Time to retire?

Today is my bosses birthday. Technically, he is not really my boss, but plays a team leader type of role in my team and shields us from a lot of heat. He turns 55 today, which is also legal retirement age.

He seems to think he is dispensable but he has a great deal of historical knowledge. He is also a great trainer and backed me moving into this role so I am eternally grateful. He is getting increasingly frustrated with the politics in the company and is planning an exit strategy.

Realistically, he wants to be made redundant and probably won't retire. Redundancy would probably be difficult as there are others who have a lot of respect for him also. He seems to undervalue his worth and whilst he deserves a payout, it probably wouldn't be in the company's best interests. ONly time will tell the future.

Stitched Up

My walking coworker has just come back from minor day surgery. He had a benign lump on his face that was growing to a point that it was rather large and consuming a fair piece of real estate on his upper jaw.

Since coming back, he has a vigour about him. He has started walking to and from work, has a spring in his step during his lunchtie walk and is very diet conscious.

I admire his will and drive. My pants right now is really tight and i'd love to lose a couple of kilos. Lets see if I can get anywhere this time.

Balancing Priorities

Today was a hard day to come into work. It was a day between a public holiday and a weekend and I had a big night last night. There was also another teams event which I had promised my poker partner that I would attend.

I pushed my weary body to work early and cleaned up what was a surprisingly busy day. My day became much worse in the afternoon - one of our customers has a habit of planning network changes on a Friday afternoon, and equipment/configs are most likely to dail when such work is being done. I ended up landing an emergency and was stuck in the office until evening working on a product I barely know. By the time the fault was finished, I could not make it to poker in time and had to let down my partner - even if I had made it there, i was mentally shot and very tired from the night before.

I ended up watching a little football before passing out on the lounge. I felt like I was in good spirits from last night, its amazing how fast things can change.

Spending the rest of your life...

I'm not a regular lotto player, but like to buy the odd ticket when the jackpot exceeds $20 Million.  The current Powerball is $50 Million.

There is a small work syndicate that I am a part of with the same rule - we all put $10 in and but a couple of tickets to test our luck.

What has me wondering is that if I were to win, how would it change my life? I wouldn't quit my job and would love to go to Vegas, but would do that regardless of if I won lotto.

 Despite my odds being incredibly long, It is still something we do.Wish me luck.

Flat Out!

Work has been extremely busy this week. I am doing work for 2-3 different people and there has been a recent influx of cases. On top of all that, I have been trying to squeeze in some lab work and increase my competence.

I have to say the day is going faster. My job is far more satisfying when I am actually busy and not just pretending to be busy. Also, for the most part, the things I am working on is actually interesting. I like getting my hands dirty and playing in the lab, though I usually do very little of it.

As a consequence, it is Thursday and I am exhausted. At least I am earning my money.

Drowning before you can swim

I have been in my current role for a few years now, but it feels like I am still the newbie. I have a very knowledgeable boss who is great for sharing information, but sometimes I do not push myself hard enough and tend to coast at work.

This week I was assigned a particularly hard and scary fault. It was quite critical and had the potential to be high impact. I wss initially concerned when it was handed over to me. After reading and re-reading the network diagram, I think I have a good understanding of the fault and can talk to it simply. I'm pretty proud of myself as I have learned quite a fair bit in the process.

These are the sort of victories that make my job satisfying.

A coworker that I have high respect for surprised me last week and showed up at the office unannounced. The surprise was amplified as he is now based out of San Jose and was formerly from Melbourne. The Sydney office is the last place I expected to see him but he had the opportunity of a Sydney junket to help out a local customer and grabbed it with both hands.

As i was on call last week, we agreed to meet up for dinner one day this week and that was tonight. We spoke for hours on work issues and my future career progression plans along with personal chit chat. His insight was impressive, for someone in his mid-20s he has slot of.maturity and knowledge.

