{"id":347,"date":"2025-04-09T18:32:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T01:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/?p=347"},"modified":"2026-02-04T17:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T01:42:11","slug":"an-ode-to-oracle-virtualbox-as-a-means-of-private-personal-use-of-work-computers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/?p=347","title":{"rendered":"An ode to Oracle Virtualbox as a means of private personal use of work computers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/external-content.duckduckgo.com\/iu\/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.2sc9GIweA3DehmwnTnhEcwHaEK%26pid%3DApi&amp;f=1&amp;ipt=e73f07ed262de192b5a84302ed1bc4e2cde60d4caedb9bd605a6db63e376dd36&amp;ipo=images\" alt=\"Logo of Oracle's VirtualBox software\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, well, it&#8217;s more prose than an ode. VirtualBox helped me keep my sanity in my first professional job after graduating university<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I struggled to find a job after graduating university in 2017. When I finally got a job, I was hired as a receptionist at a law firm. Morning mail processing meant the afternoons were a lull. I wanted to be able to browse the internet without my personal information being saved on the receptionist desktop computer since it not only was a company computer, but it was also a computer that more than one person had easy access to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I thought about creating a hidden user on the windows 10 dell workstation, but realized it would be easy to miss email requests sent to the receptionist user if I was doing personal stuff on a separate Windows 10 user account. I thought about installing a separate web browser, but then my personal cookies etc would be saved into the receptionist&#8217;s user account files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In come Oracle Virtualbox. I had played with it on and off as a teenager, but none of the family computers were powerful enough to run virtualized instances. The receptionist workstation, however, being a business machine with an Intel I-7 with 32 gb of RAM meant I could run a virtualized instance of just about any linux distro easily in Oracle Virtualbox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost a year into my tenure as receptionist, I changed roles\/was promoted to being a paralegal. This meant I had to change desks and workstations. With the Virtualbox vdi, I just copy pasted it from one computer to the other and all my personal settings were unchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I left the company, I deleted the files and apps on the workstation. I think the receptionist workstation might still have the VirtualBox installed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if this manner of doing personal work on company computers truly escapes &#8220;BossWare&#8221;, especially if the BossWare tracks, monitors, and\/or records whatever occurs on a worker&#8217;s screen. But my point is that I was able to do what I wanted without my personal information being saved and it was easily portable &#8211; and more importantly &#8211; easily encrypt-able and destructible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VirtualBox helped me keep my sanity in my first professional job after graduating university.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[175,176,178,177,174,173,179],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-and-prose","category-tinkering","tag-bossware","tag-linux","tag-office-culture","tag-office-life","tag-professional-life","tag-virtualbox","tag-white-collar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356,"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mynci90.ngreensides.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}