Offices, Obfuscation and Oculus Rifts

The word of the week is satisfaction.

Nov 3 - Three Times The Work

Starting this week at work, my desk has been moved - for the better.

I'm now ensconced in what's affectionately referred to as 'The Condo' in the office: the far corner by the secondary exit, next to my Team Lead, the Office Manager and across the hall from the Executive Director's office. Quite a swish location, I must say.

It's a quiet corner, with no noisy nearby neighbours and quite a ways from being stuck in the middle of the office bustle. I have quite a lot of desk space, my own locker as well as a ton of wall space and the overhead lights are disconnected, meaning I can use my own lights to provide as much - or as little - illumination as I need. The final bonus: sunlight streams in from the office across the hall, so I'm no longer totally disconnected from what's happening outside during the day. I can see daylight at last!

Also, there's this:

You guessed it: I'm the only one in the office with a triple-monitor setup. I took it upon myself to get the third one hooked up, as there's a few spares hanging around, so nobody minded. Having all that PC-desktop space means I can be much more efficient at my job, with less window-swapping needed to get the data I need at any given time.

Sadly, I can no longer listen to music at work, as I have to answer the phones as well as perform other duties when not talking to clients via wireless headset - that's also a perk, no cables to tangle!

I plan on personalizing my Corner Condo with some posters and selected paraphernalia over the next few weeks as I tweak my setup. Several people have already commented that it looks like I've been settled there for months, which I take as a good sign: if I'm comfortable, it means I'll enjoy my job all the more each day… and I do feel like that area is totally my own, not shared.

It's like having my own office, in some ways: score!

Nov 4 – Once more into the breach!

I set a personal movie record today!

Tonight I watched Guardians of the Galaxy in the theatres for the fifth time, more times than I have ever seen any movie in the theatres in my entire life - must mean I like it.

To be fair, it was the IMAX 3D version, which looked absolutely stunning on the 70-foot tall screen. I actually wasn't going to go see it, until I learned yesterday that director James Gunn had specifically tailored the 3D effects for IMAX, which meant I had to go experience it.

Overall, it was worth it to see, at least once; it's not likely that ANY film will ever be re-released in IMAX again, so it was see it NOW or never. I chose now and I loved it!

Since I've gushed quite a lot over this movie in the last few months, I'll simply close with this: it's one of the few movies I can re-watch and still feel the same as the first time I saw it.

Since that doesn't happen with just anything nowadays, I can appreciate it all the more.

Nov 5 – Retro Game Heaven!

Old video games are something I will always have a soft spot for in my heart.

It's really the experience that tweaks my memories and brings me back to my youth, which when I think about it, wasn't spent all that often in arcades. But all the same, I always looked forward to any chance I was able to spend a few hours in arcade with the latest games.

In the years since then, as I've aged, there hasn't been a whole lot of satisfying ways to replay those old games. Installing emulators piecemeal is time-consuming and the results are often disappointing, with games not working properly or even at all; there';s no nostalgia in disappointment.

Just this week however, retro gamers all over the world can thrill to a massive advance in playing old games! The Internet Arcade has released 900 arcade games ranging from the 1970s to the 1990s that can be played using just a web browser - so simple, and it works!

If just playing games is must all do, what would it be like to actually step into an arcade from the 1980s? While it was hard to imagine just a few years ago, the upcoming Oculus Rift VR headset will allow you to do just that. Feast your eyes on this video and be amazed; I know I was:

As you may have guessed, I've already put the Oculus Rift on my Christmas List for 2015!

Nov 6 - VPN Privacy

How secure is your wifi?

If you're not sure, then you HAVE to be careful about what you do while out and about on a public connection - it's not safe out there.

TunnelBear is a VPN I discovered a few weeks ago, when I was travelling to the USA and had to depend at times on a local WiFi network to check my email, banking, etc. For those of you who aren't up on the tech details, I'll summarize with a warning: do NOT check ANYTHING containing sensitive data over a public, unlocked WiFi connection like those found in Starbucks, Tim Hortons or, in my case, public airport terminals. Without encryption, the data you send over the air could be intercepted by anyone in the area scanning with some freely-available sniffer tools and used for nefarious means. 

Checking your banking, private email, sensitive work documents and the like is NOT recommended in any way on a public wifi network - you need a VPN, as this simple pic shows:

As I hadn't yet connected my USA SIM card to my phone in the USA, I was a little stuck. Then I discovered TunnelBear, a -FREE- VPN service, which essentially encrypts ALL data sent from your laptop or smartphone, end to end. Meaning sniffers and so forth can't intercept your data; indeed, you can appear to be browsing from ANY country of your choice, as far as the internet is concerned.

