the lexicon of idioms.

    If the code is ugly and misformated. Fix it4.

    If you’re repeating yourself or having trouble keeping it simple. Step back and assess what you should actually be refactoring. You’ll probably learn something about the application in the process.

    If variable and functions are named poorly. Fix them.

    If comments are missing. Add them!

    If tests are missing. Add them.

    In other word, if code is not holding up to current standards, rewrite as much as possible as long as it’s tangentially relevant to your task.

    Obviously this is going to take more time than a quick fix. Perhaps, if your task is truly a critical fix you should skip some of these steps. But stakeholder should understand that legacy projects are complex and taking time to do it right will lead to a better product in the long run.


    1 – Lest you question my Dad’s parenting choices, I can assure you small town Northern Ontario truck stop restrooms in the 80s/90s were not nearly as sketchy as the image you probably have in your head from movies and TV.

    2 – This rule did not apply to toilets.

    3 – Libby-fi? Sounds like some poorly thought out Liberal social network.

    4 – But please for the love of god, isolate style from functional fixes in their own PRs.


  • Winnipeg COVID-19 Controversies

    …and other associated weirdness.

    Winnipeg is weird at the best of times. Coronavirus is bringing the weirdest of the weird.

    Here is a chronological list of all the controversies and other we’re occurances that have unfolded in Winnipeg during the ongoing self-quarantine period:

    March

    12: First case of COVID-19 in Manitoba.

    15: Zillionaire owners of the Winnipeg Jets refuse to continue to pay their employees (well except for their Millionaire players). Redditors vow to stop chanting “TRUE NORTH” during the anthem when the NHL season starts back up. It takes them 5 days to reverse their decision.

    I’m sure everyone will forget all of this when sports are back in 2023.

    20: Provincial Government briefly threatens pull childcare providers’ operating grants if they choose to close during quarantine.

    I’m glad they “corrected the record.”

    25: Government liquor stores cite serving alcoholics justifications to stay open.

    I guess that makes some sense, but sounds bad when you put it that way.

    26 — notable non-Winnipeg mention: Workers ‘bunkered in’ at water treatment plant in Brandon, to ensure service during pandemic.

    This is when it really started feeling like a zombie apocalypse to me.

    30: Shindico exploits a loophole to increase rents during COVID rent freeze.

    Assholes. I didn’t see a follow up to this so I assume it actually happened.

    April

    11: Owner of water park Fun Mountain accuses medical workers of being actors.

    archive

    18: Police shot 3 people in 10 days.

    oof

    26: Local St. James ice cream shop — Sargent Sundae — re-opens for the summer. Only accepts cash to the ire of reddit.

    Extremely gross and unacceptable IMHO.

    27: Firefighters alleged to have broken social-distancing rules.

    30: Chainsaw-wielding man threatened arborists and others. 36-year-old charged with six offences, including assault with a weapon, uttering threats, theft.

    Ooohkay

    May

    8-9: Ice cream shop BDI opens an illegal drive-thru in a residential area. It doesn’t go over well.

    https://twitter.com/linzzzzzzzzzzz/status/1259295183444815874
    archive

    9: Winnipeg saw a US-style anti-lockdown protest.

    MCGA?

    10: Director of Operations of Manitoba Jewelry Chain Appelt’s Diamonds – Sarah Appelttweets a QAnon slogan. Turns out that’s the the first time she’s posted wacky stuff.

    What’s next unfriending diamonds?