Aggravation. It's making me wait.

[nolapenguin]

Corporate bureaucracy, two words that fill the worker bee's heart with fear. As in Office Space? Worrying about cover sheets for TPS reports would be about the mildest of worries in my workplace. When you work for a technology outsourcer, the red tape is mind boggling. It is my honest belief that MBA programs are simply mass brain-washing seminars spread over two years time, ever accompanied by the shoeboxes of cash ponied up for the privilege. Additionally, there is a direct correlation between the intensity of the mind-job and the semester tuition. Throw in some fashionably hot catch-words, like Six-Sigma or process workflow, and you've got a certified business analyst incapable of following the simplest of actual work tasks without being told to do so in concurrent emails.

Having to deal with that grief is more than a little tiresome, particularly when it's combined with the massive clusterfuck that is post-Katrina New Orleans. A guy I work with related a tale of two such purebred business leaders attempting to dine on MRE's early on in the recovery days. Considering the nature of the meals, replete with instructions that are illustrated to assist with the most unread of eaters, you should be able to average about five or ten minutes of prep time before you chow. Well ol' Standard and Poor took a full twenty minutes to open and finally understand how to eat the stuff, with one really leading the other. Pathetic.

My role in recovering from a catastrophic event was to put all the pieces back together. The primal base, workstations and network connections, are more commodity than anything, so extra help was brought in to replace destroyed workstations. After I had arrived on the site, of course. A couple of techs were brought in to the site, and lived in a rock-star posh bus. I drove to and from the site every day, three hundred twenty miles a day.

As a side note, those temporary helpers, staying at most three weeks, all got special recognition awards last week for going above and beyond the call of duty to help in the Katrina recovery. Only three, mind you, half of the temp team here, as the other half all abandoned ship or were asked to leave. No, none of the local folks, people who all had losses and were displaced from their homes, none of them were recognized. That's not sour grapes either. I wouldn't have been eligible. I'm in a different silo. I don't get awards.

So since September 8, I've been on the ground level of rebuilding a plant's IT infrastructure. I witnessed our graduation from trailer-sized generators to city power, from satellite uplinks to twin T1's, from a blown-out flooded building to a shiny new factory. My company has been supplying all the technical equipment in this rebuild. I knew, through being a part of the process, that I would get a brand new tower of glossy black servers, an ebony obelisk of humming tera-bits.

Those servers arrived a week and a half ago, two pallets grossing a half-ton. Last week they were hauled up to my server room. I directed an electrician to what I needed for power leads, what would be my attempt to start a redundant power system of my own design. I set up the rack. Then I sent out the notice I was ready to move, what were my instructions and where was my backup equipment. The answer was surprising.

"Who made the decision to put servers back down there?" asked my new boss. "Why would we put data back in there? I want those servers sent up to Norwich so [insert nameless server drone in Connecticut] can stand them up there for us."

"But," I meekly inquired of this recent effort walk-on, "these clients have special requirements. Their data access needs are relatively intensive, and a remote server would require a massive increase in bandwidth. Sir."

Okay, I didn't say sir. But I did voice my "professional" concerns about moving these servers, knowing full well in the background that the client, really the people I've work with for longer than these outsourcer idiots, would have a total shit-fit hearing that they suddenly won't have their servers in place by Christmas. My boss's objection came last Wednesday. It has taken until today to get some managers talking about the issue. My boss has still not emailed me directly, either, despite the fact I sent him the original instructions from the client's CIO to buy and set up the servers, and mapped out the before and after shots of what the server transition would look like. Translated, this schmuck had all the reason in the world to just STFU.

Instead of setting some hot Xeon servers on cruise control this week, I'm sitting around stewing and fuming while I wait for management to "come up with a plan."

Happy fucking holidays.

I thought I could get away from the bullshit, but I got to talk with my brother last night. About his work laptop going belly-up for the second time in three days, and that it must be his wireless router, and that it can't be the laptop because it's brand new, and the router is just a year old, and why would it do it when he clamped into the docking station, and it just didn't make any fucking sense. I suggested he replace the router, the third time in the past year, and just plug into the modem for now. Apparently I just "don't get it." He hung up on me.

The bad IT karma is following me.

Now, after this boring rant, I'm setting up a rack-mount UPS, minus the servers, so I can cascade the backup power for the few antiques I like to call servers.

That is all.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/project_mayhem_/]

Yeahhhhhh, we're gonna need you to come in on Saturday.

[nawlins-penguin.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha ha. NICE. Dood, you made my morning with that comment.

[jhohanna.livejournal.com]

It is my honest belief that MBA programs are simply mass brain-washing seminars spread over two years time, ever accompanied by the shoeboxes of cash ponied up for the privilege. Additionally, there is a direct correlation between the intensity of the mind-job and the semester tuition. Throw in some fashionably hot catch-words, like Six-Sigma or process workflow, and you've got a certified business analyst incapable of following the simplest of actual work tasks without being told to do so in concurrent emails.

Rule #1 in IT: Managers are stupid. Well, mostly. Assume as such until proven otherwise.

