Not using the gym is saving the planet

I would like to announce that I am writing this article wearing nothing but my pants. As potentially disturbing as this may be to you, it’s actually a legitimate part of my new working arrangement.

You see I recently moved into a home office. This means that my commute across the Essex countryside to get into work has been replaced with a slightly shorter commute from my bedroom to what used to be my gym. This perilous journey involves a right turn out of the bedroom door, across the hall and into a nice cosy office with a pleasant view into my back garden. I sometimes have to go left out of the bedroom and take a detour via the toilet before doubling back on myself to get to the office and this adds a bit of time to my journey, but that’s just life.

This move may seem odd to the vast majority of suited up pen-pushers who see a big office in London as a status symbol and wear far too much cologne than can possibly be healthy, but it really is the way forward, especially in the Internet industry.

By its very nature, this industry involves being online. Most of my work is online which means I can access it from anywhere that has an internet connection – unless it’s AOL, in which case it’s impossible to access the internet. Ever.

With the ever increasing use of cloud computing, the need to waste precious fossil fuels by driving to an office in Banjo playing country is pointless. So not only am I able to have an extra hour in bed, I’m also saving the planet. Who can argue with that?

The move itself was easy. There was no huge upheaval that normally occurs a when business moves premises. Being a largely paperless office, I didn’t have to take half the rainforest with me. The few odd bits of paperwork I did take either went straight in the bin or got used on my detour from the bedroom to the office.

All I had to take home was the internal server, the backup server, the network printer, my computer, the computer for the accounts lady who comes in twice a week, monitors, chairs and a few network cables. I simply plugged it all in and it worked. Had I not told all my customers I was moving, they would have been none the wiser.

The telephone was a piece of cake too. I now have an 0844 number that redirects to my landline and all calls from the previous number are forwarded. It has a nice online control panel that allows me to forward the 0844 number to any other number I want. I can divert it to my mobile or make it go straight to the answer phone. Needless to say the latter is most commonly used.

Of course it hasn’t been all plain sailing. Firstly, having spent the last 7 years in the same place, sitting at the same desk, I had developed something of a routine. This has been thrown out of kilter a bit and I initially found it impossible to do any work. This was not helped by the fact that there are always distractions in one’s own home like the fridge, the television, the bed and of course, having access to the internet all day, porn.

There have been a few issues with the router as well. As part of the move, the company upgraded my internet connection which means I can now download porn ten times as fast as before. The problem with this, other than going blind, is that my poor old Netgear router couldn’t cope and seemed to crash every few hours. To combat this, I downloaded a new bit of firmware that I was assured would fix the problem. Inevitably it didn’t. What it actually did was completely stop the thing from working.

After a bit of reading, I established that the firmware I was assured was the correct one actually wasn’t correct. So I installed the correct piece of software and it all worked. Well apart from wiping my Firewall configuration and forcing me to update all my settings again. Once done, it worked brilliantly and much quicker than before. Until I switched it off. Then it wouldn’t work again. Then I had to re-install the firmware. Then it wiped all my firewall settings again. Then I had to enter it all again.

I have therefore decided to leave the thing on all the time along with the internal server. This isn’t so bad because my backup server switches itself on in the middle of the night to download all the important files from online so I need the internet on most of the time anyway. Of course this does mean that my electricity bill will almost certainly quadruple and this puts more money into the pockets of the thieving monkeys at E.ON so I’m not entirely happy. It also means that I’m increasing my carbon footprint which will upset all the tree-hugging hippies and eco-warriors so at least that puts a smile on my face.

The other thing that has stopped working properly is Microsoft Office. I don’t know why moving my computer from one place to another would affect this but for some reason Outlook, Word and Excel have started freezing and crashing more than usual.

Of course, I have tried sending those error reports back to Microsoft and the answer on the unhelpful help pages informs me that the version of Office I’m using is, in fact, rubbish and I should purchase the latest version that will cost a squillion quid and not be backward compatible with any of their earlier products because they are Microsoft and are stupid incompetent turds.

So by moving my office into my spare room I have allowed myself an extra hour in bed in the morning. I have saved myself an hour a day by not travelling. I have also saved myself a vast sum of money in petrol. However, I will be spending all that saved money on purchasing new software because Microsoft are criminals who deliberately put bugs in all their programs to prevent them from working once they have past their sell-by-date. Google OS here I come.