Day 32 - Back Road Reversed

Today's new thing was small, but this effort is about getting out of my ruts (and hopefully not wearing new ones), large and small.

On my way to work, I go one of two back roads: either Nixon Road to Route 20, or Edmunds Road to Edgell Road to Route 20. Then coming home, I either come back on Edmunds, or perhaps take Edgell all the way to Framingham Center. On my way home today I realized that I never go home by way of Nixon Road. So today I did.

It's always interesting to travel a road in the opposite direction than the usual, as you see things that are hidden from the other side. I found myself not recognizing houses that from the southern approach I know very well. It took me out of my semi-automatic navigation and forced me to pay closer attention.

A nice change.

At work I also tried something new: sitting at my desk but connecting to the network via a Veizon air card and the VPN. This was triggered by being unable to lock in a network connection through my docking station and the LAN, despite my various efforts of disabling and enabling network connections, checking all the cables, undocking/docking, rebooting and throwing in a couple rounds of the hoky-poky for good measure. Finally I got a colleague to put in an IT ticket for me (since I couldn't get to the intranet to open my own).

After a meeting I had was done and I still couldn't connect, I got the air card idea. This got me through the day with only a few restrictions (certain areas aren't accessible over the VPN), which was good since IT didn't get to me until around 4 pm. Turns out when the IT staff at the client site in North Carolina were getting me connected to their network, they set my computer with a static IP address. Silly billies! This is not something I would have had any idea to look for, so I was incredibly grateful to our IT guy for figuring it out.

It also gave me a few minutes to declutter my desk, which was sorely needed. I find that when I'm feeling stressed at work my workspace goes to hell, which only increases the stress feeling. So by the end of the day I had a clear desk and a clear connection, and a clear sign that it was time to run away home.

May all of us have a better tomorrow.

-- Posted from my iPhone