Working from Home

In 1991, a snowstorm clogged all the roads between home and office and I spent all day in my basement dialed in to work on one phone line and talking a customer through an urgent problem on the other. The day flew by and when I hung up from the customer call, I was ready to trudge to my car and drive home. And then I remembered I was already home; I only had to trudge upstairs for dinner. The next day, I caught grief from my coworkers for not showing up at the office. I was more productive that day at home than most days at the office, but nobody cared.

In 2005, while pioneering video meetings with American families and deployed loved ones serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, I pitched working from home to the St. Paul, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. Objections came from everywhere. I also pitched telemedicine programs, virtual political rallies, distance learning programs, and all kinds of virtual video meeting possibilities. I was fifteen years ahead of my time and nearly everyone I approached either politely said no or said nothing at all.

And then COVID-19 shut down the world and working from home became popular.

I don't know anything about infectious diseases, but I do know a little bit about working from home. Here are a few things to think about when setting up a work-from-home program.

Enjoy some thoughts on our new normal, post COVID.

The video below offers thoughts for working form home and setting up a company VPN.

Company VPNs play a big role in working from home. Here is an overview of the steps, with links to details. Each step includes a video demo at the bottom.

• How to build an OpenVPN VPN in four easy steps without spending one penny.
  1. Build the base system for your OpenVPN server.
  2. Install OpenVPN and configure authentication.
  3. Set up the server configuration file and start up OpenVPN.
  4. Set up Windows clients.
• Troubleshooting, possible next steps, and a favor

We also talked about building company VPNs on WCCO AM 830.

Here are a few historical posts from the COVID era.

• Would a COVID-19-inspired contact tracing app bring Big Brother into your smartphone or would it be a great tool? Also, enjoy these radio interviews from AM1280 The Patriot and WCCO AM 830.
• A March 10, 2020 interview with Joe Rogan and Michael Osterholm.

Here's more information about my books.