How You Doin?

I would have liked to have posted more, but I have not had much to post about. Wednesday it rained pretty much all day, so we did very little...certainly no geocaching. We watched some TV (we finished up "Heroes" season 1 and started season two yesterday) and cooked/cleaned up, but mostly we rested.

On Thursday, I was stir crazy so my wife let me go out geocaching while she we shopping with the gift cards she received for Christmas (she got some good bargains, but selection was unusually poor this year. I guess the retailers did better than they thought. Of course she spent some of it on me but that is just how she is. She has fun shopping no matter who she is buying for.

My geocaching adventure spanned 6 hours but only netted me 5 caches. The reason for that was I went after several hard ones and spent quite a bit of time trying to get to some of them...I was on the wrong side of the creek a lot of the time. I managed to get 5 of 7 I went after, which is not too bad. One of them was a terracache, my first ever. Terracaching is just like geocaching but instead of "park and grabs", terracaches will require at least 1/2 of a mile of walking or be very technical in nature. The one I found was on a trestle along an abandoned rail line. It was hidden very well...much better than I would have expected. There was a geocache there as well, but I could not find it. The geocache was rated a 4.5 stars on difficulty because most GPSr's cannot lock on to a signal with that much steel above them. That and the hide is a micro and while I think I understand what it is, I need to go back to see if I am right.

Friday, my last official day of vacation before the weekend, I did not go out geocaching, even though my wife told me she did not mind. Instead, I dusted and vacuumed the living room and dining room. We had not dusted in a while and since my wife had dust some and vacuumed half the house the day before I figured I could do my part...so I did. Out side of goofing off on the web, watching a little TV and eating, the only other thing that was done constructive was that I caught up on my work e-mail (which reminds me I need to do a little work today...I have a report I need to write).

I contacted one of the local geocaching gurus and we agreed to go and do a little caching in a Richardson park tomorrow after we get out of church and finish with lunch. My wife thought it was a great idea. While we will not have a lot of daylight to work with (3-4 hours tops) I should be able to get a few caches in.

Tonight we are going to Mickey and Mary's for dinner. Bob and Christi will be there as well as Bob's son Rick. While we are not close to Bob and Christi, the evening should be fun, none the less.

I am not sure what all I need to do today since a lot of the house work has bee completed, so I need to ask my wife before I get involved too much with anything.

I had failed to mention that on Thursday when I went to bed, I thought for sure I was coming down with the flu. I felt terrible but after a good nights sleep, I woke up feeling great. Now I still have some chest congestion, but overall I feel great.

How are you doin?

Snort!

Anyone else find this ironic?

Out Of The Loop

It has been almost a week since my last update (this feels like confession!) and while I really do not have an excuse, I will just blame it on the Christmas season like everyone else does ;) .

Let's start with work. My colleague called off Wed-Fri last week, allowing me the honor of working by myself. I felt kinda bad for him since he found out he had a sinus infection...he was in real pain and work was not possible. I was glad for my sake it was slow.

On Friday I received my yearly review, which could be summed up with, "You are a great employee, we have big plans for you and $Colleague, but we have no real money to offer you...maybe we can work on comp time instead."

I need not remind you that my company had a fantastic year but my division was pulled down (supposedly) by one account (ours did very well) and getting a bonus that was less than the one my wife (who used to work part time for a small roofing company) got. My bonus was less than half of one weeks take home pay...yes, my bonus was 1/8 of my monthly take home pay.

When I asked about real raises (we tend to get them every other year and we got one last year), my boss said he would not know until February or so...they tend to show up in March. Now in March we lose our on call pay, but gain 2 percent as compensation. If we qualified for a raise then it would be on top of that. I will not hold my breath. The guy who told me about the bonuses was dead on in regards to the amount and he told me our raises would be less than 1 percent. At least we get something. Other than that bit of news, my review was very shiny.

Moving on to Christmas...I finished my shopping on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week. I felt like I cheated my wife (I had plans to get her a Wii and a laptop) but lack of a real bonus shot that plan out of the sky. We settled on meager gifts for each other this year...mostly clothing and gift cards. It has been a while since I have spoiled my wife at Christmas.

There was a service on Christmas eve at our church that went well. I had a small reading to do as well as a prayer (my wife had one as well) and overall the service went well. During the candle lighting service at the end, my candle kept going out and I had to keep getting it relit...somewhat humorous although it was not meant to be.

My wife and I opened gifts Christmas Day around 10 AM or so. We were both up much earlier and she was dying to give me my gifts (I had a Geocaching Christmas) so after a few hours of her looking a bit down, I agreed to open gifts.

After the gifts had been opened and the wrapping paper/boxes cleaned up (recycling what we could, trashing the rest) we fixed lunch. The hardest part of cooking lunch was already done...the turkey was already done (my wife started it at 4 AM) we just through together some sides (it was just me and her for lunch) and enjoyed the meal. We had a great lunch together.

After lunch we got dressed and put in a few hours of Geocaching, collecting some stragglers I had missed in the past. Many of these were not hard, but took patience and one even had me climbing a cedar tree about 20+ feet. I dropped the lid to it and since my wife was with me, she was able to retrieve it and keep me from climbing all the way down to get it. All in all we nabbed 7 and did not whiff on any of them. I even found the oldest active cache in our town, although it took a while...even in the winter the overgrowth made it difficult to spot.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up, eating a light dinner (salad) with more pecan pie for dessert. Once that was done, I walked the dogs and settled in with my wife to watch 3 more episodes of "Heroes". Two more to watch and season one will be complete.

I am off all this week but I will be working next week solo while my colleague takes his vacation. I think he got the better end of the bargain, but I am not going to complain. I will get to see how well I can handle working a busy week on my own. Look on the bright side...I have only 4 months to go until vacation!

Pattern Forming?

Not only does the lack of cold weather and snow keep it from feeling like Christmas, but the inability to join the other people at an off site Christmas party held during business hours does not help matters any. I think I have been to about half of the Christmas parties they have thrown for us over the past 6 years I have been in Texas.

My wife is right...I need a new job.

Oh Well

Day two of my colleague being out sick...he has a sinus infection. He had been coughing (a dry raspy cough) on Monday, so I told him to leave early. Yesterday he called me while I was on the way to work (I usually show up early) to let me know. It was not busy at all, however we had one issue come up 1 hour before I left that I had to hand over to this weeks on call grunt (He is in Brazil) and another came up after handover. There were problems with both, but I think we have them all straightened out. Thankfully Wednesdays are historically slow days. If the averages hold true, I should have 1 or 2 issues to deal with today.

One drawback to my colleague begin out is that I cannot report the extra time I am working into our time entry system. They closed it out on the 18th and we cannot make any changes to it. Any changes I make will be after the fact and may not even be allowed. I know it does not affect my pay, but I like to be as accurate as possible.

With my colleague being out, I am pretty much stuck in the office all day. 9-10 hours is a long time to be siting at your desk and not being able to go to lunch or take a real break. Cry me a river, El Gee...cry me a river.

I have not been geocaching in a while. I have been on call or the weather has not been cooperative. I was hoping to do some Saturday, but it looks like God has other plans...it is supposed to rain. I guess he really wants me to finish cleaning my office at home.

We still have not sent out any Christmas cards. My wife wanted to do them last weekend but something got in the way and we did not do them. We have gotten 20 or so...pretty much our average. My wife sends out 3 times that number each and every year...many to people who do not reciprocate or even write us e-mails. Normally I will send out an e-letter to everyone a week or so before Christmas, but this year I just have not been motivated to do so. Even if I did try, I am not sure what I would write.

I noticed that the last two van payments cleared the bank on the 18th. I had one scheduled for the 14th and one for the 17th. Odd how they both cleared on the same day. With that, the van is paid for. We now only owe on 2 knee surgeries for our dog and our house. With God's blessing, we can have the surgeries paid off in 2007. Doing so means paying a lot of money each month (two dog knees cost about the same as an average used car) but I am so tired of debt I am willing to suffer a while longer (we have been paying a lot of money on debt the past year or so) just to get out. I still plan, however to take a real vacation again. So far, the past 4 or so have all been in cash. If we are blessed even more, I can go visit my mom during 2008 in WV and not cut so many corners, like I have been the past 2 years.

Race To The White House

I have not politi-blogged in a while. While some of the news is interesting, I really have not bee compelled to blog about it. However yesterday I did some thinking about our choices for the presidency.

The candidates running frighten me. While I realize that no candidate will be the "ideal" choice for the bulk of America, that candidate should reflect the views (or the majority thereof) of the citizens. Initially I thought I had made up my mind on who I wanted, but lately I am not sure. I also thought I knew what I wanted in a candidate, but again, lately I am not so sure.

My candidate needs to have a tough stance on border/homeland security...that I am positive of. He/she also needs to have a pro-life stance on abortion. The candidate should favor a small government (which less spending supports). Those things are important to me. The candidate should also understand the constitution in regards to religion. While I do not want to see a theocracy, I feel that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values (monotheism, morals, etc) and our laws should reflect that.

Early on I had supported the presidents choice to invade Iraq, but I get the feeling that what we think Iraq needs is not what they think they need. I am not sure the people in that part of the world are ready for a democracy of any kind. They are so used to living under tyranny that they do not know how to deal with real freedom. Should our troops stay there and keep trying or should we turn it all over to the fledgling government and let them deal with it? I am torn.

Our economy is also important to me. I have a small IRA and a larger 401k plan that has lost all of last years gains over the past 2 weeks. These are not bad funds mind you, but ones that historically have grown over the years. It hurts to see my money go poof!

