The Bravo Blog: Work

I Hate Email

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:49:45 GMT

First off, what is email. I know, I know, its electronic text messages sent via http or smtp or any of the popular email protocols via the internet. It was one of the first technologies implemented via the internet and today is responsible for a vast majority of the traffic over the internet, trumping the world wide web and associated traffic. Besides this, what exactly is email? It is not as formal as a memo, though many use it to convey memos throughout an organization. Neither is it as informal or dismissive as text messages. We still have faxes and signed legal documents so email holds little official communication weight. Like any technology, it can be spoofed, corrupted, or faked to prove anyone’s point, with proper access. Today’s companies and governments run on it, society runs on it, life before email is only a faded memory and we can not fathom life without it or before it.

The problem with email, besides the whole gray area of where it fits into our practical world, is we have become chained to it. We spend hours each work day checking, reading, replying, and filing emails. Some of my coworkers get hundreds of emails a day, making contacting them virtually impossible. If I need a vital sign-off for this or that I have to either A) leave voice mail due to my time zone, incurring International Long Distance charges B) send instant messages to the person in hopes they are hiding with an “appear offline” status or something and will be awake to reply or C) send an email to their manager or coworker to see if they can pass along the message the next time they see them! I kid you not people, some of my coworkers have unread email from 2 to 3 months ago, and it is not their fault! The more important your role in a company the more email you receive. CEO’s have to employee people just to filter their emails! I work for a fortune 500 company, our executives can easily get 1,000 emails a day ranging from personal emails, business operational needs emails, departmental cost review emails, share holder emails, special projects review emails, proposed and planning emails, policy and publication review emails, professional organization emails, leisure activity emails, financial bulletins, and the list keeps going. This makes getting any help from them, in large projects this is key, nearly impossible.

The more important you are, the more emails you get and the harder you have to work to keep on top of them all. My largest dread from returning from vacation is clearing out my inbox, take a week off and when you return your first day or two is devoted to reviewing past emails. Email programs are great in they can have rules created and custom folder structures Most of us use an email program to manage our inboxes. Inboxes take up server space, resources, bandwidth, etc. so they are limited on size which requires our constant attention to keep from filling up and causing problems demanding immediate attention. Important people, or those who receive excessive amounts, have to keep on top of their emails just to keep their accounts from being shut down due to sheer volume. Email server managers always complaign about bandwidth utilization and space. Want to see a company panic, let their email server crash or loose connectivity. Too much of anything is a killer.

Email programs allow us to create filters, sending this email to that folder or that email to another folder as soon as they come in. This helps but is by no means a perfect way to segregate or prioritize the emails. Email programs have limited filtering capabilities, so they are not perfect when your filter or rule space is exceeded. Add this to program limitations, like Outlook’s .PST filter limitations (any .PST file getting over 3GB will cause issues and make Outlook begin to run wacky) a .PST file is the file holding all your folders, rules, profile, etc. The problem with email programs still boils down to the initial problem, you still have to read all this email and then decide what to do with it. Of course we find a solution so the next thing we do is... yes, you got it, push harder. Email programs allow us to make folders to put emails in, now we have 50 folders and rules to put important emails in them and BAM! Now we have to check 50 folders constantly! We write more complex rules and filters, we exceed the engineering until they re-engineer it, then we exceed it again.

Add things like people tagging emails with delivery and read receipt requests, flagged emails with timers, and people who mark everything ‘high priority’ or urgent (which usually means it isn’t) and you get email burnout. My business email has turned me so off to email, I hate to email my friends. Email has made us all act like we have ADD, read mail notifications cause us to stop what it is we are doing and open the latest communication. Blackberries and smart phones now bring our work email home, constantly intruding into our personal lives. We now live in an email blizzard with millions of email snow flakes screaming for notice out of hundreds. So here, put me on record. “I hate email”. Has it make my life easier, better, more productive? No. I am spending so much time reading email that I have to take work home, causing me to read more email. While I can communicate quicker, I find my emails sit in other people’s boxes for a couple of day (and sometimes require more emails to get replies), and like wise, I almost have to keep an old fashioned pen and paper list of emails to ensure I answer all the urgent ones the same day! This has not made life better. Productivity, sheesh, throw that out the window. My work is now in stop and start mode as I have to pause for emails, while working, in meetings, writhing reports, nearly everything. No my live has yet to improve because of email, the negatives have overwhelmed the few positives I could think of.

