Saturday, October 4th, 2008
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9:13 pm - A sad day and a good day
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Today I attended a memorial Aikido seminar for Rodney Grantham Sensei. Rodney was the founder of the Aikido Center of Atlanta and influenced a number of the senior instructors throughout the southeast. I was privileged to have been an uki for him a couple of times.
The morning started out with some of his oldest students each teaching a technique that they had learned from him. After this there was an hour and half of people telling their stories of him following by the eating of freshly grilled Nathan (the pig they had cooked overnight next to the dojo).
It was great to see people that I haven't seen in over 14 years and catch up. It was amazing how many still remember me :).
Darrell, The immovable kid magnet
Alice, The Southern Belle from the Bronx
Cheryl who has moved to Syracuse, NY to get away from hurricane
Richard with his long pony tail and soft Aikido until you hit the mat
George still bouncing
Lamar the unbendable
Edwin, who at least looks 20 now
Clyde who taught at several Bham seminars and is now a shihan
It was good, it was sad. There was laughter, there was tears. There was sharing and giving. I think that its what Rodney would have wanted.
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Sunday, March 9th, 2008
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11:39 pm - Same Job, Different Company
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6 Months and 29 people ago we were told that ED had lost the contract but hang on.
3 months ago and 19 people ago we were told that Ed was working hard for us and not to worry.
1 month ago and 13 daytime people we were told to start planning to lose our jobs.
2 weeks ago we were told by Ed that @TT would only be interested in hiring 39% of the current team as of that day. When pressed our mgr told us that meant between 4 -7 of us thus impressing us with his mad math skills.
1 week ago with mounting stress everyone interviewed with only 30 mins for the interview so no one was sure what they were looking at.
Last Wed we were to receive an email with either a job offer or rejection starting at 10:AM. By 11 no one had received anything and I decided that I needed to get away from the growing stress so went for lunch.
I received my offer at 11:10 and the others started receiving theirs over the next 3 hours with the result of 12 of 17 getting an offer. I thought it was tough waiting for mine but it was even harder worrying about the rest of my team and other co-workers.
I'm off for this whole week during which I will try to forget about the misery and stupidity that ED put us through.
It should get easier for a while once I find what I will be doing exactly plus the chance of a cost of living and bonus will be nice.
current music: 3 Doors Down - Kryptonite
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
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10:58 pm - Sweet Irony
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I carried my car to the dealer since the check engine light had come on. They plug in the computer and find out that I need a new catalytic converter. Fairly straight forward so far so I say go ahead. After lunch I get a car from the service rep. They replace the converter then had to flash the car's computer. Something hung on the first try. When they tried the second time it wouldn't respond. Service rep in high very upset voice "Your car won't start, the computer on it is dead"
I wasn't too worried (or upset) because, well, I've had a couple of computer flash updates go bad myself. Really bad. All the time the poor service rep was more upset about this then I was. He explains that they won't be able to get another until tomorrow and I'm wondering what its going to cost me. After he apologizes another 5 or 6 times he tells me that Toyota is replacing the computer for me at no charge and that the dealer would get me a car (a RAV4) for the night. So Hoover Toyota does a great job of taking care of me and they apologize again before I can get ut of there.
Ahhhhh there is nothing that is more amusing then to think of my car having a BSOD and then having to replace its motherboard.
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Saturday, December 15th, 2007
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5:18 pm - 2 Quotes from new Manager
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From a staff meeting:
"Um there aah are (pause) ummmm going to, you know, ahh, umm ahhhhh be, you know (long pause) ahh ahhhh ummm you know ummmmmm a ahh lot (long pause) ahh umm of ,you know , ummmmm changes coming ummm soon, you know."
After it was discovered that the contractors that cover the nights won't be paid to work over 40 hours and it was asked how we would handle their being off:
"Well, we will just pick someone working that day and they can work through the night." (Umms, ahhs and you knows edited out for sanity)
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Saturday, October 20th, 2007
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12:13 am - Job hunting
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I want to be careful about jumping at the first opportuty since I still have 6 months before the end but also I don't want to be at the end suddenly looking. One of the local banks had a number of positions open up and there was a stampede from our group to apply. I didn't apply because imho banks may be worse then my present corp. That actually worked out ok since they seemed to have got hung up on a number of behavioral questions.The herd that applied have a list of the technical questions that they were asked that they were sharing among their little group. It doesn't seem to have helped. The only one that has gotten an offer since can stretch the truth with the best of them.