He told me what I needed to hear - I am cruising in my current role and either need to become an expert or learn another product. We ended with an extended walk around the harbour foreshore before I ended up catching the long train home.

I had a really good time tonight, although I am definitely getting too old for these late ones on a school night. I will definitely pay the slumber price tomorrow.

Working from the"Regional Office"

Recently, the CEO of Yahoo came under fire for banning her employees from working from home. I work for a company that allows Working from Home  and in a bid to reduce need of office space is starting to encourage it on a Seniour management level (although Line Managers do not seem as enthusiastic).

Someone who I play poker with is a line manager. His company's research suggested that employees were less likely to resign if they were allowed 1 work from home day a week. He told me a few weeks ago that he allows his staff to do it, however, requires that they update a procedure while they are at home. He felt that home workers were less productive.

I rarely work from home. I like overhearing my bosses technical conversations at work and feel that I benefit more from the knowledge I gain when I am at work. That said, I will do if I have good reason - usually when I have worked the night before or had to go to the doctors. Today I took advantage of it as I didn't feel like driving with my bruised foot.

Had I have not been able to work from home today, I may well have taken a sick day. Working from home meant that I could update my cases, do a training course I was avoiding and keep on standby for any faults that may have arisen. Sure, it wasn't the most productive days work I have ever done but I was far more productive than I would have been had I taken a sickie.

I think Working from home is worthwhile if done in moderation. It improves employee satisfaction and can save companies money if implemented correctly. It can be abused and line managers are right to be cautious but giving an employee a work from home day once or twice a month is more than reasonable.

Decisions

Today is the birthday of a former Uni friend and work colleague. We have been through a lot together. We failed similar subjects at Uni, We did several uni assignments together, spent countless nights intoxicated at UTS bar and have similar tastes in music.

In our final years of uni, we both secured full time employment at an ISP. We did our penance and started on Phone support. He ventured in to test based interactions and I dabbled into a few different areas but after a few years there we both knew that the job wasn't for us.

Our ministry is very volatile. My friend started a work before me, and in that time, the company changed ownership and names 3 times. Members went up and crashed down. there were several waves of redundancies and we kept ducking the water. We were both very bored there and needed new challenges but also wanted our redundancy packages before leaving.

One day, not long after knocking up his 5 years, my friend had drawn his line in the sand and resigned and moved to Ireland. Whilst I commend his courage, his timing was slightly off as had he waited 3 months, he would have received his redundancy package like the rest of us.
 
He still works in the ISP industry but is more into the sales side now. He is well settled and has a long term girlfriend there now. I haven't visited him or seen him in a few years now, but still think of him from time to time, particularly on this day.

Being a little naughty.

I was all set and prepped for my regular lunchtime walk with a coworker. We work in different buildings that are about 15 minutes apart, so leave at the same time and meet in the middle.

I had put my walking shoes on and had entered the lifts to the ground floor. Just before it closed I had heard a familiar voice. "hold the door!". To my surprise another coworker was up from Melbourne for the day. We once worked closely but have always kept in touch on a professional and personal level.
He persuaded me rover ditch my walk - something I rarely do - and have lunch at a pizza parlour not too far away that I like eating at on the company. I had tried to decline, but the.offer was too good to refuse.

We caught up on changes in our respective offices and general office gossip. We also talked about a mutual former coworker that we havent seen in years. By total co-incidence, I saw her a few hours later in my local shopping centre. Just goes to show that ears can burn sometimes.

Rewarding a Bludger

I work in a cutthroat industry. There are several telecommunications equipment vendors out there and only a limited pool of customers. My company has a reputation as a market leader, however, is also relatively expensive and cost cutting, efficiencies and transformations are always at the front of upper managements plans. Labor costs being what they are, the Australian employee base has been gradually eroding over many years whilst people sparred are encouraged to be more adaptable and take on more work.