While not a die hard Republican, I have voted Republican in the past (I am a registered Independent) and could vote Republican again if the candidate is right.

Thompson and Romney both looked good for awhile, but lately Huckabee has gained momentum. Guilianni is not even on the radar for me and my wife since he supports a woman's right to choose and we are both pro life.

My wife is leaning towards Huckabee and I am favoring Ron Paul, currently, however I still have a lot of research to do. I do not want to make a blind choice.

Typical Monday

The one good thing I can say about yesterday is that it went by quickly. We had five new issues we had to coordinate...all of which occurred before lunch. With all that in the morning, we spent the afternoon "cleaning up", meaning doing all the required paperwork. Look at it like this. I am detective and after the case is solved, I have to send my captain a report. I write the report, post it on an internal web site, create a "ticket" in the report system, link it with the original report. IF any third parties are involved, I have to go one step further and create a report in a separate system they third parties have access to. Depending on how complex the issue, it could take all day to write the reports.

When quitting time rolled around, I handed over the phone line to my relief who works in Brazil. He was happy to hear that nothing was ongoing and that all he had to do was answer the phone if it rang. Once handover was complete, I headed off to Family Christian Bookstore to pick up some last minute gifts for my wife. I am not a good shopper. Nothing looked like something she wanted. I did manage to pickup a few little things for her but nothing substantial other than a gift card.

Traffic was pretty heavy (I left work at 5:00 PM) and the drive to the store plus shopping time and the trip home was almost two hours. We only live 15 miles away and i was only in the store for 45 minutes. I really don't like being out during this time of the year.

I got home, exhausted and was greeted by my wife (who called me as I was en route home) with a hot plate of spaghetti. A salad and some crusty bread would have been nice, but her day was kinda stressful and expecting her to have the perfect meal is a little unfair. I ate what she made, paid her a compliment, and then walked Little Man. By the time I got home and checked e-mail and opened my snail mail, I was exhausted.

Looking Forward To Monday

Most people do not like Monday's, but this week I was looking forward to it. Monday means I am off call. The only bad news is I go on call in three weeks instead of four due to a scheduling snafu. Yeah, I am on call the week of New Years (at least I am off the week of Christmas)...the week our customers close the books for the previous year. Any bets on how that week will go?

I got called five or six times this weekend. On Friday night, someone in Canada called (along with three colleagues) stating they could not connect to e-mail. Had the customer read their e-mail, they would have known about the maintenance that was taking place during that time.

On Saturday morning, I go a call regarding a web service that had failed yet again (the fourth time in a week). By the time I was notified, our global team was already working on it, so I was free.

Sunday afternoon and into the evening I was called every few hours regarding e-mail in the US. Had most of these people read their mail, they would have known about the maintenance on the US servers during that time. Only the last call was a valid issue and it was still related to the maintenance (the server needed rebooted). I did get a call from one of the techs telling me DNS was not working properly on the customer domain. At the moment it did not affect customers so I called the tech who handles DNS issues and left him a message. I figured that if I got a customer call I could always follow up with the tech.

I slept well until 1:30 AM when I got up to use the toilet. Once I got up I could not fall asleep for a couple of hours. I had this happen once before a few weeks ago. I was dead by the end of the day.

Since I am not on call, I am very much interested in finalizing my Christmas shopping today if at all possible. It really does not feel like Christmas around our house. We have not decorated in a few years...no tree, lights, wreath...nothing. My wife has taken a very anti-secular stance and does not want to get into all the decorating. I am sure that I could get her to change her mind but I am not sure it is worth the hassle.

I have really enjoyed walking the neighborhood and looking at all the lights. There aer some great displays in our town.

I called mom last night and she informed me that our son, Soldier Boy, had stopped in for a visit. I am glad that he finally made it in to see her. It has been a long time.

It Will Be A Miracle

Yesterday was quasi-busy for us...quasi because things were slow up until 1 or 2 PM, then we received a trickle of issues that bled over into my night, allowing me the pleasure (smirk) to put in 5 more hours of OT this week (we are up to 12 so far).

The most agonizing of these started around 3 PM or so. Our customer's Corporate IT Team (CITT) called and asked us to raise the priority of a case regarding the time entry system they use which is tied to SAP. One of the modules that calculates vacation has gone wonky and while this is not normally a high sev, we are at the end of the year and all calculations have to be perfect to close the books.

I get the case and investigate. The partner group (major IT provider) who supports this app has a tech (consultant) working on the issue, but they have stopped working because they cannot connect to the DB. Up until last year, DB issues were theirs to deal with, but that now has been passed to us. Instead of CALLING the DB for support, she E-MAILS them and then puts the case into a pending status until she gets and answer. I decide to step in and get a DB and the consultant talking. I set up a confcall and we begin working. She works with the DBA for 10 minutes or so then she says she has to drop off, but she wants me to call her in 5 minutes. I agree. I try to call her several times but no luck. She does not pick up. I ask the DBA to try to call her a couple of times before he leaves and he agrees. Both he a and I are trying to get out of the office. Him to his wife and me so I can be on call the rest of the night.

I get home and take care of the dogs (feed, water, let them out to pee...) and my phone rings...another priority ticket that I need to coordinate. No worries. I get that one started (after logging my laptop onto the VPN and calling the tech working on the issue) and decide to call the consultant from the earlier case. To my surprise she has not even TRIED to log on to the DB. She spends the next 5-10 minutes making excuses on why she has not resolved the case yet. She could not get in touch with the DBA, she was not home (it was 3 :00 AM and she was on call), she can't make international calls...cry me a river, PLEASE. We have had nothing but problems lately with this sort of thing from the thord party provider our customer has chosen to support their software. We cannot blame them because we singed the contract to "manage" IT for our customer no matter who they chose to support them. It makes a hard job...interesting to say the least.

Well anyways, after listening to this consultant from a land far, far away I ripped into her on the merits of cooperating, her lack of dedication, etc and how I was going to file a formal complaint. If I manage to escape getting written up by our management for "unsportsmanlike conduct" then God is really watching out for me. I pulled no punches, stopping short of swearing. I was mad.

A couple of hours later I get confirmation the issue appears to be resolved. I wonder if my temper tamtrum helped or hindered that?

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag

While this is not official, I can be 95% sure it is accurate (it came from a manager who is rahter upset at the whole issue). Our company bonus this year will be around...$700...before taxes and our annual (smirk) raise will be less than 1%. While I am thankful that we get at least something, I am rather hurt by the fact that the company had a FANTASTIC year...one of the best...and we get this token bonus and pay raise. Now to be fair, I work for a group that is not in the mainstream. The main group will get more but considering that the group I work for was in the red this year, we get very little. I guess it is fair...sort of.

In the 6 years that I have been working in Texas, my salary has gone up 10%. To put that in perspective, let's pretend that I make 40k a year. Now imagine my raises each year for six years to get to $44k a year. Just add that to the list of things that make me feel that my company is looking for ways to get us to quit:

* Vacation accrual capped at 80 hrs per year. I get 160 hours per year. Currently I have 135 hours built up that I cannot possibly use due to the way my dept works. It will be set aside for 2.5 years and if I do not use it in that time (while still accruing the 160 per year) I lose it.
* Pension plan has been terminated. They did raise our 401k plan to match dollar for dollar up to 6%. While it is not as much as my pension, at least it is something.
* On-call pay is being taken away. That premium was 5%. We were told our base pay will go up 2% to help offset the loss. Yeah....2% != 5%.
* The cost of our benefits has gone up again as well as the cost of our deductible.

I am really trying hard not to be bitter, but it is losing battle. The on call part is the most upsetting because my group is one that is pretty visible to the customer we support. We have a hotline that can be called 24x7 that we pick up. We work nights, weekends, and some holidays (we usually trade around). With only two people locally (and two in Latin America), when one person is out, it really puts the rest of the team in a bind. Taking all the time off we have is darn near impossible without causing problems for the other guys.

We are constantly being told to work harder and make a difference on the account we support. My question to mgmt is...if you want to cut what you are offering to us to do the job, why would we work harder for less?

Sorry for the rant, but coupled with a ton of things to do tonight (I am on call...fun) today has not been a party.

Confused

I found this reader comment on Michelle Malkins's blog:

"Let me see if I have this straight.
If you name your son Muhammad, but strangle your daughter to death for not wearing a hajib, you’re devout.
If you name a teddy bear Muhammad, you must be jailed, lashed and perhaps beheaded.
I think my head is going to explode. Maybe Rosie O’Donell can explain why Islam is moderate and Christianity is extremist, because I’m lost."

Maybe someone more intelligent than I am (e.g. most of my readers...) can explain this to me. BTW if you do nto read MM's blog, you need to.

On a side note, I received my free copy of the Qur'an the other day from a group in Houston. I was amazed how quickly it arrived. Had this been something I needed from our state or federal government, I would have waited weeks.

The copy I ordered is fro educational purposes. Anytime I find a quote that is referred to I want to look it up and put it in context.

Cold Winter Dreams

What gives with the Texas weather? 80 degrees one day, 30 the next, 70 the day after, 30's the next. Lather, rinse, repeat.


Monday was a pretty busy day for us. we had seven high severity request...six before 8:30 AM. Usually that many requests coming in have several that are related but according to those who know...that is not the case. I am glad Tuesday was a lot quieter...we only had three requests, which is the normal amount.

I have hidden a couple geocaches in the past 3 days. One is hidden in a park near our house and one is hidden in a park near my work. Both were found the same night they were published. Some grocachers are serious when it comes to being FTF (First To Find). I am glad I am not that addicted.

I am still watching season one of "Heroes". It is not bad...some epi's are better than others but overall I like it. It can be dark, but it is also humorous in places. It has piqued my curiosity enough I will watch season two when I can get it.

