The Unintentional Self-Googler

Urbandictionary.com defines “self-googling” as the “act of using the Google search engine to look yourself up.”

Now, I imagine that just about every living soul who has ever used Google for research has engaged in self-googling. I’ve treated myself to the indulgence many times over the years. But until recently, I have never experienced it in such an…unexpected way.

You see, I’m a big fan of Google and all the various Cloud-based and other apps that the company produces: Google Mail, SketchUp, Google Sites, the list goes on. Last year, in a frenzied fit of programming, I decided to tackle Twitter development by creating a custom Windows WPF application that periodically posted online article URL’s (of interest to parents and families) from a database on my PC to my Twitter account, every five minutes. Well, naturally, if you’re going to tweet content at that volume and that frequently, you will most definitely need to populate your database with an abundance of said URL’s.

There was no way that I was going to waste my time trolling the interweb for articles, copying and pasting URL’s into my database. And I had not yet discovered the secret of employing low-wage Filipina Virtual Personal Assistants (and especially since I’m of Filipino descent, it almost seems a bit unethical somehow...something akin to using your kids for forced child labor...). I determined to leverage existing services in the Cloud to find fresh sources of news, and made the joyful discovery that I could transform my Google searches into automated Google Alerts that would pop up obediently in my inbox literally within hours of being published to the web. Since I was using OutLook at the time, I could write custom code to strip the URL’s out of the incoming emails and push them into my database. From there, my custom app would post random article URL’s to Twitter. Voila! Instant news service! In fact, I wrote a little article about the app on codeproject.com.

What I soon realized was that, even though I was saving a gazillion man-hours in searching the web for content by having Google do it for me, I still had to do a ton of manual analysis and editing of the data that I scraped from the alert emails. It just became too time-consuming to read through hundreds of links each day, and I eventually abandoned the project.

Fast forward to the present: I’m currently working on a writing project that chronicles how some professionals have improved their quality of life by “workshifting”, telecommuting or working remotely. I decided to monitor online news sources for stories or developments, and, of course, set up some Google alerts. Among the twenty-something search key words that I configured was “workshifting”.

In the meantime, I had joined http://www.workfromhomeboard.com, a site for remote workers (or those who want to become such), in hopes of finding more subjects to interview. I even created the following thread to solicit stories from the forum members:

Calling All Workshifters (telecommuters): I'd Like To Hear From You!

Are you one of the thousands of people who use their PC and the web to work from home (among other places), either part- or full-time?

I’d like to hear from other folks out there who, like me, are “workshifting” (the new replacement buzzword for “telecommuting” – no kidding).

Writers, bloggers, web designers, engineers, developers, affiliate marketers, graphic designers, consultants, sales, customer service, doesn’t matter.
If your job is location independent, using technology that allows you to work from home, the internet cafe, on the beach, or even from the other side of the world, please take a moment to email me with your answers to the following:

In a sentence, describe your work: self-employed, or working for a company?

Do you spend part of your time in a traditional office space?

Are you single or married?

Are you a work-at-home Mom?

Are you a parent of a baby, pre-school/school-age children, or teens?

Are you taking care of aged parents?

Are you disabled?

Does workshifting allow you to volunteer for a good cause?

How did you find your current workshifting employment, and how long did you search?

How has workshifting maintained or improved your quality of life?

Feel free to forward this survey to other workshifters that you know.
Thanks in advance.

- Dwayne

I check my Google mail account several times a day, and last Friday, I got this startling alert in my Google Mail inbox:

IM On Steroids

I remember when instant messaging in the workplace was looked upon with disdain.

This recollection has to be from around 2001, when I was working in the Fresno, CA. office of a network integration company called NetsWork.

Their tagline was “We make nets work”. No kidding.

Headquartered in Pleasanton, CA., the company’s strategy for growth was to acquire the small to medium-sized “Mom and Pop” network integration shops throughout California, Oregon and Washington. These small organizations had a gainful and loyal customer base, and NetsWork had the financing and resources of a large corporation to support the small shops’ development and growth.

We had just moved into some fancy new digs in North Fresno – well, fancy for Fresno anyways – and we all worked in half-height cubicles in a large bullpen area: salespeople, network engineers, management, support staff, and me. I was one of four developers at this location, and I was tasked with maintaining our mission-critical work order system called SRS. I forgot what the acronym stands for.

I distinctly remember talking with my manager Terry Reuter one afternoon about some software-related subject. Bespectacled, sandy-haired and rail-thin from constant bike racing, he’s one of those rare triple-threat IT guys. You know the kind: he could go into a business and singlehandedly set up an entire network – Microsoft or Novell, because we did both. Then, he could build you a server from spare parts and write a custom CRM application overnight and install it on the new server. He was just that good, a one man network integration company.