After installing TunnelBear on my phone and laptop, I happily browsed the internet while travelling, secure in the knowledge that my data was safe from prying eyes. As a bonus, I can use the service free every month with up to 1.5gigs of traffic allowed, paying a mere $5.00 / month after that. I'm unlikely to use the paid service often, save now and again when I'm approaching my phone's monthly data cap or some other similar reason; best to keep things free when possible.

It's my favourite 4-letter word, after all!

Nov 7 – Walking and Working Well

My walk’s back to normal this week.

By last Friday, I’d stopped using a cane at all, after taking it easy all last week. As it turns out, that's exactly what I needed to do and all of this week my left leg has been perfectly fine, but I don't think I'm going to run any marathons anytime soon…

I also found out today that I have access to Office365 –for free!

Now that I have achieved full-time status, I get access to the usual things like benefits, HR help and the like that my job comes with. Some other things though were unexpected, like a just-launched partnership with Microsoft that gives all employees( while employed )a no-holds-barred access to Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus– the whole shebang, every single feature, etc. I couldn’t be happier, as my 2007 Office Home & Student was getting a bit long in the tooth.

With the new 365, I have a solid set of tools, including Publisher, to work on my novels with in 2015. In addition, there’s word( pun intended )that Microsoft is partnering with DropBox, so in the near future I should be able to access all my docs from DropBox from inside Office directly. As far as I’m aware, I should even get 1tb of storage with the Office ProPlus, but as yet I haven’t figured out how to set that up. Soon enough, I should think.

It's really incredible that just as I was thinking of upgrading and spending more $$ for a newer version of Office, along comes an email at work and presto: I have a brand-new suite of programs at no cost! While you can get Office 365 ProPlus for a mere $12/month subscription, why spend that $$ if you don’t have to?

Yet another reason why I love my day job. :-)

Nov 8 - Reconnect

Well, $%#! that… really?

After two weeks of trying, I couldn't locate a single internet provider in Victoria who could give me connection speeds approaching that of Shaw Cable. In fact, not a one could even offer 1/4 of the mid-tier speed range Shaw has, with NONE of them using cable lines, just DSL - or dialup.

It was pathetic.

Here I am, living in the provincial capital, stuck with just the choice of either Shaw( paying $150/month )or Telus( $100/month for 1/4 of Shaw's speed )and that's it. Maddening! As the image below shows, the price of services has just kept rising over the last 10 years:

Today, after much deliberation and with Shaw scheduled to disconnect my service in 48 hours, I bit the bullet and called them to talk, one last time. I wasn't expecting much, but as I was up against the wall, I still held out hope for a bill reduction of decent proportions...

Fortunately, I spoke with a rep who not only listened closely to my concerns, but actively worked to help improve my service. We had a friendly conversation and after a mere 15 minutes, I had managed to accept a package close to what I currently have, for $100 a month all told - phone, speedy internet and cable TV all included.

Blinking a few times before I hung up, I made sure of the costs, as well as what I was getting: turns out that the PVR promo I had from earlier in the year was quite the deal! The brand-new modern PVR I have has cost( and will never cost me! )a penny whatsoever; essentially, I get it free for as long as I have cable TV with Shaw, whereas customers now have to sign a 2-year contract to get it for 'free' - whoa! So that, free long distance anywhere in Canada or the US, plus a sweet channel package all combined to make me breathe a sigh of relief today; no more fruitless searches, waiting on hold or 'Sorry, we can't provide service in your area yet' emails.

Now I can get back to just using my services, instead of trying to figure out a way to do without some of them to save my budget. Huzzah! And... we'll see what it costs in a few years.

Nov 9 – Just relax and read…

It's been a good weekend.

I think this is the first weekend in a long time where I didn't have anything planned nor anywhere to go. In fact, the only thing I plan to do was whatever I wanted: as much or as little of the things on my to-do list as I felt I had to see to.

It's surprising how quickly the time passes when it's all your own, at least that I found yesterday and today.

Not having a car, I can't really just pop up-island for an impromptu road trip, or go visit my parents a mere 20 min. away on the Eastern shoreline. I suppose I could always rent a car, but quite honestly about enough here to occupy me for some time if I put my nose to the grindstone: there's two more novels waiting to be written, after all.

After the crazy-busy time I had in October, preparing for my trip to NYC and studying as hard as I ever have my entire life for my day-job Competition, I think some regular downtime in November is in order. Considering that I have my weekdays spoken for, it's going to be a bit of a Jenga game blocking in my writing time alongside other social and personal commitments weekly.

One thing is not going to change is my blog; I truly enjoy spending my Sunday evening every week updating things here for the few dozen people who drop by each week to peruse. As I mentioned in last week's entry, I've been doing this for seven years now and I don't anticipate stopping anytime soon - for what I can tell, there will always be something interesting every week for me to write down in the blog in my own words.

That's really what it's all about now, isn't it?

It's going to be a short work-work for me coming up; more about that in next week's blog. For now, it's an early bedtime, as my eyes have started to tire well before 11pm these days...