I really have not been in a blogging mood so bear with me as I go through this phase. I am sure it will pass.

I Would Like To Blame It On The Holidays...

...but that would be lying. I have not been updating this blog very often (once every 3 days or so) and I guess I am falling down on my duties.

We started off last week at work on a tear...we were busy. By the end of the week it had slacked off and i was looking forward to my last weekend off before I went on call. I actually will go on call again in three weeks instead of four to allow us to take our holiday time off. So I will be on call New Years. I hope that is a good thing.

Saturday the weather started out nice so I did my chores and ate lunch. After lunch my wife and I decided to do a little geocaching. We were out three hours, looked for six caches and found four. Not overly bad but not as good as when I am by myself. However with my wife along, I find a better percentage because she can help me look. As a matter of fact, she found one all by herself (she found stage two by herself and had a good idea about stage one) and helped re-camo some of the others that were found.

On the way home we stopped to get some hamburgers from Scotty P's. They screwed up the order but I ate it anyway. Scotty P's splits their hot dogs and serves them on hamburger buns...first time I had ever seen that. it tasted okay, but since I had hot dogs for lunch, a hamburger would have been better.

Sunday was pretty much the same old same old with the exception of my teaching a one on one discipling class with one of the younger Christians at church. After we made it through the lesson, I cam home and started watching "Heroes". I had the whole season and since I had not seen any of it yet, I wanted to get started. So far I like it.

Hats Off To Him

A few days ago I noticed an article on our internal we b page that criticized the way HR has been communication the reduction of our benefits and the actual reductions themselves. When I read the article, I immediately thought, "This guy has written what I have been feeling for weeks!" The quote that got me was this:

"...I wonder how much more can be squeezed out of us before the career becomes just a job — and the job is done just according to spec. If my pay and benefits are set by the industry benchmark, should the quantity and quality of the time I spend on the job also be industry-average?"

I took the time to send him an e-mail expressing my thanks to him for doing this . I figured that was the end of it. Boy was I surprised when I got this today after lunch:

"On the BCC: list are the 200+ people from all businesses and regions who wrote me notes over the past two days about the article. I am not “publishing” your names since I want to protect your right to privacy, but a big thank you to all who wrote. Some of your notes were quick thanks, some longer stories of how HR’s messaging and actions have impacted you and your teams, and a few were, sadly, “this is why I’m leaving” notes.

After years for either consulting with or working for large organizations, I was not surprised to hear from the majority of you that you thought writing the note was an act of “courage.” The right to free speech, unencumbered by the fear of retaliation, is an ideal and not a reality. However, my mother’s favorite quote about her son is that “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Thanks again for your kind words. Keep the faith"

He also sent this message are some of the people he works with at Corporate Communications who have an interest in the article he wrote from a professional perspective.

On the CC: list were the people responsible for running the internal employee sounding off program.

He explains in the e-mail that the note "was written in September, and put in the queue for publication, after I read the August HR note announcing the change in the Layoff Compensation plan, not to be confused with the wonderfully timed Thanksgiving day note announcing more changes in the Layoff Compensation plan."

Amazing? I think so. Over 200 people wrote to him thanking him for speaking out is such a public way and on such a public forum. The other impressive thing is that corporate actually published it. Many companies would have hidden it some place and hoped it blew over.

I think that if this manifested into something that changed the path we are on we should be proud. One man speaks out, 200+ encourage, and history is made.

It Takes Guts(y)

Recently I reloaded (from scratch) my Ubuntu Linux install. My previous install was and Edgy Eft, upgraded to Feisty Fawn, upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon. Since some boo-boos were made along the way (and considering Linux installs are faster than Windows installs), I reloaded.

In the past I used Automatix to get my machine tweaked for multimedia. I had read that in Fiesty, this was not really all the necessary since Ubuntu would try to find the codc you need to play a specific file. With that in mind, I decided to try updating multimedia without Automatix.

First, the basic install went well. I ran into some issues partitioning the HD (I dual boot and did not want to screw up my Windows partition) but I finally figured it out (it seemed harder than the last time I did this, but maybe I am just imagining that).

After the basic install, I ran into the "no link error" that I later found was a problem with the new driver I upgraded on the Windows side. That issue was resolved (this was not any fault of Ubuntu) and I then started trying things out.

While the details are fuzzy, I remember that I had some issues with Totem and some of the file types was trying to play. Ubuntu prompted me to allow it to search for the codecs and after it found and installed them, some played while others would not. I eventually found that for multimedia, I needed to add the Medibuntu repo's to give me full control over DVD's and other media.

For the most part, this was the most frustrating part of the install. All my Windows partitions (two of them fat-32 and one NTFS) were recognized, as was all my hardware. Everything "just worked", although I just realized I have not set up printing yet. My friend Knightmare Duck states this will be no problem at all.

I have not tried wireless with Gutsy yet, but Compiz, the 3D desktop effect package, has worked pretty well...much better than I had expected.

I tested my multimedia upgrades last night by watching a PC DVR recording of Battlestar Galactica - "Razor". Tehre was some flicker but the over impression was pretty good. Audio formats have played well.

If I were to judge this distro to previous Ubuntu releases, I would have mixed reviews. While having the eye candy work nearly flawlessly is nice, I would rather have multimedia work "out of the box". This is what the majority of the end users are going to want. If Linux is to be a serious threat to Mac OSX and Windows Vista, it needs to be more friendly towards multimedia.

JMHO.

It Has Been Three Days

...since my last update. I guess the reason has been the workload, which is about the same as it has been the last two weeks. As usual, my colleague and I are in the thick of the issues and we are doing pretty well, even if he is on call this week. The number of issues has been the same, but the stress has been less. For that I am thankful.

The guy who took over my old job had announced that he was quitting, but it appears that he took the offer of a weeks vacation to see if quitting was what he really wanted to do. The stress on the poor guy has been very high and to be honest I was expecting him to snap. I know that when I did that role, I was ready to quit myself. No one likes to be on call and available 24x7x365...and that is what the role demands. Now according to one of the mid level mgrs, this has been redueced to 8x7x365...but I am not sure how long that will last. if a customer is awake somewhere in the word, we have to be as well.

My Linus box seems to be running well. I turned on Compiz effects (medium amount) and it slows down the boot by a few seconds and apps launch a touch slower, but the effects are worth it to me. Now if I ahd a slower machine, then I would have to turn them off.

The weather has returned to 60-70 during the day and 30's at night. It is supposed to be dry all week long until Sunday, meaning my wife and I can Geocache this weekend as a team again. I am looking foreward to that. Sunday is is supposed to rain.

Another Reason I Hate Microsoft

If you have read this blog for a while, you know I prefer Linux (especially Ubuntu) over Windows. While Windows "just works" most of the time, the crashing, obscure errors, lack of good programming in the software, etc has left me wanting more...ergo I use Linux. It may not be overly flashy, but it does work pretty well, most of the time. I have installed it on laptops and desktops as well as servers. It works good enough and is much more stable than Windows, IMHO.

The other day, I was updating my dual boot (WinXP/Ubuntu Linux) machine with all the latest patches from Microsoft. I noticed there was a new NIC driver (that was 6+ months old) that I had not installed yet (from Microsoft) so I let the "Windows Update" program do its thing. Once installed I rebooted and made sure everything worked.

The next day I go to log on to the PC, but since I am using it, I log onto Linux (I do not use Windows at home very much). The machine boots and the first thing I notice is that there is no network link. The router does not show a powered on machine plugged into it. I panic, thinking the on-board NIC has failed. I gather myself and reboot the router and cable modem (not in that order though) and then reset the IP address. Nothing. I am not getting any DHCP. I reboot into Windows and oddly enough, I am able to get online, so the NIC is not dead.

I reboot back into Linux and the same thing occurs. Frustrated, I grab my laptop and start looking for answers but find nothing. Puzzled, I decided to do a backup of all my important data (what little of it was on the Linux partition) and reload the machine since it has been upgraded a few times over the original install and was acting a bit funky sometimes.
After I reload the machine, I notice I am still not getting any network. Now I am really starting to panic because I cannot figure out why a fresh install cannot detect one of the most common chipset in the world for NIC's (Realtek 8139). I unplug the router and plug the cable modem directly into the PC...same thing.

I grab the laptop and frantically search the web (Googling "realtek 8139" and "gutsy gibbon") and hit upon the answer. It seems that the new driver I installed has a "feature" that turns off the NIC until WINDOWS boots up again. The Linux kernel tries to wake up the NIC but it can't (the kernel does not have the newest driver) so it just leaves it alone. The article said I had a couple of choices. I could: recompile the kernel with the newest drivers on the Linux side, turn on "wake on LAN" from the Windows side, roll back the Windows driver, or just unplug the power from the PC for 15 seconds when I want to boot to Linux.

Since my efforts to recompile the Linux kernel have not been successful in the past and unplugging the machine seems silly and that rolling back a Windows driver can be a disaster, I decided to just turn on the "Wake on Lan" feature in Windows and live with a mild security risk.

I think this "feature"is a pile of crap. This only affects people who dual boot Windows and another OS. When Windows shuts down, it puts the NIC into a "coma" that can only be reversed if Windows boots up or you unplug the PC. Turning off your PC does not stop the flow of power into the mobo. Only unplugging does that and you need to break the power to get the NIC to clear the "coma" flag that is set when Windows shuts down.

Argh. I hate Microsoft.

Freaky Friday

Friday was a bit odd for me. As previously posted, my TL called off on Thursday, leaving me to man the guns solo. It was not not bad...only one issue to deal with and the paperwork was minimal as it was solved quickly. I left nothing to hand over to my Latin American helpers so I went home happy.

