OFFICE
| I've had
people notice that I tend to
be always online, mostly
available, and often working.
That leads to requests
to see my office, assuming
that it must be incredible
to inspire such dedication.
So, here it is: |
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OK, that's a mild
exaggeration. However,
although I have an extremely
well equipped
office at home, an office in
the building of my employer,
(both in the Phoenix, AZ
area) and even a folding chair in the data
center were my employer
co-locates the server farm,
my
Targus TCG650 backpack
is what I can call my office
anytime, anywhere.
Unfortunately, after 4 years of carrying
my gear, including a laptop (sometimes
2), schoolbooks, and other
assorted stuff, one of the
straps finally gave out. The
good news is that I was
able to replace it with
exactly the same bag.
This one should last longer. I keep less weight in this than in the original one as I
almost never carry tools
anymore (I can't get
them through airport
security). I
should be invited to write a
testimonial. |
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| Of
course the contents of said
pack are what allow my
productivity to be truly
unfettered by location. My
primary productivity tool is
my
Apple MacBook Pro. I
currently use the "Early
2011" 15" model, with a
2.0 GHz Intel i7, 8
GB of RAM, and 500 GB HDD.
I run
OSX 10.6 SnowLeopard,
MS
Windows Vista Ultimate,
Windows 7, and
Ubuntu Linux (formerly using
Parallels, but now Sun
(Oracle) VirtualBox, because it's so much faster). This laptop is my thrid MacBook Pro, and the network name
is "EZRI". and the only
drawback I have with it is
since upgrading to any OS later than Tiger,
I am no longer able to run
OSX Planet. Instead, I
the background is a photo I
took at
Pebble Beach in the
summer of 2004. I still have
the details of an old
MacBook
here. |
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Of course my mobile office
requires connectivity. To
get this, I use the
AT&T USBConnect Mercury.
It is difficult to grade
this piece of hardware as
good or not, because as a
former user of both Verizon
and Sprint, I can say that
the quality of the AT&T data
network (at least in
Phoenix and Memphis) is very, very poor.
Typically the connectivity
is too spotty and slow to
even web surf, let alone
maintain a VPN connection to
my office. I almost always
get an EDGE connection,
never 3G, and even that is
poor. I still have the the
details of my old Verizon
card
here. Believe me when I
say if my employer at the
time had not
switched to AT&T, I would
still be using the Verizon
card. |
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As you can see from the list
of items so far, my mobile
office requires quite a bit
of electricity. The bad news
is that on a good day, I can
get about 90 minutes out of
my laptop if I am using the
cellular card for the entire
session. I found that
limitation annoying, so I
searched until I found the
Batterygeek
SPPS200. Batterygeek
promises 9 hours of laptop
use from this model. I found
that estimate conservative,
and have had my laptop last
up to 12 hours (including
the internal battery). I
give them my wholehearted
endorsement. |
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Contact Information:
E-mail address:
joseph.king@joking.net
AIM: Joking611
ICQ: 12346671
MSN: only_joking
YAHOO: only_joking611
Skype: joking611
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Webcam
Mobile / Text:
901.570.0010
Mobile / Google Voice:
623.688.8860
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