Work

We Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists

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So the MTA workers have struck in NYC. That means the dreaded telecommute for me! Since I rely on the subway to get anywhere I am rather ticked off. But what pisses me off the most is the reasons why the union is striking. I am not the hugest fan of unions in general, and this strike reiterates my issues about them. Forget my specific issues with the unions contract. I just want to know why if you have a group of people who refuse to work for the conditions (reasonable conditions) set by the employer, that you cannot replace them with people who will? Seriously, if you were a corporate worker somewhere without a union and you said I am striking until I get a better contact you would be replaced right away. I am curious to know any non union workers who would have a job if they decided to not show up for 2 days because they wanted better benefits?

And lets talk about benefits. Back in the day (early 1900’s) unions were necessary. Without them people where exploited. Is the MTA exploiting the union members now by asking them to contribute 1% to their health benefits? I don’t know what % I contribute to my health insurance but I know it is allot more than 1%. Also where can you work that you can demand a guaranteed raise of 8% a year for 3 years for everyone? What ever happened to you do well and you get a raise?

You have a group of 30,000 people holding a city hostage. They have cost innocent people hundreds of millions of dollars because they think they are entitled to a better contract. Well wake up TWU, several other unions have been operating without a contract for a while. They don’t strike and cost others not involved in the situation money. The mayor was right, your leadership is a bunch of ignorant thugs. I feel bad for the union workers caught in the middle, because yes they too are caught in the middle of all this.

I do have to say I am thankful that the governor and mayor didn’t cave into demands. TWU, if you act like terrorists we treat you like them. We don’t negotiate with people holding cities hostage!!!

Real Checks

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Yesterday I had to deposit a real pay check. At first I didn’t know what to do! I have had direct deposit for like 4 years. Well seriously I knew what to do, but it quickly came back to me how annoying it was to goto the bank every few weeks with a check. I am switching banks (more on that later) so I needed to have 1 paper check so my employers payroll company could send a test EFT to the new bank. I will be back to the land of automatic payments in a few weeks.

The good news is my company started recently direct deposit expense checks. My last place I worked did that. It made life really easy. No need to goto the bank for almost any deposits:).

Road Trip

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I took a work road trip today. Had to meet some people in our other office and several other people had other missions up there so we rented a van and drove up. Got allot done, and we tried to avoid the traffic from some storm that was coming up the coast. We didn’t really avoid the traffic. Got stuck in it from the GWB all the way to my house. I assume that everyone was stuck in it past that too.

After work I hopped out of the van by my house but instead of going home I hoped on the subway and went to heartland brewery to meet Jayson and John for dinner and drinks. I had fun. We talked and hung out. We need to schedule another poker night.

Anniversary

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Today is my 4 year (full time) anniversary at my current company. In some ways it doesn’t feel like 4 years, and in others it feels like I have been there for ages. it is weird looking back. I really have been working at the same company for 5 years coming up in July. Or 5 years in March starting off at the original company that provided support for my current place. It was a rather complicated situation. In any event it is 4 years to the date that I stopped being a contractor and started my full time stint.

On most days I am happy and don’t even think about leaving. That is a big step for me since before this place I never stayed anywhere more than 2 years (nor did I want to). I say on most days because this has been a rough week. Things are settling down, but I had high stress levels dealing with some people.

Holiday Lull

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Lots to do this week, but for some reason there felt like a little holiday lull. I guess it is the short week. We had a release explode on us twice in the past week (the same release on two different nights). that was fun getting a call from Danny at 11PM Monday. I am also trying to get a deal finalized for a new network switch. Getting to the right price is always interesting.

Our new batch of servers finally arrived Wednesday with more on the way next week. We also got the licenses for our copies of Vmware’s ESX server so we can build those out.

I also had the electricians in the office to spec out adding another couple of circuits to the computer room. They think they can do what I want, but will have to play around with the power a bit to get as much juice as I need. With this power upgrade done we will max out the room. Any further expansion most likely will have to go somewhere else.