Another person that I know, is being hired in as an IT mgr at the same bank and made it very clear that if I decided to apply to send my resume through him. Count one for mad networking skills.
Oddly my resume keeps getting hits from the west coast and the "would you like to come out here" questions. And also NO I do not want to work in Boston.
To get ready I'm updating my certs and working with some stuff that I don't have a lot of hands on with such as SANS and VMware.
Even though my thinking brain knows that we should be ok there are times my fearful little hindbrain kicks in hard. Its the oddest things that it balks at. I look at it as my own little experiment for now.
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Friday, October 19th, 2007
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11:48 pm - Well, it will at least be interesting
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Two weeks ago Thursday everybody on our account was given a 10 min notice to join a conference bridge for an announcement. Since it was so short notice I knew it was bad news. It was for the corp - lost all the contract we are on to a competitor with the customer taking inhouse what we do. This wasn't a great surprise to me since there were signs that it wasn't going well. Such as the customer hadn't talked with our account people since July.
Since then there has been a lot FUD generated. Leaders warning that the jobs would be taken in house but not the people since the customer had people sitting around idle, that our corp would open a building so that we could continue to work for mother corp without having to relocate, etc. Of course nothing official. Not even an email stating that we had lost the account. With all this we also got a new Mgr on Oct 1 who is well...overwhelmed. Add in that about 8 to 10 of our 24 member team are leaving for greener pastures and work has become a roller coaster ride.
Also stirring the pot is my former mgr who during my review on his last day mentions that there are opportunities on his new account while at the same time expressing the belief there won't be any job openings with the customer even though they are taking in roughly 1800 Wintel servers.
Yesterday (Thursday) the account heads held a town hall here in Bham. Starting at 11:30, running till 1:30, offsite at Regions Park with no food provided and stern warning not to brownbag. Just my ideal of a perfect storm - a room full of 500+ people who are stressed with low blood sugar jammed in a small remote room with poor AC and soso acoustics. Really for what information we got it would have been better in an email. The general answer to most questions was "That's a good question, but we are still discussing that with XXXX".
Since I was already about leaving this isn't a big jump. Overall my company isn't that great a thing to work for and sooner or later they would have gotten me. As they have told us we're just wigets that can be found anywhere. So far now I will do my version of Slim Pickens from Dr Strangelove and see where this bomb falls.
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Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
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9:39 pm - Resident Evil
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I caught Resident Evil on Mon. I needed a movie where good was good, bad was bad, no moral ambiguity and bad got the ever loving crap beat out of it. Not bad for what it was. I have given up seeing good tactical sense used in movies so I wasn't too annoyed by their antics. Somehow being hot upped your survival chances unless you were a guy. The guys, even though they had survived this long, suddenly become creative in finding ways to be killed by the undead.
Hmmm, maybe next time "Shoot Them Up". Lots of shooting but no undead. Well unless you count the acting from what I have heard.
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Saturday, January 27th, 2007
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3:24 am - Ouch
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Sadly one of my coworkers managed to catch me totally unaware yesterday by jumping out from between cubes to scare me. The good news is that I caught my reaction in time and only slightly bent his glasses and a slight bruise on the cheek (more from him colliding with my hand that wasn't there when he jumped at me). He is very positive that he won't try again.
Work abounds with many rumors as to what will happen to us in the next month. It seems to be a race as to whether out corp will lay us off first or the company we now contract to will fire us\bring our jobs inhouse. Its a lot like the South Park episode where the boys are trapped on the school bus and are telling stories. Each one ends with them eating ice cream. For us the rumors end with us and our jobs being brought inhouse.
Should be interesting as we start our final sprint for hope over the next few weeks.
current music: Theme from Firefly
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Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
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1:23 am - Same old, Same old
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We kicked off the year with more layoffs. Good thing we're profitable and doing great. The odd thing is that this time most everyone was happy for the ones that got cut. In fact the ones that were cut looked like they had won the lottery. I guess a lot of that has to do with the not knowing how the merger will affect us.
Changing subjects, last night around midnight I was going through notes when I noticed out the corner of my eye one of our cats playing with a cat toy. I just saw her dash and pounce on it with a small squeak from it. I then remembered that we didn't have any cat toys that squeaked. I got the mouse from her before she was able to carry it back to where wife was sleeping and let it go so that was good. The mouse appeared to be very happy even when I booted it down the hill and through the brush. The cats however were not happy with me and can't understand why I didn't share with them.
