![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Chinese Inconvenience
Dec. 23rd, 2021 06:10 pmSo, the Chinese Doom, or, as I suppose it ought be called now, the Chinese Inconvenience, may have visited me. I had about two days of sneezing, fever, and coughing, which felt more like a cold or hayfever than anything, and then today I'm more or less fine. My chief harm is a strained back from unexpectedly sneezing when I was in an awkward position, but that will pass.
I wanted to get one of the Abbott home antigen tests, but those, which were reasonably abundant and priced at $15 a month ago, are now represented only by empty shelves, with a handwritten $25 label pasted over the old one.
*****
Work, the Curse of the Drinking Man, has found me again! A few months ago I took a job with the same fellow who had me for work-from-home data entry earlier in the year. He's a property tax consultant, who helps people lower their taxes, so I'm supporting something that I believe in, which makes coming to work rather more enjoyable than if I were just getting money out of it. It's a five-person office, so they're not really at the level where they actually need a full-time IT guy, but it benefits them to have someone part-time, and on call, for when things happen. I work three days a week, most of the time looking up tax data online, and then entering it into our DB system.
My strength as an IT dude was never that I was particularly good at any one thing, but rather that I was reasonably good at a wide variety of things. A small office is a much better fit for someone like me. So far this week, I've helped the Boss make his first-ever video conference call, fixed the toilet (flush chain broke), printed out the pictures he got in an email, and solved a variety of minor user issues with computers. I'm useful, and I feel fulfilled :)
We got remarkable amounts of Christmas gifts from our clients as well - candy, and baked goods, and fruit. The whole office was just stuffed.
*****
*
I wanted to get one of the Abbott home antigen tests, but those, which were reasonably abundant and priced at $15 a month ago, are now represented only by empty shelves, with a handwritten $25 label pasted over the old one.
*****
Work, the Curse of the Drinking Man, has found me again! A few months ago I took a job with the same fellow who had me for work-from-home data entry earlier in the year. He's a property tax consultant, who helps people lower their taxes, so I'm supporting something that I believe in, which makes coming to work rather more enjoyable than if I were just getting money out of it. It's a five-person office, so they're not really at the level where they actually need a full-time IT guy, but it benefits them to have someone part-time, and on call, for when things happen. I work three days a week, most of the time looking up tax data online, and then entering it into our DB system.
My strength as an IT dude was never that I was particularly good at any one thing, but rather that I was reasonably good at a wide variety of things. A small office is a much better fit for someone like me. So far this week, I've helped the Boss make his first-ever video conference call, fixed the toilet (flush chain broke), printed out the pictures he got in an email, and solved a variety of minor user issues with computers. I'm useful, and I feel fulfilled :)
We got remarkable amounts of Christmas gifts from our clients as well - candy, and baked goods, and fruit. The whole office was just stuffed.
*****
*
