Working From Home

My heterodox opinion is that dual monitors are for people who don’t know how to alt-tab

I also have a limited range of neck motion and turning my head is fatiguing

i tried dual monitors once and it wasn't for me.

my teammates have all called me the 'tech guru' and that is such bullshit, I know nothing about IT stuff at all, I just...listen to and know how to read instructions. very low bar to clear these days.

it's more annoying though cos then they think I can actually solve real problems and, well, no, I can't. i'm not IT!

Yeah knowing more about computers than everyone in your immediate vicinity is a trap

I have only one monitor and I have never heard of alt-tab and I'm only vaguely aware that MS Teams, which I use every day, has a private message function, ask me anything

correspondence (i.e. outlook and now teams) is such a huge consumer of my bandwidth that I feel it’s a lot better to dedicate a screen or two to that, and then have another reserved for “actual work” as I like to think of it.

We've had ongoing construction near our house for the past two and a half weeks, so our house has been noisy and constantly vibrating from about 7:30 in the morning until 3:30 every day. In non pandemic times, we probably wouldn't even have known, but it's been really, really frustrating. I've been on work calls where I can't hear, even with headphones, and my son has been STRUGGLING to focus on classes with his desk vibrating.

This morning we had the ongoing construction noise and vibration and six (SIX!!) leaf blowers running within four or five houses of ours. I almost lost my shit completely.

My heterodox opinion is that dual monitors are for people who don’t know how to alt-tab

― The Bosom Manor Michaelmas Special (silby), Tuesday, November 10, 2020 9:00 AM (eight minutes ago)

agreed! or just ... get 1 (one) bigger monitor

I have a 27” 4K monitor and I only look at, like, the top-left of it

dual monitors are a must for writing/editing sry

that sucks dude

xp to jon

I kinda wonder about people who prefer one monitor vs. dual monitor people and whether there is a correlation with different vision issues and/or attention issues.

Can I defend the dual monitors folks? Working in architecture and project management means I very, very frequently have building plans up on one screen while I do something on the other. Most commonly, I am tweaking plans in AutoCAD while also referencing PDF plans that have been redlined and marked up - that would be an absolute nightmare to alt-tab constantly, especially since I'm often drawing plines in AutoCAD that require one continuous command while I compare to the redlined plans. Secondarily, I then have to review and edit spreadsheets with room schedules to compare to floor plans, again a ceaseless headache were I to have to constantly alt-tab between the two.

to be clear - I do think there are plenty of valid reasons for dual monitors. I just don't think most of the people at my company need them.

i'm teaching today on webcam and trying to look happy and not mega-stressed. my co-facilitator and I clearly don't gel together and everybody is driving me nuts and I look fat on the cam :/

ha I actually spent a fair amount of time in the past weeks reviewing and editing spreadsheets with room schedules to compare to floor plans and making a list of things to redline in architectural plans (25 units -- none of them are the same, none!!!) -- and I get the dual monitor thing if you are running AutoCAD at the same time. I generally just print the planset and do the mark-up review with a LOL red mechanical pencil.

xpost thank goodness for 3 PTO days bookending a weekend

... or I print the room schedule out and compare it to the planset on the screen (which is actually easier because I don't have a large-format printer at home)

I love having so much monitor space that I lose my cursor, 2screens4life

the dual monitor thing hurts more during screen shares, since we train virtually, the students have to share their screen, and often when they're in their console and click to launch GUI, GUI always opens on the other screen, so they have to drag it over, or we can't see it. so it's five minutes of "try clicking and dragging...so....ok so click on the GUI pan...ok ok you got it, hold your mouse. No not LITERALLY 'hold' it, I mean keep your finger on it. I know your finger is on it but keep the left clicker down. are you holding the left clicker down? Ok you say you are but I don't think you are....ok ok now slide the mouse to the left. THE LEFT! The....ok, is someone else able to do this instead?"

btw...you'd think Outlook is the most intuitive email client in the world, but how many of you have had this convo like I did yesterday (exaggerated a wee bit):

"Rob, I can't find the meeting invite to get into the MS Teams training"

"have you checked your calendar?"

"my what? No, I was accessing it via email, but then I clicked Accept, and now it's not in my email anymore".

"Yes, because it's in your calendar."

"My what?"

"The thing that says CALENDAR in Outlook. do you see it?'