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Thursday, December 14th, 2006
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3:20 am - Amusing oddness
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The other day I found myself sitting in a room with 5 FBI agents. Now I know that some are not surprised but really it wasn't anything bad. It wasn't until later that I verified that they were agents but they just gave off that FBI aura, not sure how to explain it any other way.
I've had several discussions lately about 2nd Life. Its a virtual world that this company has created where you can create just about anything you want then sell it to others to make money in it. You can buy or rent real estate, clothing, and stuff. One of the funny things that I have heard about it that one of the most popular items being sold in this virtual world is a virtual hand held game. Oh sweet irony....
Also I found out that when they opened up the rules on how to get accounts some people became upset and formed the SLLA (2nd Life Liberation Army). They are protesting by using virtual bombs to blow up some of the virtual stores.
Got to go now, have servers to patch and am still thinking on the whole virtual bomb thing.....
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Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
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7:24 am - Polishing the sword or pushing the rock
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One of my instructors once told us that there are days when we "polish the sword" (everything clicks and flows and that there are other days when we "push the rock" meaning a sorta of grind it out, no flow practice.
Pushing the Rock pretty much describes my day since I spent it discovering the many different ways that the people before me didn't do their job. Needless to say fairly disgusted which bled over into a good funk. Add in a good friend's Mother passing away this weekend which is stirring up a number of emotions that I thought I had dealt with already and the week has all sort of dark promise.
On the plus side this is a four day work week for me then three day next week with two more days still to work in somewhere.
current music: Green Jelly - Three Little Pigs
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Tuesday, October 10th, 2006
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4:02 am - Geekiness
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Spent the weekend recovering a hard drive that had died on me. I was able to get a lot more then I had thought I would. Also started recreating the network documentation for my home lab that I had lost in a different crash (No more IBM drives for me). Found a cool site where other people (geeks) had posted their network documentation (http://www.ratemynetworkdiagram.com). Obviously some people have too much time on their hands.
The hardest part has been tracing out my power runs so far but I still have to do all my LAN cabling. I think my next challenge will be getting rid of spare equipment. That and refilling the ether in my ethernet so its runs better...
On a different note (C Sharp), none of us are sure what our job situation will be after the big telecom merger. I know that the other corp has a strong dislike for ours so it could get... interesting...
My manager has been very happy this week which makes me check to be sure that I have all my deliverables in order. So this is what other people feel when I look happy at work. Somehow I don't think Oct will be boring.
current mood:  contemplative
current music: Reflections - Dianna Ross and the Supremes.mp3
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Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
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11:08 pm - Last week's Conference and stuff
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Spent last week at an HP conference in Houston (which is a lot like New Orleans without the breeze and good people). I don't think I will attend next year.
The hotel for their certified people was 10 blocks from the convention center. A number of us switched from a hotel that was near the convention center to this one since they always have buses running back and forth between them and they wanted all their certified people together. Apparently this year an Exec made some cost cutting decisions including having buses only till 7:45 in the morning and after 5 in the afternoon/ They neglected to mention this until a number of us didn't make the cutoff time. Their reply to our bitching - You can catch a cab back and forth or walk.
I attended mostly security sessions since the instructor that was doing them was extremely knowledgeable. I picked up a number of interesting tips. She discussed a hacker that has been trying to break in to one of her honeypot servers for a year and a half now. Apparently he is trying to brute force the password but since she wants people to break in she left the password blank.
Hootie and the Blowfish played for the conference at the going away party. I think we shocked their sound guy. He was setting up the sound board and looked up to find a small crowd watching him. I don't think he is use to being the center of attention at a concert, LOL. Interesting guy, he spent about 30 mins talking about his equipment and setting up this hugh sound board before the concert started.
I came away with some interesting swag and also won an Ipod Nano which promptly went to the wife as did my conference bag which is now a scrapbooking bag.
current mood:  amused
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Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
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10:53 pm - Notes from Dragon Con
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Who woulda thought 15 is the maximum number of people in a hotel room before the Fire Marshal becomes unhappy
There were a lot less Storm Troopers this year. One of the things I enjoy about Dragon Con is seeing all the different costumes and guessing who they are. There were a lot of FireFly fans there though.
( More Con stuff )
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Wednesday, August 16th, 2006
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10:42 pm - And I work for them why???
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My company has dropped below even my lowest belief in them.
In the past 3 three weeks we have had 5 people depart for other jobs bringing to 9 the total for the year that have moved on without replacement. Most companies after a loss of 40% of the group would consider hiring at least one person. Mine - considers laying off at least one maybe two more.
