The working from home thread: tips and advice

I work in a travel related business and we were told today that in my BU 50% of us are being furloughed.
The company however is not paying the 20% of people's salary not covered by the Gvt offer.
Thankfully I'm not affected at this moment however it could change rapidly the longer this goes on for.
Suddenly being able to work from home takes a whole different meaning.
Not wanting to state the obvious but morale right now isn't the highest.

I do a lot of "snipping" to bounce screenshots of error messages* around to my team. the fact that I can be on local machine, click a button, drag over an area, then go into remote desktop and Ctrl-V it into the slavemaster** is a gamechanger.

It's just a real pain that there's no "Clipboard and file" option. Might suggest they add it tbh as it would be great to have all the snips saved in a private folder***

*hopefully a decreasing number!
**Outlook
*** cos its useful for sending dank memes too

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It's crazy that Windows still doesn't have this built into the OS

I paid for a year upfront of internet and knew it ran out round about now, but was still surprised/annoyed/bemused this morning when I got up for my annual review with my boss and found the internet had fucking expired. Stupid telecom company agent isn't answering my messages either. I'm over WFH.

do a lot of "snipping" to bounce screenshots of error messages* around to my team

'Alt + Print Screen' might be useful to you

I found X Mouse Button Control very good for customising mouse buttons on Windows
http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm

Does anyone use a gym ball for sitting at their desk? Any good? My 10yr old office chair is generally fine but 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a bit of a stretch.

Don't want to buy a new office chair at the moment as I'll be moving soon and will be getting something then so thought a gym ball might work to mix it up.

Also, where can I buy a gym ball? Very little stock on Amazon and Argos don't seem to home deliver.

Does Decathlon deliver in the UK; I know it does in France and Belgium

Blinking wifi/router shit in the middle of your vision?

Subtract 10 home-working points and turn to page 49.

I used to 15 years ago. Very little recollection of whether or not it was effective but thanks for the reminder... I’ll give it a go.

I've started moving around the house to work. Week 2 of being sat up the kitchen table is taking its toll.

So most of this morning has been spent standing up in the kitchen using my laptop.

I'm also politely declining a lot more calls since everyone wants to talk.

Oh and on the internet stuff - they came to fix it again yesterday but it's still broken.

So EE have sent another router. Great.

Yes

I hadn't even noticed it until you mentioned it and obviously now it's annoying me all the time.

Problem solved though:

Out of stock at Decathlon. Sports Direct seems to be the option. Maybe Mike Ashley was telling the truth when he said they were a vital service ....

My colleague used one of these whilst she was pregnant, and gave strict instructions that she wants it back when she returns from baby holiday.

No idea where you can get one, but it's a thing.

I have that effect on people. ;)

I'd still hide all those cables and bury the blinky shit under the desk somewhere.

Velcro. I've got all sort of crap velcro-ed to the back of my desk or monitor.

Onedrive/dropbox will automatically save your screenshots if that's useful? Won't do automagically for snips though.

Mine isn't that organised. I moved stuff once every year so that's often enough not to bother :)

On a SurfacePro, Win10 - how do I turn off alert beeps and whistles while I'm on a call? Or at least have them do their thing on the machine and not through my headset?

Is there a do not disturb function in the sidebar?

not sure - I've just switched "focus assist" to "priority only" to see if that helps. I don't mind the visual notifications, just the sounds are annoying.
Edit: found and switched off the zoom play sounds tickbox :) that's a particularly annoying one.

Tip: a lock on the door.

Just come in to find my 3 yr old standing on the desk, pissing all over the computer. Keyboard is fried. Computer seems ok for now but we'll see. Fucking hell.

Turn it off and ensure it's dry before turning it back on.

Lock it away in a cupboard for a few days.

That way you can work on getting your computer sorted out.