I’m a fire-fighter. It is not in my job description, but it is what I do. Only I don’t get to ride those bright red flashy cars with hydrants and sirens. But when the Dee Zaster comes, I’m up for a fight her with a curse on my lips and a spirit to win. Who said that the concept of IT support is FIXING things when they broke? So totally wrong – we should be IMPROVING the way how things work so that the only time when they’re down is when they retired.
Try to explain this to the management though. Why being so clever in managing people, they completely miss out on managing resources? We never have funds, we never have time, we always have something new landing into our hands to hold, to care, to support…way before Christmas we told our management that our oldest server has lost one of his disks and is about to die rather sooner then later. OK they said. Ok as in “we don’t have money to buy a new one right now coz we just purchased a bunch of fancy blackberries for our manager’s team”.
It was not only the oldest server (truly old – 9 years in computer’s life equals 99 in human’s) it was also A Very Important Life Supporting Server…oh, c’mon, what kind of life threat could possibly exist in libraries?! What’s wrong with the good old pen&paper backup?
It was suppose to be a big project to transfer old server into a new hardware. A well planned procedure and full list of priorities, all cleverly calculated so that the downtime is minimal. But we never do projects here. We do emergencies and disasters. And a balancing too…Another image comes to mind – of an old electronic game where you’ve got a basket and eggs falling down on you in random fashion. And you suppose to catch them all and prevent from becoming an omelette. So we do the same here: fixing one thing with one hand, holding another with the other hand trying to keep it from falling apart at least until we're able to catch…
Anyway…this was just to picture what’s going on in here and partially to say: look, I’m here but I’m not up to communicating, not up to sharing, not up to anything right now, coz I’m rebuilding the old piece of oh so important scrap metal while trying to keep an eye on few other candidates for post-mortem. This doesn’t mean I don’t care, just that I’m being in my anti-social mode. When I’m having problems on my job, I’m not good with the rest of the life either. Those who close to me know this and wait patiently. Those who unaware suffer and I don’t pity them. However, the other me, which is more bearable is out there somewhere, so eventually the server will be build, the others won’t be broken yet and I will be back with some bright and cheerful ideas…or with yet another rant…:-p
Try to explain this to the management though. Why being so clever in managing people, they completely miss out on managing resources? We never have funds, we never have time, we always have something new landing into our hands to hold, to care, to support…way before Christmas we told our management that our oldest server has lost one of his disks and is about to die rather sooner then later. OK they said. Ok as in “we don’t have money to buy a new one right now coz we just purchased a bunch of fancy blackberries for our manager’s team”.
It was not only the oldest server (truly old – 9 years in computer’s life equals 99 in human’s) it was also A Very Important Life Supporting Server…oh, c’mon, what kind of life threat could possibly exist in libraries?! What’s wrong with the good old pen&paper backup?
It was suppose to be a big project to transfer old server into a new hardware. A well planned procedure and full list of priorities, all cleverly calculated so that the downtime is minimal. But we never do projects here. We do emergencies and disasters. And a balancing too…Another image comes to mind – of an old electronic game where you’ve got a basket and eggs falling down on you in random fashion. And you suppose to catch them all and prevent from becoming an omelette. So we do the same here: fixing one thing with one hand, holding another with the other hand trying to keep it from falling apart at least until we're able to catch…
Anyway…this was just to picture what’s going on in here and partially to say: look, I’m here but I’m not up to communicating, not up to sharing, not up to anything right now, coz I’m rebuilding the old piece of oh so important scrap metal while trying to keep an eye on few other candidates for post-mortem. This doesn’t mean I don’t care, just that I’m being in my anti-social mode. When I’m having problems on my job, I’m not good with the rest of the life either. Those who close to me know this and wait patiently. Those who unaware suffer and I don’t pity them. However, the other me, which is more bearable is out there somewhere, so eventually the server will be build, the others won’t be broken yet and I will be back with some bright and cheerful ideas…or with yet another rant…:-p