It’s only Tuesday, but I’m exhausted. These long days at work add up.

I wish I had something interesting to add. but I don’t.

People keep asking me why I’m putting in so many hours. I don’t have to. It’s not required. But things need to be taken care of. This is our busiest time of year for support. So I stay and do what needs to be done.

But there is more to it than that. This time last year, my co-workers and I got overtime if we stayed extra. It was a nice perk, but really our jobs had no right to collect overtime. You won’t find many IT departments that offer it, especially to their higher level employees. The powers that be came to that conclusion, and made us exempt salaried employees. This means no over time. To make up for this, we got nice fat raises.

My coworkers, for the most part, have responded by leaving promptly at the end of the day and/ or showing up late for work.

This is not how it is supposed to be. When there is stuff that needs to be addressed, we should be there, taking care of it.

And I am. Think of it as a statement.

I’m not sure if anyone notices, but it is a statement nonetheless.

Last week was a long one. Not bad, but long. I can’t believe that it has been only seven days since I was at the concert.

Long hours and a hectic pace at work contributed to this. The fact that one of our ‘team members’ can’t seem to do his job, didn’t help.

I don’t know what’s up with this kid. He’s assigned to be the technician at some of the sites that I am assigned to as a Network Engineer. He won’t close calls. He seems to be paralyzed by the amount of calls out there right now. He works on calls that are more complex for days, with out elevating the call to an engineer or even asking any questions. When he does choose to ask, he sort of just tells me to do his job for him. Meanwhile, his calls keep piling up.

He doesn’t understand that there is more to his job than just knowing how to solve these issues. Unlike comparable positions at other companies, he isn’t assigned a list of calls. He pulls all the calls for his sites out of the Help Desk and addresses them as he sees fit. When things get this busy, being able to prioritize is paramount. He needs to let the complex calls sit (or elevate them) and take care of the simple calls. He should be able to close 15 to 20 calls a day. He is closing about 3 or 4 a day. Meanwhile 25 to 30 calls are coming in each day. This pace will slow down, but by the time it does, he will be in a very deep hole.

I’m not his boss, but I am ultimately responsible for these sites. If he doesn’t get caught up soon, I’ll have to go out there myself (and maybe pull resources from other sites) and bail him out. If that happens, I will have to explain to our boss why I’m out closing calls instead of working on my projects.

This just causes me stress I don’t want or need. I hate it when people don’t just do their jobs. I hate it more when it messes with my job.

One a more positive note, my niece is going to be a senior in high school this year. Her school requires that seniors arrange to have their senior portraits taken by a professional photographer on their own, instead of having one come to the school. I guess she didn’t take care of arranging this when she first found out that she was supposed to, and by the time she got around to it, the photographers were booked up.

My wife mentioned to my sister-in-law that I am capable of taking those photos. And they asked me if I could do it. Last weekend we went out to a few scenic spots and took some shots of her and a few with her boyfriend. I also shot a few traditional head and shoulder shots of her, but I don’t have access to a professional backdrop so I just shot her against a wall. I was able to use Photoshop to cut the wall away and put her in front of a background that looks very much like a pro backdrop.

I thought I did a pretty good job, but this isn’t the kind of photography I usually do, and I’m not really very good in Photoshop (I really need to take a class on it.) I began to become concerned that the photos would not be up to a professional level. I knew they looked good, but there is a reason people pay a pro.

I went to get some proofs printed so we could choose which pictures she wanted to use. When I came back to pick them up, the little girl at the store says, “I’m sorry Mr. Jeckles, we cannot print these pictures.”

I began to panic, I start to try to think of what I might have done that would have caused this problem. Did I do something wrong in Photoshop? Did I use the wrong format? I couldn’t imagine what I had done wrong.

“We can’t print pictures taken by a professional photographer without his permission.”

I smiled, thanked her and assured her that she had my permission.

I can’t think of a better compliment.

Today I had the pleasure of attending a mandatory presentation.

It was a motivational speaker. Even for motivational speakers, this guy was awful.

His dad didn’t love him when he young. That rejection stayed with him his whole life. He found that he pushed himself harder to try gain the approval of a distant and cold father. He became successful, rich and women loved him. But somehow it all seemed empty, useless like life had no meaning.

