Dream Home office set up.....

[DallasBPF]

http://lifehacker.com/5159194/before-and-after-barren-attic-to-programmers-paradise

Check out that guys home office.... would LOVE to be able to have something like that set up.

------------------------------------
Dallas, Texas
Telecommunications Tech
CCVP, CCNA, Net+

CCNP in the works

 

[maczen]

I bet that costed a pretty penny! He never actually disclosed an amount! LoL

B Haines
CCNA R&S, ETA FOI

 

[CiscoGuy33]

Dallas,

That is very cool and makes tons of sense in this day and age!!

My sister's husband does the telecommute thing from Florida, he has a seperate office at home with seperate network, phones, fax etc. nothing like this guy but a nice setup and it beats the travel.

If you are going to do it from home - you NEED the seperate space, not the corner of the kitchen table

My work office is not as good as this one but I now have 3 19in monitors on my Dell 745, left monitor has "Start" and icons and this is where things "pop up", middle monitor is where I work, and right monotor has video feed for the main door and the print que for the "lab" printer - NO 35 page print jobs To the left of all this is another 17 inch monitor with a video feed for the main computer lab area on another computer. I have 2 other work areas in my office with 3 more 17 inch monitors, both areas are for testing and repairing things.

I wish I had that guy's setup at home but not the electric bill :-(

E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[maczen]

My networking equipment at work is spread out over approximately a football field of space and offers pretty much every aspect of communications in existence in some way, shape or form. Luckily I do not have to worry about the electric bill a Naval vessels tend to have nuclear reactors that do a pretty good job of generating electricity. LoL

B Haines
CCNA R&S, ETA FOI

 

[DallasBPF]

LOL!!

I have 4 machines active right now... 2 laptops and 2 desktops. 1 laptop is the one I am on, which is for moving around and traveling, the other is for surfin the web in vista in the living room while watching tv. 1 pc is for GNS3 and VM MS server for DNS, DHCP, ect for my lab enviroment, and then I got a new pc last night that is just purely for my CCM's 1 pub, 1 sub, and unity all runnin on the same box... Actually that last machine I just turn it on, start the servers and walk away from it and just use web interface on my laptop to get to it. But all of this just sits on my lil ole desk that gets kinda cramped with 3 mice and 3 keyboards from time to time lol... I am plannin on building out a telco rack for my routers/switches here in the near future. But then that will require rewiring parts of my house to connect to it.

------------------------------------
Dallas, Texas
Telecommunications Tech
CCVP, CCNA, Net+

CCNP in the works

 

[burtsbees]

Probably actually some 14 year old kid booting people off of Yahoo every day.

Aw, COMEON! It's a JOKE!

Burt

 

[lerdalt]

I'm going to have to show this to the wife. See if she'll let me build out the new office similar to that one.

Of course after I suggest it, I'll probably be talking to you guys once I get out of the hospital.

 

[CiscoGuy33]

Dalt,

ONLY way to sell it to the wifey is if you travel as much as that guy did or as in the case of my bro-in-law, he would leave Sunday night and get back Friday morning, so converting the guest room to an office was an easy sell

Billy,

Of course you can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard your ship or any other ship in the US Navy ...... that was my friends standard line any time we talked about the Navy, of course he WAS the weapons officer and did say that every once in a while when they pulled into port to resupply they would have about 50 Marines around his ship, but they might have just been glad they were back


E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[namesrhard2pick]

Bribe the wifey with a pair of shoes or hand bag...LOL!

 

[maczen]

That was February 24th.. and no one has heard from Lerdalt since! Good thing is that if he has been in the hospital this whole time at least he is saving a ton of gas driving to work.. LoL Next time just write her a letter with a picture and such! LoL

B Haines
CCNA R&S, ETA FOI

 

[lerdalt]

haha, I wouldn't be so lucky Billy...I work at the hospital already, they probably would expect me to keep working even from the hospital bed.

 

[silverhairb]

At least it would cut down on the commute. And since you're there anyway, why not just extend your daily work schedule to waking hours.

Weather is turning nice around here later in the week. Looks like I'm going to try to scare up a few trout in some of those nice little Missouri creeks.

[the other] Bill

 

[lerdalt]

I'll admit, there have been times when it's tempting to just find my own room. And you learn quickly if you end up in the wrong wing, it's important to not only have your name badge, but also your shoes.

Even worse, I wish I could work more of a 2nd shift there. Less people around, so easier to actually make changes on the network.

