It seems one of the popular things is to complain about these days the curse of the always-on generation. Mobile phones, email, instant messaging mean you’re always contactable.

But I like all that stuff for other reasons. It means I can leave the office early (as I do every Tuesday) and stay in touch. I can be at home with my kids, but still able to respond to crises. If a system goes down or needs a change at 11pm, I don’t need to find a babysitter and go into work to fix it.

(A friend told the funny story of how her young daughter knows — and doesn’t like it — when she gets the SecurID out to connect to her work computers. She doesn’t understand what it does, but does know it means her mum has to work.)

I’ve had a bad cold for the last week or so; the cough is still hanging around. But we’re frantically busy at work, moving towards a deadline next week. I was able to stay at home for two days last week and cough and sneeze my way through the day, yet thanks to remote access, terminal services, a phone, and conference calls, it was almost like being at my desk. Except no noise and interruptions from colleagues or the nearby printer.

And if I don’t want to be reachable, the mobile goes silent or off, and callers go to voicemail. The experience many years ago of the 3am emergency call (which turned out not to be a problem I could solve) was a lesson I’ve learnt from.

“In the mansion of life, we can’t all be the state bedroom. Someone’s gotta be the outside bog, and that’s you!” — Vince, in Pratt Outta Hell, by Ben Elton

I wonder how many people are happy with the job they’re in, and how many are just killing time/earning some bucks while they work towards something else? I don’t mean people who are progressing naturally through their chosen career, but are actively trying to switch.

What does the guy lugging expensive boutique soft-drinks into an exclusive cafe think of the clientele? Do people in service industries ever get envious of their (sometimes quite obviously) more wealthy customers? Or are they happy enough (provided their own wages are high enough) not to be living with the stress (past, during higher education, and present, in their jobs) those people might be burdened with?

Personally I’m pretty happy in my job, because the pay’s pretty good, the hours are flexible, I’m learning stuff, it continues to challenge me, and it’s not overflowing with red-tape. And I don’t really want to leave the technical sphere and go into management, which I know from past experience is Not Me.

Unbelievably, just hours after lamenting with Marita about how some of us in the Bowen family are prone to upset tummies, I felt the same myself. The Bowen belly had struck yet again, though not as badly as some other times. This comes after my sister and her toddler were struck down with something last week.

Why are we so delicate? Beats me.

So having lost a couple of hours’ sleep overnight, I elected to work from home today (I didn’t have any meetings with anybody scheduled, and it saves about an hour in travel time — gawd bless remote access). Thus most of the day was spent coding in my trackie-dacks, and at one point retired for a quick afternoon snooze.

I’m sure I recall reading about studies which showed working from home could be more productive than going into the office. Even with the model working environment described above, I seemed to get plenty of work done today.

Bizarre thought #574: In the building where I work, there’s a security guard who is sometimes seen wandering about the place. He looks kind of top-heavy, like he’s got a lot of upper-body muscle.

For some reason it reminds me of an old video game I once had back on my Commodore 64: Ultima II, which had fighters who looked like that. When I wrote the Ultima clone in high school, I used a similar design.

Outrage in the office. A note at the scene of the crime, the fridge:

Further investigation revealed that in fact two victims had had their yoghurt go missing. It seems there is a serial yoghurt thief among us.

Stupid damn printer/fax machine/copier. I put a document in to fax, and punched in the fax number. 7010 2168 (or something like that).

But I hadn’t set it to Fax mode. It decided it was in Copier mode, but will only allow three digits for the number of copies, so it started printing 168 copies of my 4 page document. Thankfully I was able to cancel the job before it used up a whole tree.

A little commonsense in the design should dictate that if someone punches in 7 or more digits, they probably want to fax, not copy.

Sometimes I find Friday’s casual day a stress. I find normal weekdays easier — any idiot can look half-decent in an expensive suit.

(Have I told you about my suit? It’s really nice. It was pricey though. It’s so expensive that it doesn’t have a pocket for small change. The makers must have presumed it would be worn by kings and presidents, who never have to carry money.)

Last Friday

I thought I had it figured out: that right balance of casual dress without looking slobby. But this day last week, I had a meeting with people I didn’t know, which complicated things further. I thought something a little more formal was required.

I should have just grabbed my work gear but left the tie behind. Or done my usual Friday thing and worn my nice stripey (horizontal) top with jeans and sneakers.

But no. Out came the stripey (vertical) shirt (aka The Party Shirt). The cotton pants. Put them on. And plain black shoes.

I looked in the mirror. Hmmmmmm. Shoes not really working.

Let’s just throw in a looming deadline, too. The 8:06 and 8:17 express trains are ideal. They stop only three times before reaching the city. If I miss the 8:17, the next is the 8:31, stopping all stations, which reaches the city 21 minutes after the 8:17 does. So I was keen to save those 21 minutes, and get the 8:17, particularly since I knew I had to nip out of work for something else during the day.

I switched the black shoes to the (shudder) old brown shoes. Then, at 8:06 (the station is ten minutes’ walk away), I grabbed my Myer’s bag full of stuff (which is used to avoid having to carry a briefcase home on Friday nights) and headed out the door to catch the 8:17.

I waltzed off down the street. But something was troubling me. I looked down. Ooh. These trousers just weren’t working. They must have looked better on the rack. Maybe they should be worn with the Birkenstocks, lazing about the house or something. But not with Real Shoes.

In my mind I could hear Wallace, frantically calling: “It’s the wrong trousers! The wrong trousers! Stop them, Gromit!”

A U-turn back down the street, into the house. Found my black-blue jeans. On. Bolted out of the house. I glanced at the time. 8:11.

I sprinted down the road and just made the 8:17 (a minute or two late). Out of breath, sweating, but made it.

The train quickly spirited me to Parliament, as I read my newspaper and pondered if any of my neighbours had seen me depart the house twice in the space of five minutes, wearing different pants.

Off the train, I walked down Collins Street to work, rather self-consciously wondering how I was looking, in my jeans, old brown shoes and the Party Shirt sticking out. I’ve been told by She Who Knows that such a shirt must never, ever be tucked-in. The problem is the Party Shirt is kind of big and long and billowy. When I’m walking it looks a bit like a pregnant lady’s shirt. I’m probably better suited to a shorter, slimmer shirt.

I looked at my fellow CBD-dwellers, at least those who were male, between 20 and 50 and wearing casual clothes. He’s got cotton pants. They look okay. He’s got old brown shoes too. Oh dear, maybe not so good. Damn, look at him, he’s got sneakers. That could have worked. Oh, him — he looks fine. Sticking out slim shirt. Sneakers. Hey, he has a Myer bag with his stuff in it too!

Today

Today, I’ll try and do better.

(Edited to clarify this describes last week.)

At home for the second time this week. On Tuesday I worked from home on purpose, as things in the office were quiet and I needed to do some stuff on a side-project web site.

Today however, Isaac woke up with a whopping 39.5 temperature. This managed to coincide with the work computer system being very ill indeed (database refusing connections: “No. I’m not going to connect you. I don’t like you. Go away.”) Thanks to some medicine the temperature has gone down somewhat, and thanks to some DBA magic the database is being nice again, but I’m home for the day.

Thanks to the miracle of computer networks and modern telephony, I am able to do a large proportion of my work from home. Sometimes it’s a curse, sometimes it’s a blessing.