There is one particular employee who has been with the company a little over 8 years. He has a reputation for being invisible - he is a good talker but never does any work. His manager is based in Melbourne. My workplace allows people to work from home, but he takes true advantage of the privilege and turns up on average about once a month. There have often been snickerings my many, including yours truly, on just how he manages to keep his job. Is his manager incompetent? Is he blinded by this employees gift with words? Does this employee have a medical or personal condition making it difficult to get rid of him for legal reasons?

I have seen him turn up to work three times this week. Today I found out that he had been made redundant. He had kept the news quiet while he works his notice period, but will be entitled to at least 6 months pay. I think it is a positive move for the company as it is about time they cut their losses with this guy and am very surprised that it took them this long.

My walking partner was unaware of the redundancy until I told him, which is slightly odd since they are technically part of the same team. He is an older employee that would be ecstatic with a golden handshake and has a similar negative opinion of the employee in question. When I broke the news, he was quite upset. "Why is he rewarded for doing nothing?". He has a point - a more proactive manager could have dismissed him without a package. Maybe its because I am not looking for a package that I see the benefits of getting rid of him by any means outweighing the drawbacks of retaining him.

Business is picking up

Work is actually starting to get busy again. Customers are upgrading and expanding, faults are happening. I'm starting to help out with a few interesting areas just outside my prime responsibilities. The days are going faster and I'm feeling more satisfied.

The only downer to all this is that I do not feel like I am learning. Maybe I am in cruise control and lost my drive? I'm not happy about it and going to have to do something to get back into overdrive. It is very easy to sit back into your comfort zone but that isn't really the job I get paid for.

One of my few fantasies

A friend from work has decided to pack up shop and applied for a transfer to Silicon Valley. from what he says, the work is quieter than what he was expecting but he is enjoying the break away from home and the subtle differences that the US offers.

One of his indulgences was to splash out $60,000 on a V8 Chrysler Camaro. If I were to live in the US for a year, I would be parting with a third of that and looking for a early 80's Silver Deloreon.

Deloreons were the coolest cars going around when I was growing up, helped largely by the Back to the Future franchise. Any car with doors that open upwards get instant brownie points. Other than that, they just look cool. The Deloreon never made it to Australia and most have the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car for local use.

I went to Universal Studios in Los Angeles when I was a kid. I sat in replicas of KITT from Knight Rider and the cop car from Blues Brothers. There was a Deloreon on one of the stage shows and I was a volunteer in charge of rocking it for one of the shows but never managed to sit in it.

My fantasy will probably never come to fruition, but one can dream.

The wrong kind of busy

This week was easily the busiest work week I have had this year. A few of the managers have been tasking me with loose ends that need to be closed off.

I have been managing lifecycles, preparing reports, cleaning up product bases and updating databases. These are all fiddly little things that someone has to do, and me being quiet with cases right now is the obvious person to di it.

Today I went a step further and did trade and diversity training - bith of these are mandatory but I had been avoiding them out of lack of interest. The diversity training was whack - it was a role play with disabled and racist people, choosing the best out of three responses, none of which were responses expected in the real world. I'm glad they are crossed of the list for this year.

None of the above are my prime responsibility or particularly fun, but someone has to do it and I am paid to do a job so i need to see it through. At lesat I am busy and the days are going by quicker, but I'd love to have to lab a case or get into soe real work.

Another week of house arrest.

Today is the start of another on-call week for me, so yours truly is expecting to have a very quiet and unsocial week. Generally speaking, everything slows to a halt on Christmas week - customers go on embargos, work traffic is non-existent, work parking is ample, news is boring and everything freezes. Day by day business usually picks up until just after Australia Day weekend, when everyone returns to work, school starts again and back to normality for 11 months.

This week customers are starting to finish their embargos and work should start to pick up, I'm still not expecting any call-up's, though I have to be ready for them nonetheless.

In the meantime I'll have to think of something to keep my mind busy this week. Wish me luck!

Now in Widescreen.