On Friday it was slow and my TL told me to leave early. So I left at noon (4 hours early...at least I can burn some vacation) and decided to hit a cache that is close by to the office that had just been unarchived. After that little gem (it was a micro) was found, I went to do some shopping.

I hate shopping and hate it even more during the holidays. Everyone is out and the pace is frantic. I was able to get most of what I wanted at World Market, then I came home. On the way home I looked for another cache but it is buried somewhere in a pile of pine needles, along with several small pine cones) and I just did not have the patience to sort through it all, so I just went home.

My wife did not get home until six or seven PM and while she was gone I just puttered around the house, doing little. I was not in the mood to do much so I didn't. The only thing I did was reload my Linux box, which I am going to log about later.

Saturday was cloudy and rather dreary. I spent the morning working on bills and finalizing my Linux install (mostly tweaking) and finally vacuuming the house. Once all that was done and my wife and I had eaten, she asked me if I was going out geocaching. I had not planned on it since the clouds were so heavy (cloud cover really affects GPSr reception). I had been looking at few caches in the area but was not sure when I would get them. I was telling my wife about one of them and how one of the cachers two year old child found one that had eluded many seasoned seekers for months. She grinned and told me that she sometimes thinks like a two year old so I asked her if she wanted to go. I was floored when she said "yes".

We got dressed in old clothes (the finds we were going after were in the woods), boots, and grabbed some bottled water. We were not going far (4 miles or so away) so the normal gear one would take would not be needed. We hopped in the GeoDak and headed to the site.

We found the area and started looking. I was pretty amazed that a .30 cal ammo can could be hidden in such a sparse area. There were so few places to look...now I see why it has plagued so many people. I checked the obvious areas first and my wife asked me exactly what we were looking for. I told her about some of the clues that that the cache owner left ("two cedars" and "replace the cloak") and told her my thought was that the cache was on the ground, covered with a home made cover of dirt, leaves, and cedar twigs. So we took sticks and started scratching the ground. We covered a pretty large area and I was getting just a tad flustered when my wife got up and moved to a new area. I got up and went to where she was and started moving leaves, branches and dirt and found a small wood frame. I moved a bit more dirt and saw it was the cache. I guess technically, it was buried (which is against the "rules") but to be honest, you did not have to "dig" for it, only move away a thin layer (1 inch or so) of dirt, wood particles, and leaves.

My wife and I rummaged through the can and I signed the log for both of us. She seemed disappointed that nothing of "value" was in it. I told her that the hunt is more of the spirit of treasure hunting, not actually getting something valuable. The object was to trade interesting items, not expensive ones, although I have been told of people who hide very difficult ones with real valuable prizes inside.

After we re-hid the ammo can (as good or better than we found it) we started off after one more of Jake in Texas's hides. While I had no idea where (or what) this one was, I figured my wife and I could at least try.

We started trekking west toward "Jakes Gecko" after leaving "Jakes Can". The path was slippery and choked with briars. I was afraid my wife would turn back, but she continued on. We got to a slippery slope near a creek bed and after I crossed (slipping but not falling) my wife fell and slid down the hill. I thought she might be hurt but the only thing bruised was her pride. She actually started laughing and I could only smile as I helped her up and across the creek as well as up the next hill.

We go to GZ (Ground Zero) but were unable to find the cache after 20 minutes or so of searching. Jake hides a mean cache and it is even harder when you do not have any clues. We turned around and found our way out (a tad easier than going in) and started back to the GeoDak. My wife asked me if there were any more close by, so I told her there were two that I had not been able to find withing a 1/2 mile. We walked to the first one and found it very quickly. I know I had looked in that area before and nothing was there. I later learned that the cache has been muggled 3 times in the past couple of years. We signed the log and walked back to the GeoDak and headed off to look for the last one of the day...another Jake in Texas classic, "Sleeping Candy Canes". Long story short: we could not find it. The weather started getting icky and we decided that two finds (with one of them being a Jake in Texas classic) was not a bad day. I personally like to find 10+ in an outing but when you get down to the hard ones, 2 or 3 is good.

Nervous Star, Nervous Ending

When I got to work yesterday, the phone rang moments after I removed the forwarding to the on-call guy. It turned out to be my TL. he was feeling a bit run down and under the weather, so he decided to stay home. He apologized profusely for "leaving me hanging" but I told him not to worry. I knew things would be okay...busy or not.

About an hour after that I got a call regarding one of the extranet servers so I reacted quickly to get the right people involved. It did not take too long to get resolved and for that I was thankful.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. While I was not able to enjoy my lunch away from my desk and I had to work over an hour, it still was not too bad. My only scare came at 4:45 PM when our hotline rang (we close up shop at 5:00 PM). I realized it was not a trouble call since it came from an internal extension. It turned out to be one of the LAN guys asking for the on-call number of one of the teams in Europe. He had a management server that was down and needed help. It was not a customer facing issue, so I was not needed, but he needed the number nonetheless.

After that info was given, I was able to forward the phones to the on-call guy and head home. When I got there, my dogs (who had been in crates all day) were very happy to see me. I let them out, fed and watered them and they were very happy.

Very Thankful!

Tuesday was another busy day (I ended up staying over just to get things under control) but Wednesday was much better. While I was busy with the follow-up paperwork to all the issues we managed the previous 2-3 days, it was a lot better than trying to run new issues. I normally am not a paperwork type of guy but I will take that over constant phone calls any day.

Last night my wife and I went to care group, but I really was not into it. The food was very good (lots of veggies and meatloaf was the main course) but I just had too much on my mind with the current situation at work. I realize I have it much better than some, but it still is disheartening to have an obligation to be on call and not get any compensation for it. I really need to find a way to let go of this anger and get a better attitude about my job.

I slept pretty well last night, although I got to warm. I find that odd since the furnace was not on, I was not wearing PJ's, and I tend to get cold at night, not warm. When I woke and got out of bed, then I realized I was getting cold, so I dressed appropriately and took Little Man out for quick walk.

The rest of my morning went pretty much as usual, with the exception of my TL called in sick. He is a pretty healthy guy but the past two weeks have been pretty hard on both of us and I guess he just caved first. I was going to ask him if I could take today off and tell him he could have Friday off, but it looks like that is out of the question now. I bet he tells me to go home early tomorrow if things remain calm. I won't count on it, but I am sure that is what he will do.

The weather is back to waht I expect Texas fall weather to be like...50-60 in the day, 35-45 at night. Not bad, really.

Cry Hovok And Let Loose The Dogs Of War

It has been a very busy past two days here at work. The third party (normally is our competitor) who upgraded our customer's SAP instance has been frantically working to patch an ever growing number of issues that has cropped up after the "upgrade". Not that we could have done much better. This systems is so customized that I would not want to support it.

With all the issues they are patching, we are required to coordinate the communications. Normally this is not too much for two 40 something year old guys to handle, but since we have had 3-5 new issues per day (we currently have 3 open for our region alone) it is getting to be a bit much. At least neither of us is on call this week, although my colleague is on call the next and I go on the week after that.

I have not gone out to do any geocaching since Friday so since the weather was nicer today, I nabbed a couple P-n-G's (Park-n-Grabs) during lunch. I was pleased and embarrased that I was able to get both of them as soon as I walked up to GZ (ground zero). I am beginning to get an eye for the urban caches. I still have trouble with the ones out in the wild. I think the reason for that is because some of the ones in the rough are placed by urban cachers and they "over hide" the caches. That is must my humble opinion.

The weather is looking up the rest of this week...at least until Saturday. It is suppossed to rain again and that means no caching for me if it does. Oh well.

Yeah...Fall Is Here

Texas weather is interesting as you can never tell what it is going to be like. It can swing from 75 and sunny to 40 and wet in a day or so. Of course I have also seen days where you need A/C and heat all within the same 24 hour period. You gotta love it.

Thanksgiving day weekend has been wet and cold. Thursday it was cold, Friday it was cold, Saturday and Sunday it has been wet. Walking the dogs has been fun. We come back and we all need to dry off before we come back into the house. At least it is supposed to clear and dry up over the next 4+ days.

I poke with "Mickey" today. His wife "Mary" is healing very nicely from hysterectomy. They had invited us up on Friday but I did not go...I still was in a pretty crummy mood. I sent him an e-mail explaining why I did not go...he did not tell me if he received it or not. If he did I can tell he did not understand it.

Mickey was also telling me about this new job he will be starting next month. They are offering him $12k more a year, a signing bonus, and six service years to start. I had to admit that I was a bit jealous at first then I asked him about on-call and he said, "I don't know, I never asked." Right now on-call is a rather sore subject with me since my employer is doing away with the on-call pay we get, even though we are still required to be on-call at least one week a month. I am not happy about losing the 5% I get for being on-call and I am not happy that the decision is one that has been made by the business unit I am in...not the company in general (if I am reading the info correctly). It seems my business unit gets the short end of the stick no matter what happens. One good example is bonuses. Last year our group got the smallest percetage of the company. Now one would think that since we received the smallest we must have had the poorest percentage (we received half of what the other groups received), but that is not true. Our group contains the support that is needed to maintain the accounts the other groups signed up (you know the groups that got the larger bonuses). Now do not get me wrong. Getting a bonus of 4.1% was nice, but getting a 9.4 percent bonus would have been nicer. I am betting that is what we get this year...half of what the other groups get.

