May 9, 2006 | blog
Its amazing how one new individual added to a team can start to disolve the well understood relationships within. This is happening at work, and unfortuntely, I don’t think I can work with the result. We’ve added a new manager for one are of our department, and he seems to be too intent on playing the role of “manager” than being a team member.
The approach is quite remenicent of isolationism than anything else I’ve seen recently, and is really rubbing a number of other groups the wrong way. Too bad, because he has the ability to shape his group in a whole new way, but I don’t know if he’s going in the right direction yet. He sure pissed me off – ’nuff said (for now).
Apr 27, 2006 | blog
Finally, I’ve made a few small breakthroughs on the project I’m working on at work. We’re upgrading our VPN systems and I have been having trouble with our client software upgrading cleanly. Since the software ties into Windows quite deeply, and the end-users who will be running the upgrade manually (they don’t have admin perms), I was starting to get more than a little worried that it wasn’t going to work.
No worries now though, finally found the pieces to get the automated process rolling – and none too soon. Its been taking a lot of my time and I’ve not been able to get back to the blog here on a regular basis. Now that I’m near the end, that headache (its caused a few) is going away.
Apr 19, 2006 | blog
Scoble (or was it Bubba?) had a post on Blogging and Careers yesterday. It started me thinking on how employees working for companies in the tech sector have more opportunity to blog during work. Some actually have it as part of their job – Robert Scoble for example. Others come to mind as well, mainly the A-Listers and so on, have more ability to blog during work and more importantly, to blog some of their work.
While I’m not ready to admit that I’m jealous, I do think that there is an important piece to blogging that many employers simply dismiss out of hand. The opportunity to blog about what you do and/or how you do it can help a blogger grow in their abilities. It can help expand a person’s writing style, imagination, and persistence. It will open doors that a person doesn’t even realize they have avaliable to them. Blogging does represent a window into a person’s character, and that is a good thing. In today’s environment where life is so fast-paced that people have trouble just keeping up with their work, blogging can offer an outlet for their ideas, passions and creativity.
Blogging can enhance your career in ways too numerous to ponder. One, for example is the simple availability to potential customers, and yes I view employers as customers. After all each of us have services to offer, and why not have a sample of these services and resources available to future customers?
There is more to blogging than many middle managers in corporate America understand at this time. It is a powerful tool for everyone, its as simple as that. Anyone can start and update a blog for free, and you can take it to many levels after that limited only by your own ambition. Blogging has not ‘peaked’ as some are trying to hint at – blogging has barely gotten started and will provide one of the best ways for those interested to promote themselves and their ideas. Come along for the ride and find out for yourself; your career and your personal life will be enriched.
Also, this article from The Boston Globe on the subject is a good read.
Apr 16, 2006 | blog
Ok, we’ve completed DR, and it was an overall success. Though our provider had several hardware issues that delayed our start time, and impeded our early progress, we did complete our required tests.
One stretch objective was “bagged” at the end, though we did restore the systems involved. This was due to the length of the test, we had added 8 hours to the test when the provider offered them for not being 100% ready at the beginning. That change did make for a longer than anticipated work schedule for a number of the staff – several extra hours were spent on-site rather than getting much needed rest.
Once we completed yesterday, we all headed home for rest; I got home in the afternoon, ate a little, watched a movie and tried to waste a little time to get closer to a “real” bedtime. Finaly crashed around 9pm and slept for a little over 12 hours. Good thing we don’t do this too often, its hard to catch up on rest.
Now we’ll gather our notes, archive the contents of the DR Blog and bring all this information to our post-DR de-brief meeting sometime in the next week. Lots of items will be discussed, from our performance, our providers performance, what went well, what we can improve on, and so on.
Until next time!
Apr 14, 2006 | blog
After a few hours it sure does get boring. We’re on track to finish up tomorrow afternoon sometime, and I know everyone is looking forward to concluding the test.
There are not many ammenities at the test facility we are at, our remote team probably is at the nicer site. However, they are carrying the “heavy load” so to speak. They are putting in longer hours and doing most of the restore work. Our team here in town is focused more on supporting and coordinating the system testers that validate that the restore is completed successfully.
Well, I’m going to get a chance for some extra rest this evening, and will be surfing on my favorite news sites to see what is new out in IT land. Soon, it’ll be back to normal and I can’t wait for that.