As I sat and listened, all I could think was my Dad was pretty good as far as dads go, but I’m not rich or powerful. Women tolerate me at best. And many days I feel like life has no meaning.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CRYING ABOUT?!?

Almost makes me wish my dad had been distant.

He recommends that I keep a list of affirmations and read them every morning and every night. So I created a list and we will give it shot, starting right now.

I am a great fake radio DJ.
I am a good blogger.
I rule at the help desk.
I can install an OS in no time flat.
I know more about comic book characters than many people know about their own families.

Somehow I don’t feel better.

It’s probably the weather. This cold rainy shit is making me wish I was dead. I really need to move somewhere that is always summer.

He also suggested having my own personal Mission Statement. I can’t believe we paid this asshat to come talk to us.

I don’t know if I’ll have time to play the Ratdog Set before SBR tomorrow or not. I’ll post something if I’m going to do it.

I’d love to tell you all about the concert, but I don’t have it in me right now. Maybe later. It was awesome though.

This week and next are the two busiest weeks for tech support at work. And, of course, management is always trying to find ways to maximize our resources to handle the onslaught of calls we get.

This year, the grand plan is too let the engineers handle the phones, so that the support guys can all be in the field closing calls.

On paper, it’s a good plan. The reality is the support guys will, to various degrees, slack and not keep up with the pace and that some of these engineers aren’t cut out for phone support.

The number one job in phone support, at my job any how, is to address small simple problems and to create calls for larger problems and then route them to the appropriate group. I had to cover the desk for an hour (or so) on Monday and all day today. The engineers I was working with did not get it. They would try trouble shoot complex calls over the phone. I looked over at one point and saw the other engineer logged into a server checking something.

Not me. I can reset your password. I can tell you to make sure there isn’t a floppy in the a: drive when you try to boot up. I can check to see if your user has the correct rights. Anything else: “I’ll create a call for you and forward it to the right people who will help you shortly!”

These guys will help one or two users in an hour. But others will ring through to the voicemail. Users hate the voicemail.

I guess a lot of these guys think that doing this is beneath them and they don’t want to do it. Not me. I think it’s a blast. It’s easy work. I get laugh at the users. And I have fun with it. We have a bunch of seasonal help coming back right now. Many of them already have accounts, but they forget the password.

“Tech Services, this is Jeckles.”
“Uh… yeah. I think there is problem with my computer.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well. I try to login and I get an error.”
“Does the error say ‘make sure you used the correct password’ or does it say ‘I can’t find the server?’”
“It was saying check your password, but now it’s saying my account is locked.”
“Sounds like you haven’t used the correct password.”
“I think I may have forgot it.”
“Forgot it? Do you know that you are the first call for a forgotten password that I’ve had this week?”
“Really?”
“No. I’ve unlocked your account and changed your password to ‘password.’ It will prompt you to change it to something else when you login. Have a nice day!”

I’ll be on the desk all day tomorrow and three days next week. And I’ve been staying late so that I can catch up on the rest of my work. So I’m tired, but it’s okay.

If I have time on Thursday, I may broadcast the Ratdog set before SBR. Perhaps around 7:30 PM EST. If you are interested, that’s awesome. If not, who cares.

Thanks for calling the Help Desk!

It seems odd to even to talk about it, but I’m going on a Road Trip. But just about any measure, I’m too old for this, but it is exactly what I am doing any how.

Shutter and I will hop in the truck Saturday morning and and drive for about 4 hours till we reach the Mountain Laurel Pavilion, located in Bum Fucked Pennsyltucky. It is there that we will watch Ratdog and the Allman Brothers, who are sharing the bill. I’m very excited about Ratdog, I saw them in 1996 and loved it. By all accounts, the band has done nothing but get better since then. I’m not really an Allman Brothers fan, but they are reputed to be one of the best live bands out there.

I’m excited and a bit nervous. I haven’t been to a concert in over a decade and, like I said, I’m a bit old for this kind of road trip. We don’t have any arrangements made other than the tickets. I don’t really want to try the four hour drive home at 1 or 2 A.M. This pavilion is located squarely in the middle of nowhere, as far as I can tell. I don’t know if we’ll stop at cheap motel and crash for the night or if we will just try to catch a catnap in the parking lot with the Deadheads.