The overall outlook looks rather grim. I am losing on-call pay and expected to maintain the same level of service or greater, the amount of carry over vacation I can have is now limited to two weeks (I currently have three to carry over and I only use about two a year so if I do not increase my usage, I am going to lose vacation in three years), the cost of benefits went up about 5%, the co-pays went up, and I cannot guarantee that any raise we get will cover the cost of living (we have received two raises over the past two years - one was 2% the other was 1.8%). The longer I stay at this job the more it seems that I am losing money.

I know...be happy that I am employed. I am...really I am but why must I always be in a losing situation? If I could just get a cost of living increase and leave my benefits alone...please?

I am wondering if this is God's way of telling me to keep my eyes open for a better opportunity.

Thankful

Wednesday ended well and I was able to leave a bit early (got three caches on the way home) and had a meager dinner (I do that a lot) before watching some MMA videos on MMA Linker. Oddly enough there are a lot of vids there.

Thursday morning my wife and I got ready to go into downtown Dallas to assist in feeding the displaced. It was a huge operation that was organized, but it needed more leadership. I manned the dessert table helping hand out pie, cobbler, and cookies. It was cold (a cold snap has come through the area) and windy but I was okay. My wife started off cold (imagine that) but warmed up after she moved around a bit (just like I said she would). We only stayed two hours. My wife was tired and my back was sore (I get this way when it gets cold) and there were a lot of helpers there.

I hate downtown Dallas. Maybe by biases are beginning to come back but I really feel unsafe when I am there, especially in the neighborhoods we have gone to help out. My wife still walks around like a victim (she never really is observant or plans her route...she just walks) and I am constantly pulling her over out of the way of small groups of people. Yes, I am sure I am over reacting but I am a protector...that is what I do.

We got home and I had a big lunch of leftover whatever (we did not cook this year) and napped on the couch on an off the next couple of hours, doing little else the rest of the day.

"Black" Friday is the day that I do the last bit of yard work of the year. This year it was cold and I had not gotten my supplies yet. I am beginning to become a procrastinator. I got up and headed over to Lowes (I prefer Home Depot, but my wife had a coupon for Lowes) with a small list of things to get. I got them all but the crock pot my wife wanted...they were out of stock. The trip took an hour, not for traffic, but because I am not used to the way Lowes is laid out. Once I got home I was able to start my tasks.

I started cutting the grass (It had no been mowed in over a month but still was not very high) after spending 20 minutes trying to get the mower started. It finally fired up and I mowed both ours and our neighbor's yard but I was exhausted by the time I finished that first part. Once that was done I pulled out the edger and the trimmer and tidied up both yards. That went quickly because the borders had not grown much either, and that the ground was dry. I was very grateful for that.

One the edging and trimming was done, I pulled out the all organic weed killer and fertilizer I picked up at Lowes. I did not do it for me, but because my wife is really beginning to keep her eye open for natural products. I am not sure how well it will do, but we shall see.

After all that I only had one thing left to do and that was to blow all the grass clippings and the spilled fertilizer back into the yard. That usually is the fastest part of job and today was no different.

Once I was done, I grabbed my geocaching gear and headed out the door. To sum up a long story, it was the most disappointing 4+ hours I have ever spent. While I managed to grab a couple memorable ones (an ammo can that has gone untouched for 7 months and a difficulty 4 nano) I struck out on about 8 or so...maybe more. I did not plan at all for this trip and it showed. Normally I will spend a couple of hours online mapping out my route and reading about what I am looking for (taking notes or printing up key info) but this time I just packed and left.

I got home defeated and tired and unusually hungry. Then I realized that I last ate a full meal the day before at lunch and only coffee, juice, and a banana since. Wow.

I guess that one of the reasons why I did not pay much attention to my hunger was that I have a lot on my mind. Money is becoming a bit tight and I feel that I am fighting an uphill battle. My wife has 2 part time jobs (that total 20 hours a week) that she is quitting and with my pay cut in March and our scheduled debt payments running until June or so (not counting the house), I am beginning to stress out.

"El Gee, God will provide."

Yes he will, but he wants us to use good sense or his blessings will be minimal. I feel that we are not doing all we can. This has monopolized my thoughts the past week.

All in all I am thankful for what God has blessed us with. He has kept me employed in an industry with the same company for a long time with a minimal impact on pay (have only gained 10K in raises in 6+ years). He has kept me warm and dry, fed and clothed. He has blessed us with three very good, reliable vehicles and we have only about $7k in debt, not counting the house (that is car and credit card debt).

Yes He has been good and I am thankful. Now if he can only reduce my stress level :-) .

Frazzled

It has been a very busy last two days for us at work. There were some major updates to the SAP system that our customer uses and there have been no shortage of problems because of it. The nice thing is that the SAP environment is not supported directly by my company, but by a third part (a competitor) that our customer decided to use instead of us for application support. You get what you pay for.

The issues have kept me and my TL busy all of Monday and Tuesday. So far we are all caught up on our paperwork, but there is still one issue outstand and that does not count what could come up today. The good news is that we are off the next 4 days and are not on call...our group in Brazil is on call for us since we have Thanksgiving holiday Thursday and Friday.

So, what am I going to do this long weekend? Well, my wife and I are not cooking, nor are we eating a traditional holiday meal. We will be assisting a church in Dallas feed the displaced on Thursday.

On Friday, I will be working on the yard, doing the last cut of the season, trimming anything that needs it, and applying chemicals (weed-n-feed). I do not plan at looking at it again until late winter.

Saturday I will do my normal chores and most likly go geocaching. I will have to move a couple of caches that some of the other cachers think are too close to residential areas. I agree somewhat, but I think that stealth is needed in urban settings. I was able to plant, check up on, and remove both of the ones in question without any problems, but then again, I knew where they were.

Sunday will be my rest day as well as my time at church and Sunday school. There most likely will be other things as well, but I won't know until they happen.

I am looking forward to four days off. I want to clear my mind of all work related issues since I am not overly happy about the current changes that are happening.

The first is our vacation carryover is changing. Starting in 2008, any unused vacation is put into a separate bank and we have 3 years to use it. We will not be allowed to carry over more than 80 hours per year (I get 160) so we have to use it rather quickly. Why is this a problem? I work (yet again) in a department that really cannot afford to let me or my colleague (who is in the same boat, vacation wise) off for any length of time without putting major stress on the other. using the three weeks of vacation carryover in three years PLUS the vacation I normally accrue will be hard without driving my colleague insane. The same goes for him when he tries to go on vacation.

The second has to do with our on call pay. It is going away. None of us are happy about that. Now what they have done is offered to up our base pay 2% to make up for the 5% on call differential we are losing, for a net loss of 3%. Now IF we get a raise this year (we have been getting them every other year), we would be getting closer to what we had, but we would still be down at least 1%. "Raises" in my division have been 1.8 to 2% each time we get one...once every other year and we are not scheduled to get one this year.

If you couple the loss of 3% pay, the increase in our cost of the benefits, the higher co-pays, no raises, the cost of gas to get to work and not being able to telecommute...I lose a lot. Then I get to look forward to my wife quitting her parttime job so we lose even more. Best guess is that I stand to lose $1,000 a month or so (all factors together). Can you live on $1,000 a month less? I guess I need to get more clients in my PC repair gig.

Now in all fairness I know God will provide for us. He is not going to let us starve or put us out on the street. However, like most Americans, we enjoyed a quality of life that has been slowly diminishing over the past 6+ years...sometimes I get afarid that I will not be able to do my part.

Well, the morning has been quiet and I am happy for that. As long as my lunch is still in the fridge (we were given a catered lunch yesterday but I forgot and brought mine anyway...I left it here overnight), I should be in very good shape.

Recap

I know it has been a few days since this blog has been updated but I have been a little busy and when I have had time to update it I have not been motivated to do so.

Friday was moderately busy at work during the day but the issues were all resolved before I went home, which meant as long as I did not get called that evening, I was off the hook.

Friday evening was pretty low key. Since I was on call we did not do anything but watch a little TV. I did work on a clever bit of camo for one of the hides I planed on placing this weekend. I think it turned out pretty well.

Saturday morning came and I treated myself to a pot of coffee, the first I since I burn my mouth (quite seriously, I might add) a couple of weeks before. I walked the dogs and then got ready for the men's breakfast at church. It went pretty well, but I felt moved to share a concern with the group regarding the direction the men's ministry was heading. My thoughts were not received overly by some, but a few of the men thanked me for bringing it up.

After the breakfast and cleanup, went home and started cleaning the house some. I spent about 2 hours on vacuuming, stripping the beds, and such before I decided to go kill a few hours locating some of the more difficult caches I had missed in previous weeks.

I had a very good time hunting the caches and only missed one I wanted to get but got a couple of very tough hides. I came home hot, sweaty, and a bit sore (there was a good deal of climbing on some of them) but very content. After I got cleaned up my wife and I went out for ice cream...you know, on a date. It was a pretty nice treat and both of us had a pleasant time.

Sunday was a bit different than most. First, we got a call from Soldier Boy...HE IS BACK HOME IN THE USA! My wife and I were very happy to hear his voice and we talked to him as long as we could before he had to go. Welcome home, son.

While we had Sunday School, the Christian school affiliated with our church put on a performance for us. It was a musical and while the acting and the production we good, the story was hard to follow and the Christian message was rather weak. Overall I would say a 3 out of 5 stars.

After the performance I went back home (my wife was not feeling well) to see if my wife was feeling better. She was not so I went out to lunch on my own, depositing a refund check from the hospital and grabbing a cache (a very well done one at that) before I headed back. You could tell the holidays are approaching because traffic is already starting to get heavy. It took me twice as long to get to the other side of town as it normally does.

