Working from Home

This morning I sat at a cafe in Tokyo eating breakfast and looking out the window at all of the people coming from trains and heading to work. On Monday evening I got to visit one of my work colleagues that lives here in Tokyo for dinner. This morning I realized that most everyone here lives in a tall building, takes a train to another tall building, works in the tall building, takes a train home at the end of the day, only to repeat the process the next day.

Think of the infrastructure required to move everyone around and how much smaller it could be if we didn't require so many people to work in an office every day. Furthermore, think of how much cost savings there would be if you didn't require office space for everyone.

I work from home on Friday's. I chose that day of the week as it allows me to spend more consecutive time at home. Remember that I fly to work on Monday mornings and don't return home until Thursday evenings. Let's assume I have 5 people on my team and we all decide that each of us will work from home one day per week. Someone works from home on Monday, someone else on Tuesday, etc. My team no longer needs 5 work spaces at the office, we now only need 4. Of course this does have the problem that we never have the entire team in the office at any given time. However that is a problem that can be easily solved. A number of companies don't assign permanent work spaces and just provide the technology so people can move around at will.

As I sat at breakfast this morning, I wondered how many of these people really need to go to an office anyways. There are a number of jobs where people only go to an office because of tradition. There are some forward thinking companies that allow people to do their jobs from home. I have a neighbor that used to work in JetBlue's call center. She woke up every morning, logged into the system to say she was working, and took phone calls all day long from the comfort of her home. At the end of the day, she logged out of the system and stopped receiving phone calls. If a manager felt the need to monitor her work, a number of key indicators exist: number of calls answered, average length of calls, average time between calls, etc. Even then if the manager felt my neighbor wasn't doing a good job, the manager could listen in on the calls.

Call centers should be small and everyone should follow the telecommuting principle. My daughter used to work for one and she was required to go in every day. She hated it. Eventually she quit and took a different job. Now the company needs to retrain someone else and while it probably doesn't cost very much, it isn't free.

There are a number of other jobs that could offer telecommuting as an option. Technology is advancing to the point where simulated face-to-face meetings are getting better and less expensive. WebEx and GotoMeeting are a step in the right direction but they could be greatly improved simply by improving their interface for allowing multiple cameras and screens to be used. That would allow for people's faces to be viewed along with whiteboards and presentation materials.

I am a manager and feel like I need to be in the office to monitor what is happening with my team. Perhaps I am the one that needs to take a step back and figure out how my job responsibilities can be streamlined through telecommuting. I have figured out how to make 1 day per week work. My next step may be as simple as figuring out how to make it 2.

There's an App for That

Yesterday I attended a conference in Tokyo and one of the subjects included mobile phone applications. While you can generally use a web browser to access a number of useful websites, some of them provide smartphone applications to custom tailor the user interface experience to better fit the small screen sizes. My personal preference is to use the phone's browser instead of cluttering my phone with a bunch of apps that I rarely use. This places me in a specific category of users. The point of the presentation showed how much you can learn about a person based on their smartphone app usage.

The thing that I found interesting about the presentation is how accurate of a picture can be painted about you simply based the smartphone apps you use. Similarly that same information can be gathered from the websites you visit and how you use your computer.

For most of us, this isn't a big deal as we don't really use our computers for nefarious purposes. For others, this is rather bothersome. Fortunately the examples provided in yesterday's presentation were used to categorize users in to various demographic groups for ad sales purposes. However imagine if someone were to use that information to deny insurance benefits or keep you from getting a new job. It leads me to believe that we all need to be rather careful of our digital footprint. After all, someone might discover you have a clinical addiction to chocolate-chip cookies.

A Tough Thanksgiving

This has been a very tough Thanksgiving this year. It started with . . . never mind. This is the time of the year that I should really be focusing on what I am thankful for instead of worrying about what went wrong. So here is a small representation of things I am thankful for right now:

1. I'm thankful that the mountains got 14 inches of news snow the day before Thanksgiving. I love to ski but I also know that we have had a couple of really bad winters and the Great Salt Lake is getting smaller. I hope we will have a few months of unnaturally wet weather that continues to fill the lake so I can sail my boat more in the summer. Extra powder in the mountains is always nice.
2. I'm thankful that I got to spend the week with my family that loves to have as much fun as I do.
3. I'm thankful that even though the ski resorts in Utah are not yet open (Snowbird opens tomorrow) I still got to ski every day. Sure I had to hike up the hill, but I have the correct equipment that makes it more fun than a chore.
4. I'm thankful for a fun job in technology that pays me to do what most others consider play. About the only job cooler than mine would be an astronaut and those are very difficult to get.
5. Finally, I'm thankful that even though I had a busy week, I got everything done that needed to be completed and can look forward to a wonderful Christmas season.

Hopefully you have lot's to be thankful for and are looking forward to one of the most pleasant times of the year. Now pray for more snow.

Black Friday

Tomorrow is Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season officially begins. As for me, I will refrain from shopping tomorrow. Instead I plan to spend the day outside and will officially be supporting REI's #OptOuside movement. I will ski in the morning and then spend the afternoon on my sailboat. No, the lifts are not running in Utah and so I will have to hike up the hill in order to get some turns in.

Unfortunately I have two daughters that work retail and both are being asked to come to work this evening even though it is Thanksgiving. They will come home well after midnight and then have to head back to work tomorrow to work the Black Friday specials. So if you are fighting the crowds in the stores tomorrow, please be nice to the salespeople. They are someone's son or daughter who don't get to spend time with the family so you can get a good shopping deal.

