Andy's first post

Hi! This is Andy and this is my first post. Writing for both of us, my lovely wife Dar was the author of the previous two.

This post will be little more than a hello and what's up. I'll introduce myself more fully later.

So, hello!

It's Wednesday -- our third workday in Mexico City. I am sitting at "Mission Control" listening to the morning traffic go by. Mission Control is what Dar affectionately (I hope) calls the collection of computers, mobile phones, cameras, power adapters and cables which always seem to cluster anywhere I sit for more than five minutes. In this case, it's my remote work setup, and it consists of my laptop and webcam on an adjustable stand, a USB speakerphone, a USB hub, two mobile phones (more on that in another post), the Mardi Gras mask I wore for the office virtual Halloween costume contest (definitely more on that in another post), the various knickknacks the AirBnB hostess left for our office use, random decor -- and the ever present cables, cables, cables.

So far, working from Mexico City is pretty uneventful. Our digs are comfortable, centrally located and well appointed. I have a nice work space in the apartment with a window overlooking a busy street -- which I like a lot.  The washing machine is busted -- hopefully that will get fixed this week or next. With cheap laundry service ubiquitous in this city, it is not a cause for concern. We're even getting used to walking up to the 3rd floor. Coming from 900 to 7356 feet above sea level that's no joke!

We're walking everywhere! Haven't been in a car since the two-hour Uber from the Airport -- that was a crazy! There were major closures all over the city due to all kinds of events. It led to the worst traffic I've ever seen in Mexico City. (Welcome home Andy!)

The food has been amazing so far. We're trying to not only eat out, and so far we've successfully committed to eating a late breakfast at the apartment and a late lunch out as our final meal of the day. So far so good. More on eating diet later -- that will be a long one.

My one complaint is Internet access keeps dropping. I asked the AirBnB hostess to bump up the speed for an extra cost, which she graciously did. It is very fast -- 200Mbps for all my fellow nerds... when it's running. Netflix and other streaming are affected only minimally, so we've got that going for us.

I'm estimating 99% uptime, which by all accounts should be awesome; but, that 1% downtime, when you're on a video teleconference call, is a killer. And it's not like the downtime is one second out of every 100 second. It's more like 30 seconds out of every hour. So, I drop off for 30 seconds at a time once per hour. Netflix can tolerate this because it buffers enough video to minimize the problem. For my meetings, not so much.

I installed Net Uptime Monitor to log the outages. I'm pinging Google and Level 3 response times for stats. I am also pinging my local gateway to see how much the WiFi is playing a part. I may move next to the router and hardwire in for calls if that's the case.

My key concern here is that I need my remote work to be seamless here vs. the US. At this point, the outages are not as bad as for some of my coworkers. Shit like this puts me on edge, but I am far from out of options.

Told you I was a nerd.

Anyway -- that's all for now, much, much, more to come!

Presently somewhere,

Andy