Adulting – Page 8 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Tech workers rejoice! Kickstarter votes to unionize.

On February 18th, Kickstarter became the first well known tech company to unionize (article here). As somebody whose professional career has always been in technology, I rejoiced, as I’m sure many others did.

I find it interesting that trigger that pushed Kickstarter’s employees to unionize was the decision to cancel a campaign, rather than working conditions. Typically, trade unions engage in collective bargaining related to wages, benefits, and working conditions, rather than a management decision on satire. And that’s where I would see a benefit to unions for tech employees.

As a tech worker, with one exception, I have always been a salaried (or “exempt” – from overtime) worker. While union workers in the private sector are typically paid more, that’s not what I would look for from a union – tech workers are typically well-paid. But we are paid the same whether we work a 40-hour week, a 60-hour week, or an 80-hour week.

What if you work a 30-hour week, you ask? Well, in that case, you’re expected to use vacation time. But those extra 20 or 40 hours a week… are effectively unpaid. And they’re common… ask your friends in IT how many hours they work each week. Pause while they check their phone for the latest work e-mail, because we are always connected now. (But they’re not in the office, it doesn’t really count, right?)

If you’re lucky, you might be given a “free” vacation day to make up for the overtime, like when I worked an entire weekend for a system launch and got… one day. Or that 80-hour work week… no, wait, I received no days off or financial recompense for those extra 40 hours. And that was the beginning of 18 consecutive days in the office during a “hell project.”

As a disclaimer, the company I work for now is awesome in allowing employees to balance work and life, so I’m definitely not complaining about my current position. But management at many companies forgets that we are, in fact, employee humans, who need the time off, particularly in positions where we’re expected to be mentally engaged most of the time. I can assure you, my programming wasn’t up to par by the time I hit my twelfth hour at work, and I usually spent some time the next morning reviewing my code wondering what in the world I had been thinking.

I think Kickstarter unionizing is a good first step. Who’s next?

Setting the mood with music

Music is all around us. There’s the hum of the furnace pushing air into the house, the slight rattle as something tumbles in the dryer, the percussive beat to the cat jumping on the counter, and the subsequent crash of a drying eggshell shattering on the floor.

In January, I posted a song on Facebook each day as the first song of the day. These ranged from silly (Mahna Mahna) to fun (Que Te Pasa) to heart-wrenching (Empty Chairs at Empty Tables). My qualifier was that I post the first song I sang – even if just a snippet – on that day. The song itself didn’t necessarily set the mood, starting the day singing is always a good thing.

And assortment of radio stations on Pandora

Some mornings I start by walking on the treadmill; on those days, my first song was more likely to come from Pandora. As you can see from the screenshot, that doesn’t narrow it down much… my stations include Disney, Broadway, 80’s music in English and Spanish, along with some other odd mixes.

At work, if I have any music on, it’s usually classical; I find it hard to focus on working if I want to sing along. In the spring, the music selection will probably be open windows and chirping birds. But for now, there’s snow on the ground and I can’t hear the cardinals at the bird feeder through the closed windows and the humming furnace.

Blending hobbies: crochet and karate

Sometimes it’s fun to blend my hobbies. Over the years, I’ve crocheted assorted images into pillows or towels, and even coasters with Space Invaders aliens. You can see some of them here. Some of the fandom-related items have appeared in art shows at local conventions, looking for new homes.

The karate ones have only been created as gifts and donations. I carry a crocheted karate towel in my sparring bag, and a matching one was donated to the raffle prizes at the 2016 World Championships. (I have no idea who it went home with.) A karate scarf I made with all of our belt colors was auctioned off at a holiday party a few years ago.

Blue pillow with white figure doing a flying sidekick to the right; purple pillow with a white figure doing flying sidekick to the left

When Eagle Academy, the karate school I attend, announced that they were going to have a Casino Night with raffle prizes and a silent auction, I crocheted a pair of karate pillows with flying sidekick figures. The Casino Night (21 and over, of course) is a fundraiser to raise awareness about human trafficking. It’s paired with a Parents’ Night Out event, so kids can play in the awesome gymnastics area across the hall while parents play games in the dojang.

If you’re free tomorrow night (Saturday, February 1st, 2020), considering attending the Casino Night in Aurora from 6:30-9:30pm. The address is 881 Shoreline Drive.

Goals we set are goals we get.

We’ve reached a new year – 2020 – and as I do each year, I take the time to look back on my victories from last year and the goals I’m setting for next year. I realized belatedly that a couple of my goals related to organizing around the house didn’t meet the SMART requirement – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based. Specifically, they weren’t really measurable – “organize the shelves” doesn’t have a defined end.

I completed two project management courses as part of my perpetual goal of maintaining my certification; I started a third, which I should finish early this year. I added a new garden bed and grew delicious strawberries in it, had some delightful kale and pea crops, and lost every squash plant in the garden to hungry woodchucks. This year’s garden plan (still in progress) includes planting squash in the higher bed, where the woodchucks are less likely to eat the plants before they have fruit.

My old shed is gone, I’ve re-used most of the bricks that we found behind it, and am expecting to plant sunflowers where it used to be. It’ll be a while before that planting happens, since we’re barely into winter at this stage. My first seed catalog has arrived, so I do expect to have a plan done by the end of this month, but I don’t expect to put any seeds in the ground – not even kale or spinach – until at least late March.

I deferred a couple goals to this year, such as re-doing the master bedroom closet and testing for my hapkido black belt. I added other goals that replace them, at least in terms of me having time to accomplish everything – I think I started 2019 with 11 annual goals, and I finished with a list of 15. I’m starting 2020 with 20 annual goals and 12 weekly ones, which include a minimum number of German lessons on Duolingo each week and using something from the freezer (clearing out old harvests well before the next one needs freezer space).

What are your goals for the year?

Pedestrian thoughts

I had the opportunity recently to walk in two rather different environments. (Three if you count walking near home, but the amount of traffic is significantly lighter here.) I rarely drive in downtown Chicago; I prefer to take the train in, and if the weather is nice, walk to wherever I’m going.

If you’ve ever walked in downtown Chicago, you know there’s strength in unity… the larger the group of pedestrians is, the more likely that turning cars will have to wait, instead of them pushing through the intersection and making people on foot wait. Yes, in theory, pedestrians have the right of way in a crosswalk. It’s a lovely theory and doesn’t usually hold up to drivers’ impatience.

Imagine my surprise then, walking in Carlsbad, California and having drivers defer to me, a lone pedestrian in a crosswalk. This happened multiple times, so I don’t think it was just a fluke. The weirder part about it was that the turning cars stopped even if I wasn’t to their side of the crosswalk yet, waiting until I was clear before taking the turn.

I was, as ever, delighted not to get run over while out walking, and would love it if the drivers here picked up similar habits. The ease of walking in Carlsbad certainly explains how I managed to walk 18 miles in my week there. Of course, the warmer weather helped too.

Welcome to NaNoWriMo

What? You haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo? And what’s with the weird caps distribution? NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s an insane endeavor to write 50,000 words in a 30 day month in that novel you’ve always said you’re going to write. That’s just 1,667 words a day… if you break it down into bite-sized pieces, it seems more feasible. There’s no editing during this month, just write, write, write.

Unless you’re writing for younger readers, 50,000 isn’t a full novel. But it’s a start, and it’s proof that you can do it. They even have a Young Writers Program for kids who want to participate, with goals set to appropriate levels.

I have only completed NaNoWriMo once. No, you can’t read it, it definitely needs re-writing. I was working part-time and barely managed it, what with everything else I had going on at the time. Yet here I am, poised for the start of November, ready to try again while working full-time, parenting, attending karate classes, and helping to run a convention.

I have a new story idea, minimal prep behind it, and an exercise bike specifically designed to hold a laptop. With the temperature dropping, I don’t expect to get outside much for Pokémon Go or Wizards Unite, so I’d best make good use of my bike time for writing.

Will I succeed? I honestly have no idea. But if I don’t try, I have no chance of success at all.

Demolition!

One of my goals for the year (that I didn’t list here) was to demolish and replace the shed that came with my house. We’ve known since we moved in that it would have to go eventually – the base board is supported by a few bricks rather than a foundation, the doors didn’t quite fit together when they closed, and one side of the roof had retained moisture to the point where it grew mushrooms along with other molds. And that wasn’t the side where water dripped in!

When I opened the shed in the spring, I discovered that somebody had been living in it over the winter, courtesy of a hole dug through the far wall. This, on top of the many hard to spot hornet or yellow jacket nests (all abandoned by this point) was the tipping point. The yellow jackets were a problem the first summer here, leading to this little tidbit one morning:

“So this morning, I took a big bucket of soapy water outside after layering up really well and proceeded to totally whiff when flinging the water at the shed door. I aimed too low. On the plus side, I didn’t disturb any of them, so I was able to refill the bucket and try again.”

The yellow jackets had built nests on the inside of both shed doors, which made retrieving gardening supplies … nerve-wracking. Having discovered them just after a trip to Menard’s, I looked online for options other than bug spray, and found out that soapy water adheres to their wings and prevents them from flying, even once it’s dry. And the water dissolves the nest.

Now, three summers later, we finally reached the demolition stage. The upper left photo shows the roof after I started peeling shingles off – the wood was damaged enough it was breaking during the process. The upper right photo was taken during the fun process involving a pry bar and sledgehammer, with a controlled approach to make sure the shed fell into the garden rather than the neighbor’s fence. The bottom two photos are the remnants, with the smaller pieces lined up against the wall waiting for the city’s semi-annual trash day; the big pieces will take a couple people to move. The base board will come up as well – there’s a rotted section just before the bricks.

The bricks? Yes, those came with the house too, hidden behind the shed… who knows how long they’ve been stored there. I have plans for them, though not for the rolled up fencing that’s entangled with raspberries at the moment.

Home maintenance decisions

Owning a home thrusts you into a constant process of making difficult decisions. When a problem starts, do you fix it yourself or call a professional? Do you repair it or replace it?

At times, that decision is obvious. When I bought this house, I knew the windows would need replacing. None of them were broken, they were just an older model of casement windows that weren’t particularly good at insulating the house. Newer windows are all double-paned, and the frames are meant to last longer. Additionally, the casement windows were a pain to open – I had to remove the screen, unlatch the window, push it open, then put the screen back in.

This summer, my dryer stopped spinning. Looking at the notes from my home inspection (always get one before buying a house!), it stated that the washer and dryer were dated and should be replaced at some point. While I debated between a replacement and repair, I improvised a stand for my clothesline and started air drying my clothes again. The dryer has since been repaired – the belt had broken, which isn’t a terrible expensive repair – and when I had my water softener serviced for the year, that guy commented that you can’t get durable machines like my washer and dryer anymore. That made me feel better about my decision to repair them.

On the other hand, I have a wooden door out the side of my attached garage with a crack in it. And while it’s neat to look at the light shining through it and make Doctor Who references, come winter it will reduce the efficiency of the heater in the garage. The garage is home to my washer, dryer, well pressure tank, full-size freezer, hot water heater, and boiler, plus occasionally my car, so maintaining a proper temperature in the winter is somewhat essential. So that’s on the replacement list.

Meanwhile, the lock on my front door just needed a bit of WD-40 when the key wouldn’t go all the way in. It’s a never-ending process of updating the house, the garden, or both, along with deciding whether to do it yourself or hire a professional.

Customer service matters.

I had two experiences recently that reminded me how a good customer service experience results in repeat business. In both cases, the business will be infrequent (I hope) due to the nature of the services they provide.

Last week, I had my annual eye exam. I went somewhere new – closer to home, even walkable when I have the time to spare. I found the location through my vision insurance website; the fact that is probably the closest eye doctor to my house is a bonus.

When I called to schedule, Park Family Eye Care was able to get me in the same week. While I appreciate that, it’s more lucky timing than customer service… they happened to have openings in the near future. I went through the usual pre-tests with an assistant, and then the vision test with the doctor. After a brief chat with the doctor, he walked me back out to the waiting area.

