I've been living in a small town, working from a home office for nine years. I grew up in a rural setting, and I've always dreamed of moving back to the country.

Our house is sold (closing 4/15) and we'll be building on thirty acres an hour drive away from most tech jobs in the area.

Since I already have a tele-commute job, I don't have to worry about that right away. But I worry about what will happen if my job goes away. Worst case, I'll commute an hour each way to a job in the big city.

But there are also alternatives, such as local consulting (most farms use PCs in managing their business now), become local ISP (rural customers have few choices, usually expensive choices), etc.

Then again, I've been in tech long enough to think that a job in one of the trades might be a good thing. :-)

--Tom

So far, I haven't read this, but it is a MUST.

Install and maintain a formal ticket system. Use this system to communicate with users/clients. Ticket systems allow you to document the entire process, allow the user a means of communication without having to hunt you down, and allow your manager to see all of your tickets and make or change priorities.

Secondly, have a Service Level Agreement. This needs to be hashed out by your manager and other key managers, but it needs to be written (mostly) by you and your colleagues. This gives you and the user community common ground to start from, and sets realistic expectations. All employees must be aware of this SLA, so it should be part of a new-hire package, etc.

Use the ticketing system to print out and/or track your jobs on a daily basis. Be sure and set your daily workloads, keeping in mind employee absences, etc. Don't schedule more jobs than can be completed in one day, and allow room for emergency calls to your helpdesk. If you do not have a formal helpdesk, create one. This can be as simple as setting up a voicemail box on your voicemail system that the users dial and leave a message on. This help line response time must be included in the SLA. Have the mailbox tied to a pager that someone carries, so emergency situations can be responded to quickly. We tell our users that all calls logged on the helpdesk will be responded to within 15 minutes, and tickets will be created so the user can then further communicate with the assigned tech.

In your free time (heh) read "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Limoncelli and Hogan, ISBN 0-201-70271-1. They talk about all of these things, plus many other things that make our lives easier, and worth living.

Hope this helps...