Week 6 day 2

I hear this all the time folks. “It worked yesterday, why is it not working now?” As I hear this I want to whip out my magic 8 ball or some other type of magic crystal ball and shake it vigorously looking for an answer. The problem is there are no magical answers and while it may appear that I have a magic wand with magical fairy dust I really do not. Sometimes things happen in binary land that I really do not have any control over. For instance, if your e-mail is hosted at a remote site and your password becomes inoperative for whatever reasons I really do not have the ability to fix that at your local desktop. We really do have to call the remote site (ISP, helpdesk etc) and get them to reset your password. Resetting your computer continuously for the next hour is not going to magically reset the password. Also, when you ask for help please do not feel the need to use a high pitched whine when you do it. My purpose in life (at work at least) is to provide you with technical support and I promise that if you just tell me what the problem is I will do my best to fix it. Heck, saying good morning and calling me by my first name would start the conversation off very nicely and would make me want to do whatever I can to assist you. After all, I get satisfaction from knowing that I have solved your problem and that you can go back to doing your job efficiently.

Over the last five weeks I have gone from running around with my hair on fire wondering if I made the right decision to take on this new job to having things finally slow down a little bit. As I look around me I am able to see things more clearly and I do not feel as overwhelmed as I once did. When you are the only I.T. person at a company you are responsible for everything and there is nowhere to turn other than to your ability to get things done and external resources. Now that I have most of the user community at a point where they can work without calling me several times per day I can now start turning a portion of my attention towards the actual network infrastructure which includes the five servers that run our applications and provides us services. I have several clean up type projects that need to be addressed sooner than later. I need to get my ducks in a row, create a plan and then go to the boss and get his blessings for any external resources that I might need or the necessary funding to make this happen.

My on call responsibilities have not been too overwhelming thus far which I am glad of. I get two or three calls on the cell phone per week and most of the questions I can answer without having to remotely connect to the users workstation to fix something which is nice. The intense discovery zone routine that I have been going through in the last five weeks has helped out tremendously as well. I have a three ring binder that has different types of information that I might need and I carry that with me in my laptop bag. Being extremely organized and task oriented is very helpful when it comes to being in an I.T. role at a company.