Besides complaining what can I do? Nothing! It is like trying to stop the tides or the sun from rising or setting. Email is an integral part of everything. Need service on your gizmo, email tech services from their website. Need directions to your friend’s new apartment, send an email. Boss needs a new report, get email status requests twice daily till the deadline. Got a question about that travel reservation or weekend class, email the company and they will get back, with some canned email template that really explains nothing and clarifies less. Nope, the world now runs on email. In the ‘70’s it was carbon paper, everything was in triplicate. Now email has risen from academic experiment to toppling governments as evidence of shenanigans. Yep, it’s an email world and I just have to deal with it. I might not like taxes, bleeding heart liberals, liver and onions, long lines, pollution, or cold weather but like email, I have to deal with it. So if you have found email to be a burden, a false promise or hope, please let me know. Email, like anything else, is best when used in moderation but in our lives it seems like we can only use it in excess, too much excess to be valuable.

Love those time zones

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:39:05 GMT

I'm here for a flash and flash only. No I WILL NOT discuss the state of the union address, celebrity gaffs, NFL laments, etc. Why??? I have conference calls at 2 AM and 6 AM in the morning, not to mention I had them at midnight and 4 AM yesterday (but they did not call me... and issue with their finger dialing in I guess). I have ordered my Skype credits so I can be proactive and join the calls myself. I really wish they could have them at a different time because I really love my sleep and hate waking up at the middle of the night for a conference call to go over who knows what! On the subject the 'official' travel agency we have to use to book our flights are charging the company $350 USD more for my flight to Chicago then I can get it for directly from the airline, OK I am a member of United.com and Miles member, but it does not get me a discount air fare, so why the price difference???

The baby is still hanging in there tight and secure and Coco is going to see the doctor tomorrow to see what options are open as the original delivery date is now just 3 days away! I sure hope my kid has not inherrited my procrastination gene, although I was born early. We both are just getting anxious for the kid to come so we can begin all the parenting things we have discussed the past 6 months. Oh well, thats life. Ok I have to go so I can get at least 5 or 6 hours of broken sleep here, have not done this since my Navy days when have a late watch or early evolution to perform.

From underground to above ground

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:02:03 GMT

The company I am working for Accenture, has placed our team in a building different then the one we were doing our initial orientation in (the same building my former employer was in, just 7 floors up). I really was not too keen on moving to a different building (the past building was just a few subway stops {line 1, the red line} and my wife's work is just on the way... very convienent). The new building is fortunately on a railway line here (line 3/4 the yellow/blue line) and also line 2, the green line.

I have only been on the above ground line two times before, once to go to horse back riding and once to find Bubba's Texas BBQ. I was a little worried as I did not know how long it was going to take, at least line 4 makes a small circle so even if you mess up you can get back to the right stop eventually. I did my research, line 3 and 4 both are accessible at the Shanghai Railway Station, very close to the apartment. They both stop at the new building, and from the subway level I know I have to take exit 7.

I got up 45 minutes early, was out the door 25 minutes earlier then I usually was and lo 'n behold I made it in a mere 40 minutes and only 5 stops. It is made even easier by the fact that the railway station and the building platforms are both on the same side, the others are on the opposite side. I used good old fashioned logic to figure out which train to get onto, as there are 2, one on each side of the platform. The new office is on the west side so I just took the train going away from the rising sun (remember the line goes in a big loop). I made it to work 10 minutes early even! We still did not have our security badges or ID cards so I had to wait for people to come by to get in, but I made it and with out getting lost or turned around! Big accomplishment for me in Shanghai without my wife or anyone else as a guide.

After surveying the surround area durring breaks, our office is on the 31st floor, I think I will like the new office building. Accross the street is the In The Clouds mall, which has several floors of all sorts of shops, including a Carefore (think really large super market) and a Yolo, Chines version of Best Buy (and the one with the biggest selection of electronic I have seen) and more restaurants and odd little shops underground in the subway part to keep me and the wife busy for months to come... there is even a large book store close by, hopefully they have a good English section as I need some tech manuals now... wish I have brought my 2 boxes of tech manuals from the states with me now! At lunch we had food delivered, which was really nice as it could take almost half an hour to find a good spot to eat.

For nearly 9 months now I have come to know and become pretty proficient with the undergound subway system here, even in the large stations on line 1 and 2 (Peoples Square interchange station can take a solid week to explore as it covers nearly 15 acres undergound total and connects 6 buidlings and parks in down town). Faithful readers will recall how I always complaigned about the over crowding and potential hazards this cause to the system, that I do not miss. The above ground trains are just as new as the below ground ones, only a couple of year old. They both have Chinese and English station annoucements, video screens, and maps inside the cars. The above ground cars are smaller, yet they are about just the same amount over crowded, but the people do not seem to puch and shove as bad above ground. It is also nice to see the sun and city on the way to work, and not the blackness you see in the subway. I hope my optimism on this new variation of getting to work will continue and despite the early wake up call (the baby will ensure that when she is here) it looks to be a nice change of scenery for a new job in a new building.

