Work has been eerily quiet, which has allowed me to work in a bunch of things that I’ve wanted to document and get off of my work cheat sheets & quick reference guide and into “my work tome”.

Having the kids at home while Rachel and I work is quite frankly…exhausting. Perhaps the most frustrating is that I’ve returned to the “local IT guy” for both Rachel and the kids.

It continually amazes me how IT people look at things strictly from the IT perspective, and not from a usability perspective. No…not everyone understands the limitations of citrix, and what exactly is the point of sending people home with a monitor if you are forcing them to use Remote Desktop Access to work on everything? Isn’t this supposed to be easy and make sense? It’s not about how cool it is, or how the technology works. IT needs to realize that it’s all about workflow. It has to work smoothly for the end user….

Sending out 10 emails about a new phone system doesn’t help anyone. Send ONE email to everyone outlining how to set it up…and then follow up with a one on one email with the private information that each user needs. Keep it simple for the end-user!

The kids don’t seem to have it any better. The school board is…struggling…and attempting to figure it all out. Kudo’s to the teachers that are at least trying…although Rachel and I do wonder how it’s possible that our youngest has the most complicated work flow.

The school boards are in a tough spot…it would have been nice for the technical group that overseas this to send out a high-level list of requirements for the end devices that the kids are supposed to use for the lessons. I do understand that there will be the odd thing missing here and there…but working through a lesson and then determining that I need to download Google Slides after the fact is frustrating.

Which ironically makes me wonder if the kids are getting any basic education with regards to the Google tools and hardware they use at school. Until recently our oldest was using Google Slides for projects at school, but wasn’t even aware of Google Pages until I sat and explained that each Google tool has a specific use…and that…yes…you COULD use Google Slides for a project, it’s a whole lot more work to format, and won’t translate to paper very well.

The truth is overall I’m impressed with how smoothly we’ve been able to adapt technically from being onsite with school, to working remotely.

I’m sure all of us with kids are struggling in different ways. For us the struggle between schoolwork and free time is very real, especially with both parents working out of the house.

Like all of you out there on the interwebs…we’re all living cat posters…we’re just “hanging in there”