Geek

I don’t work for Yahoo. I do work for a Fortune 500 technology company and it’s a job that I like. I complain about my job from time to time, but earlier today my supervisor told me that I was a valued employee and I responded that I love what I do. And that’s true. I have a good gig.

One of the many reasons I love my job is because I have the flexibility of working from home three days a week. I love this benefit and it has boosted my productivity considerably. I’ve always been a loner. I work best when I’m in my own little zone with minimal distractions. I’m not much for water cooler chatter and I’m easily thrown off my game with what I call “fly-bys”: people stopping by to ask a question or tell me a quick anecdote or something like that.

Another plus is that there are times when I feel my most creative at 3 a.m. Because I have a home office setup with all my work goodies in its own little office space, I am able to go downstairs and start writing code any time I feel the urge to. And because my company has excellent collaborative tools (phones, IM, webcams and the like), I still feel part of the team that I work with. While next week I will be meeting several of my teammates face to face for the first time, the truth of the matter is I feel like I already know them. And while I think we’ll work together even better when we all meet each other in person, I think I’m part of a really good team now. Our collaborative tools give us the opportunity to brainstorm and be the team that we are.

Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo (the sixth CEO of Yahoo in six years, I may add), announced a ban on telecommuting for all Yahoo! employees. To foster teamwork and improve productivity, come June, all Yahoo employees must work from the office. “Shoulder to shoulder. Brainstorming. Creative collaboration!” All of this can only be accomplished in person at Yahoo, apparently. Perhaps they’ve never heard of Yahoo! Messenger. Perhaps they have and have finally given up the ghost of using it for anything productive.

I don’t know about other telecommuters, but when I’m working from home I’m focused on my productivity. I know that working from home is a privilege and I’m not going to compromise that privilege by slacking off. I’m focused on getting stuff done. When I work from my office, I’m focused on the number of hours I work. And the number of hours I would spend commuting. And the price of gas. And where I’m going to go for lunch.

Not all jobs lend themselves to telecommuting opportunities. But many positions in the telecommunications and technology sector do; heck, we make the tools so that others can telecommute! And doesn’t Yahoo sell services for telecommuting purposes? I think this speaks to the quality of Yahoo’s products if they can’t even effectively telecommute using their own products and platforms.

We often hear about green companies and ways of scaling back on the damage that we are doing to the environment. Telecommuting actually helps with this; there’s simply not as many vehicles on the road burning up gas just so people can get to the office. As a productive, happy and proactive telecommuter in a team environment, I am lending my talents to making great things happen at the company I work for. I feel like we are soundly in the 21st century and I want to do what I can to make that experience better.

If I worked at the office five days a week, eight hours a day, it’d be just another job.

Perhaps Yahoo just wants to be another mediocre technology company. With decisions such as Marissa Mayer’s telecommuting ban, it seems like they’re headed in the right direction for that.

And that direction would be backwards. I’m happy that I work in a company with forward motion. I look forward to contributing to that motion by working where I work best.

And sometimes, that happens to be at home.

I was less than a half mile from the house when my Spidey powers kicked in. I felt a disturbance in The Force. My ying was not quite in tune with my yang. Something felt off and because of this a disconcerting feeling fell over me.

I grabbed at the chest area that was obscured by my two layers of winter jackets. I felt my work badge right where it was suppose to be, so that wasn’t it. I looked over on the passenger seat. PopChips? Check. Work MacBook Pro? Check. Lunch Pail? Check.

It wasn’t until I was on the Thruway several minutes later that it dawned on me. Like the sun that was rising in the east at the time, the realization came over me, followed by a brief moment of panic, which was quickly replaced by a feeling of emptiness. Helplessness. Incompleteness.

I had forgotten my iPad.

What on Earth was I to do during my work lunch hour with my iPad? I couldn’t read. My books are all on my iPad (I’m currently reading Emily Post’s “Etiquette”). I couldn’t play a game because my games are on my iPad. And I surely couldn’t listen to the radio during my lunch hour because I needed my iPad to interact with the hose.

I. Needed. My. iPad.

Turning around to go get my iPad was inconceivable. Since I was on the Thruway, the exits are spaced many miles apart. This helps keep travelers away from the native population, lest their money mingle into the local economy as the traveler pollutes the area with his exhaust fumes. The next interchange was nearly 15 miles away and by the time I turned around and went home it’d be lunch time, so that wasn’t an option.

Forlorn, I moved on, though I had reconciled my feeling of emptiness, it never quite left me.

Never to be deterred, I did what any self-respecting geek would do. All was not lost in a pit of blackness for I still had my iPhone. My nice little iPhone 5 with similar powers to my iPad was as snug as a bug in a rug in my pocket and it would serve me well during my lunch hour. When lunch time came around, I simply paired the Bluetooth keyboard that is always present in my Jeep with my iPhone and I sat down, PopChips and an unsweetened iced tea in hand and I typed a blog entry.

And here it is.

