domesticat.net

If you can't reach me, you didn't try.

Submitted by domesticat on 3 March 2013 - 1:21pm

wfh
work

Disclosure: rant.

The article I read this morning (“How Marissa Mayer Figured Out Work-At-Home Yahoos Were Slacking Off”) infuriates me. I understand why it does; it makes me defensive because I, too, am a work-from-home employee for a tech firm. In our company’s parlance, that phrase becomes “I am WFH.” I am WFH because my company’s closest office is over a thousand miles away from me, and it would be financially and socially disastrous for me to uproot my life. Nevertheless, it’s easy to fear that my company might someday make the same decision Yahoo did.

If I want to work at Acquia (and I do) I must either be extraordinarily successful at being a WFH employee or I will have to give up my completely paid-off house and take a six-figure mortgage in either Boston or Portland.

I have what you may call “incentive.”

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It happened.

Submitted by domesticat on 11 February 2013 - 6:22pm

work

So, I can finally tell you. I got promoted.

I am moving off of the front lines, at my company, into more of a management role. I’m shifting from the badly-named tier 1 team (tier 1 at this company is FAR more than what you’d think of as “tier 1” support, probably T2 or T3 anywhere else) to a Training and Documentation Coordinator.

The question was pretty simple: how did one person in Alabama become a ticket-smashing machine while maintaining clear communication and genuine customer focus?

The follow-up question is even simpler: and how do we teach this intangible?

I have, in essence, a mission that is as singular as it is far-reaching: figure out what made me awesome at my job, even though I was never the most gifted coder or diagnostician, and transmit culture, values, and troubleshooting skills to every new employee that comes after me.

Care, feed, and garden my team.

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Hyperspace Bypass

Submitted by domesticat on 5 February 2013 - 8:01pm

Date:

21 August 2007 - 10 February 2013

Photoset:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/domesticat/sets/72157606877405925

Recipient:

Jen and Jerry

Pattern:

Strips and Curves

Level of completion:

Completed and given away

Blog entries referencing this quilt:

Some assembly required

I’ve posted a lot of projects on this site, but this one is hard — hard enough that it’s been many years in the making, and I’m only just now talking about it.

Hyperspace Bypass was my second attempt at quilting, and it was very nearly my last. It was too technically difficult for me at the time, and while I did my best, it didn’t work out the way that I wanted it to. In perfectionist terms, I knew what I had to do: I packed it up and put it away. I’ve been dodging this quilt top ever since, and it has bothered me more and more throughout the years.

I decided, late in 2012, that I needed to stop hiding this top and, perfect or not, it wasn’t doing anyone any good sitting folded away, unfinished, on a shelf. I sucked it up, pulled it out, took pictures of it, and posted it.

It’ll end up going to an old family friend, someone who has known me since I was a child.

It boggles me a little to look at photos like this one

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House plans

Submitted by domesticat on 21 January 2013 - 9:30pm

home
house

After agonizing over the idea for over a year, and fretting and wondering if it could ever work out, I’ve set a major house plan in motion today: we’ve ordered replacement flooring for the house. We’re taking the yuppie plunge, and shifting from carpeting to engineered flooring, because that’s the best quality we can get, given that our house is on a slab foundation.

So … yeah. That crazy idea is finally a thing, a real thing that we’ve now put real (ouch) money (ouch) down for. We caught the beginning-of-year sale that the local flooring shop has, and we’re paying someone to do the furniture moving and installation, but this is finally happening.

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Aperture

Submitted by domesticat on 2 January 2013 - 9:38pm

Date:

1 January 2013

Photoset:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/domesticat/sets/72157632419940808

Recipient:

John W's family

Pattern:

Half-square triangles

Level of completion:

Sewn, awaiting quilting

We’ve been doing a slow but persistent de-cluttering of our house, and I’ve been looking at lots of items in our house, asking myself “what can I toss, finish, or tidy?” I’ve been staring hard at the beautiful, yet space-gobbling, silk fabrics I’ve had sitting on my top shelf for a couple of years —

— and looking at the pile of backing fabrics I brought back from Europe that needed shelf space, realizing that if I dealt with the one-time pile, these fabrics would have a permanent place to live.

I’m on holiday this week, an enforced break away from work and stress and people and talking in preparation for a six-week stint of talking, teaching, people, and travel; I realized the one thing I wanted most was to give myself a great deal of time in my sewing room to dive into old projects and tackle things.

So far, I’ve finished the top for Delft Punk: