Musing from my brain

My plan for my home office is currently underway.  Here’s my initial thoughts:

• Taking all the current paneling that is currently covering the walls.
• Insulate,  with a vapor barrier
• Two layers of 5/8” drywall (for sound proofing the room a bit, when I work from home, I make and receive lots of phone calls.  Doesn’t need to be completely soundproof, but I think the two layers of 5/8” drywall, along with the insulation will help with the sound acoustics in the room.
• A new window.  It currently has one window, which is single pane.  I’d like to replace it with at least a double pane window like the others in my house.
• Raised floor.  Currently the floor is the concrete.  I’d like to put in a bit of a raised floor, possibly bamboo.  Secondary to the rest.
• A couple additional power outlets, on a separate circuit.  Currently the space has one power outlet.
• Different lighting.  Currently has a single bulb.  I’m thinking pot lights possibly.  I don’t usually have the lights on , but in the winter months it might be useful to have better lighting.
• Custom desk.  I’d like to build a custom desk that would hold my desktop and two monitors, my printer, my phone and working space.  Two monitors are fairly essential and I have them, just don’t have the space for them right now.
• Network wiring. I’d like to put network drops in and put my 24 port switch in my garage.  It’s quite noisy.  In the garage the noise wouldn’t be an issue.

Yes, I’ve thought about this plan quite a bit.  I’ve never done remodeling of any sort, so this is quite a project.  We’ll see what happens. 

The snows from the first snow event of 2012, dubbed Snowmaggedon 2012, are slowly melting away. It’s Friday, and I’ve been in the office only twice this week.  On Monday, before the snows began.  I was also in the office today for about 20 minutes to resolve an issue that occurred when the power went out at the office. 

Thankfully, I didn’t miss any work.  I was able to work from home thanks to a laptop, my cell phone, my bluetooth headset, my phone system at work and my VPN at work. 

All the calls were forwarded to my cell phone, so that people didn’t even know I wasn’t in the office.  I was able to use the VPN to connect to my office and access resources that aren’t available on the public internet.  All good until last evening when the power went out and the VPN machine didn’t reset itself when the power came back on.

What are some things I learned during this snow event? 

• My job can be done for the most part anywhere in the world.  This is a good thing and a bad thing.
• I need an office in my house where I can work without having to get my family to be quiet because I’m on a phone call.  It’s not fair to them. 
• Laptops and cell phones are beautiful inventions and useful for remote work.

To that end, I will be working on building out an office space in my basement come spring.  I have an office in the basement, but it currently really isn’t equipped to handle my needs.  I’ll be working on specs for the office in the near future.  Should be an interesting / fun project if my wife allows me to take it on.  We’ll see.