Many hours of work about to pay off

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:21:16 GMT

Over the past 6 weeks I have been very busy at work, at times putting 12 to 18 hours in at the office! This is why I am so grateful for such a supportive wife. All this work was to take care of 2 websites, then 3 websites, and now 3 websites and one CD-ROM project, all of which are due this month. This month we will also be finalizing last months website, which we did 100% of the design, layout, format, and content load. Of the total projects the company has completed I have almost 1/2 and have been here just under 6 months. This week I was unwinding on the couch and reflected on all I was doing and why I was doing it. I was trying to find perspective as to why I was putting in more work and more of myself into all these projects, along with my office and website maintenance client, and working harder then I did since my days in the Navy. I believe now the answer is slowly coming into focus.

Growing up on a farm in rural Alabama I learned the value of hard work the old fashioned way. Results speak volumes and words are meaningless when it comes to getting things done. Any project, whether it is a website, term paper, ammunition transfer, building foundation, fence row, or filed to be plowed, they all follow the same simple principle: You start with nothing, and end up with something… the amount of work and effort determines the value and quality of that something you end up with. So principles learned as a child on one end of the planet hold true in a world apart, both industry, business, and culturally, and half a world away.

This time my involvement in the final product is not really as noticeable as before. I can not point to a part or an item and state I alone or as a group created that. This time my management and dedication lead a team to create something out of an idea. This idea was not our own, which makes it that much more difficult to achieve. In the IT industry we work with intangible systems and products every day. There is often noting to hold onto, see, or feel. We work in ideas and conveying these ideas. Website development is just this type of thing. We are taking one person’s ideas and vision, using a medium that is limited to 2D visual and audio and creating something that is only viewable to people who have a computer and are connected to the internet.

Basically I am now able to sit back and see the final product. In my younger years in Alabama this was your measuring stick for your work. At the end of the day you sit back and look over what you accomplished. You could see it, everyone could see it, it was real. In the IT industry it is sometimes hard to get such satisfaction as many things can not be seen, databases, IP phone systems, CRM systems, inventory integration systems, many things exist only in crude physical boxes and wires, yet they are just as real and just as vital to those who use them every day.

Every time I go home I get to drive past a warehouse I helped build. I worked construction one summer between jobs, as a laborer for a foundation company. We did this, some side walks, a sewage treatment plant, small patch jobs here and their. I can see the effort of all my sweat and hard work, even if the building falls down, the foundation will still be there. I doubt any of the work I am doing here in Shanghai will be around 15 years from today, but the feeling of satisfaction is almost the same. In life you start out seeing things from one point of view, as you grow and age some things melt away into being trivial, others have less impression and meaning, and just a few are left the way they were when we were young. For my team, Good Work, you worked hard and deserve a beer and to kick back and enjoy a relaxing weekend. Of course Chinese culture does not have this post work ritual attached to reflect on all that when into a job and getting from point A to B, but the appreciation is the same. All this hard work, long hours, and difficult times (my Chinese is still very poor) are now at an end and the company I am now working for can add 4 more successful projects under its belt and know how well and fast we can do this part of our business. Hard work is its own reward, as the old saying goes, so my team is feeling very rewarded right now… and they deserve a big pat on the back for that.

From my first morning going to work in a new country

Sat, 13 May 2006 04:00:46 GMT

My First Monday

Monday morning came earlier then expected, maybe due to the lingering chest cold or the truck that insisted on its constant horn honking at 4 AM this morning. I was greeted to a full breakfast, first time since my Navy days to wake up to a full breakfast. After eating, shaving and showering I made my way to my new job. Work now begins at 9 AM, that is an alien concept to me, but a welcomed one. One thing I must say on Shanghai taxi drivers… they do not seem to know how to get places very well. Almost every taxi we have taken requires a 5 to 10 minute dialog on how to get to where we live or are going. Now it is important to point out now of the areas I am going are off the beaten path by any stretch of the imagination. I work in Central Plaza, it is the main office and business area located centrally in the city, hence the name. I live in the Zhai Bei area, which is just north of People’s Square across the river. I am having detailed directions written up in simplified Chinese for future use and until my Chinese gets fluent enough to do it on my own, and to be understood too.

Due to the traffic situation I have noticed punctuality is not as closely adhered to as it is in the states. Being 10 to 15 minutes late seems to be acceptable and common. Road rules are also followed loosely. Red lights seem to be more of a suggestion as taxis, busses, and the numerous bicycles and mopeds continue their flow throw red lights seemingly oblivious. There are quite a few foreigners here, as I am now one of them, but I have noticed we still get stared at quite often. For a city of the size and population that Shanghai is it has seemed to locate its population out well. There are hundreds of people anywhere you go, but it never seems over crowded or claustrophobic as some may suspect.

