malada

My office is being deep cleaned and repainted - a thing which hasn't been done in decades, really. I've asked to keep most of the furniture but the deep yellow and dark red walls - they're getting repainted.

The whiteness... the whiteness.

I took my work laptop and monitor home with me, along with all the paperwork I usually need.

I prefer working from home. The bathroom is closer, the coffee is better, I don't have to drive and if I want to take a nap after lunch no one is going to mind or notice. During the Big Snow and the Lock Down when I was working from home I'd often take a nap after lunch. I did Monday because I have not been sleeping well.

I tend to drink less coffee at home. At work I drink coffee because I'm tired, or I'm cold, or I'm bored waiting for people to get back to me so I can finish my tasks.

I've been working from home since late December to take care of housemate. Now that they're mostly recovered I'm back in the office. It's strange being back in the windowless hole that's my office. I'm actually less productive but I'm more connected with my fellow employees - many of whom welcomed me back warmly.

They've also promised me some useful upgrades! The former inmate had two walls painted dark maroon - which I ignore - but they're offering to repaint the walls. Get rid of the maroon! Since I'm also supposed to be monitoring the air signal - four channels worth - they're *finally* going to replace the broken system that was installed ages ago. Right now I can only check one channel with a TV that *I* brought in. It was from a garage sale and cheap so I'm not complaining too hard.

In another sense, it's good to clear up a space at home that was taken up by work computers. On the down side, I'll be using up more gasoline driving to and from work. It's about 10 miles but it still adds up.

The important thing is my housemate is recovering.

Work nonsense reared it's ugly head yesterday. The Big Honking Remote Video Server barfed a few months ago and ate a bunch of our files. The operators claimed to have discovered which files got
hosed and we've dealt with the most important missing files. There's still a pile of little stuff which isn't important at the moment.

Until yesterday.

Hey! Guess what! They found another file that was missing! Lucky for us I logged into my work email on my day off and discovered the notice. I was able to remotely replace the file with something close enough to keep us on the air for the moment. I don't *mind* a little extra cash for the overtime but this is annoying. First of all - they never told us there was a server failure that ate our video files. They used sneaky language to kind of avoid telling us. It wasn't until I had to replace multiple files that I demanded to know what the heck was going on. They finally coughed up a explanation and after I bothered them some more they reluctantly gave us a list of missing files.

Apparently, those chuckleheads missed at least one.

When this system of remote video servers was introduced (I was in the Room Where It happen - but my objections and those of many engineers was ignored) I strongly suggested that we have local backups. Well, the bean counters nixed that idea although I've been keeping some backups informally. I got little support from our local engineers who either couldn't be bothered or were too busy keeping us generally on the air.

We've got new engineers now and I'm hoping to get some assistance on this. I'm also hoping that some of the other missing files are stashed away on other drives that I don't have immediate access to.

As I like to say, if you want to work in broadcasting there's something *wrong* with you.