The rest of the week was taken up by paper work and project plans!

Wiring Day

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Today Jayson and I spent most of the day rewiring a cabinet in the office. Try as we might these cabinets get super messy with cables everywhere after a while. We rewired this same cabinet over a year ago but it looked horrible again. The issue is that we keep putting in and taking out different kinds of gear. The cables get really messy.

To keep things cleaner we moved the PDU’s, rewired all the electrical, moved some servers to different racks, and took out the thick analog KVM cables and replaced them with IP KVM’s that run over regular CAD5. The result is a much cleaner rack. That and everything is neat and tied down helps. We next need to get the electrical guys to come in and add some more circuits.

We still have to clean up the mess of cables and old servers we pulled from the cabinet, but we can do that during the week.

The work was messy, and we came in on a Saturday but the results where worth it!

Busy Week, Not Much Writting

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I haven’t been in the mood to write this week. I have been busy. I have had plenty to write about but just not motivated to write. So what is the recap of the week…

Meetings galore on Monday. The usual stuff, but they always seem really long. I am do not handle long meetings well. I get bored quick I guess. I survive though.

Ended up meeting Kristen for a few drinks at a decent Jazz club Monday night. Then I went home to cut our IM server over to a new hardware and a new version of software. All in all that cut went well. A bunch of client issues on Tuesday but nothing major.

Wednesday was my travel day I mentioned in my last post. Thursday felt like friday. I spent most of my day working on ensuring everyone in my group was on top of their assignments. Friday was allot like thursday and then there was the misc troubleshooting, and recapping my boss on everything he needed to know about the Wednesday trip.

Jayson and I left a bit before 6 today and hit the Outback. We had appetizers like we did years ago. Got full and went home early. I wanted to get a haircut but by the time I got home it was too late. I will get up early tomorrow before I have to goto the office and get one. I wrapped up the day by cleaning up my apartment a bit, and putting away my laundry that came back from the Laundromat.

In general a normal week. I will try to write more this weekend on specific topics, but I like recapping what I did, if not for anyone but myself!

10:35

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I did a trip to the “other” office today. Due to return trip train delays I didn’t get back into the city until late. The pouring rain didn’t help. As with most of these trips they are productive, but not in the traditional sense. I get allot done with people, but I usually can’t get any of my own projects done. I did allot of talking with people to see how certain things were progressing, and that is as detailed as I can get.

On the plus side I didn’t get a headache. That is a plus since I tend to get them when I do this trip. I also think I napped a bit on the train home. I had my iPod on and I think I dosed off for a while. I fought not to fall completely asleep, but the trip seemed to end allot faster than it does when I am awake.

Since I had the such a long travel day I got nothing else done on a personal level, unless you count watching some TV I had on my DVR from last night.

If you are wondering the 10:35 is the amount of time elapsed from the time I left on the train this morning until the time I returned back at penn tonight. And yes I got bored on the train and kept track.

Overall a good if not wet day, but I for one will be happy to be back in my office tomorrow.

Imposing Personality

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Do I have an imposing personality? I never thought so, but something someone said to me has got me thinking.  It was not said in a bad way or anything.  It was actually part of a conversation I was having with a friend, and it came up.  I always say that I am very quiet if I don’t know you, and if I do know you I won’t shut up!  I guess that can be said for my personal life and part of my professional one.  When I do start to think about how I handle things in the work environment, my friend may have a point.

More VMWare Work

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This week I actually am working on a technical project, not just managing them. I built a test environment to put up a windows 2003 terminal server. I used VMware’s GSX server to do it. I was testing what ports i would need to open up if i wanted to access a terminal server via the TSWeb client Microsoft gives you. Turns out even if the web server and the terminal server are the same machine you have to open up the RDP port on your firewall anyway. That wasn’t the answer i wanted to hear, so i am looking into Citrix to see if i can use their product and only open up port 80? Waiting to hear back from them.

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