Category: Observations Page 9 of 90

On Semi-professional Bird Watching

On May 26, 2020

I am a semi-professional bird watcher now. It started when I was working from home in my last job. But now that I am home and nowhere else I’ve been enjoying it (and them) all the more. It started with one feeder. A bright yellow feeder I could load up with seed and let the sparrows take over.

Then I got two suet feeders (once I learned what suet was). That’s when the woodpeckers started showing up. The downy woodpecker and red-bellied woodpecker take turns visiting my yard and are beautiful in their own ways. The red-bellied one is a particular treat as he’s a large bird that likes to linger and eat his fill. He’s also one of a few birds I’ve seen willing to take on a Blue Jay. Did you know Blue Jays are territorial and will fight and kill other birds? I didn’t until I witnessed one take down a little sparrow and found a Cardinal I suspect met the unkind claw of the murder bird.

The third feeder I got sticks to a window with suction cups. After some trial and error (and moving it to the second story of my house because squirrels will climb the window screens to get to it) it found a home outside my office window. I get daily visits from the downy woodpecker which is a delight. Until a family of European Starlings moved in and decided it was their. I counted as many as 4 birds crammed into the feeder and at least three young birds in the group. They were very boisterous and made their presence felt in my backyard.

I continued to be surprised and delighted by the number and type of birds my little yard is able to attract. The Mourning Doves along with the woodpeckers are my favorites. Though I am convinced all Robins need to have little top hat and monocles. They stand so tall and upright when they patrol the yard for food. They look so proper.

And doves always sound sad. If you hear a sad mournful call, you have doves nearby. I love how they waddle along living their life. Doing their own thing. They, like the Robins are ground feeders and instead of competing for the bird seed at the feeder, wait below it for the sparrows to make a huge mess when they toss it all over the place. Working smarter, not harder is the Dove way.

I can’t talk about bird feeders without mentioning squirrels. They like to crawl up to the feeder and hang from it and feast on the seed there. Recently, they’ve taken to knocking it out of the feeder and piling it up underneath in a little spot where they’ll sit and feast.

I don’t mind the squirrels so much in that they eat the feed. But they scare off all the birds at the feeders. I don’t need to look at squirrels. I can do that any time. I want to look at birds as they come and go. I haven’t gone as far as buying any feeder that claims to outsmart squirrels (because I don’t think any of them will actually work). But I do have a baffle I am going to put on the shepherd’s hook holding the seed feeder and see how it does.

A yard story in 3 parts

By Carl

On May 10, 2020

In Observations

You have my permission

By Carl

On April 25, 2020

In Introspection, Observations

You have my permission to delete.

You have my permission to mark as read.

You have my permission to skip.

You have my permission to step away.

You have my permission to log off.

You have my permission to ignore.

You have my permission to breathe.

You have my permission not to feel bad about any of it.

Your podcast queue is overflowing. Your stack of books is gathering guilt dust. Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and HBO and and and and…

There’s so much content out there. Endless feeds to scroll online. Twitter. Facebook. Mastodon. Instagram. Tiktok. They’re all there with new content engineered to suck you in and keep you there.

There’s email. Both invited and not. Newsletters are stacking up with interesting information.

You have my permission to ignore it all. You have my permission to not feel bad about ignoring, deleting, skipping and moving on with trying to get through your life.

How are you?

By Carl

On April 17, 2020

In Introspection, Observations

How do you manage through an environment where the business volume doubles within a 30 day period and at the same time you are forced to split the company into multiple teams. One team leaves the office and works from home for an undetermined amount of time, while the other two teams rotate in and out of the office. Then in order to meet the demand we need to hire staff and train them as quickly as we can using a plan and processes that did not exist two weeks ago.
Current State of things

This sums up exactly how things have been for me in the past 30 days until…?

So, how are you all holding up?

Coronavirus Diary 1

By Carl

On March 20, 2020

In Observations

I’ve made a huge mistake.

For the past two years I worked from home. I would sometimes go multiple days between leaving the house other than getting the mail or refilling my bird feeders. I was a government contractor support Webex, and a host of other teleconferencing options for a government agency you’ve heard of.

I am particularly well-suited for remote work as I’ve had the time (and money) to setup a space that’s not grandiose by any means but far surpasses anything I’ve ever found at a job site.

I have a hand-crank standing desk from Ikea that I dearly love. Not always because I want to stand, but I’m tall and often times desks aren’t high enough for me. It’s a huge open workspace I can lay out computers and notebooks and whatever I’m tinkering with at the time with room to spare.

I have two monitors setup amongst my small army of computers. I have two windows I can open for cross-breeze. I can control the temperature and amount of light at any given time. Those last two are the biggest benefits of working from home. Light and temperature control are so often overlooked at offices.

I’m also extremely introverted. I’ve got lists of books and projects and things to do miles long. To be inside is to be in my element.

My wife and I do not have any children so we are not trying to figure out how to keep small people entertained and educated all day, while stressing about them, and the coronavirus and the state of the world and… and… and…

It is a great irony not lost on me that on my birthday this year, in Mid-February I resigned from my full-time remote job to take another job in an office. Albeit very nearby which allows me to avoid all of the Interstates and Beltway hellscapes of Washington DC area traffic.

But it means going to work. In an office. Away from my perfect work place. Right at the start of this outbreak.

That lasted a week.

Then I was sent back home since I’m in a position where my job can be done remotely. Which I understand is a completely privileged position. The place where I work relies on people being in the office so many don’t have the same luxury.

Where did I decide to take a job right at the start of a global pandemic where millions of people are being sent home to work or quarantined in their homes?

Why, a company that specializes in remote collaboration of course! My new role is to oversee Webex and Zoom webinars for clients of all sizes including many large companies and government entities you’ve heard of.

I jumped out of the frying pan and directly into a seething volcano! It’s been a breakneck pace for the past week trying to get up to speed and onboarded into a new company, all the while everything is on fire!

This is how my week has been going. And how next week will go. And how the weeks for the foreseeable future will continue.

It’s thrilling being right in the middle or building something and racing to troubleshoot and put out fires with the technology platforms our business relies on. All while trying to learn the business and how it all works internally. I’ve had just as many people ask me this week how my first two weeks have gone as had said how much they appreciated my help with something or expertise I was able to provide. Or even having a warm body to hand a task off to and trust it would get done.

It’s a satisfying feeling knowing I am appreciated and that I can step in and immediately contribute. And those contributions aren’t overlooked. I’m no longer one number on a huge spreadsheet somewhere. A cost for a large government contractor to worry about spending money on. Worried I’ll ask for more or want more out of my position.

As much as it’s nice to know I’m an asset, it’s just as stressful. We use a lot of remote cloud-based applications with work and they’re struggling to keep up at times. Zoom and Webex overall seem to be doing a good job at the basics, but not a day goes by I don’t have a stream of alerts and notifications of various issues with both platforms.

Many of the them are simply limitations of capacity. There are only so many phone lines into a country. There are only so many ports for data and voice to travel across. Just as with cars and trucks sharing a road, the same is true for the internet. And we are going to test that infrastructure like never before.

I’m thankful to still be working. I’m thankful to still be healthy. I’m thankful to have been part of a religion for a time that pushed preparation and saving. It’s serving us well as we have safety nets and savings in place for ourselves.

We are lucky.

And if you made it this far, here’s a silly picture of Zoom multi-platform testing.