IT Guy's Life - How to Vacation
28/09/11 22:03
How to vacation :
This should not be hard.
You request some well-earned time off. You get it approved (or else).
You GO AWAY for awhile and DON’T THINK ABOUT WORK.
A simple concept for an average Joe like you or me to grasp, right?
So why can’t some people do it?
Example : My good friend (not really) - we’ll call him 24x7.
He goes away for a two week vacation to a tropical island. We're looking forward to it more than he is. The day he arrives at his destination, he discovers his BlackBerry will get a signal and function there. Me? I'd turn that thing off post-haste. But 24? No way, man.
He decides the beach is a great place to fire off a list of tasks that he feels I need the manage while he's away. (Not that we didn't go over this three to nine times before he left…).
F-ing awesome.
I do the smart thing and choose not to respond.
Two days later - "Please send mid-week status report on current helpdesk activity.".....
I'm thinking "What a damned joy this guy must be to his family on vacation." I can visualize him, checklist in hand, having the kids verify the daily vacation task list and telling them to submit request forms for any activites not currently scheduled.
I wonder if he schedules "exception time" to get it on with the Mrs.?
First Friday, post-24x7 departure. "Please submit weekly status report."
At this point, I feel I have to reply. My response was as follows : "Dude, you're on vacation. Try to enjoy it. Everything under control. World continues to revolve. I'm doing you a favor by NOT sumbitting a report. We will catch up upon your return. Sun continues to rise. P.S. - they grow awesome coffee there. Bring me some back. If a response is received, I will remotely wipe your BlackBerry.
Enjoy. This is not a request."
Didn't hear back until he was actually back in the states. Did not get the coffee - just some kinda-sorta O.K. cookies.
That bastard.
Moral of the story : I work to live. I don't live to work.
Look. Someday, you're gonna die. Do you want to look back on your life and think "Damn, I'm sure glad I kept up on those TPS reports." or
woudl “you rather think, I had a f---ing good run. I did what I wanted to do, saw what I wanted to see, and had a good time doing it."
This company I work for will have absolutely no impact on, or signifigance to the world, historically. I'd rather enjoy my life while I can.
This lesson was fully reinforced by my father-in-law who, after years of working his *** off, promptly had a heart attack and died the freakin' day after he finally retired.
He had tickets to Hawaii for the next evening.
Of course, he was kind of an asshole, so it may have just been karma.
Enjoy.
Life with a Geek... How to Earn a Geek's Respect.
28/09/11 21:26
This should be obvious to most but, to my continuing amazement, it is not.
It is very easy to earn the respect of your local “computer guys” - just admit and respect that fact that, in this one particular area, (Technologuy : PC’s, gadgets, phones, etc.) we DO know more than you.
I’ll readily admit that I know jack about corporate law, managing the financials of a million dollar company, marketing, and all that other business-type stuff that I don’t really care (or want to care) about.
I understand that you went to some higher education facility, worked your way up the ladder, etc.
You know things I don’t. Good for you, pal. I admit this freely.
While I can balance my checkbook, and make a pretty Excel sheet and all that other jazz, it doesn’t mean I’m going to come across with an attitude like I have even the slightest clue about how to do your job.
Therefore, just because you have a Dell Inferioron at home that you’ve managed to install Office on all by yourself and you know to periodically run Windows update, that does not mean you're even remotely qualified to offer your opinion on how I should maintain and manage your machine at work (correction - MY machine that you’re borrowing).
I’ve actually had people tell me “No, thats not it.” when I offer them the solution to a problem.
Honestly now, there are over three hundred machines I’m responsible for - most of my peers work for companies with many, many, more.
The odds of you coming up with something I haven’t seen before are about the same as me hooking up with Natalie Portman (mmmm.... Natalie... Oh, sorry.).
Look, I’ve seen **** that would make the MCP from Tron crap his digital pants, O.K.?
Second-guessing your friendly neighborhood help desk guy will immediately get you on the IT PITA list.
If you’re on “The List” your quality of support WILL suffer.
You will find that, for some reason, the person who always winds being dispatched to help you is either :
. a) the new guy
. b) the guy we’re planning on laying off soon
. c) the guy who owes someone else on the help desk money
. d) the jerk went to Starbucks and didn’t bring back something for the other guys
. e) the guy who “smells funny”
. f) whoever lost the coin toss and is pissed off about it
Keep this in mind before you offer your highly valuable opinion.
If you REALLY want to get on our good side, admit it when we ask you if you did something to hose your machine.
I’ve never yelled at a user for making a mistake. Good natured ribbing on occasion, yes, but that’s usually to get the user out of panic mode.
Example of my favorite users :
A former corporate attorney. (Seriously, A lawyer, can you believe it?!)
His laptop was seriously infected with a really bad rootkit and a few other super-nasty pieces of “Oh Crapware”.
It was acting up and performance was terrible.
When we asked him if anything unusual had happened recently, he eventually admitted that he had opened a few email attachments that he suspected he should not have.
He basically stated “Yeah, I f-ed up and fell for it. So I called you guys before I even brought it back into the office.”
His readiness to admit he messed up saves us a lot of troubleshooting time, and probably protected us from a security breach.
Heck, we even bought him a router with a SPI firewall for his home setup so he’d be better protected in the future.
Another fine example : former CFO.
He’s an older gentleman who openly admits these newfangled computer thingies sometimes give him fits.
He’s actually fairly savvy in general, but once he gets off track or starts digging through an application’s options, he’s pretty good at messing things up royally.
He’s also famous for forgetting how to do things if he doesn’t do them routinely.
Fortunately, his calls are usually pretty amusing; “Hey, you showed me how to archive a bunch of my old e-mails the other day - again - remember? Well, I’ll be damned if I forgot how to get them back. Again. Think you can come over?”
Sure dude...
Just keep this in mind, and well get along great.
You do your job.
Let us do ours.
We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t want to help.
Respect the skills. (While we probably won’t openly admit it) We respect yours as well.
Sold!
28/09/11 20:44
Change is in the air…
Recently, my employer was purchased by another company.
This can be either very good, or very bad for me.
Part of the process involved me interviewing FOR MY OWN JOB with five people.
Three barely spoke intelligible English, one did not look old enough to drink, and one seemed she was in WAAAAY over her head.
None seem anywhere NEAR capable of taking over a business of our size and complexity.
They have promised to announce their decisions on who they plan on keeping, and who gets “let go” in the next few weeks.
I am conflicted. I see the potential excitement of getting to rework some things and there is the benefit of some actual
MONEY being invested in the company again.
Yet there is also the potential nightmare of staying and watching things fall or be torn apart.
Then there’s also the chance of flat-out unemployment (shudder)...
Interesting times ahead…