I’ve been teleworking since march 16. So far everything’s fine.

Everyone struggles a little bit to find video or screen sharing tools that are not overloaded, but it should settle down as we might end up hosting some tools in house to solve this problem and make sure at the same time that we don’t give up all our data to GAFAM…​

Free software to the rescue!

As far as my daily work as a system administrator is concerned, working remotely is not a problem, as long as we don’t have to deal with hardware problems of course. The VPN does its job, I do mine :)

I would even say I am more efficient, my work environment is quieter and much more comfortable. I also save myself the hour and a half commute between home and work every day. The end result: my nights are longer, I do not get tired by all the driving, so I am more efficient at work, nothing suprising there.

Regarding communication, we use chat more than ever. I guess some people had to get used to it, in my team we were already relying heavily on it.

For voice communications I suggested that we use Mumble to my team and despite some little difficulties with the microphone configuration, it was a conclusive test. I even installed an instance on our work infrastructure so that we could free up my personal one. It’s really nice to use and you feel like you can chat as if you were at our desktop in the open-space, except this way you don’t bother anyone. It’s a shame that Mumble is not more user-friendly. For now it seems hard to imagine suggesting it to all our users, we would end up spending hours explaining to people how to use it. This is a recurring problem with free software…​ but that’s another debate.

Being a rather solitary guy, staying at home doesn’t bother me — at least not for the moment — especially since I’m not realy alone, I have my darling to keep me company, as she is also teleworking.

While I usually hit the road before she even wakes up, this week we could have a quiet breakfast together before both going to work in the office. We are lucky to have an office big enough to have our own space and still be able to communicate.

Of course we spend more time together, but more importantly, we spend better time together. The tensions that can be caused when you get home from a long working day are less likely to arise.

More time available also means finding ways to occupy it. We took the opportunity to finish a TV Show: "Power". We also continued "Objectif Top Chef" and started "The Handmaid’s Tale" and "The Widow". We also took some time to take care of our garden. It was the first mowing of the year, the hydrangeas had to be taken care of and we had to clear the bushes everywhere. We will have to practice our guitar a little more and get some work done around the house.

We thought maybe we’d start planting some vegetables. We don’t have a green thumb, but it might take our minds off the situation. We still have to figure out how to proceed since we don’t know anything about it, but we will figure it out eventually.

If we are lucky the weather will start to be nice and we will be able to enjoy the garden a little bit since we have space. We could take out the shuffleboard, the badminton net. We also bought a ping pong table lately, it could be a good occasion to start using it.

Besides, I’m going to geek a little bit. I’ve taken back my "racing" games: Project Cars 2 when I feel like having an adrenaline rush, Euro/American Truck simulator when I feel like relaxing. I could also play with friends on Overcooked, Ghost Recon Wildlands, The Division 2, now that I have downloaded the "little" 30GB update.

On the tech side, there’s also this blog and I still have a few things to do on my Yunohost instance.

In terms of finances, we are saving a lot of fuel, as neither of us has do drive about a hundred kilometers each day, not to mention the daily restaurant replaced by home cooking.

We still have food left for a week so we shouldn’t have to shop until next weekend.

Finally, no one is sick either in our family or in our circle of friends.

Anyway, we’re not to be pitied, so far so good. Let’s hope it lasts, because from what we hear and what we read, the health situation is likely to last a little while.

Courage to those who are working to get us out of this mess, to those who are sick or know sick people and my sympathy goes to those who have lost loved ones.