I am working from home today, and as I sit here at the kitchen table and enjoy my lunch, I can’t help but notice that the house is being buzzed by some very large airplanes today. This is not surprising; this sort of thing happens when you live a couple of miles off the end of one of the longest runways in the United States, despite the fact that the Air Force Base that houses this runway has been officially decommissioned for nearly two decades.

I find these planes fascinating. From what I can tell, they’re Lockheed Galaxy transports and I believe there are students flying the plane. I think two planes are taking turns doing touch-n-gos. One of the planes markedly pulls back on the throttle just as they’re approaching the house and it looks like the jet is coming to a complete standstill. The other plane opens up the throttle and the engines whine about it, higher and louder. The second plane was loud enough to get Tom’s attention (must be the frequency of the whine) but not loud enough to wake up Jamie, who’s still asleep as of this writing.

Maybe they’re both used to the noise.

So the planes go ’round and ’round and I watch them fly over wishing I was up there with the students and whoever else is on the plane. I bet they’re massive on the inside. I could see myself enjoying the view with a parachute strapped on my back and awaiting for the leader to give the signal to jump. That’s a different passenger approach than the planes that most people fly on. There’s probably no first-class section divided from the rest of the plane by a limp, blue curtain. The curtain probably isn’t even camo or anything because there’s no first class. Honestly, skydiving would be a first class experience to me. The idea of skydiving from a big plane like that (or even a small plane) is awesome. I told Earl that I want to skydive for my 45th birthday this year. He looked at me with fleeting panic but then calmed down. He knows that I’m adventurous enough to do such a thing. To tell you the truth, it’d be quite an adventure to just be in one of the Galaxies when they feel like they’re coming to a halt in the air.

For now, I’ll listen to them whine while I whine with envy a little bit.

Just as I was finishing up this entry the whine was replaced by the traditional roar of jet engines usually heard around passenger airports. Since Griffiss doesn’t have commercial service, I had to take a look to see what was flying in and saw that DHL must be having some jets serviced by that does that sort of thing on site. Nifty! I need to work at home on Thursdays more often.

So the geek in me was rather excited about an announcement coming out of Canonical, the company behind the open-source platform of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a distribution of Linux, one of the many operating systems available for computers and computing devices. It serves the same purpose as Microsoft Windows or Apple’s OS X, and like the differences between Windows and OS X, Ubuntu does things in its own way as well.

Now while we are an Apple household, my primary laptop computer is actually a Lenovo ThinkPad T430. A recent purchase, this laptop runs the latest version of Ubuntu Linux (12.10 or Quantal Quetzal). It does take a little extra effort to get my Linux laptop to fully cooperate with everything that goes on behind my walled garden of Apple, but for the most part I love the experience and I really appreciate what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu. (Though I can get cranky and state otherwise once in a while).

Anyways, today Canonical announced the planned release of Ubuntu Phone. This looks like an exciting project, and watching the video now available on YouTube, it looks like it’s going to have a really cool interface. The new guy in the smartphone category is going to have a really tough time competing against the likes of iOS and Android but I think they are coming up with their own spin on things and I wish them the best of luck. I appreciate their excitement. It is infectious.

The thing that has bothered me since the announcement, which was less than an hour ago, is the snarky, naysayer, doomsday comments from the tech crowd. “Good luck with that.” “What commands do you have to type to respond to a text message?”, etc. Folks are already populating my Twitter and Google+ feeds with crappy, barely witty one-liners all in the name of dooming this project before it even gets off the ground.

What a crappy way to start 2013.

So I’ve been deleting people I follow on both services. In fact, I haven’t been limiting this practice to the Ubuntu-commenting folks. I’ve decided that if someone can only repeatedly complain about life on their Facebook feed or whatever, I don’t need the negative energy in my life. I don’t need other people bringing me down when I am looking straight ahead and reaching for the stars.

Do I think the Ubuntu Phone is going to be a success? Who knows. I know that they do have a tough road ahead of them and if I were going to hedge any bets at the infancy of this project, I would say that it has a better chance outside of the United States where the cell providers aren’t trying to financial rape anyone and everyone they can with their overbearing control. Personally, I’ve tried smartdevices outside of the iOS realm and quite frankly I haven’t been impressed. The Nexus 7 looks nice but there were too many glitches. If I were to tag any device that I really liked outside of my iOS world I would say it was the Zune that Microsoft gave up on a couple of years ago.

I like Ubuntu’s idea of plugging your phone into a dock and that it turns into your desktop computer. That is cool to me and I think it’s a step closer to the Corning Glass vision of what’s to come in the relatively near future.

I think the world would be a much better place if people concentrated on the positive and weren’t so quick or eager to find the negative. That’s one of my goals in 2013; to be a positive influence on society and to contribute more than I receive.

I hope others try to do the same with me. And best of luck on your project, Ubuntu Phone. I will be watching your progress and when the time comes, you might end up on the top of my phone consideration pile.