Today as I was walking back from a lunch with the office manager and some of the office staff I was treated to a familiar sound, the roar of a military jet flying overhead. Then the sharp ping of terror as I realized this was not the typical Falcon, Eagle, Hornet, Tomcat, or even Harrier but an actual fully functional Mig, this subsided quickly but was still odd. Little things like this are going to get hard to deal with as my previous profession is in constant conflict with my current situation. I timed my walk back to Coco’s work and it took be around 20 minutes, of course I got a bit lost on the way and overshot one of the intersections I was supposed to turn down. From our apartment to work will take no longer then 35 min, and a taxi seems to only shave 10 to 15 minutes off of this time… I am in the process of figuring out the subway system too; for rainy, hot, and cold days. Speaking of the subway, it is more like what I have heard of the London Underground then anything I have seen state side so far. It is lined with stores that sell everything and anything.

I am still trying to figure out the wireless situation here, I can connect to some networks and not others, and my connection does not always guarantee the ability to get onto the internet or web. I will try my magic tonight by attempting to configure a wireless router in our apartment. I have dealt with American DSL, Cable, and dialup for years… Now I will tackle ADSL and the used of proxies to be able to go to the places I am not supposed to go anymore… like news sites and information sites not in line with the current accepted view. Agh agh, nudge nudge, wink wink, poke poke.

I am writing this from the ever always aromatic Starbucks where the special of the Day is Cinnamon Latté. It started out a bright clear morning and has turned windy and hazy, of course the smog in the city is constant but it is a damp biting wind very similar to Norfolk on a winter evening. The humidity is increasing and it appears to be ready to rain. The reality of my move has still not fully sunk in yet. I can take comfort in knowing there is still a small assembly of normality at home still, there is beer in the fridge and through the use of power adapters and converters I have a PC, internet, music, movies, and a few familiar things to keep my tide over till I can feel confident to venture out fully on my own. Today was a big step in that as I made it back ok, visited the Shanghai version of Best Buy/electronic bazaar/swap shop, the underground and some of the subway section, ran a crucial errand of retrieving a lost cell phone from a restaurant from a place where English seems to be limited to only seating and ordering (proving I was authorized to pickup the cell phone was another matter all together… calling it on my cell phone was not sufficient but calling it from the house phone while using the address book on my cell phone was………… hmmmmm yeaaaaaaaaa. Sorry Office Space moment). I am not confident enough to hail a cab yet, as I am not confident in the driver’s ability to find where it is I have to go. But I signed up for this knowing darn good and well I am going to have to change quite a bit in my perceptions, expectations, and abilities to get the normal things done, no gamble no gain!

Short Update

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:19:37 GMT

Ok, I know I haven't updated in some time and I have actually gone a week without taking any notes. Sorry but I have found life in Shanghai is like an AAHAD person on coke and crank after drinking a Jolt cola and eating a king sized chocolate bar!

First week at work was boring beyond belief, doing noting but learning sales pitches and presentations. This was my second week here by the way. That weekend Coco and I went to the river front to see the famous building and be harrassed by all the local vendors selling who knows what. I took many many pictures and walked many many miles. Went to a club with a co-worker and found that there is only a few differences.. more to come there too.

Second week at work was a little busier, actually got to go on a few sales calls, was given a new title, from sales supervisor to project specialists and was made the project manager for new projects. Got a new client who we work with alot, we are doing their web site, I will fill in the details later. I did a few cold calls that resulted in little to no interest, but that is to be expected. The weekend was a treat as I rode horses all day saturday and had a good time with some new friends

Third week at work saw the beginning of the web site project as we received files the clients want, but the deadline is too tight, will be amazed if we can get it all done on time, but hey that is what I was hired for... right?!? Had a meeting with a new client on yet another web project and they are very very open and honest, I want this deal really really bad, but alas again a tight time frame, very very close but we can pull it off... I hope! I also got some positive feed back on some cold calls and decided to be a little more aggressive and send out flyers and packages without any requests for information. Tried some more leads but focusing more and more on the project management side now. The weekend was cool, an overnight horse back riding trip! Great, until I realized Chinese saddles are not made for American asses and well, lets just say I have a bruise where sitting is now a chore. It stormed cutting the trip short but I did not mind as I could not ride even if I had to.

