The work behind closed doors

Looks like I might be getting an actual office of my own at last. Granted, its a bit of a small office of sorts, but an office just the same. Over the many years of working in IT, I've been in a Cube environment all of this time, but this might change really soon.

The past 11 years have been the same as always, but lately a progression towards real walls of sorts has been in the making. The current IT department has pretty much been a big open room, from the time I first joined them. So open at first, it was like an island of connected desks with only a few very minor walls to divide us up.

This changed though with a few higher walls and that created some Cubes for a few of us. I found myself facing one of those huge cube walls, but with a bit of an open environment to my back. So half of our department needed walls it seemed, to help us cut down on some of these distractions it seems.

Well, the distractions haven't gone away and in a lot of cases, we now have many more distractions and so the answer to cut down on these distractions is to build real walls and install doors. We are looking at creating six offices; measuring 10 x 7 or 7 x 10, depending on how you look at things.

I'm trying to picture how this is going to be when its done, we'll have a walkway down the middle of a decent size room, that is pretty much cube areas now, and so later on it will look like a long hallway, that has six private offices for us.

I'm looking forward to this really, the thought of a private office to work in is awesome sounding. I think a cozy little 10 x 7 room with my own door that I can shut is just what I really need. I just hope its cost effective and the right decision to make in the end.

Some of the past cube areas I've had were not to bad, some were quite roomy really and fairly private. I'm not sure if we have larger cube walls or even normal walls, to help make our areas more private cube areas, I think that could even cut down on some of the current distractions.

So looking towards full walls and a real door is what might be coming my way instead. I do feel I can get a bit more done, when I tend to be more on my own at times though. Don't get me wrong here, I love team work and I work well with others I think. I just feel at times it can be much better and I can be more creative with less distractions in our area.

The past couple of weeks I found myself snowed in and thanks to our VPN, I was able to find a quite place at home and get a bunch of work stuff done from home. Back at work, you have people coming and going all the time, add in the water cooler talk, plus hearing every ones daily phone conversations, and much more with seven of us in semi open work environment. Its no wonder that I find myself spending most of my time with headphones on and trying to tune as much out as I can.

Well not for much longer, if the plans for walls and doors go through. I'll find myself strolling into work and making my way into my own private IT Cell, I mean small private office and I'll simply shut my door to get things done. I can continue to Skype the others in IT like always and hopefully find some inner peace at last, from suddenly working in a distraction free zone at last.

Or... I can pray for many more Snow days here in Texas or other reasons to keep me working from home instead at times.

Do You Wanna Touch?

I started watching the film The Runaways (2010), starring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett, who was one of the founding members of the all-girl rock group, The Runnaways, and this suddenly brought back memories of the first Live concert I had attended as a teenager.

My wife had started up the movie via Netflix tonight and I wasn't sure what I was about to watch here at the start and was really surprised to see how much Kristen Stewart looked like Joan Jett and then I realized what this movie was really going to be about.

So a little later on into the film you see Joan Jett at rock club and can hear a version of "Do You Wanna Touch" by Gary Glitter being played, which happens to be one of my favorite songs that was covered later by Joan Jett during her solo career. I decided to search and see if I could find the original video here on the web, you have to just love the Internet for stuff like this.



I really like the Joan Jett & The Black Hearts version and I can remember very well when this version of the video actually hit Mtv... yes, way back in the day when they actually played music videos and when it was a cool station to watch. But I also remember attending her concert at Six Flags Over Texas and I believe the Live footage of the concert fans was in fact filmed out in that parking lot concert area. Some where in that crowd of fans just might be me waving my arms in the air.



I've seen her live only one other time since then and I'm much older now, but I think she still Rocks! I enjoyed the movie and learning more about the Runaways as well.