The Early Morning Internets
Most everyone I work with knows this, but friends and family may not -- so just in case you haven't heard -- my work schedule (which means the time I am available online) has changed since I joined Canonical. I am now up very early to better match European time zones, where the other members of the Launchpad bugs team are located. How early, you ask?
I wake at 4:30 am, and I'm at work by 5:00.
A pause while that sinks in on all my musician friends.
Work hours are now 5:00am-2:00pm, but in practice I knock off closer to 2:30 or 3:00. I try to avoid being online after that. I usually spend the afternoons playing with kids, cleaning the house or yard, or other such family/home activities. I usually come back in the evenings for an hour or two of work before I go to bed, but I rarely jump on IM or IRC in the evenings -- evenings are for quite work. Note the usually in the previous sentence. This is not a work requirement -- have I mentioned Canonical really is the best employer! -- and in the summer I'm finding it harder to find time in the evenings with the kids out of school and staying up later. Usually, the girls collapse by 7:00-7:30 on school nights, so I enjoy coming back to the laptop for an hour or two to unwind. Sometimes this is work-related, and sometimes it's just for fun hacking (which may even be work-related still, believe it or not!)
So all of this is to say, if you want to or need to catch me online via IM or IRC, make it happen from 5:00am-2:00pm CST. For you west-coasters I may never see you online again, so ping me out a day early if I need to stay around to catch up with you. :)
While the schedule is different for me in terms of my time online, it really is the perfect schedule for me. I'm focused early, getting a lot of work done, and enjoying working on Launchpad a whole lot. And then there's still time in the day for doing the things a husband and father likes to do.
Posted by deryck on June 24, 2009