Beginning of this week saw the deadline for my first project come and the client is a total mess, but on the positive side they want me to head up a web site maintenance project for them on a Maccau vendor, did the maintenance myself on ASP pages, first time to do that since college! It was easy after I looked at the files on the web server and it came back to me. Another meeting with the Golf Estates client and they are 2 steps closer to signing the deal, I still want that deal very badly as it is a guarntee to more work in the near future!

had to stand in the rain for 1 HOUR waiting on a taxi, it seems that it is imopssible to get a taxi here when it is raining! Love my new tailored hand made wool suits, love our apartment, love the good food, but hate the traffic, rude inconsiderate people on the street, bikes mopeds, taxi, etc.etc. Not too fond of the air quality or lack of programming on TV as they talk way too fast for limited understanding. Hate the getting home at 7 or 8 every night (hense the lack of posts and attention to my blog, taxes, correspondances, chatting, etc!)

I must admit living with Coco is much easier then I anticipated, we get along very very good and despite our actually doing what we said we would (post rules, chore lists, new budget, activity schedule) we are getting along pretty good. I have lost track of time as the speed of life here is so tense and fast every day begins to blend after a while, and for the past two weeks I have been putting in many many hours of overtime as I have found that is the Chinese way and when in Rome... Oh that brings me to another quick point (now that I am here and writing I hate to leave!!!) Chinese people do not have weekends par say. Banks and business are open all day saturday and most of the day sunday and you can get anything you want up till 10PM! Too much work! I will post some pics and try to get 7 hours of sleep as that is the most I can get since moving here and beginning work! Will be back soon I promise!

A New Beginning in a New Place

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 03:33:53 GMT

New Interview

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 05:24:03 GMT

I got the call tonight, setting up an interview while I am in China for Chinese New Year, the Friday before the celebrations begin. I am very excieted, nervous, anxious, and a little scared. For those requesting many pictures... I have a new digital camera I was able to use my enormus annual bonus, all $100 or it, on. It is a 7.1 mega pixel Cannon, an A620 which came with a GB SD card for 1/2 price! My digital camera I took last time, the one that I left in China and was mailed back... well it did not fare the return trip so well, it works as a cam really well, but does not like it when you put batteries in it, you have to squeeze it. So rest assured, I have room for 250 7.1 MP pics, but for this site I will take only 3 or 4 MP pics, to conserve space and such.

My visa application is in Washington DC at the Chinese embassy now, so hopefully I can have it back by next Friday. Coco and I have been looking at various visa options and it seems to be one of the biggest headaches ever. Not even the military or government supply chain has this much red tapel, wait time, etc. I have been in contact with several international law lawyers and it seems if she wants to get here July is the soonest we could hope for, and I have to have a work visa approved and back in my hands 90 days after setting foot in the ShangHai airport if I am to move there. Well, it is a good test to see how strong a couple is. I know from military experiance our government throws up as many road blocks as possible to keep foreigners for marrying Americans, yes Virginia... as unpopular as we are in the world people still want to marry us to get over here. Fortunately I do not have to worry about that. Oh the phone... not good, it seems the company Digital China Information may be closed that Friday... How can this be... Errrrr.... oh well, fate is busy dealing a new hand right now so just like in Texas Hold'em.... you have to play what you have, but you don't know what the cards will be until the hand is fully dealt.

So now comes the hard part, waiting for the 25th to come, still some things to do, namely getting my suit case back from the repair shop, ordering Chinese money (of at least seeing about the exchange rate as I got burned my Wells Fargo last time), and getting my bags packed and mail held. Still hard to believe I will be making such a long journey again so soon. Oh must remember to get an 8 cell battery for my new laptop. Ahhh I am rambeling so time to go. Take care all and thanks for sticking around.

Many Apologizes

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 05:15:26 GMT

Well, I am not dead, nor hibernating, but instead have been burning the candle at both ends and then some. Holidays were way more busy then expected, and as a result I have let this one part of my life slip! Sorry to all the readers out there who most likely have abondoned my blog for lack of my ability to find an hour here or there to write anything! Well short story short it goes like this:

Birthday, Christmas shopping, supper agressive job hunting, moving and relocation research, getting in touch with old friends, Christmas, New Years, friends family and their drama, fishing in sleet, watching trees bud and hearing thunder and seeing lightning in January, getting the new position, car breaking down, packing, now rethinking moving and looking into moving my love here instead, researching HR jobs in Chicago and Milwaukee, discovering all the paperwork involved in getting one of us to the other's place... no easy solution on the horizon... c'est la vive!

I had a good Christmas, great New Years, and despite being 8,000 miles from the one I love ok with things the way they are. This promises to be an interesting year indeed. I have not forgotten anyone, as the numerous holiday cards, and ecards indicate. I will continue my serises on motivation, get back to studying Chinese, work on keeping a cleaner apartment, call my mom more often, and force myself to at least take an hour every few days to get something out here in the blogsphere. For those still droping by in hopes there will be something new here, well.... here it is.

