Monthly Archives: June 2005

Bears! Oh my.

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I was at RiteAid this evening picking up some cold and flu medicine for Chey, and the woman at the register warned me to be on the lookout for a bear.

Yes, a bear. It turns out there was a bear down by Saginaw and Creyts Rd., which is not all that far from the RiteAid I was at. (Read about the bear sightings on the Lansing State Journal web site.)

The woman was very excited about it, and put on a pretense of being afraid about a bear running around Lansing. I say “pretense” because I think she was actually delighted that something so unusual had happened near where she lives.

Because she was so enthusiastic, I took a moment to share a bear story with her.

I remember reading a story in the Daily Mining Gazette about ten years ago about an incident when a black bear got into trouble while roaming the City of Houghton (up in the U.P.) the night before.

This bear climbed up onto the porch of a house owned by an elderly widow and cornered a small dog. The dog began barking fiercely at this bear, but the bear began advancing on the dog.

Meanwhile, the elderly woman came to the rescue. She opened the door to find a black bear menacing her pet. So, she grabbed a nearby broom and began beating the bear with it.

The bear was no doubt scared witless by this broom-brandishing old woman and lumbered off the porch and made haste down the road.

Commuting! Oh ye bane of my time! Oh ye cursed destroyer of my schedule!

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So, I’ve found that I’m gone during the workday for eleven and a half hours, when I take the bus back and forth. I leave at 6:25 AM and get back home at 6:00 PM. When taking the bus, the total commute time for the day is about two and a half hours. When I drive, it is about an hour.

All of a sudden, I really appreciate having had a home office. If I figure one hour and forty five minutes average commute time per day (some days taking the bus, some days driving), then that makes eight hours and forty five minutes per week of commuting. If I multipy that by 50 weeks of working a year, that is 437 hours and 30 minutes a year. So, over the last three years of working at home, I’ve saved 1,300 hours by not having to commute.

That’s a lot of time. And gas.

So. I have a job for which I need to commute, and so am faced with the prospect of spending lots and lots of time between here and there over the coming years.

Telecommuting would be an option, except that my job is to train people in person. So, for the most part, telecommuting is not an option.

Another option is to get a car that I could use for commuting. That would cut out the more time-consuming option of taking the bus.

Another option is moving closer to work, so that I can walk or so that the commute is considerably shorter (fifteen minutes would be nice). Walking has a benefit that commuting in a bus or car just doesn’t have, for me anyway. At least with walking I get some exercise, and it isn’t as costly as driving.

Hmmm.

What a change

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I’m at the end of my first week at this new job. Other than basic logistics (parking, orientation, setting up voicemail, etc.), my time has been spent mostly in classes and preparing to teach classes.

So far, I’ve sat in on Access Database Design, Fundamentals of Web Development, and I’m in the middle of a full day class on PowerPoint 2003. I have two goals: First, to learn from the teaching style of the instructors, and, second, to get a sense of what these courses cover, as I’ll probably be teaching them eventually.

Speaking of teaching, I have my first class on Monday: Excel 2003 – Level 1. I’ve spent about a day and a half looking over the material and visualizing how the class will go.

One really big difference is that my day is much more consistent. My job, as I understand it, is to teach technology courses. So, managing a business, working with clients, prospecting for new work, and actually managing projects and doing the design, development, and consulting work are all no longer things I do.

I hope that after I get more class-time, I’ll feel comfortable shifting my focus away from prepping for classes and be able to focus some on developing new courses or refining existing ones. At least something to add some variety to the work. Who knows what else could be done? Well, my coworkers most likely – my concerns are so short-term right now I can barely see past the next couple weeks.