Our group had to implement an emergency MS patch in 5 days on over 1800 servers which we did by working all night and weekend. Praise from upper mgmt - nope. Their statement - "if you are able to meet your deliverable then you don't need more people".
They announced that Blue Cross would be dropped and instead we all would have to use one that is not accepted by most medical people in this region. Plus our costs would go up. They will pay 100% of preventive care that means they pay for our access to a "Wellness" web site. This site after doing their survey wanted to discuss my alcohol consumption (the lowest choice was average 1 drink a day) and felt I was at risk for colon cancer (after answering that no one in my whole extended family line had ever had colon cancer)
Upper leaders are concerned about the lack of morale - this after three months of one or two people being laid off almost daily. They have had to tell us that we could not volunteer to be laid off. All the senior people in my group spent a morning last week backing up data to personal external drives or DVDs just in case it was out turn.
So for now I work on some exams and I polish up my resume. Who knows maybe the horse will learn to sing.
On the plus side my knee is getting better so it doesn't ache all the time. Musta been the wellness web site...
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Friday, July 28th, 2006
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11:57 pm - Happy SysAdmin Day
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Monday, July 24th, 2006
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11:50 pm - More then I needed to know LOL
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I had to dispatch someone in Atlanta tonight to check on a server that wasn't responding. She replaced a network cable & power cord and it came back up. I promised her that I wouldn't do anything else that would cause her to drive back in this week.
She replied "That's good, I don't want any more interruptions in my sweet loving"
current mood: amused
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Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
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11:26 pm - It all about .. Well.. studipity
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My corp has been announcing almost each week or so a new contract that they have signed. There is constant talking about the new company and how well it is doing. It shouts out that employee are its #1 asset. So how does it show that everything is improving?
That's right: LAYOFFS
Apparently we are very disposable assets.
Our new person in our team has been with us over 3 months and still isn't able to do his job. I've had to resort to drawing pictures (simple) since the application of clueX4s hasn't worked. We are at least up to "Fire Bad".
I was home sick today but because one of my team members is a lazy ()#*&(#*& moron I had to go in.
And these aren't the major bad things...
Actually as I look back this whole month so far has sucked and blowed.
current mood:  depressed
current music: Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hell
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Monday, June 5th, 2006
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11:31 pm - How do you grow a System Adminstrator?
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After 3 years of grabbing anyone that showed any server\network knowledge our pickings for job openings have gotten slim (Sigh - over hunting). Our last person to come in our group before layoffs started was a person who was doing more of a coordination role then an actual technical role. While an intelligent guy there seems to be something not clicking. Lets just say its been an interesting ride. After he accidentally wiped a production server last week we have had to back off and reconsider how to use him hence the question "how do you grow a System Administrator (SA)?".
I have always been of the opinion that we just occur, sorta of like a mutation or a cold. I never dreamed that we could have trouble "converting" a normal. But then wiping the wrong server wouldn't have occurred to me either.
So what is needed for an SA? How about:
1) Troubleshooting
2) Ability to adapt since Microsoft releases patches every month guaranteeing something will blow up or change.
3) Ability to multi task since while you are working a server outage you will also have to explain to 3 levels of leaders (in terms they can understand) what happened plus work with the customer who is down.
4) A certain disregard for authority (At least when you don't directly report to it)
5) Sarcasm - Its the armor that protects you when you want to say WTF to someone stupid instead reply that sure I will reboot the internet for them.
Well the next few weeks should be, aah, interesting.....
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Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
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1:02 am - Rambling
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Spent the weekend in Atlanta with an old friend catching Wicked. Interesting show but very different from the book...
Also saw the exhibit Bodies.
Had a nice afternoon today swimming with the book club group and watching "Flash Gordon".
Lucked up on several used books I had been looking for in Atlanta including several Honor Harrington hard backs.
One of my Uncle's funeral was last week and found out another was in the hospital. Couldn't make the funeral with everything going on this past week and it was in New Jersey. Hoping to make the internment here in Al but not sure when that will be.
Survived our layoff last week. Looks like we have another one in July. Boss assures us that we don't have to worry since we are already under staffed. We'll see. I think the next one will be my 10th one in the time I have been with them. Good thing the company is actually doing well...
Start of next month it looks like I will get to almost double the number of servers I support.
Continued the assault on the bushes that have grown up over the past year around the house. At the very least its helping me get exercise.
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