There is a reason work is called work

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 02:28:24 GMT

This has been a week for the record books for me, work wise. It is only Tuesday and I have logged 350 miles, 3 cities and 2 12-hour days. I haven't felt this run down since I was doing ammunition on/off loads ar Morehead City... at least I don't have a 4 hour watch to look forward to and I can enjoy a beer if I really wanted to.

Monday was an all day adventure in Appleton, installing a new all-in-one copier. The copier was delivered at noon, not 9AM like I thought. I delivered the 4 preconfigured laptops, help move a desk and made a 18 foot CAT5E cable in the mean time. Once the Xerox showed up I was suprised... corporate sent a compleatly different and new machine! Think I was excieted... think again. Our network is trying to be new, just not quite there yet. Our network runs many Citrix applications so all printers have to have post script level 3 drivers, certified by our server team to work right. Don't know what I just said? Imagine haveing to deal with issues like this every day! Anyway, no drivers for the new machine and the person who certifies them is on vacation for a week. Long story short, I made a decission and found Windows Server 2003 PS drivers that worked, at least so far... until certified drivers are published and I can reload them. I got the email and fax features working and the remote administration, so I can setup the network scanning from Milwaukee.

Today a virus attack happened in the Madison office, a varient of the Zotorb. It seems the remote installation of the service pack 4 needed for the patches to install correctly was never turned on for the Madison office. I had a few new users to set up there so I was going to head out and take care of it before lunch, well at least make it to the office before lunch. Corporate had other ideas, they kept telling me to go, then to stay while they tried to puch the service pack out. After an hour of this I made a 'command decission' and went myself. The list corporate sent me was about 1/2 of the actual affected machines... go figure. I setup the two users and while their PC's were imaging I set up a network share for the service pack so I could do many PCs at one time, I did not make it into the office until 2:40 PM (after working one day without any lunch or breaks I had to take a lunch today). I got the service pack installing on 11 machines and found a machine still configured to teh old domain. This means I have to go into the registry and replace all the old domain settings with the new, disjoin the domain, reboot, join the current domain, install the service pack so the patches and login scripts can execute on the next reboot. Still awake? See my job is so excieting and full of adventures I can nearly stand it.

Despite all this and all I get to look forward to next week, I still love this line of work. After all the jobs, careers, and things I have done this is by far the most rewarding and interesting. Always something going on, always different, always a job done at the end of the day. Now if only I could get the company car, charge card, and apartment I would be set! Work may be work, but it you like what you are doing then it is much better. This is only the second time in my like I have been at work and not bothered by staying late to get things finished. I don't know if this is my calling, but it is fun and rewarding.

Round 2

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 02:53:17 GMT

Well, more of the same... different city. Add that to the rdering snafu's and the miss-communication between departments and i am so ready to take a few vacation day! Of course this is what i get paid the big bucks for, better then flipping burgers or laying concrete in the hot sun! Mentally drained, but 2 movies were sitting in my chair when I came back from the 90 minute drive from the Appleton office today. The DVD gods laid a nice gift of the two movies i ordered from Amazon.com! Hero and Vanishing point. I am so mentally drained I am just going to sit back, turn up the surround sound, and forget about viruses and laptop theives and all that other stuff we call a job. I'll make up the posts this weekend, baby sitting my god-daughter for a day and a half... her parents anniversary. Anywho, food getting cold, drink getting warm, I'll be back to normal form soon, just need to decompress for a day or two.

Well, it is never dull!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 01:45:46 GMT

Ahhh Mondays, crazy Mondays. All I can do is shake my head. I went into work this morning and suprise, suprise, suprise... Police cars and people all in the parking lot. As I slowed down one of the managers came up and said everyone was eargely awaiting me, not a very comfortable thing to hear in a scene like this. As I walked in the District Manager and two police officers approached me and that is when I found out the office was broken into. Talk about a headache, well that wasn't the whole story... nope we were hit by three viruses over the weekend and the whole north american network backbone was down. Double wammy and I didn't have any breakfast!

Seven laptops were stolen, no power cords, LCD monitors, docking stations, phones, scanners, printers, nothing but the laptops. Breakin was around 7PM last night by smashing in the glass in the back entrancce. Of course an alarm system was too expensive so we didn't have one. Not like it would really matter, they appeared to be in and out in 5 minutes tops from what they took and what they left behind. They went trhough desk drawers, nothing was missing, and left some laptops, the older ones... like the one on my work table. No prints were left, at least the police said they wern't any surfaces they could dust... doubt that. The average battery life is around 2.75 hours, not very long. Each laptop is password protected with domain enabled encryption, meaning it will be bery hard to crack, easier to wipe and re-install the OS, the installed programs are pretty much usless unless you can copy the old registry and then install the keys for the programs to get them to work again. Basically these laptops are useless in the hands of common theifs and sold to common people.

