Subj : Re: Kill 'em all; let god sort 'em out To : Jack Phlash From : Atreyu Date : Mon Oct 18 2021 10:32:17 On 17 Oct 21 16:58:36, Jack Phlash said the following to Atreyu: JP> Totally reasonable. So was the public parking outside of the city, or on th JP> other side of it or something? Or are you getting into the city, then takin JP> bus or train to where you work? If the latter, it almost seems like it woul JP> be more worthwhile to just drive to where you work and rent out a (probably Public parking is always at the various train stations throughout the city with the exception of the central train station downtown. So yes I was taking the train downtown every work day and paying extra for that dedicated space. And yes... it got to the point where I just said F this and drove downtown, especially when my work hours got cut. There is also the extensive subway and bus network but I never really got into that. At the time, and for a time, it just made more sense to take that one train from the west-end into downtown. JP> For me, I live more or less in the middle of the city, so choosing to use JP> public transit is extremely situational. I also work *way* outside of the c JP> (well, when I used to go into the office...) which didn't make a lot of sen JP> either. Taking a bus to where I work would take twice as long (at least) an JP> that's only if I could take it directly from my neighborhood rather than JP> taking another one to get to where that route starts. Blech. We have a neat Seems to me it makes more sense to drive out to your office then? If and when you have to? JP> At> I don't miss the rat race but I kinda miss having an office... kinda. JP> At> The company had two large floors of offices, a huge server room and JP> At> enough daily IT between myself, another tech and an IT manager. Most o JP> At> it is gone now from all the downsizing. Covid really killed that JP> At> business (office rentals, meeting space rental etc). The workplace was JP> At> actually pretty good, awesome people and the work was pretty mickey JP> At> mouse... all with a very good salary. JP> JP> Damn. Did you lose that job, or are you just referring to having to work fr JP> home? Personally, I miss going to the office and seeing people in person an I lost the full-time office job but remain with the company as their sole IT consultant and am invoicing them consultant rates. After the loss of the full-time hours I pretty much went the freelancing route in 2015 and never looked back. Struggled the first year or so but doing okay now. Not swimming in the dough like Scrooge Mcduck but enough to afford to live in the downtown-area in a 2 bedroom apartment while also being a single custodial parent. I've been lucky to mostly WFH since before Covid. Spend most of my days on VPN, RDP and SSH. The American client is the exception, thats all on-site travel work. I'm likely one of only two or three techs in all of Toronto that knows that particular telephone system at the former company inside-out-and-backwards ... an ancient Intertel 8600 series. Dude its such a Rube Goldberg contraption but the company owner refuses-slash-can't-afford to replace it with something else. The owner would rather pay me to look after every freaking tech request no matter how trivial. A shit-ton of MAC (move/addition/changes) in addition to the network and server maintenance. I also run a hosting business out of my tiny apartment complete with a 15U cabinet full of equipment where really its just one client with a terminal-server virtual desktop setup... nice client, pays on time, etc. I paid for software licensing out of some of my college grants and paid to have a commercial class fiber connection right to the rack. The real mickey-mouse-but-high-paying work I do is for an American startup that pays for me to maintain cellphone charging stations throughout various malls across the city. THAT one is a lot of my bread & butter. JP> in a dedicated work place with less (non work related) distractions, but I JP> also love the flexibility of being able to work from home, at least part of JP> the time. Like a lot of them, my company is still waiting to see what the n JP> normal looks like, but it seems like the changing environment is pressuring JP> them to adapt a much more liberal WFH policy than what they'd have likely JP> ever come to on their own. I like WFH, my daughter goes to high school and thus this place is dead quiet during the day, no distractions. But I do miss the noise of a busy office... my Amazon Alexa government snooping device has an App that plays background sounds ala. white noise. Sure enough, they have an office-monotony soundtrack. Every so often when I do the on-site work its nice to know I'm out of the house for the moment and not going entirely batshit crazy. Atreyu --- Renegade vY2Ka2 * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (46:1/109) .