 

[CiscoGuy33]

lerdalt,

Thats the same thing my brother-in-law said - he does his IT consulting with hospitals also and about once a month he is on site, normally in the business office area but - like you said - if you wonder into the wrong area :-(

He said that he thinks it is funny when he does start a new contract (he tends to get on board for years at a time) the first thing they say they need to find him an office and he says - I've got one - in Florida Once he explains that most of the communication , even when he is at the hospital is phone or email, they agree it does not matter where the office is, and he builds a savings into the contract if he does not have to commute!!

Having a home office for many businesses is only going to increase when the "powers that be" figure out at $15 to $30 a square foot for office space - just how much they are paying when with a flip of a switch all data and phone calls can be forwarded anywhere in the world!!!

And being Cisco certified just means more work for us setting up home offices with data and VoIP etc!!!

E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[silverhairb]

From personal experience, a lot of management prefers to ave staff physically at the office. Unless there is a strong track record of unsupervised productivity, there may be pushback to telecommute.

Even with a proven record of high productivity in a telecommute role, one change of management ended the deal for me and I was once again required to report into the office (almost 120 miles round trip) every day. Fortunately, my management was in New York, I was in St. Louis. Combine that with a lot of travel and management wasn't quite sure where I was on a given day.

That was too bad because I had a home office that was quite nice and a phone system that made it hard to tell if I was in the office or not.


[the other] Bill

 

[CiscoGuy33]

Bill,
Most productivty tests show that home workers tend to get more done because they don't have the chatting at the water cooler with coworkers and aren't late to work or from lunch. They also tended to call out sick less often.

Studies also found that workers tended to "get a little more work done" after dinner on their own time.

With webcams, phone monitor systems and computer monitoring systems, supervising "home" workers can be as easy as office workeres. I know one place where they still have an office and as punishment - if production falls or some other infraction, they have to come back and report to the office for 1-3 months. Once they get the taste for the freedom and then understand it can be "pulled" it worked very well!!

I just have to wonder about the cost for the insurance company that I worked for - 2 floors in a high rent area = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[lerdalt]

It's amazing how productivity can increase from home. My office is not at the main campus, only probably 10 people in this building on a given day. When I moved out here from the main building, I realized really quickly how much more I can get done in a morning compared to an entire day at the other building.

We've also gone through with sending some transcriptionists home. The system they use can show hard numbers for how much more productive they are at home. But they also had criteria they had to meet in order to stay there. When they first started going home, they had a backlog of work. Then once they all got into the grove and the adjustment of being home, they ended up looking for work to do, or being forced to take time off work. Kind of scary sounding, but amazing for a group that used to be behind by a couple of months.

Co-worker and I have also noticed just how much more we can get done in just an hour working from home. I usually end up building a list once in awhile of all these changes I want to make, and setting a night to just rip through them.

 

[silverhairb]

I had a problem with telecommuting. When I was at the office, I knew when to push away from my desk, lock my office and go home. That doesn't happen at home. I'd get up in the morning at 6:00am, pour a cup of coffee and log on before anyone arrived. I'd push back when my wife would tell me supper was ready. Sometimes I'd need to finish some work or take care of a couple of emails. I often quit after 8:00pm, sometimes as late as 11:00pm only to start the next morning at 6:00am. I would get in serious trouble with my VP because of the hours I was keeping.

Keep in mind that for years I was the only crypto guy in the company I worked for. I was juggling a lot of projects and that was the time secure electronic commerce was getting traction. And also the time when DES was successfully attacked. A very busy time in the bankcard industry.

[the other] Bill

 

[silverhairb]

But now I'm retired and I'm doing what I want at my own pace. I think I'll go fishing Thursday. Might stay over and fish Friday. And maybe Saturday.

Do you know why I'm going fishing? Because I can.

[the other] Bill

 

[DallasBPF]

I really enjoy working from the house, spend more time with the pups, get a good run in a couple of times a week, hey I can even sneak away to see a movie during the day before the mad rush of teenagers hit =/ But I make sure everything is taken care of that needs to be taken care of. Guess that is also the joy of doing consulting work on your own, you make your own hours so long as your clients are happy. Also, I am able to set up a home lab and get in some time to prep for cert test or scenarios that I run into in the field (ie running sip and sccp on the same network)

------------------------------------
Dallas, Texas
Telecommunications Tech
CCVP, CCNA, Net+

CCNP in the works