I spent all morning reporting to dell the serial numbers and lease information so they can not be worked on or ordered on if the serial numbers are used. I had to reset all the user's passwords, delete their PC's accounts, scape together enough PC's and configure them for the most vital users, get temporary pc's ordered from corporate and next day aired down, and configuring and ordering replacements PCs.

Next came the virus, which was still crippeling the main server farms at corporate. We only had 14 Windows 2000 machines and only 4 were infected, so for the rest of the day I was isolating PC's installing necessary service packs, virus patches, and antivirus definition files. Users were screaming they could not access the internet, email, or Citrix applications.... they thought the office was off line, but we weren't the proxy servers, exchange servers, and Cittrix farms were all down along with some critical databases. These distractions were killing me, as all the upgrades and patches that had to be applied because of the service packs took about 25 minutes per machine, and I could not batch the jobs, meaning I had to go to each machines, logon as the administrator, map the server and appliy the core patches manually and then allow the login scripts to do the rest. Our network kept our Windows 2000 at SP2 for some ungodly unkonw reason, well, not any more. I have never been happy with the way corporate made me/restricted me from keeping the pc's protected and healthy. Of course we have custom applications that they have to test the service packs out and hotfixes/patches on prior to releasing them, well they need to have more modern custom apps or have them re-written to at least stay in this centry! Come on man, you are killing me!

Needless to say, My day was very busy, no breakfast, no lunch, and straight work from 8 to 6:30. Add that to the fact I have to be at the office at 6:30 to catch a ride to our Apleton office to fix there PC's and make sure there new training PCs are good to go for class at 9 AM. Madison has logged some problems so it will be interesting to see if they try to send me there also, oh and I have to get back in time, driving back a new van from the brach office, to configure and setup the loaner pcs from corporate. Does anyone out there have a cloning machine???? Well, today's lesson on Living With Purpose will be postponed hopefull I can get to it tomorrow. Sorry but I am beat and mentally drained with a it of a headache, lack of food and water.

Some have asked if I will continue beyound my regular sylabus, yes I will. I have a few philosphies and theories to air, along wigh my special observations. I must warn that beginning this fall there will probably be some political views here, and I am very passionate and stuborn when it comes to politics. Anyway. I must hydrate and such.

One day closer to payday

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 01:28:02 GMT

The Appleton adventure is behind me now, I made my way to Advance Auto Parts during my lunch break, picked up the plugs, found a decent Chinese buffet and had a pretty healthy lunch. Got all 9 wireless laptops, the projector, and printers online, tested, and squared away. Had to pick up some power strips and an extention cord as there is only one grounded outlet in the room we are using for training. That was about it, excieting ah?!?

After work I installed the plug wires, I'm getting good at it... my car seems to like going through at least 1 set every summer. 10 minutes and presto, like new! Found the issue, the carbon core broke next to the electrode; which is why sticking it back in worked, the spark could still find the metal end and conduct to the plug. Gas milage on the way back was a little better, must have been a head wind.

Noticed an interesting sign. For all those who have road tripped across the nation you will understand. I noticed a large yellow caution sign stating "Watch For High Winds". Now I have seen the "watch for Falling Rocks", "Thick Fog", "Blowing Snow", "No CBs Blasting Zone, "Slow Children... At Play" (my personal favorite), various Xings. See the pattern, they can all be seen. Now I know I am a bit behind the time in my personal transportation area, but how many vechicles, ment fot highway travel, have outside wind gauges? I know the sigh applies to truckers and motorcyclists mostly but it made me do a double take. If I notice a high-wind shoudl I pull over? I don't remember that being in the driver's handbook. Of all the sighns I learned for my driving test I am 99.999% sure there weren't any high-winds signs. Of course Alabama isn't know for being on the forfront of vehicular safety. Is it just me of does that sign seem odd to anyone else? I have noticed Wisconsin has some interesting signs; Bong Recreation Area... yes but not that type of bong, County Road XX... wonder how oftern that one gets stolen, Jelly Belly way Ahead... hmmmmm jelly.

I'm excited to hear the shuttle Discovery made it up today, see my post on STS-114. Haven't noticed much else and am really beat, driving for 100 miles watching out for those sneaky high winds can take alot out of ya. Eating a bean and cheese burrito and hitting the sack!