I also admired the fact that Terry’s wife Lynn is also in IT. In fact, at the time of my conversation with Terry, Lynn was working at NetsWork as a programmer as well, doing development in Microsoft Access. A wife who’s a programmer AND working for the same company? How cool is that!

As we chatted, Terry happened to glance over at one of the network engineers, back from one of his customer visits. The engineer was chuckling to himself as he typed away to some unseen correspondent via Instant Messenger.

Terry’s brow knitted and the corners of his mouth sagged in a frown of disapproval. “I hate Instant Messenger”, he muttered under his breath. “I wish we’d outlaw it.”

Now, I respect Terry a lot. So when he expressed his contempt for Instant Messenger, I dutifully avoided ever using it at work even for legitimate reasons, despite the absence of a corporate policy.

Oh, how times have changed.

When I started with UnitedHealth Group three years ago, I noticed that the pre-configured company laptop came with a desktop shortcut pointing to something called “Communicator”. On a conference call, I asked my manager about it.

“Yeah, that’s the corporate version of Instant Messenger”, he explained.

Our team of .NET programmers is composed entirely of workshifting employees, distributed geographically primarily on the East Coast and Midwest. Since our programming team was scattered across the country, with me being furthest West in California, the fastest way to contact a team member was via Communicator. In fact, my manager proceeded to encourage me to reach out to my team via Communicator if I had questions or needed another programmer’s opinion on an issue.

Corporate version of Instant Messenger?

Since when had instant messaging received the Blessing of Corporate America? I was stunned.

Microsoft Office Communicator, of course, is the Enterprise incarnation of Instant Messenger, a sort of IM on steroids with additional features such as VOIP, video conferencing, and integration with the Office Suite. Included in the base installation of a laptop provided to employees by a Fortune 20 company, and advocated as a legitimate business tool.

And it started out life simply as Microsoft’s entry into the internet chat space.

Heavens, what next? I suppose I’ll have to get used to tweeting my team members...

My New Friday Workshifting Tradition: Starbucks

Photograph by Josh Libatique

Now that Starbucks has free wireless internet service (huzzah for Starbucks!), I'm thinking of making the local site my Friday workshifting spot.

For me, going to Starbucks requires a ten minute drive from my home to half-way across town (yeah, it's a small town), and that, of course, requires a car. We own three cars: my wife takes one to work, and my daughters take the other two. Which kind of hamstrings my ambitions of workshifting; mobility, after all, requires some sort of mode of transportation to become mobile.

Thus, most days I'm stuck working at home, with two cats that have just been recently introduced to one another. The first, our resident 18-year old seal point Siamese is a grouchy sort who's currently hissing at the newcomer, a long-haired gray tabby named Macy Gray. Suffice to say that I'm a virtual shut-in, home for about seven hours a day, alone except for two seething, caterwauling furballs.

So, by the time Friday rolls around, I'm just a bit starved for human contact. Not that I want to immediately rush out and engage everyone I happen to meet in spirited conversation, mind you; I just feel the urge to be in the company of bipedal creatures with opposable thumbs, large braincases, and that have an affinity for caffeinated beverages.

Did I mention that I used to be a barista? Yeah, back in the winter of 2006, while I was "in between jobs", I did the adult thing and "did what I had to do", taking a part-time gig at the very Starbucks that has become my new tradition. Our town is located within fifteen miles of a California Women's Correctional Facility, and evidently there's a whole shift of correctional workers that gets out of work and is looking for some caffeine at 5:00 a.m. in the morning, so this particular Starbucks opens really early. So, every day, I'd drive bleary-eyed and semiconscious to Starbucks just in time to pick up trash in the parking lot and drive-through, then take orders or make drinks for the morning "rush" of customers. It was brutal.

Actually, there was one good thing that came out of it: during my daily four hour shift, I was in near-constant motion, moving quickly from the bar to the coffee station to the iced drinks station and then back to the bar. You know how they say that, if you take at least 10,000 steps a day, you're guaranteed to lose wait? I was losing weight, baby.

It was while I was working at Starbucks that I learned to make several drinks that don't usually appear on the menu, one of which is the "Red Eye". This drink is so named, as the legend goes, for college students who were preparing to cram all night for a test the next day and needed a way to stay up for several hours at a time. The students initially drank lattes made with a single shot of espresso; this spiked their energy level for a short time, but was followed by the inevitable crash. Some student finally got the bright idea to mix espresso with coffee; the effect was that the student's energy level increased, but stayed at the elevated level longer, and made a much more gradual decline. The next logical step, of course, was to add a second shot of espresso, which was dubbed the "Black Eye". This is my absolute favorite latte: a venti Black Eye, with four pumps of sugar-free vanilla, two Splenda's, and about an inch and a half of steamed whole milk.