No matter what happens, it will be very different from the road trips of my youth. If for no other reason than the fact that I’ll be sober. And I’ve gotten wiser over the years. The trip probably won’t be as wild as some of the ones from my misspent youth, but that’s necessarily a bad thing at all.

It should be a good time.

And I’m tired.

The weather was as good as you could have hoped for this weekend. But it was still hot. Yesterday was a long day, and I’m very tired. It was a great hike. Well for the most part. I may write about it later.

This tiredness seems to have made me crankier than usual. I know. That’s saying something, isn’t it?

I’d take a nap, but naps just don’t work for me. I doze off for a few minutes, wake up disoriented and grumpier than when I fell asleep.

I guess I’ll just watch Star Trek.

Man I suck.

We had two massive thunderstorms today. One around lunch time and the other was just a few minutes ago.

I love thunderstorms. All that power and fury shows up out of nowhere. It’s awesome.

With any luck, it will cool things down for this weekend.

Have you noticed the effort to blog daily? It won’t last. My streak will be broken by my backpacking trip tomorrow. Still, I’ll try to post on a very regular basis. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know where these compulsions ideas come from, I just try to run with them.

I should be preparing for SBR right now. Oh fucking well, it’s not like it’s a real radio show.

Okay. The show is over now, I guess I can finish this post. Like I was saying, the show isn’t very good. Listen for yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also, there may be an tiny bit of profanity.

I really shouldn’t get so caffeinated during the show… It will be another sleepless night for me.

I’ll see you losers on Sunday.

My sinuses are still bothering me. I feel much better than I did the weekend of the blogathon, but I’m nowhere near %100. I can’t breathe. Which makes everything difficult. Especially the gym.

On the flipside, I’ve found a podcast that doesn’t suck. It’s called Podrunner and it’s an hour long mix of techo-ish music all set at a constant beat rate. It’s awesome for running or whatever.

I’ve been told that if I want Shitty Blog Radio to be successful, I have to promote it. It sounds like good advice, but I really suck at self promotion. It seems like bragging or something. Regardless, you should check out Shitty Blog Radio tomorrow night at 10 PM EST. It is the ‘Worst Show on the Internet’ or at least that’s what I’ve dubbed it. What is is mostly is some rage filled nonsense. Or something. Actually, it’s kind of hard to explain. You’d have to hear it.

Thanks to the magic of DVR I’ve seen 3 episode of Star Trek in the last 36 hours. I hadn’t watched good old original Star Trek in years. In my minds eye I had reduced it to not much more than Kirk… speaking in.. intervals that. Make. No. Sense. And paper mache sets, Red Shirted Ensigns and special two handed future punches. It, of course, has all those things, but in spite of that it’s pretty good show. It’s been fun to discover these episode all over again.

Right now I should be packing to go backpacking on Friday. I’m just throwing that out there.

This concept of a two year build up to the Presidential elections needs to be rethought. There is no reason for it. Of course, whenever I say that some asshat speaks out and says, ‘but I love this stuff.’ That’s the whole problem. I can’t help but believe that the only reason this process has spread out like this is to give CNN and FOXNews programming. That’s not a real good reason. There is no upside. It makes campaign insanely expensive driving the candidates into the waiting arms of the special interest groups. Meanwhile they all just dig up dirt about each other. This is a stupid system.

You would think that I would do something fun while I have all this time to myself. At least, you would think that if you didn’t know me. For fun, I’m broadcasting make believe radio on the internet. I suck. But I do take requests.

Other than that, I’ve just worked and watched Star Trek on DVR. I know, you’re jealous. You wanna be just like me. I’m sorry, but not everyone can handle this level of dork cool.

Oh… for the record, Expert Level on Guitar Hero II is fucking stupid hard.

I’m not a gamer. I never have been. I hear my friends talk about spending hours playing this game or another. I just can’t imagine doing that. My kid has an Xbox 360, so I get a chance to try out a game every now and then. I enjoy it for a bit, and then I’m over it. The only game that had come close to holding my interest was Madden Football.