End of the week fastly approaching

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 21:49:18 GMT

Well the day is about done, as is the week. It started out rough enough with a service call to Madison that involved a 2 hour power outage (not my doing). Thank goodness I got the server taken care of prior to the power drop. The rest of the week has been catch up and figuring out this new role I fill. I am still administrating the Milwaukee office but have no clue about Appleton or Madison yet. I got blind sided by a corporate directive to roll up all the remaining year's leases and get new machines to help out partner, Dell, out so they can have better numbers. Trying to get manager's moving on something that has to take place within 72 hours is nearly impossible.

My Xerox project, phase 1, is going great. 3 machines all scanning, emailing, faxing, and doing their normal printing and copying is good. They bug me everyday with their moring emialings regarding empty paper trays, but know the second a machine has a problem is great in getting the problem fixed fast. It also lets me know exactly how many jams and user errors occur. Now to get phase 2 rolling, eliminating this paper issue we have, filing cabnets full of dead trees. Once I can get the procedures worked out we can scan in all the files and start to go paperless. As paperless as we can anyway.

I am logging tickets for meetings, paper jams, and general PC questions from my office now instead of just the actual troubleshooting quesstions and real issues I have to anyway. The consenses is they will use our ticket logs to cut the least productive. Thats about it from the wonderful world of IT. As long as I can get around the sneakingly abrupt trip to Madison tomorrow I will be happy. Do some fishing, catch some rays, goff off and enjoy whats left of my paycheck.

Long day suplemented by long road trips!

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 02:43:28 GMT

Got to our Appleton office today, only a tad bit late. It is a 100 mile trip mind you. Fixed the server much faster then I anticipated, which was very good.

Set up the training room PC, an old laptop, and the video output looks like poop! First I had to download updated drivers and then the S-Video cable was junk. Have to love cost conscience auditors when technology is involved. The video output was tweeked as much as possible and the resolution just isn't good enough to read or see fine detail. Oh well, lets save some bucks and use old tired equipment that was usless 5 years ago!

Updated most of the users PCs with modern software, only 2 left to verify. Got word I will be in Madison on Monday to work on a server name change. I have to call in the morning anyway as a user there has a PC that lost its name somehow (sounds like user error). As long as I can stay here in Milwaukee till the weekend I'll be fine as wine in the summertime.

I need a stress reliever squeeze thingy!

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 18:07:34 GMT

Question:

What is one of the worst thing you can do to an IT professional?

Answer 1:

Force us to call a Technical Support line for an IT issue.

I have been searching the internet, FAQ pages, and Support web at HP trying to find out how to prime the print heads on our #@%%*&@@#@ plotter. No Dice. So I called the Help Desk at HP and now I want to kill. I know better then to yell at the poor sap on the other end (I worked at a Help Desk at UW-M for 5 semesters), but I never get the support or answers I gave when I answered the phone. There is an old addage in the IT field, "Help dosen't" meaning clicking on the Help button or calling a Help Desk is pretty much an excercise in seeing how high your blood pressure can climb. Needless to say I posted the question on their Professional Services web and am hoping to receive an answer after lunch as my engineers have print jobs backing up all over the place. My bean-counter also does not want to foot the $35 per instance fee but I may just have to go and convince him otherwise.

Office morale is low, yet again. There were no nominations for our Quarterly Employee of Quarter award yet again (2 in a row). I chair the commettee so I had to institute some major changes. One our office has 50+ staff and 28 service techs so the problem is a symptom of something more sinister, we don't like being here or around each other. I know people do not get a job to make friends and most people hate their jobs, but the office does not need to foster this attitude. We do not have an office pic-nic or outting at all, except for our anual rewards shin-dig (which replaced the politically incorrect "holiday" party). The commette is in danger of being disolved due to lack of participation, not on my watch!

Having been in the office for 3 years now and seeing 3 district managers, 4 managers (financial managers), 3 receptionists, 2 HR directors, our only marketing person, and 2 staff accountants come and go offers a glimpse of what I am refering to. I am the most senior person in my department, time at the office wise! Disheartning I know, anyway so goes life in a mid sized field office of a global corperation.

Now can we get some excitement?

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:29:35 GMT

Today is the day I configured the last and Final office Xerox for network scanning and email. Had an issue with a forgotten password for the FTP client on the server but that was the only wrinkle. Now its up to the users to notify me of when they want the client software. Adding them via the server software was easy enough, except the program tried to delete all existing folders (thank god I made a copy first) so I had to re-add the existing clients plus the three new departments. Set premissions on the server for their folders (otherwise you get infinate copies of your scans). So far only one person has asked for and gotten the software, oh well progress is slow.