It was a coworkers last day today. She is not part of my team but someone whom I've had several 5 minute chats with in the kitchen or an the walk back to the office after a coffee run. She has decided to go on holidays for a couple of months then re-settle in her native country (Hong Kong).She has lived in Sydney most of her life and it is obvious how big of a decision this has been for her.

There have been the obligatory farewell emails and final catch-up but one particular email that caught my eye was one where she was trying to sell or give away her stuff before the big move. I bought a widescreen monitor (which I am using now) and a blood pressure monitor for the bargain price of $150 total.

Whilst I was happy with my purchase, I almost felt I was intruding into this persons life as I was browsing through her well organised pictures at work. She had a lot of nice stuff. This was a major move for her - she is selling her bed, car, TV and a host of other equipment we all have and take for granted.

I really wish her well for the future and wonder how long it will take before she changes her mind and comes back. I give her 3 years but she believes the move will be permanent.

I need a coffee hit

I blogged about a month ago that my regular barista at work had left. The move has been hard on me. Since he has left, no less than 6 people have made coffee at this place with various results. Yesterdays coffee was awful - I hate waste but it was a total screw-up. My regular was now a small, and it was so bad that I had to tip it down a sink.

Today I ventured a bit away and had a had a decent coffee at a shopping centre but this is not sustainable. Once teh Christmas break is over and other coffee shops start opening again, I may need to venture out and find another place to get coffee. In the meantime, I keep yawning at work!

Lab Rat

So I have been at work the last couple of days. Given that I have 1 active case at the moment and the customer is on leave for the next couple of weeks, my boss decided that it was time to develop the team and do some lab work configurations.

I'm a broadband enginner in a support role. The problem with support is that you only get involved when the network goes pear shaped, and event then the fault is usually software or hardware bugs. It's very rare that we actually get to play with the equipment and set up an end to end connection.

I had a late night last night and was very tired today, to the point that my boss offered to send me home early. I refused as I enjoy lab work and I felt like I was learning, Nonetheless, I certainly wasn't at my productive best and it was alot of fun. We managed to get a user connected and almost had him connet to the internet but our knowledge exhausted itself at the final hurdle. Hopefully we will be able to finish it off on Monday.

I really enjoyed today, just a pity that I was so darn tired.

The Treasures Within

There is a TV show that I have been obsessed with recently called Storage Wars. The basic premise is that if you don't pay your upkeep on a storage locker for over 3 months, the storage facility has the rights to sell it. Every so often, the facility will host an auction. Buyers have 5 minutes to look at the locker without entering or touching anything then the locker is auctioned off and the highest bidder then owns the contents.

Often the lockers are a stack of rubbish with the occasional gem item that is appraised, but there is something about seeing a pile of belongings that makes you not want to look away - whether it be on the side of a street or in a storage facility. The show also wins by following some great characters and watching them try to outbid and trap each other into paying more than they need to. It is a really good half hours light entertainment.

Work has been a little quiet this week in the lead up to Christmas and one large section of out office floor has relocated to another site. They left behind about 20 roller door Curdenza's. Not letting an opportunity go by, I decided to play my own game of Storage Wars.  Ended up with a pretty cool pen, 2 DVI cables, a purple post it pad, a muesli bar, about $2.85 in loose change and a handful of green tea bags. Not quite the treasure within, but it was a bit of fun and helped a slow day move quicker.

On a side note, Its now been a month of blogging for me. I'm a little suprised that I have been able to keep this up, but stranger things have happened.

Lunched Out

I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, however, had another work lunch today. Work very rarely provides lunch, but it is the Christmas season and it feels like I am in an avalanche of work lunches.

Today's lunch followed on from a customer meeting, so I needed to be on my diplomatic best behaviour. I had a pretty dry King Salmon at a steakhouse. They were very short staffed, they took an eternity to take our order and before I knew it, half my day was gone and all I wanted to do was sleep.

I really wish these things were spaced out better throughout the year, but I guess that would be too hard to manage. I think I'm done fr work lunches this year, which means that I need to get back working on my diet.