This week saw the Hekawi attack, sort of. It was like something out of a lame British play. Some psuedo chief of the Hekawi was pissed becasue I told one of the run-of-the-mill lusers that realators had been in looking at the building, which is true. What the psuedo-chief forgot is that I don't work here anymore, I just have a cube in this building. The psuedo-chief couldn't get me fired if he wanted to. What did they do instead? They tried to pile on all sorts of work, which I was only too happy to take on - provided they all put in work tickets first. I have never seen so many people look so confused about what to do next as I did that day.

You see, the common Hekawi luser needs to call our India help desk to enter a ticket, and since all of the work I was being assigned was non-IT, the help esk wouldn't take the ticket. Meanwhile I arranged for the receptionist to do the non-IT work which made her happy. She is now in charge of the phone list, the names on the in-out board, the cube name plates, the conference room schedule, and calling the phone company when lusers have a phone problem.

The psuedo-chiefs are still mad at me, but I am immune from their hate.

Seems as though the VLC wants to unload the ol' fort. They've been running realtors through all week - on the Q.T., of course. Don't want to spook the Hekawi. Looks like its time to start looking elsewhere to spend my time. Fun while it lasted.

So the wannabe IT head of the Hekawi (obscure F-Troop refence becasue I just can't bring myself to refer to the management at my primary location as anything like competant) has been demoted. I believe "reposted" would be a good Hekawi word for what happened. He is now in charge of special IT projects. Good luck to him since he has no standing in the VLC IT dept. and my boss can't stand him. It just means that he is REALLY looking to take my job. Believe me, if I could find a different job he could have mine.

Major Fambrough is here doing a tour of his territory and my review. While he is here I am working my tail off trying to fulfill every little whim the lusers have. This makes them willing to shut up while the major is here. Sounds like a lot of work and it is, but it is only a few times of year.

Received my P.R. in the pony express today. Facinating read. Pity it has no real corelation to my job, but then neither does Major Fambrough. I love a boss who makes decisions about your job performance based on what lusers tell him instead of what he observes. The luser mentality is simply "what have you done for me lately" and anything that isn't running the way they think it should is "broken", regaurdless of whether or not it is running the way it is supposed to run.

Oh well, nothing I can do about it.

I'll just need to find another job since this one will suck in galactic terms. Been there, done that, don't want to do it again. If I have to prove that I am doing my job - the same job I have been doing successfully for eight years, mind you - if I have to prove it again to another PHB, I am out of here. WHY CAN"T THEY READ THE @#$% OLD P. R.s? Glowing reviews, every one of them. Eight years - EIGHT @#$% YEARS! Now I have to start over and I don't even get the promise of better pay.

Keep my head down, nose to the grind stone, hide in my cube, close all of the tickets as soon as I get them. Game the system as much as possible. Ya. Hoo.

Wow, what a long time it has been. Had a heart attack in October and recovered. Got sucked into the OFFICIAL IT dept of my VLC, which means that I am now really (really really) an IT person. Aquired a new boss and found myself on the very edge of the frontier as far as he and the rest the VLC are concerned. 'Balderdash', you say? Part of the territory (I have a territory!) I am responsible for is the area that was featured in 'Dances with Wolves'. Kind of like 'Dances with Lusers', except the Natives will probably scalp me and steal my cell phone in the end.

On the up side, I see my boss, afterwards known as the Major Fambrough (Google it) sees me about once every three months as he swings 'round his territory.

Oh well.

WB/PC Guy (who is now sorta-manager-WB guy) found out that his position is only a title today. Gotta hand it to him, he took it in stride. He is currently in his Mgmt-cube writing his *fifth* memo of the day. I suppose that if enough people think he is a real manager, he will get the respect he wants.

Spoke to WB PHP about the fan in the server room. Gave home $3000 quote. He balked. Told him there was $27,000 in equipment in there. He said we'd replace it if it failed.

Sent him email about the same issue with warning. CC:d his boss. Email back - "We'll look into it."

He has been warned.

WB / PC guy got his promotion today. I celebrated by reminding him that his isn't my boss and that he now has much more important things to do than bother me. He wasn't amused.

Did I say he wasn't my boss?

He, he, he.

The fibre is here! The fibre is here! After 6 weeks the fibre guys are installing the six-strand. They promise it will be terminated this afternoon. That means I get my network back. Yay!

Had a very bad day at work, but this was because of the management, and the lack there of. I am about 400 miles away from my manager, which is usually a good thing. My manager doesn't hassle me much. There is no micro-management from two states away. On the other hand there is no was to fend off the dump-truck-effect from all of the local managers piling work onto me. That's what happened today, and I am so far behind that I may just not catch up again. I even wound upsheparding a job - a PRODUCTION job through the shop because it had programming in it.

Let me be very clear on something right now. I program. I am not a PROGRAMMER. I know how to use a computer for more than coding. I can FIX THINGS, not just use them. I limit my programming to useful tasks like eliminating pesky files from WB pcs, or checking manager's email. I do NOT write programs that are of monetary benefit to my VLC. I don't want that kind of attention. I was assigned this task because i work in IT and no one at this location has ANY IDEA WHAT IT DOES. Its a little like being an epidemiologist in 12th century France. What you do is of immense benefit, but people just assume you're a rat-catcher and keep handing your bags and sticks.

Just about everything works well now, except the VLC IT provided firewall and switch. For some reason one of these devices is not allowing packets through. Seems obvious to me, but I will let the beanie-heads at IT earn their brownie points by following procedure to arrive at the same conclusion.

Had to go head-to-head with a Worker Bee manager. Seems his people want better PCs and printers and have decided the best way to get these is by shoving the devices off the desk. I am always one for getting new gear by disabling the old stuff, but I don't want anyone calling me up and expecting me to fix the stuff after its broken. We have an effective gear request system in place and the WB manager knows how to use it.

The phone room cabling upgrade is done. All of the fle-bite problems are taken care of. I had a dead switch but a spare switch is covering for it. Three cables are dead, and the Fibre guys won't be in until NEXT Monday, throwing my whole schedule off.

But the room looks better and I havean entire rack to use, so that's good. I guess it is.

Had to stay home again. Nicely notified workerbee/PC guy via email that I wouldn't be there so he wouldn't get worried about das blinken lights on the server. He wrote back to "thank" me for monitoring my email, and he made sure to cc: his boss. Sigh. Some people need to learn the hard way.

Thursday is meeting day, and that means interruptions. Made a sign that read "In Meeting. Please do not disturb". That reduced the disruptions to 10, which is about normal. Next Thursday I will be co-opting a meeting room, and if that doesn't work I will lock myself into the phone room.

Phone guy just left. Wanted to sell us a new system. I had to give him the bad new that our VLC IT/Telecom group want to install their own system. If only that were true. Instead we have to put up with a phone system from the typewriter era.