Once I got back I walked Little Man and placed a cache 1/10 of a mile down from the last one I placed. I used the modified camo I made the other night and was pleased with the results. I walked back and checked on my wife but she still was not feeling well, so I went to the church Thanksgiving dinner (we had signed up to help set up the dining hall) by myself.

I helped set up, ate a good dinner, and cleaned up before coming home to take care fo the dogs and check on my wife. She was feeling better, but still a bit under the weather. I was not feeling bad, but I was tired so after talking to my mom, I hit the hay early.

Cold Blast

All you people in the northern regions...try not to laugh.

It got a bit chilly last night. At lunch I was sweating as I was searching for a couple of geocaches but by dinner time, the wind was blowing and it was a lot colder. When I woke up this morning and got ready to walk "Little Man", it was in the upper 30's...the coldest yet. Now do not get me wrong, it is still warm here in Texas (it is about 60 right now) but the cold snap came on very sudden.

Work so far has been pretty light. Nothing much was going on before lunch so I had no problems leaving to grab a cache during my lunch hour. I debated which one to try so I went back to one of the ones I struck out on yesterday (in one of the green belts in Richardson) and hit pay dirt, although it took me 30 minutes or so to do find it. It was camo'ed pretty well and I am sure a passerby will not find it too easily. It was not on the side of the belt I thought it was on which is why it took me so long to find it.

I came back and ate my lasagna and let my TL go on his lunch break. I chatted with a couple of people regarding the situation here at work and we all agree things are not looking too bright for us, but at least we are still employed.

I do not have any plans tonight so I am not sure what the evening will bring. Maybe I will hit a cache on the way home...there are a couple that I have not gotten yet but I am not sure how easily I can grab them as I drive home.

We shall see.

A Trend

My morning at work was about hte same as it has been the past couple of days, which is a good thing. Nothing major going on and it gave me time to work on a report that I needed to knock out before too much time had elapsed.

At lunch I attempted three caches...one near a church hidden in some hedges (I really dislike these types of hides) and two along a green belt a mile or so from my office. I was unable to get the one at the church but got the first one at the green belt (which was Halloween themed) and struck out on the second at the green belt due to a lack of time. I cam back and ate my lunch at my desk and worked on a power failure issue at our customer's main site in Plano.

Before I went home I noticed that our peer in Mexico raised an issue with our third party provider on an old ticket but he failed to update the log. I was concerned since I was on call and I did not want to get stuck with a bad situation. Long story short, I did not have to work it but I did get a phone call at 11:30 PM (after I had been asleep for 30 minutes or so) asking me to make a change to the ticket. Why I had to be called for this I am not sure.

Since I was not obligated to any issues I went to care group with my wife. We had a good time and enjoyed pleasant conversation until we had to go home.

I stayed up working on some caches I plan on hiding soon then I hit the hay. Of course I was woken up at 11:30 but that is part of the job...

Burst in BLog Traffic

I was checking my web logs the the other day and noticed a huge increase in traffic (about 40 hit) early in the week. I did some digging and noticed it was all regarding Ron Arlt, the person accused of conning more than one person...a few of them women with romantic ties to him.

The traffic came mostly from one person, the first one to publicly blog about it. (IIRC). She had left a comment on my blog stating that she was surprised there was still that much interest in him. Well dear, if he is still conning people, there still will be interest. Besides, we know he is narcissistic, so how do we know that he is not driving up my hits? Hmmmmmmm?

Work went well yesterday. I had a call on the way in, but it was nothing to really worry about. We only had one other issue to work on and it was resolved just after the clsoe of business. so I was minimally impacted.

The rest of the evening was ho-hum...just a little TV then I hit the sack pretty early...10:00 PM or so.

Oh, I did manage to get a cute "frog themed" cache at lunchtime yesterday. It is harder to get them at lunch because I have gotten most of the ones in the immediate area that you can get without being noticed. If I travel too much further out, I w will not have time to get there, search for the cache, get back and eat. I think there are less than a dozen that I can still nab at lunch in this area and most of those are good hides or they are in a highly visible spot. Oh well.

Almost Pleasant

I am on call this week (work week only, I hope) and it started off pretty well.

I left work a little early (30 mins) and decided to grab a multi-part cache on the way home that is in a park not too far from our house. I had been by once to get it, but I let the clues mislead me. Once I realized how it was hidden, it was a piece of cake.

I got home and had dinner with my wife (Salmon on a bed of baby greens) and it was great. I had a few Greek olives alone with the fish and I was in heaven. Oh the flavors!

After dinner I got ready for the trustee meeting at church. The meeting lasted about 2 hours or so and we covered a lot of issues. Of course a lot more will come up in the upcoming weeks but that is to be expected.

I got home and walked the dogs and then checked my e-mail before heading to bed. I was tired. I was still that way when I got up the next morning. I was pretty much in a fog all morning long...even on my way to work. Not sure why.

Just Another Day

Sunday arrived and departed much like any other day for me. While I enjoy Sundays, sometimes they can be a bit mundane and today was no different. It started off like it normally does with a quick walk of the dog and my morning bible reading (I have skipped coffee the past few days since I have a nasty burn in my mouth that has not fully healed and I do not want to aggravate it). I attended church and Sunday School as usual ad after that was over, my wife and I grabbed lunch at Fuddruckers. I was getting a headache so my wife gave me a couple of Tylenol and it eventually subsided. Lunch was good and afterwards we filled up the gas tank in her van and headed home. By the time we got home the headache was mostly gone and my wife had already started her Sunday afternoon nap. I was not sleepy so I worked on a a small cache I wanted to hide near our house. Once it was complete I dropped it off and submitted it to geocaching.com for approval. This makes hide number 5 for me. None of them have been as good as the first, but I have not found the perfect area yet in which to place a fun one.

After I placed the cache I sat down for a few minutes and watched some "Man Versus Wild" on Discovery. When it was over, I got cleaned up to get ready for the monthly service that takes palce on Sunday Night. We call it "Voice of Faith" and it is all singing and prayer.

After the service I tried calling my mom but the line was busy so I gave up and went to bed. I was tired for some reason (I tire easily nowadays it seems) and decided to get as much sleep as possible. When I woke, I found my wife up and working on the PC. She had been up since 4:00 AM (I get up at 5:00) and had a littany of things she wanted to do. I left her to herself as I walked Little Man around the block.

I got back and my wife started feeding the dogs. With that, I started my routine to get ready for work. When I arrived, the feeling of dread had already sunk in. We were told of layoffs coming soon and one of us are very happy. The whole building is quiet (even during the busy parts of the day) and everyone looks glum.

I have dodged 5 layoffs so far and if God wants me someplace, he will put me there no matter what happens. That is why I am not going to worry...It is not in my hands.

Well, I Had To Hand It Over

The issue at work did not get resolved while I was there so I had to hand it over to my TL who is on call. I hated to do it but it was not going to get resolved on my watch. I hope he did not have to stay up for it.

I got home and vegged out for a while then hit the hay. I was tired and needed rest.

The next morning I got an early start on my chores. I wanted to get them done before I got my hair cut at 10:45 and I was able to accomplish that without too much trouble. Before I left I had time to print up some of the geocaching notes that I would need for the day. I had a plan and I hoped to stick to it as best as I could.

After getting my hair cut I hit the road and started my quest for geocaches. I started at Allen Premium Outlets and grabbed two there. Both were pretty easy although one had me a bit puzzled for a few minutes. After I grabbed those I cruised by Star Creek Park and picked up a very good hide there. The guy who hid that one is really good at using the natural items to assist in the hiding process.

I left Star Creek and headed north to a cemetery that had 4 hides in it. All 4 were in the back (to give you an idea how big it is all caches have to be at least 1/10 of a mile apart from each other) and I was able to get them all without any trouble. As a matter of fact I was able to get all 7 in just over an hour.

With that accomplishment under my belt, I decided to head over to another area that had a couple of ammo cans hidden (Ammo cans are what cachers strive for...they can hold a lot of goodies and are harder to hide). I struck out while wasting about 1-2 hours looking for the next 4 hides on my list and I was getting a bit depressed. I drove back down to Stacy road and headed towards 4 that I did not get last week and when I arrived I realized that there was more bush whacking needed than I wanted to do after wasting so much time on the ammo cans. I decided to drive towards Lucas and see about picking up a few there.

I pulled up a road that looked familiar and zoomed out my GPSr. It showed 2 within a mile so I drive up and picked up those two. Okay...I was up to 9. My goal on any Saturday is a minimum of 10 so I zoomed out my GPSr again and noticed 2 more about half a mile away in a new, nicer subdivision. I pulled in to the park and headed off into unknown territory. I found the first one pretty quickly. It did not look like it belonged and when I lifted it, I was rewarded with a film canister and a log. Once it was signed, I moved on to the other one in this area which was about 800 feet away in the woods.

I followed the path until I was sure that I was not going to get any closer to it then I headed off into the brush. It did not take long until I found the ammo can (my first solo ammo can find) and opened it up. It was packed with cool stuff. I did not go through it all because I had been out for 4 hours and needed to get home. I did however sign the log and trade few items. I took a tube of "Shoe Goo" (the sole of one of my Wolverines was coming lose so this was needed) and a geocoin and left an old Mexican coin and an MRE accessory pack. Once all was packed back up, I headed back to the GeoDak and went home...stinky but mostly happy. I would have loved to get other 6 or so that I had wiffed on, but those are for another day, I guess.

I Wonder How Will This Turn Out

Two days in a row we have had a peace. No issues have been raised and things have been nice. This afternoon while everyone else was in a very important meeting that I did not get to go to (another story), I worked with our third party provider trying to get as certain module of SAP up and running for our customer. This started off bad and got worse as the hours drifted by.