We got Guitar Hero II yesterday. I’ve been hearing and reading about people getting all kinds of worked up about this game and it’s predecessor for some time now. And today, I can honestly say I understand what the fuss is all about. I play guitar. Not as much as when I was young. But still, I can hold my own. I can’t say that this game is just like playing, but it does capture the feel of playing. I couldn’t help but rock and bob with he rhythm as I powered out “Possum Kingdom” or “Heart Shaped Box.” I think I need to just not play it. Otherwise, you may never hear from me.

In other news, my wife took the kids and left me. I love telling people that. They look at me, think about it, decide it seems reasonable, look at me again, think that maybe I’m too calm about all of this and then ask me, Really? I tell them that they will be back in a few days.

They are going for a little more vacation at the lake. I have to work, but that’s no reason to stop them from having some fun. Besides, the kids have been restless, they need to get out and do something. I will do my best not to spend the entire time they are gone, playing Guitar Hero II.

Instead I’ll put my effort into designing an online store. It’s not for me, I have nothing to sell. My brother asked me to give him a hand, and I can’t turn down a challenge this geeky. I’ll tell you more about it, once it is set up.

Oh, and I’m sure this will shock many of you, I’m going backpacking this weekend.

The few of you that have paid attention for long time, know that I’ve had some bad luck with blogging services. I used to be at blogcafe.com. But they had some sort of catastrophic failure and everything vanished. Luckily, I was using the blogger.com interface to post my entries.

After that disaster I moved to here, and copied some of my posts over. Here and there, I’d move a post or two over but I’d usually put it off. There is no automated way, that I know of, to move these. Which meant logging in to blogger, copying the text of the post, coming here and creating a new post. Pasting the post, adjusting the date and hitting publish. It’s tedious and time consuming.

Over the last few days, I’ve finished copying the last of them over. In the process, I’ve re-read a whole lot of my older posts. Some of them were even good.

Some time last month, I passed three years doing this. I have had over 25000 visitors, and a few of those have even bothered to read this drivel. There are 505 posts, most of them suck. The rest of them are mostly about blogging or back packing.

There are a few that have been ‘lost’ for the last year and a half that are worth reading. Now is your chance to catch up. Allow me to recommend these:

What is it I like about my Job?
The Ups and Downs of Mountain Biking
The Rain King
Looking Back Across Burning Bridges
Being a real dad

For the record, I still don’t like blogging.

I have struggled with this blogging thing nearly as long as I have been doing it.

I like the idea of putting my ideas down in html and putting them out there to so if anyone gives a shit. On one level this has worked well for me. There have been a surprising amout of people who seem to want to hear what I have to say. On the other hand, it doesn’t work the way I thought it would.

Blogging has become (or maybe it always was) about communities. These are my blog friends. I have to read what they are writing. And we will be like a group. We will join the same traffic generating scams. We will play the same meme games.

I don’t like that. I came here to say something. I hope you’ll listen. But I dont want you to expect me to listen to you. If you have something interesting to say, I’ll listen or I’ll move on. It’s not personal. Or it shouldn’t be. Maybe it should be, I don’t know, but that’s not what I wanted out of this.

I’ve been more frustrated than usual with this recently. This is why I have posted so little.

I was going to shut it down.

Not quit. I still have the urge to express myself in this way. But I was extremely close to shutting it all down and starting somewhere else. And no, I wouldn’t have let you know. Not even you. It’s not personal. But if I let you know. Then I’d let him know. And before long, we’d be right back to here. Just ask Mango. He knows.

But I didn’t. I have some sort of pride in this meager collection of shit. And I don’t want to start over.

I have to refocus. Beside the community aspect, I didn’t fully think out the implications of publishing. It’s on a micro scale, but this must be what columnist deal with every day. The comments are a both wonderful and awful. I love the feedback. I love to know what you think about what I write. But I hate it. Sometimes I want to scream, who asked you? I can never decide if I should respond to the comments or not.

The reality is, this is publishing. On a small scale, but still it is. I’m putting it out there and for that I have to live with the consequences of that decision. I can’t pick and choose who reads this. I can’t do anything about it if you don’t understand what I mean, even though I’ve been as clear as I can be. I can’t censor any reaction, in the comments or else where, that results from what I’ve written. And I can’t worry about those things as I sit to write a new thing.

