tweaked9107

I knew I'd be spending quite a few hours it in so dropped the full amount for the deluxe edition. I don't think the deluxe is "good value" for money over the standard, but I wanted access to everything.

Funny you mention the teams watching. The site I work at is more like a small village than a single office - Its a manufacturing plant with several offices and manufacturing suites dotted over about 35 acres of land and across multiple floors. Because of this we are very much used to using teams/skype to check someone's status to see if they are at their desk before making the walk/climb. This has obviously carried over into the working from home thing as well. Now I haven't heard any stories of people watching and see people going to "busy" or "in a meeting" and feeling left out, but I've heard lots of paranoia of people being worried that if their status says "away" for even a few minutes, they are worried if anyone sees it they will think they are slacking off. At work no one would think anything of it as you could be on plant looking at equipment or managing an issue, or simply talking to someone at their desk. Because people are working from home however, they are too scared to even go to the bathroom for too long for fear of people thinking they aren't working. I myself don't care but some are really kicking up a fuss and asking for that feature to be disabled. Some I would say is because they actually aren't doing any work (speaking from experience of said individuals), but others I think genuinely are just worried about it and the banter of "o you are working from home with your feet up" likely doesn't help.

I'd be interested to hear how many of the people who are saying it's better for the overall team have the WHOLE team working from home? The reason I say this is because I've noticed with friends and family, that the ones where the whole office is working from home it seems to be working great. For ones where its half and half however, not so great. I fall into the latter and I would definitely say it's not a better situation and is definitely less productive. Those working from home are starting to feel forgotten about and out of the loop.

That part is ringing true for the mrs as well. Her company are forcing all their staff back into the office at the start of September even though there is zero reason to do it. It means she'll have to go back to getting the train into work costing her an extra £200 a month, and then sit in an office where they haven't put in place any social distancing measures at all. Not to mention the fact that the shared building they use has some useless contract cleaners that were once witnessed cleaning the door handles with the same rag they had just used on a toilet seat... The only reason I can think of is that the management just don't trust their employees to get on with their work from home. There is no other logical reason for her and her company to be in the office right now.

It's been interesting for sure. I started working from home mid-March and it's been a struggle. The facility I work in was already on the downward run as it is planned to close this year so actual work to do each day was already drying up end of last year. I'm a reliability engineer so as much as I do a lot paperwork to keep QA and compliance happy I do still need to go on plant and look at equipment from time to time. All the day to day stuff dried up completely though as my boss was on site and just took over everything. This left me out of the loop and feeling pretty useless overall. Sounds like a first world problem but it means I was only really generating about 2 hours work in an 8 hour day with the rest of the time spent browsing the net and watching netflix/youtube. Some days I'd get so bored I'd just throw the laptop on the bedroom floor on full volume and have a nap, knowing any messages or phone calls would wake me up. At one point I even spent a week digging up my garden and re-turfing it all with the laptop sitting on the patio... I then started returning on the odd occasion (roughly two days on average over a 2 week period) but it didn't really make anything feel much better, or at least up until a few weeks ago. Then I went back full time to complete a decommissioning project I was working on which was nice, but I felt mentally slow. Like my inactivity for months on end had caused my brain to rot a bit. At least I felt a bit more useful though. That projects finished now and I've since moved into a new department that isn't closing down. I was meant to be made redundant in July, then end of September, but have since signed on for a 2 year temporary assignment. The getting ready to leave and then having a bait and switch thrown at me several time hasn't helped things. That aside though, I started in the new department and this has further highlighted my lack of "match fitness" so to speak so mentally I'm feeling pretty shitty about it. It also means I will predominantly go back to working from home most days a week which is a bit of a downer as I thrive off the office banter/sharing of knowledge and ideas. I also don't know most of the people or the equipment in the new department so it's like starting from scratch. It's also very hard to keep up to speed when you aren't physically there overhearing various bits of information. A big part of me wishes I just left in July so I don't have to think about it (I still have the option of leaving up until the end of September but the job market isn't great for engineers in and around Brighton/Worthing). The only plus side to all of it is that me and the fiance have been absolutely fine (she has also been working from home since the end of March). I hear a lot of talk of couples getting into arguments because they aren't used to spending so much time together, but its not been a problem at all. More because she has the patient of a saint than us being some ideal couple though. It does mean come dinner time we have absolutely f*ck all to talk about though as EVERYTHING has been said during the day and nothing interesting has possibly happened because neither of us have left the house. EDIT - I've also noticed that all notion of "bed time" has gone out the window. Will regularly stay up to 2-3am, as evidenced by the timing of this post, knowing full well being tired at work really doesn't matter anymore as no one can tell.

Probably because the R doesn't need any handling improvements 😉

Still rocking the same 306hp engine apparently so no performance difference. Apparently should expect a UK price of around £40-42k before options. Interesting that this has the "current" engine and the R is getting the new one.

Agreed. I was actually a bit pissed off this wasn't an option. Given my time over and with the options available to me I'd of gone Indium Grey I think.

Unless his tyre blew out too of course. I actually fell asleep in the middle and woke up just for the good stuff. Got a nap and effectively all the stuff that will make the highlight reel. Not a bad result 👍

Clearly didn't listen to my recommendation of the Michelin PS4S...

On the subject though... Still think this is my all time favourite.

Nah I'm not from Wales. They haven't had to evolve and grow sharp teeth as a defense against the horny locals here... Okay now it makes sense. You're right, pretty accurate for the car.

Okay I'll bite... What am I missing?

Got an email from VW saying that because of Covid cars with warranties due between 1 March and 31 May have been extended by 3 months. Anyone else get one? Seems kind of pointless after I paid for a years extension...

Yeh, going from being on the grid with your car in pieces and a tie rod being replaced with 15 minutes to go, to finishing 2nd is not a bad go at all. Mercedes were completely dominant as expected and if not for Bottas false start would have easily had the 1-2. Overall a decent race with a manic first few laps and a good midfield battle as you said. We just really need to get Mercedes some serious competition soon because if the first few races are anything to go by they will probably win every single race this season bar mechanical failure or a crash.