First, the help desk gave me the wrong description to the problem. There were screen shots, but they did not match the issue reported. Since I am not familiar with this, I pass on to the third party.

Next, the third party says that they can only work via e-mail since they work from home. I am not sure where that came from since I sure as heck have to call people when I work at home.

Finally, the third party states that since there is a chage freeze, they cannot upload the code that needs to be put on the productions servers and the customer will just have to wait until the freeze is over with...in January. The tech working on the issue did not understand that the cahgne freeze is in place for non-critical issues...high priority issues are immune from this.

We have engaged the management of the third party and they are working with the tech to rectify the situation.

We hope.

Maybe I Spoke Too Soon

Yesterday at lunch I decided to go to the Army-Navy Store to see what goodies they had that a new geocacher like myself could use. While the store was full of hiking, camping, military, and law enforcement gear, it all was a bit expensive. I opted for a roll of olive drab duct tape to help hide my caches.

While at the store, I stopped by and grabbed two caches. One was right out side the store across the street near a small park and was similar to one that gave me fits before, so I knew what to look for. While I was looking at it, an old woman cam walking by mumbling. I normall would not have paid much attention to her but she was wearing (and I am not kidding folks) A TIN FOIL HAT. My only guess was that she thought my GPSr was reading her mind. Scary.

Since I had 30 minutes left to kill from my lunch, I decided to drive by and see if I could find he puzzle cache I solved a few weeks ago. it did not take me long to locate, sign, and return the cache. Once back into my GeoDakota it was a short 5 minute drive back to the office. Not bad for 45 minutes or so.

The afternoon was quiet. No calls and no issues to deal with. This was a welcome change from the previous days work. I looked and it had been just about two weeks since we last had a free day from issues. I guess I will enjoy it while I can.

I got home with a bit of a headache (tension) and my mouth was sore from the recent hot dog burn (by the way, 1 minute is too long for two wieners in the microwave. I just thought I would share that) so talking and eating was (and still is) painful. I was not sure I wanted to go to care group, but I decided that I needed to go. We had three visitors join us and it really was nice to have them. We spent too much time on some missions stuff and that left very little time for prayer, so we had to cut things short to allow a few of the more senior members to go home on time.

We got home and took care of the dogs before we went to sleep.

I got up felling better than I did the night before but still kinda rough. I walked Little Man and let The Golden out to pee before feeding them. In the process I dropped The Golden's ceramic dog food bowl (it was full of food by the way), breaking it and sending the dog and the food flying. Of course the first thing out of my mouth was "son of a b@tch!", which was not what a Christian should be saying...ever. Oddly enough I did not even realize it until my wife brought it to my attention. I really need to pray more that God will remove those words and thoughts from my mind. I feel horrible when it happens and I know it disappoints my wife.

Thankfully, the rest of my prep to go to work was uneventful!

Since the morning started off on the wrong foot, I stopped grabbed a cache on my way to work. It was only about 300 feet out of my way on an overlook of Plano. I am surprised I have never noticed this before. There is a nature preserve near by that is supposed to have two more caches hidden, but these will be hikes...no park and grabs like many others in the area.

Well, I guess I will get back to monitoring things.

Repeat Of Last Week?

At least I am not on call! This week has been busy and it is only Wednesday morning...I can imagine what the rest of the week will be like. We have been averaging three incidents a day for the past couple of weeks when we normally have 1-2. These have been longer and harder to deal with and being on call for them is no fun.

I voted yesterday morning and it was quick and painless, unless you count the fact I had forgotten which poll we voted at. Once that was done, I was able to get to work on time. I let my TL go early so he could vote on the way home and he seemed to appreciate it.

Yesterday I nabbed to caches that made me happy...one that had eluding me for weeks and the other was my first multi part cache. Multi-part caches give you coords to one area and then you must find the coords to the second area. I was blessed in that the coords were not very far away from each other...just across the street to be exact.

Last night I had a one on one session with "Larry", my student in "One on One Discipling". We had not met in almost eight months I was worried he had given up. While he was late, he has not given up. I am happy he takes his walk with Christ seriously.

This morning I had my dentist appointment, so I skipped my normal morning coffee. the visit took all of 26 minutes to check int, get my teeth cleaned and examined, and check out. I like that !

On the way to work I stopped off to grab the last of the TMNT caches hidden by the "Garland Goonies". I found three of them very quickly but had trouble with the other two. Today I close that chapter in my geocaching book.

Not sure which one I will go after today. I need to research a bit.

When Four Days Feels Like Seven

Whew...I am finally off call. This was one of the more difficult ones only because of the late night wake up calls from the help desk we are associated with. While it was only four days it felt more like an entire week.

The rest of Sunday went well. I tough my Sunday School class and even made it through the service without getting called. After service, I drove home (since my wife and I cam at different times) to let the dogs out before we went to lunch. When I got done with the dogs, I noticed my truck was leaking coolant like crazy...a scary thing since I just had the truck worked on Friday. Needless to say my wife and I dropped the truck off that afternoon so the guys could look at it and correct the problem. I hope it is their fault and not the radiator...we do not need any more big expenses right now.

After we dropped the truck off my wife and I grabbed some bagels for lunch. It had been a long time since I had bagel with hummus on it and it did not disappoint. While I have had better bagels, this one was not bad.

We got home and my wife spent the afternoon talking to her friend in Alabama. I dozed on and off while I was trying to watch a bad Harrison Ford movie (Hollywood Homicide) on TV. and eventually I got up and fed then walked the dogs before we went to the party that was being thrown for one of our church members who recently became a US citizen.

The rest of the night was quiet and I went to bed early since I was (and still am) very tired. At least Sunday night was quiet!

Well, DUH!

Again, I prove I can predict the obvious...I stated this months ago.

Thanx Slashdot for the link.

Notice The Hour...

No, this is not a misprint...I am blogging at almost 1 AM. This weekend on call has not been friendly this time around.

Friday night I got a call at 11:00 PM regarding an R&D app in Canada that went down for maintenance and did not come back up properly. I had never worked a call like this and could not find a number for the on call team. I caved in and called another team asking for help but they never returned my call, which was very odd. The customer was understanding and agreed not to press the issue until the next morning. I stayed up until 2:00 AM researching the case and got up again at 7:00 to finalize it. The sad news was that it was not even supposed to have been raised to us. The team who work with that app are to be called directly, skipping me. Nice of them to tell me after the fact.

At midnight the same night I get a call from a third party provider asking me to push an lower severity issue that if not solved in 36 hours, will become a high priority. I transfer the case to the proper team and note the ticket, with intentions of calling on it the next morning. When I get up, I see my European peers (who work 24x7) have already called to push on it so I do not have to.

I get up the next morning and finish issue number one, have my coffee, walk the dogs, and eat my breakfast. I have some chores to do so I do them and am done by 1:00 PM. After a quick lunch, I decided to grab some local geocaches (keeping my phone handy and sticking close to home...no more than four miles away) and nab seven of them:

The Great Pumpkin - A new hide in a new park just west of us.
RR Ghost Nightmare - A Halloween themed cache with one of the best containers I have ever seen.
Rockin' - A cache I have tried and missed twice before...deceptively easy. I felt foolish for missing it.
Old Railroad Dam - A historical spot just north of us.
"Bag" - The Ticket - One of the hardest to get to I have ever seen. Briar factor seven.
Score! - A mystery/puzzle cache I solved two weeks ago but have not had time to nab.
Stacy Ridge #1 - The furthest cache I have done from my home coords yet (not counting the ones near work) at 3.2 miles away.

I DNF'd (Did Not Find) on two: A multi (Where, Oh Where Could My Little Cache Be?) because of an abundance of "muggles" (non-cachers) and "Balance", which is in a bog. Yes a bog. I spent 45 minutes looking for that one and finally gave up.

Even though I DNF'd on two, I still had a great time and did all this in three hours.

After I got home I found my wife working on some yard work, so I joined in on the fun. We worked for about 2 hours and then I grabbed some McD's for dinner (using some of the cash I earned doing PC work) and then my wife grabbed some Braum's ice cream for dessert. Not the healthiest we have eaten but it was tasty.

I walked the pooches and then watched some TV before falling asleep on the couch. That brings me up to the current situation. At a little before 1:00 AM I got a call from the third party vendor who called me the night before. The issue they called me about had still not been completed. and only had 12 hours left. I found this odd since my European peers had already called about it. I called the team in Slovakia and they assured me it would be handled ASAP. I called our third party vendor and gave them the news and told them I would call them back as soon as it was complete. I hope for my sake it is soon.

While this may seem like nothing to those who are on call and get called all the time, this just caps off a very busy week for us. We have averaged two high priority calls per day over the past week and it is beginning to wear on me. Considering that I traded on call with someone I think I got the short end of the bargain.

At least the caching was good.

It Figures

We had a pretty good day yesterday at work. The phones were ringing, but there was nothing of any great importance until 4:50 PM...10 minutes before I went on call. My TL took a call and got the ball rolling for me and he stayed until 5:30 PM to make sure things got started before he handed it off to me. Nice guy...and I mean that.

I take the issue and get a call back about 7:00 PM from the tech who was investigating it. He could not see a problem on their end so he asked me to have the message queuing admin look into it. So at 2 AM or so CET, I called the on call admin and he looked, but after an hour, he could not find anything. Then then told me to have the customer reboot the OCR machine. Well that was not going to happen any time soon since the customer was not at work. (Sigh) ... another wasted 4 hours.