Anybody who’s been to the big chains knows this is where you normally get handed back to an assistant, as you agonize over which frames to pick and they upsell you on as many things as they can. That didn’t happen. In fact, the doctor helped me select frames, adding on just the extras needed based on our discussion. He then wrote up the itemized bill, took the appropriate measurements for the glasses, and only when that was done, passed me off to the front desk for payment.

In a similar vein, I had my dryer serviced this week. To be more specific, my dryer stopped spinning a couple weeks ago; fortunately the weather is nice for drying on a clothesline. I logged onto Next Door and asked for recommendations, hoping that I wouldn’t need to buy a new dryer quite yet. I received several recommendations, including one from a person who had experienced the same issue; I went with her recommendation and called West Suburban Appliance Repair.

When I called to schedule, I was told the diagnostic visit fee would be applied to the repair if I opted to repair the dryer with them. That was a good start.

The repairman assessed the problem fairly quickly – a broken belt – and happened to have a replacement for my make and model in his truck. He informed me of the cost before even checking his truck for the belt, then verified that I was approving the work at that price after confirming that he had the necessary piece. I know, that all seems super reasonable, but sometimes repairs around the house end up with surprise costs.

What caught my attention was the details at the end of his visit. Instead of just handing me the work order and running my credit card, he explained the details of the work order, including the manufacturer’s warranty on the part and the company’s warranty on the work. He literally went through every piece of information written on the work order… I’m not sure I’ve seen anybody do that before. He’s certainly at the top of my list to call if I need appliance repairs… though I hope not to.

Ethics and home ownership

When you buy a home, at least in this country, some assumptions are made by the bank and your neighbors, and to some extent, by yourself. Your neighbors assume you will maintain the property, particularly the visible bits, in a way that will maintain or increase the value of the home. In some areas, this is enforceable – the city will warn you if you fail at certain maintenance work, such as keeping your lawn and weeds below a specified height, or unrepaired parts of the exterior that are unsightly. More so if your house is in a HomeOwners Assocation (HOA); their rules are stricter.

I don’t have a problem with that concept, it seems a fair part of homeownership and belonging to a neighborhood. I managed to avoid buying a house with an HOA, though I did look at a couple when I was house-hunting. (That was not the deciding factor.) The exterior maintenance I’ve done has really been for my own comfort – the big projects have been improving the ventilation to the attic, adding insulation, and replacing the windows. One of my long term projects is to replace the siding on the house. The current siding is an older style which is no longer produced, so it needs to be fully replaced when it goes.

And therein, we come to the discussion of ethics. Last summer, a hail storm hit the area fairly hard. A good chunk of the neighborhood replaced roofing, siding, or both, as a result of the storm. In the first week after the storm, I had over a dozen companies stop by with business details, offering to inspect both my roof and siding for damage. One was the company that installed my soffits, gutters, and attic insulation; I let them check for damage. After a cursory walk around the house, they reported that they found no new damage.

Here were are, nine months after the incident, and I’m still getting the occasional drive-by visit from companies that want my insurance’s business of repairing the roofing and siding. This last one bugged me. Their flyers – pre-printed – said “YOUR ALUMINUM SIDING and/or ROOF HAVE HAIL DAMAGE! YOUR INSURANCE WILL PAY US TO REPLACE IT WITH BRAND NEW VINYL SIDING!!”. The flyer ends with (still in all caps, and really, I have limits to how much of that I want to see) “You’ve been paying insurance your whole life, now is the time to finally get something back!!” The guy at the door reinforced this – he told me that if he could find even one section that appeared to be damaged from the storm, the insurance would pay to replace all of it.

I’m all for using insurance when something happens that requires it. Health insurance covered the birth of a child and my appendectomy, both of which would have been painfully expensive without insurance. My car insurance came through for me after my accident. But I’m not going to abuse my insurance simply because I want new siding, knowing that there wasn’t significant damage to the siding from that particular storm. I’m also not going to pick a company that reminds me of ambulance chasers to do the work.