"Yes - ok I see a blue meeting now, but I still don't see the link"

"You have to double click it to actually open it"

"oh - is that blue underlined thing that says Link the link?"

"Who dresses you each morning?

"My mother does it."

I would not think outlook is an intuitive email client! The motherfucker has so many buttons.

well but the calendar, I mean....shouldn't be that hard to find!

the out of office auto-reply feature is in a place that isn't intuitive, that i will admit

But I read my work email by synchronizing it to local maildirs over IMAP and using command line tools to filter it and open messages in less(1) so what I consider “intuitive” is suspect

outlook fucking sucks and its calendar sucks and now mine defaults to opening emails without the reply and forward buttons showing it's so dumb

dual monitors are a must for writing/editing sry

or at least "very very handy" yes otm

Outlook is intuitive if you have used Outlook for a very long time -- and even then ... idk people's intuition is different obv considering we have a fundamental difference in terms of monitor usage.

I guess I just don’t remember what it’s like to be able to turn my head as much as I want all day long

I am glad that I don't have to use Outlook.

I like to focus on a thing that is right in front of me, then finish that thing, and then pull up the next thing so it's right in front of me, then check to see if I have emails or texts or calls to return and then deal with that ...

my peeve about Outlook are the times when Microsoft Exchange freezes up and can't connect to server so no emails come through, and then finally hours later it starts up again and now oh hey 30 emails at once, some asking for stuff today

When my job means focusing on one thing (say, writing) one monitor is fine.

At other times, my job involves comparing one thing to a different thing, usually while viewing both. Dual monitors (or a really wide one) are helpful for that.

fuck work, i hate work, why do any of us have to do this useless shit. i get by with as little effort as possible and so far it's working out just fine and i love it. thank god my 25% is everyone else's B-.

same. i take so many breaks during the day and constantly getting, "you're doing great!" i mean what is everyone else doing? we don't *all* need to be doing this all day.

lol that's about where i'm at right now. i miss being a project manager cos I could outright disappear for parts of the day. even as a requirements analyst, my productivity was so good that I'd....read ILX all day

word

here's to low expectations, making up numbers because who has time to measure all that shit anyway (and no one is ever going to check), doing the things that make other people happy, and then just stepping the fuck back and leaving people alone.

in 100 years, when they're sifting through the rubble of the entire world, they sure as fuck aren't going to ask why I didn't finish my time card one week in 2017

high frequency alt tabbing is not optimal

fuck work, i hate work, why do any of us have to do this useless shit.

Well, yeah, but I still have children who want to live in a house and wear clothes and eat food

Then we get to my own needs, which include guitars and weed

alt-tabbing to the oldies

I hear you all and I value this perspective but man I feel like shit if I’m not trying to do a good job

Not that that means I’m on task 8 hours a day but that’s physically impossible, programmers get paid 40 hours a week for about 4 hours of intense thinking

clothes AND food? it's a binary choice in my house

I feel bad about it insofar as every bit of my self-esteem is tied to how good I am at things.

Well, yeah, but I still have children who want to live in a house and wear clothes and eat food

Then we get to my own needs, which include guitars and weed

― mouts and shurmurs (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, November 10, 2020 6:01 PM (nineteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

hi, i'm talking about work as in jobs, in this thread titled "working from home"

I hear you all and I value this perspective but man I feel like shit if I’m not trying to do a good job

i do relate to this tbf but i guess i'm just ... tired. my field is very underpaid and i've been doing it for 10 years and i just don't gaf anymore. i will do what it takes to keep my job and keep that paycheck coming in but i literally don't have the energy for anything more than that anymore.

In utopia the state ships everyone a guitar and some weed once a month

The feeling that silby and Neanderthal - that of enjoying being good at something there is a German word for it (of course): funktionslust. Joy at being of use, joy at doing things well. It's one of the emotions that is easiest to ascribe to nonhuman animals.

My cat jumps effortlessly onto the top of the fridge: funktionslust. I play a decent mandolin solo: funktionslust. I get through cooking a decent pasta and then folding the laundry: funktionslust.

There are lots of places to scratch that itch that don't center around your job.

yeah this thread is way too chipper for me rn. yall enjoy your funktionslust though, wishing you all the pats on the head.

the flip side of that coin is misery over failing, which explains why it took me years of training to crack it as a singer, because I'd go to voice lessons, my teacher would get exasperated at my lack of progress, I'd go home to practice alone, hit a few bad notes, and give up, depressed.