The Achilles Heel of the PlayStation 4

Last night I practiced my guitar as my daughter came in and asked if I wanted to watch a movie. Being in the middle of a song, I wanted to finish it before hanging out so I told her to get started without me. She headed down to the TV room and booted up our other PS4. The only problem is that I was in the middle of my song using Rocksmith on the console in my bedroom. The PlayStation 4 does not allow you to be logged in at the same time on 2 different physical machines and that is its Achilles heel.

I had to laugh as my daughter yelled up a sincere, "Sorry," when she heard me tell my wife why I suddenly stopped practicing my guitar. Last night was not the first time we encountered this problem and probably won't be the last. My daughter could have used the dedicated DVD player or our PlayStation 3 but prefers to use the PS4 as it does so better than any movie player available today.

There is a very simple solution to getting booted from my PS4: create a user on it in the TV room specifically for watching movies. I could even name it something like "Movie Watcher." That way when someone else in the house wants to watch a movie, I get kicked off my console in the bedroom.

Keeping the Dog Company

It is a Saturday evening and I find myself alone at home in Utah with the dog. My wife is at her sister's visiting with her family and so I can do whatever I want. I find my list of choices almost endless. There is a large library of video games still in the shrink-wrapped plastic. I could also sit down and watch a movie without having to get consensus from the family. I have a $20 bill in my wallet and can even go out to see a movie if I wanted.

When I left the family gathering this afternoon to bring my daughter home so she could go to work, the first thing I did was pull out my guitar and practice it for 2 hours. I have never been musically inclined but thought that if I could play an instrument, I would play all the time. Now that I have taken up the guitar, thanks to Rocksmith, I do play all of the time and it is very rewarding. I only stopped to make myself dinner but that may be something I continue later this evening.

I also have a PlayStation VR that I have not really spent much time using. My youngest son enjoys it and often invites his college friends over to play. They love Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. One person will play the game while everyone watches. It is set up in small 15-minute mini games that work for a  group of friends. The person playing will get startled and jump, causing everyone to laugh. They can play for hours on end. I told my coworkers about this and they suggested I get Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. It is a party game that runs on Windows and Mac as well as the PlayStation VR. I have yet to purchase it, but it does sound like fun. In the mean time, I have about 6 or 7 other VR games I could play. Yes, some of them are still in the shrink wrap.

When you think about it, most of our lives today are amazing. It is a Saturday evening and my biggest concern is how to keep myself and the dog entertained. I am not sitting in a fox hole helping to fight some war. My next meal is already in the fridge and so I am not out hunting it or plucking it from the ground. When the house gets a little cold, a thermostat senses it and turns on the heat so I don't have to chop wood or keep a fire burning. Oh the choices I have for the evening and how I am glad I am not having to take care of one of the basic necessities of life.

Video Game Review: Sniper Ghost Warrior 2

Back in April I finished the Sniper: Ghost Warrior and wrote a review. I've had the second version for several months now and finally got around to playing it last week as I wanted a quick game to get through before the Thanksgiving holiday. The two games are very similar in that you are a US Marine sniper sent on a number of missions. Some of them involve sneaking around without getting caught while others require you to shoot people from a very long distance.

As I have mentioned before, I enjoy playing first-person shooters and so I had fun playing this game from City Interactive. As with the first version of this game, it is not a triple-A title and so don't expect a lengthy story or overly complex action. The maps are fairly simple and the 6 or so hours it takes to play the game feel about right for this title. They did do a great job on the scenery and the only glitch I noticed in the game engine is when it saves your progress to disk. That didn't interfere with the game play though. You should be able to find this for a very inexpensive price. I played it on my PlayStation 3 and most of those games can be found in the $5 bin at Walmart or Best Buy.

The game has an ESRB rating of M for Mature due to graphic violence and strong language. I played it alone on my boat and so nobody got offended by the language. However if I had tried to play this at home, headphones would probably have been a requirement. I recommend this game to any young adult that enjoys first-person shooter games and needs an inexpensive Christmas present. I paid next to nothing for my copy and would not recommend paying more than $7 for the game.

Video Game Review: Far Cry 3

Recently I finished playing Far Cry 3 on my PlayStation 3 console. I found a really cheap copy that included Far Cry 2 and Far Cry Blood Dragon. I have yet to play the other two games but interestingly enough, I have played some of Far Cry 4 on my PS4. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I thought I would go back and see if there is any tie into the game before. Nope, you can play each game in any order as they don't rely on each other at all.

Before starting the game I did review a few online guides. The game has an ESRB rating of M for Mature. One of the reasons is because of nudity and that's not something I want to see when I play video games. I read that there really only is nudity at the end if you make a specific choice. They lied. There is another section in the game with some brief nudity. The M rating also applies to language and a lot of violence.

I finished playing Red Dead Redemption and really enjoyed that style of game. I tried a number of other games but couldn't find anything else I enjoyed nearly as much. Fortunately I stuck with Far Cry 3 long enough to discover that it is an open-world game where you can try to stick to the main story or go off and do other things just like Red Dead Redemption. I have to say that I really enjoyed Far Cry 3 and enjoyed playing all the way through the game. I spent about 10 weeks on the game. Remember that I only play about 3 nights a week for 1 to 2 hours and so it took me a lot of calendar time to complete it but not a lot of total time.

Far Cry 3 is published by Ubisoft and I have found myself playing a lot of their games lately. I got my copy of the game for $1 and recommend it if you are looking for an inexpensive game for an adult video gamer still playing games on the previous generation of consoles.