I called the customer and gave her the info. Needless to say she is not the friendliest person I have dealt with in the past few months. She agreed to wait until morning and then come in to work to reboot hte machine and call me with the results. She says she gets to work at 6:30 AM, so she has had an hour to do this but so far I have not heard from her or the third party who normally supports the app.

(Sigh).

I hope today is similar in the workload, MINUS the last minute high priority ticket. And if the weekend is issue-free, all the better.

Tidbits

Yesterday was busy, but not in a very bad way. We had a lot of calls but only one issue that we had to formalize. My TL stayed 30 minutes over to insure things went smoothly.

At lunch I was able to snag two caches in a nearby park. These were quick and well thought out...just the way caches should be. I still prefer fewer quality caches than mass amounts of poorly done ones.

I got home and found my wife working on several things at once but dinner was not one of them. Now don't get e wrong, I don't expect a home cooked meal every night but if you PLAN on cooking then stop early enough to get it started...not when it is time for you hubby to be home. Since I was hungry and did not want to wait, I just picked up some take out and came home to enjoy it with my wife. Having a little cash from my side job helps.

My wife spent the evening grooming the dogs and bathing one of them (Little Man) and I walked him before the kids hit the street begging for candy. Little Man does not like trick or treaters.

About 10 PM or so I noticed a lot of flashing lights on our street. A fire/rescue truck, and EMT, and 2 police cars pulled up in front of the house diagonally across the street from us. They were there 20 minutes or so then left, so I a guess it was nothing too serious.

I go on call tonight for the the guy in Mexico. It should be okay, but I am expecting to be busy. I have the city council meeting tonight so I am not sure if I will be able to stay for it all or not. So far I have not been able to hang in there the entire time when I am on call. Maybe this time will be different.

Busy Quarterly Close

This week is the quarterly close for our customer and that means reports...lots and lots of reports. SAP systems will be running overtime processing and printing up sales and finance reports for managers at all levels. Quarterly close is my least favorite time at work because this is when the customer calls and complains about system performance. Of course we know things are going to be slow during this time, but the customer cannot understand that the systems were designed to for normal to high loads. When the loads get to "ultra high", things will bog down.

The guy on call (who happens to be in Mexico) has asked for Thurs-Fri off. He asked my TL who turned him down and then he asked me. I told him we would take his calls during the day and I would take the on call at night Thurs-Sun. I really did not want to do it, but I am a team player so I agreed. With this Quarterly Close being so problematic, I may regret my decision. Oh well.

I have not been successful in Geocaching the past two days. I think I am 0-3. After striking out yesterday, I began to wonder if I am looking at this the wrong way. It is not about how many you get, but the quality of the hides you find. I have 110 finds so far and only a handful have been "fulfilling".

I got paid for all my outstanding computer work yesterday, plus a check from Yougov.com ... I had figured that I was never going to get that check, but low and behold, they finally paid me my $50 for my opinions over the past two years.

Best Of Both Worlds

Sunday was a pretty good day for us over all. The sermon at church was good and afterwards my wife and I enjoyed a picnic lunch in the park near our home. While the wind made it chilly, the sun was warm and the meal (sandwiches and soda) was palatable.

After our lunch, we came home and grabbed The Golden and and decided to walk a bit. We drove over to a newer area that has been recently developed in out small city and walked a bit. While we were out my wife and I were looking for a spot to hide a cache or two, but the first area was not a good place unless I wanted to do the typical Live Oak/Cedar cache hide. I had a neat container that demanded something more permanent. Eventually we went to Story Park and I was able to hide (after a lot of waiting) my cache. I posted it that evening and it was approved last night. One of the more seasoned cachers found it at 4:50 this morning. Wow.

Work yesterday was pretty slow, but of course it picked up just as I was getting ready to leave. I did my part and handed itover to my TL/colleague who would handle things until he went home, then he would hand it over to the guy who was on call the first part of this week. Needless to say he did about the same quality of follow up as he normally does so when I got in the morning I had to take up the slack. I hope it is just a training issue.

Last night I went on a house call (for a member of our church) that was one of my easiest yet. Since it only was about one hours worth of work, I charged my normal church rate for the call. They were also close which meant the wear and tear on the truck was minimal. Speaking of which, I think I am leaking something...I have a clear, oily spot under my truck that looks like oil but it is too clean. I hope it is nothing too serious...money has been tight and we are trying to get out of debt...

Geocaching Spree

I had made plans to go out and geocache Saturday morning for a few hours before I started on my chores around the house. I normally work first then play, but I wanted to get out a get a few before it got too hot. I managed to get 14 for the day (thanx to a hint for one of them) before I headed home to do my chores. I think I had about four DNF's and I have no idea where they are hidden. My best guess is that they are gone.

I finished my chores (strip/make bed, vacuum house, dry clothes) and even managed to mop the kitchen floor, much to the delight of my wife.. I had just finished when my wife called and told me that she was running a bit late. I told her not to worry and I got cleaned up while I waited for her to come home.

When my wife finally managed to get home, She changed clothes so we could go meet Mickey and Mary for dinner at TGI Fridays. We had not seen them in a while and it was nice to talk with them again.

After dinner and some small talk, my wife and I returned home to walk the dogs. We did not stay up too late since we both had a long day.

Delay

I know it has been a few days since my last post and I apologize for that. For some of you that is no big deal, but to me it is. I like to try to update this daily.

Oct 25 was my last update, so I guess I will bring you up to date starting on Friday.

I have been on a mission to find 100 caches in 30 days geocaching. With this in mind, I have usually nabbed a few at lunch, and even an odd one to and/or from work. Friday I was out nabbing #91 and #92 at lunch (I researched those well so I could get them quickly) when I got a call from my TL/colleague. He had called to let me know our boss wanted me to make an off site visit to assess a situation that, to be honest, no one else wanted to get involved in. I got back to the office to get directions and eat my lunch (I usually spend my lunch hour searching for caches) and when I was finished I headed to the satellite office of our customer, which was jsut a few miles from home.

When I got there, I introduced myself and began to gather data on the situation. Long story short, our customer just bought out a company and they were in the process of migrating them to their network. Well, the PC's they were using had to run Windows XP (and not our image) so things were going to be different from the get go. The PC's were not locked down, so th the users could make whatever changes they desired even if it messed up the default or corporate settings.

The whole office was very nonchalant and laid back. People milled around carrying equipment, routers (wireless and wired) were strewn everywhere creating ad-hoc networks all over the small 15 person office. The engineers were adamant about keeping everying thing open and accessible, both in the office and on the PC. It was a techs nightmare. Thankfully the tech who was assigned to work with me was top notch.

After 3-4 hours of this, we (the tech and I) were called by the PM and told to attend a con-call with some of the mgmt staff. That con-call lasted one and half hours...time I will not be able to get back.

Once all that was done, I was able to go home and get a bite to eat and spend some time with my wife.

OF All The Things To Critique...

A long time ago I posted my critique of "Farscape", a mostly enjoyable sci-fi show. Today I noticed an anonymous (I dislike anonymous comments...maybe I should turn them off) reader decided to ask me to make corrections to my post. When I first read it, I naturally assumed the reader was asking me to correct grammar or spelling. I am used to that. My good fried Land Shark has mentioned to me before, but as I told him, I blog for me...no one else. He understands.

No, the reader sent this:

I know your post is old but it would be great if you went back and made a few corrections.

First of all one cannot fornicate with their spouse. Look up the definition of fornicate.

Secondly a whore barters with sex. D'argo enters into a relationship because of lust/love not for reasons of commerce. Depending on your views regarding alien sexual relations he may be immoral but he is no whore.

I send my best wishes and hope that you are happy and well.

Now here is my response:

1) The urban dictionary includes fornicate as sex with or without being married. While the urban dictionary is not the end all resource for word definitions, it does for "urban" speak.

2) Whore - a woman who engages in promiscuous sexual intercourse, usually for money; prostitute; harlot; strumpet. Notice it says USUALLY for money, not exclusively. Besides, I was talking more from an urban perspective where "whore" means anyone who sleeps around.

I made the corrections that were suggested, but under duress. I have not always been a Christian so I understand a lot of street talk and sometimes use it when it is not offensive. Men and women can be whores (in a liberal sense) and fornicate is used on the street when kids want to sound mature. So I guess the original commenter was technically correct on this.

Sneaky, Cool, And A Salesman

I planted my "sneaky" cache the other day and I already have a few hits on it as well as some compliments. It seems that a few of the local cachers like my style.

The weather has drastically changed so we are getting into the 40's at night and only to the 60's during the day. I am amazed that it has happened tat quickly. We went from hot to cool in just 24 hours.

Why is it that some people have to over promise and under deliver, AKA typical sales person mentality. I am not trying to be mean, but most sales people I have met will take this route and it is the support people who pay the price.

Yesterday the PM and my boss call me up asking for "a favor". They need someone to go over to a new site and help out with the cut over. I ask what needs to be done and they both tell me (initially) that they need a person who is good with people and has great process knowledge. Well, to be honest, my TL / colleague is better in that area than I am so he tells them he will go.

Fast forward about 1.5 hours later. I have just opened a high priority ticket but since I am not on call, I have to pass it off to the on call guy, who happens to be in Brazil. I get this done and head down to the PM's office and she is on the phone, leaving a message to my colleague / TL telling him to show up at 10:00 AM not 8:00 AM. PM and I talk for while and I soon realize that my TL / colleague is not going to have fun doing this. I consider calling him and telling him what he is facing but I decide not to.

Later that night, I get a call from him and he tells me that he does not have to go. It seems our customer is very much against the dedicated onsite help...it costs extra and they don't want to pay it.

This is a pattern I see around here. People want to promise the moon and deliver the rocks.