Like I said, I’m amazed that as many people have listened to me as have. Yet I look around and see that, all things considered I don’t get much traffic. Most blogs get 10 times what I do. I’m told that it’s quality over quantity. I’m told that it’s cause I don’t play the ‘game.’ This is probably true. But I can’t help wonder, why not me? Why shouldn’t people want to not only read this, but urge others to? But it doesn’t work that way. Not for me. And if I’m going to be true to me, then I need to accept that.

I’ll keep it up. At least I’ll try to. This blog and the stupid radio show. I think that for some reason, I’m more comfortable with the Radio thing than the blogging. I guess it’s a matter of expectation. The SBC, I’m not so sure of. I think it’s time has past. I look at the blogs who request membership. I don’t think they get it. Maybe I should let it fade away. And don’t worry, if I do I’ll run Shitty Blog Survivor from here. I do like that. It’s been fun this year.

Still, sometimes I hope that people will ‘get’ me. That I’ll have dozens of readers instead of 5. But I’m full of shit. I’m not cut out to be popular. I never was. And I never will be. There’s more to popularity than people liking you, you have to play the ‘game.’ And I quite simply can’t do that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 18 hours of Star Trek on my DVR.

6:04 AM Wake up to the sounds of the Grateful Dead coming from my iHome and the buzzing of my other alarm clock. Hit Snooze.
6:37 AM Sit in front of laptop with a breakfast consisting of a bowl of grits, a low fat key lime yogurt and coffee. Check my personal email, bloglines and Misftopia.
7:05 AM Get another cup of coffee and head to the bathroom for a long shower.
7:42 AM Shave and brush teeth.
7:55 AM Kiss the wife and go to work.
8:11 AM Arrive at work. Fashionably late.
8:23 AM Check Work email.
8:37 AM Get involved in an impromptu discussion about how we are distributing new PCs.
8:42 AM While still keeping an ear to that discussion, IM the UberBot and the WAN-Man about upcoming backpacking trip.
9:05 AM IM Shutter cause I’m bored. He’s too busy to talk to me.
9:17 AM Look at management console of New Update server that I upgraded yesterday.
9:22 AM While still checking out update server, fill out monthly mileage paperwork.
10:01 AM Check the status of the backups on the Netware servers at the 9 remote locations that I am responsible for.
10:12 AM Begin researching a plugin for Exchange to support smart phones.
11:19 AM After almost an hour, find an mobileadmin.msi thing and install it and still don’t know how to make it work.
11:24 AM Read Microsoft’s ” Step-by-Step Guide to Deploying Windows Mobile-based Devices with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2″ Still I don’t know how to make this work. Begin to think that this would be easier to figure out if I had a Smart Phone to test with.
11:25 AM Pack up my shit for lunch.
11:49 AM Eat a Quesidilla for lunch
12:22 PM Pace, check watch, look out the window and wonder why the Dish Network Tech hasn’t shown up.
12:32 PMDrive back to work.
12:48 PM Look at PDA to get some clue about mobile connectivity for Exchange.
1:03 PM Think I may have found something. Need to figure out how to install rootcert on PDA.
1:16 PM Install a copy of our Root Cert on my PDA.
1:37 PM Send an email from my PDA over wi-fi to my gmail account.
1:45 PM Send instructions to an engineer who has a smart phone to try it.
2:17 PM Create new Exchange account for one of the Developers.
3:02 PM Send email to CIO on how to set up his smart phone.
3:19 PM Start documenting the changes I’ve made to Exchange.
4:24 PM Pack up my laptop and go home.
4:42 PM Watch new shiny HD Channels.
4:44 PM Tell the DVR to record anything that looks like Star Trek.
5:12 PM Eat dinner.
6:04 PM Run to convenience store for Red Bull.
6:11 PM Drink Red Bull.
6:34 PM Go to side job.
7:26 PM Realize that PC is infected with a virus.
7:57 PM Realize that virus scanner can’t find it.
8:23 PM C:\Format
10:36 PM Collect less money than I should because I feel bad I that I had to restore the system.
11:18 PM Post blog entry that no one will find half as clever as I do.
11:48 PM Go to sleep listening to the Grateful Dead.