working from home
is it as cool as I thought it would be? No. Is it easier? Sort of.
Does it give me more time with the family? You frickin betcha. Just being able to get the kids off to school and get them off the bus is cool enough. I was to the point where most nights I would only be able to see Gillian for all of about 30 min before she went to bed. Now? Heh, lets just say that she's seeing a lot more of Daddy and I'm feeling a lot less guilty for taking this job.
When I first started working from home, any interruption would set me off. Not drive me into a rage or make me throw stuff and start ranting, but really disrupt my train of thought. Now that I've had some time to work with it for a while and we've all fallen into better habits, I like it a whole lot more. I usually get up at the same time I usually do to drive in (6:15), work for an hour or so, get the kids off to school, work until noon, have lunch, work till three, hang with the kids and help with homework, then get back on for a few hours after they go to bed. Granted, it stretches it out a lot longer, but it allows me to spend better time with them, and get a lot more work done.
That first hour of work is crucial, mostly just reading emails and technical posts and stuff like that. The first burst is usually pure code, and after lunch is usually research and analysis. I do maintenance as it comes up, and usually the last hour or two before I go to bed I'll start dipping into my todo's - creating 'bookmarks' in my code for what I want to do, and bringing my day to a close by wrapping up things and getting them into a state where if something broadsides me the next morning, I can usually leave my work from the day before and handle the emergency and even go so far as to be able to migrate my stuff if the emergency becomes more than a 20min or 1 hr thing.
All in all, I'm becoming a better developer, time manager, Dad, husband...and hopefully, person 
Thanks again for having faith in me Matt. (no, I'm not talking to myself, my boss' name is Matt as well)
my very first presentation
Well that went well! I'm in Orlando at an administrators conference for my company, and since my boss is on vacation, he asked me to go and demo an application that I built as well as field any questions that they had that were IT related.
That went really well I have to admit. I've spoken in front of people before, but never when it mattered this much. I'm excited for the next one.
Its really nice to be taken seriously!
Work
So what's going on with me?
Still working for a good guy who genuinely wants to hear what I have to say. I'm working in an office with two other guys, and yeah it tends to get really loud. I do work from home 1-2 days a week, so that's nice bonus, and truthfully, I get a lot more done here.
What do I do?
- I'm the web applications developer
- I'm the database administrator
- I'm the architect
- I'm the babbling idiot in the corner who looks at that mountain of work behind him and runs screaming into the night.
- I'm the one who on sunday night actually says, cool, I go to work tomorrow.
- I'm in desperate need of a quiet corner where I can close the door.
- I'm someone who'd like to be able to split myself into three so I can do the first three bullet points more effectively.
- I've come further in two years than I had ever imagined or dreamed I could. Granted, the tool I use makes it a lot easier to do my work, but the sheer volume of work I've accomplished is enormous.
- I'm the idiot who drives almost two hours each way to get to work, and I do it.
- I'm the one who only spends 30-60 minutes with my daughter while she's awake depending on the day.
Yeah, that one sucks. I maximize my time with them on the weekends and when I can when I work from home, but it still comes down to the fact that I travel a lot for my job, and I never get on a plane.
That being said - yeah, I'm a little depressed - the benefits I've already gotten and the potential for this job and this company is incalculable. I've gone further in 2 years, than I have in the previous 10. I feel like I am taken seriously and it's scary and gratifying as hell both equally.
k, I'm sleepy now. night.
still 223, still no aikido this week.