Which brings me, in tangential fashion, to my point; I should explain that, in the strictest sense, I don't feel that I'm really, truly a workshifter.

More precisely, I feel like I'm a second-rate workshifter. Oh, sure: my job as a programmer is definitely location independent. It allows me to work from wherever I want, with a flexible schedule, but my lifestyle design reality seems so pedestrian compared to other workshifters that I've heard of, the kind that conducts business while attending an entrepreneurial conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Or who takes a couple months to vacation and volunteer while traveling through South America.

I suppose those folks are more of the "digital nomad" variety. Now, those are the REAL workshifters, the Major Leaguers. Me, I'm playing Triple-A ball.

Actually, I really should consider myself fortunate, and count my blessings. I had been staying away from Starbucks in recent months, simply because it gets expensive to get a venti Black Eye AND pay for wireless access, but all that's changed. On Friday, I'll claim one of our cars as my own, drive down to the local Starbucks, order my venti Black Eye, pop open my laptop and earn my credibility as a workshifter.

Now if only they'd do something to make the chairs more comfortable.

HEMP of Another Variety

The other day, I was just thinking how wonderful it is to work at home.

"How wonderful it is", said a little voice in my head, "to be able to work at home".

Invariably, whenever I meditate upon life's goodness, whenever I hear a little voice in my head enumerating my various and sundry blessings, there's always another, different voice coming from another corner of my mind that tends to play The Devil's Advocate.

"Yeah, working at home's fantastic", said the other voice, sounding a bit like Jack Nicholson, "just as long as your power doesn't go out." This, of course, is the Voice of Anxiety, which always plays like Jack Nicholson in my head.

"Power, schmower", interjected another voice, this time with a distinctly Christopher Walken-esque quality. "One high-altitude electromagnetic pulse and that's it for your little work-at-home gig, my friend. Fried. Kaput, end of story. It's back to the nineteenth century for you, reading your books by candlelight."

This second voice I've come to recognize, over the years, as the Voice of The Worst-Case Scenario.

As you can tell, my mind likes to hold conversations discussing my irrational fears and possible dangerous future events over which I have no control. Welcome to my neuroses.

Neurotic or not, the Walken-voice's claim does have the Ring of Truth to it. My job as a workshifter (is that even the correct usage of the term?) is totally and completely dependent upon a collection of delicate, low-voltage electronics: my laptop, printer, wireless gateway, cable modem, phone and headset. And I'm not even counting the Ethernet cabling running from my gateway to the cable modem, and the coaxial cable beyond that. And beyond that, the Big Enchilada that is the vulnerable civilian infrastructure: the power grid.

Some brainiacs at the EMP Commission (http://www.empcommission.org), Dr. William Radasky and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, recently wrote an article for The Space Review, essentially a rebuttal to an earlier article by Yousaf M. Butt, "The EMP Threat: Fact, Fiction, and Response".

I scanned through the article and tried to understand as best I could. After reading scientific or technical pieces like that, a voice in my brain that sounds like "Ted 'Theodore' Logan" in "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure" (my all-time favorite Keanu Reeves movie) always grabs the microphone, attempting to summarize.

"So, like, the EMP dudes were like 'Whoa…EMP is totally gnarly, bro.' And then this Yousef dude's all, 'Chillax, bro…EMP's lame.' And then the EMP dudes are all, 'No way, bro…"

Suffice to say, Radasky and Pry say that EMP is bad and our power grid's vulnerable. Here, you go read it.

So, what's a wary, worried workshifter to do? A frantic Google Search of "emp shielding" yielded some results mentioning a device called a "Faraday Cage".

I'm intrigued.

A Faraday cage is an enclosure constructed of some conductive material, typically metal mesh, that blocks out external static electrical fields. Wikipedia says this: "In 1836, Michael Faraday observed that the charge on a charged conductor resided only on its exterior and had no influence on anything enclosed within it. To demonstrate this fact, he built a room coated with metal foil and allowed high-voltage discharges from an electrostatic generator to strike the outside of the room. He used an electroscope to show that there was no electric charge present on the inside of the room's walls."

So now, all I have to do is find – or build – a mesh enclosure big enough to hold me and my laptop.

"Great. You'll look like a gargantuan parrot in a bird cage," comes yet another voice, low and grave, sounding very much like Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn in "Spider-Man"; this is the mocking Voice of Self-Loathing. "And as soon as you shut the enclosure door, your wireless is gonna stop working, genius".

I'll show him, I thought; if a car can withstand a 600,000 volt simulated lightning strike, EMP is no big deal. I'll just bring my laptop and headset outside and sit in my 1997 Nissan Altima! Wireless internet reception AND protection from EMP.

I'll just have to get used to saying, "How wonderful it is to work out of my car!"