What is your company doing about working from home, travel, and meetings?
BIM360 + Revit
Microsoft 365/Sharepoint/Teams/OneNote
BSD Speclink Cloud
We have travel restrictions and preparing software solutions (listed above) to support working remotely/home.
They posted this yesterday:
Our Employees and their families are important to us and we want everyone to remain safe and healthy.
With our technology and ability to work from virtually anywhere we want to encourage caution and healthy habits.
Please consider
Using Skype or Conference Calls in place of team meetings.
Limiting or cancelling site meetings all together at medical facilities if possible. Our clients will understand.
Postponing all company travel use our technology to meet and work instead
Working from home if you are not feeling well, or have sick family members at home, or have concerns about public transportation.
Keep this in mind as well:
Stop Shaking hands
Clean door handles and regularly wash your hands every hour on the hour
Disinfect surfaces of your desk, phone, doorknobs regularly
Increase ventilation by keeping doors and windows open or adjusting air conditioning
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO): https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
I was at a CSI Product Fair in Los Angeles tonight. 60 exhibitors registered but only 30 showed up. We usually get 100+ attendees, but tonight there were only 20. In addition to the panic, we have the biggest rain of the year in sunny California.
As far as the work situation is concerned, it’s me, my wife and a dog.
Assigned reading in Seattle: all the Fox Fire books to allow the reconstruction of society after the collapse…except the libraries are closed.
We’d burn witches but 1/2 of them are elected officials and we like them so that’s out.
I personally have Nalley’s Chili, Spam, a carton of Clorox wipes and 16,000 rolls of toilet paper (don’t know why but everyone else was grabbing some, so I did) See my facebook page for photo.
Oh and I almost forgot! A growler of Hazy IPA guaranteed to stop any virus because viruses are not hip enough to drink Hazy IPAs. (I had to get a special permission slip because I don’t have a man bun and I’m over 30)
PS: We’ve invited Donald Trump to Seattle so we can shake his hand and give him a big wet kiss!
As specifiers we should come out of this ok. We’ve been practicing social distancing for most of our careers.
More seriously though, my office has been encouraging those who can to work from home. Non-essential travel and meetings have been canceled. I’ve found that my connection to the files on my office’s servers is better if I do a remote desktop connection to my computer in the office from my home computer than if I bring my work computer home and VPN into the office network.
VPN is inherently slow, because every bit of data has to go back and forth to do anything, whereas, RDP (Remote Desktop Program) only sends the IMAGE of the data going back and forth, so it is significantly faster to use if you have a dedicated computer in you office to connect to from your external pc, laptop, tablet, whatever.
I have a standard PC desktop at my office, and I use a Macbook Pro laptop everywhere else. I use RDP constantly, so it basically looks like I am running Windows on my Mac, but I’m not. This allows me to text using iMessage and all my Mac applications are live and running simultaneously. Works great…provided that you have a decent network connection. No matter what though, it is much faster than VPN.
faster but not encrypted…but if that doesn’t matter then …enjoy. Of course I live in Ballard(seattle) and have super fast download speeds and pretty good upload. so I’m happy with my company’s VPN
We’ve been told as soon as there’s one confirmed case in the building (high-rise multi-tenant) the building’s closed. Those of us who can work remotely will, but those who can’t are either stuck using their PTO or get to file for unemployment. Many are already voluntarily working remotely.
Our VPN is faster than most, but we shall see how it handles all the added traffic.
Office closed today for cleaning. Foreseeing this, I bought and installed a docking station at home: now I can use my two home monitors with my company laptop. Today started rough: we have two factor verification for company sites, and both the two factor password system and the VPN had problems. Once that got fixed, my access to Bluebeam Studio crashed. Office is reopening tomorrow. We also have to get special permission to travel to any client site, including driving. I just received authorization to go on site tomorrow. Interesting times..
Something tells me that many facility managers, including Dan’s, above, just don’t get why it is that businesses are closing all over the country. The idea that Dan will be “safe” because the janitors came through and cleaned things is so far from reality that it’s hard to comment on. If just one of Dan’s workers who has been exposed to, but is not showing symptoms of, the virus comes to work and hangs out at the water cooler, puts their lunch in the fridge, makes some copier copies, uses the restroom, shares some jokes with coworkers at the end of the day, and goes home, those coworkers may very well take Dan’s virus home with them and unknowingly give it to their families who think they are safely isolated. That’s what exponential spreading of a virus with no known vaccination is all about. Message to Dan: 1) Read about this thing. 2) Please stay home.
I just read per CDC that gestation period is from 5 to 16 days which means that people are contagious for up to two weeks prior to showing symptoms.
Any company that still has doors open without having a good reason (such as food stores perhaps?) should reassess their priorities. Perhaps their employees should reassess the commitment they feel towards their employers.
Just. Stay. Home. The sooner we all stay home, the sooner we can start re-building.
Our local library closed, which is a real issue, since many people rely on the library for internet access. Schools are closed and families without internet, or computers, have no means for students to practice the recommended online learning.
Additionally, with “social distancing” in effect, access to books becomes more important. Personally, I can only take so much TV. Unfortunately not all library books are available in ebooks. I am hoping they setup “curbside pickup” for books that have been reserved online. That should be possible to do without endangering anyone.
Ellis, Scribd just announced they will make their ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines free for 30 days for anyone without a credit card commitment. The Libby free app through the public library system also has audio books in addition to ebooks. Hope that helps.
that’s great to hear. Unfortunately as 1. I work from home and work has not stopped and 2. I’m a bit of a bibliophile (book hoarder) I’m going to have no problem finding something to read. Is it wrong to walk thru my library stroking the spines of the books whispering “my precious, my precious”? sounding like something between Gollum/Smeagol and Peter lorre.
Ellis: Our neighborhood has started a “community library”. Take one. Leave one. Whatever anyone needs. It is a few boxes in front of someone’s house and promoted on Nextdoor. Maybe something like that would work and be a community building thing also
Marc;
My fantasy home is one on Capital Hill, with abasement tunnel to the Library of Congress. Of course, in my fantasy I have unlimited access to the LoC and I just shuffle over every morning (in my slippers with a cup of tea). I then proceed to roam the stacks selecting books to read. usually at that point I then wake up and have to go to work. 