Book of Days: asher553

Oregon hasn't been hit as hard by the coronavirus as our neighbors to the north and south, but within Oregon, Washington County - where I live - has the highest number of cases. I don't worry too much about getting the illness personally; I don't like crowds and generally avoid them, plus I'm fortunate to have a fairly robust constitution. Typically if I get sick at all it'll last for about 24 hours and then I'm done. But I do want to be mindful of not being party to transmitting the illness to an elderly or infirm person.

Anyway, my second full day of work-at-home went pretty smoothly. I am getting used to the routine and I suspect I'll come to like it. My job (IT support) is one of those best suited for remote work, and it's likely that the COVID-19 thing will have the effect of accelerating a trend that's already well underway. So from a professional standpoint, the chance to get accustomed to the practical realities of working from home - and supporting others who do - can only help me in the future.

Last time I went shopping, I stocked up on shef-stable food. Grocery Outlet had two flavors of Tasty Bite for 99c a package. One of these - the vindaloo - I hadn't tried before. I had previously only heard of vindaloo in the context of "pork vindaloo" which the vegetarian and kosher-certified TB product obviously is not. So I gave it a try. Most of the TB flavors, even those marked "spicy", are fairly tame. Not this stuff! As it happens I'd been hankering for some hot Indian food, and (short of a trip to one of the nearby Indian restaurants) this filled the bill pretty well.

I was resisting the idea of working from home, but yesterday just before lunchtime, Oregon's governor gave the official "go the f**k home" order, so it was done. I hastily set up the VPN client on my work laptop (the same operation I'd guided a number of other users through), packed the laptop in my backpack, and walked up to the 48 stop on Cornell to take the bus home.

I was up and running at home by about 2pm, and started taking calls. The only material difference in working form home is that I didn't have the luxury of extra monitors and had to view everything through the little laptop screen, but that proved to be only a minor inconvenience. And of course I lost the ability to bother the techs in the adjoining cubicles with questions (since I'm fairly new on the job), but I got along OK.

So I'm looking at the positive side. I'll save time and bus fare with zero commute - that's more free time to spend at home doing as I please, which is not a bad thing.

Another plus is that I'll be able to take a nap on my lunch hour!

Sometimes you get the guy who's the rock star performer in the workplace, but he likes to hog the spotlight at the expense of the rest of the team. That's another example of the mentality of "others must fail so that I can succeed."

In the Marines we had it drilled into us from boot camp on: "Keep your buddy locked on!" You don't gain anything from the other guy messing up. Often just the opposite: collective punishment is still seen as a perfectly valid discipline tool in the military! One guy fails a barracks inspection or a rifle inspection, the whole unit has to stay late. It's a strong incentive to help the other guy stay locked on. And that's as it should be - on the battlefield, one guy screwing up could get everybody killed. In the military, you really are your brother's keeper.

Same in the workplace, if somebody's a great performer as an individual, but they feel like they have to undermine their co-workers, or if they just bring a lot of drama and dissension to the workplace, then it's going to impact the operation negatively.

If you want to grow personally and professionally, my guess is that the thing to do is seek out a workplace where people keep each other locked on - where you're going to be surrounded by competent people who will push you harder, demand more of you, and challenge you more.

Some workplaces are meritocracies, where if you are competent and you work hard, you are rewarded and you get ahead. Others are anti-meritocracies, where competent people are penalized because they make the others look bad.

That's probably my single biggest criterion for deciding where I want to work or where I don't want to work.

I'd planned to put in an appearance at Chabad this morning, but housecleaning took precedence. The bathroom sink was a biohazard. Several boxes needed to go to storage. And organizing the kitchen couldn't wait another day. So, it was that instead.

On Sundays street parking is free until 1pm, at which time it costs either a little or a lot depending on whether the Timbers are playing. Today was the Timbers' last game of the season (they beat the Vancouver BC Whitecaps 2-1, if you're following) and so I needed to do something with the car. Driving deliveries for Uber Eats was out for today because I had to update my car insurance with them, so I did my first - and, I hope, last - run for Postmates.

I have my gripes about driving for Uber, but I found the Postmates experience inferior in every way. The nav app is unclear and confusing, you have to wait in line and order on behalf of the customer using a pre-paid card (and you have to scrape the sticky gunk off the back of the card when you get it), and then you have to take a picture of the receipt. So much more cumbersome than Uber, where you just grab and go.

So that was my experience with Postmates. In other news I picked up some groceries at Trader Joe's. Also unpacked the flag I'd stowed away earlier, and put Old Glory on the wall by my bed where she's hanging now. Found out I had a bunch of unused Audible credits and downloaded Sowell's 'Basic Economics', Smith's 'Wealth of Nations', and Schweikart/Allen's 'Patriot's History'.

Dug out my DVD player and watched some of 'Spirited Away'. I love that film more every time I see it. It's beautiful and spellbinding, and it is profoundly *moral* without being moralistic. Chihiro must learn and practice courtesy, humility, hard work, loyalty, and courage to free her parents. (I like that, at the end, you can see that her hair tie has turned purple - signifying that the trip to the land of the spirits was real and not in her imagination.)

The customer support job at the HMO is going well. My supervisor took me aside to follow up on a ticket I'd forgotten to close; I waited to hear critiques of my other tickets, but he told me that other than that one ticket, I was doing "110 percent". So, a nice little bit of encouragement!

The HMO support gig only lasts until the first week of November, but I'm optimistic I'll get something by then. If I can get my pay rate up to the figure I'm targeting, I'll be able to relax about bills and finances a little bit, and hopefully won't have to drive any more deliveries.