Rule #2 in IT: NEVER trust a Business Analyst. Always confirm technical specifications with customer technical lead - not manager. :P I *hate* business analysts that have no idea what is going one, and they have the *worst* attitudes. I got beat up by one not once, but twice, the 2nd time disabling me. :( With no workman's comp, no recourse, no charges, nothing - even though it was all on security camera. Bastards (oh yeah, NEVER work for the Indian Casinos)

But I really want to ping on the quote you put in there - it is my firm believe that MBA programs are just brainwashing people to be sheep. Sheep sheep sheep and more sheep. But I'm not a sheep - so I don't get along with most typical managers. I guess that's why I love mine so much - he's not like that at all.... he does have a degree, but he's got much more good educations from the real world. Don't we all. But it seems there is a congruence on this stuff - from MBAs to 'counselor's' to life guides... it's all to be a SHEEP. It doesn't teach people accountability or responsibility - it teaches blame and sloughing. Oh, sorry... maybe I've had too many bad managers? :P I could do such a better job if I wanted to give up the tech stuff.

And thank you for sharing your rant. I want to tell you first and foremost how very proud of you I am. Proud to be your friend, proud you are so strong and fighting so hard. I think it's shitty as hell that you have to drive 320 miles to put up with this stuff... you'd think they would let you crash on the bus at least (don't tell me, I don't wanna know who the contractors were through, cuz it might cost business. :P)!! It kills me inside to know how badly they are dissing the locals who have been through so much. And if you need a good architect... I just might come and help. I've been considering it for a while, going down there to help out. I just don't know if my health would hold up with all the mold.... unfortunately with the asthma, I don't know. :( Your brother is just being a twit right now... everyone is real testy. If he keeps it up, tho... you can always withhold your help! :P I always threaten that... and people act right.

I have some high power HP Opterons coming in... I can't *wait* to play with them....but we have to address the power issues, because we're *OUT* in our data center. And it's a 9 month wait for a generator install to support another line in from SDG&E. *sigh* One is gonna be Win2k3 Advanced and the other RedHat Advanced. Both are data pumps.... but the one is a master control and database server, and shouldn't/won't be moving data, thank GOD I got them to listen to me on that. (I *so* wanted to go with iTSM, but... the cost was too durn much)

[nawlins-penguin.livejournal.com]

Hey, you. Thanks for the support. It's a trying time, to say the least. I just found out that I've been made the project manager for the effort. Very classy, considering it's been needed since September and no one wanted to take the responsibility. Doesn't matter, because it should have been me in the first place, leading the show.

The recovery in NOLA is slow. Most businesses are struggling to recover, and aren't nearly ready for any IT infrastructure. Indeed, just putting up drywall is a major accomplishment. I think once the wireless net has been cast across the city, individual business-owners can begin to patch in to take advantage of it. I think there was a massive loss of data from the storm, so most places can start from scratch.

But you're so right about the asthma. My daughter hasn't had an issue yet, but she had some problems at the second house, we think from the cane-fields burning. The mold in the city we've tried to shield here from, but it's tough.

Man, you have fancy toys at work. I'm such a slacker.

[jhohanna.livejournal.com]

No problem... congrats on the Project Manager - hope they increased your pay/bonus a bit to put up with the headaches (I know... longshot, but). You stepped up, and that's so awesome.

I know it must be so hard there... and I can't even begin to think about the data recovery efforts - but suffice it to say that we have and are putting all of that into consideration as we plan our new backup infrastructure - that's what the opterons are for. That's what I do - backups, disaster recovery, hotsite planning, etc.... in fact, tsunamis and hurricanes just became our biggest two pushes. Hrmph... go fig. I should call up Sunguard and pimp myself out (hell no, I don't wanna work for them. :P).

The mold is so hard to deal with... it's so toxic too. I hope the best of health for you guys as you go through this. You're in our thoughts nightly. :)

[evningwithgrace.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you could use a night a Sake Cafe.

[nawlins-penguin.livejournal.com]

Dayum, girl, you got that right.

I've made a few trips down to Ninja in the past month or so. Very good. I've long considered their chirashi to be the best in the city, and still do. Good stuff.

[evningwithgrace.livejournal.com]

Ooo Ninja... Sounds like dinner

[greysil.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm just a desktop help desk guy... But I did have an aggravation last week. It's nothing compared to yours, but it does show that IT bosses the world wide can be schmucks.

We had a situation at one of our remote sites where two machines were flooding the network with traffic. Dialing into the router, we found the IP of the two machines.

That site uses static IPs, so isolating the machines should have been easy. But one of the IPs was not one of the static ones, and no one was sure which machine it was. Ryan tried to look it up, but it didn't work.

I remembered a little freeware utility I once had on my work machine. I had deleted most of the freeware at my boss's command, even though some of it was quite useful, because he's got some insane beef against freeware.

But, knowing that I had a habit of putting things in multiple locations, I decided to look and see if I still had a copy of that utility somewhere. Sure enough, I did. So I ran it, and found out which machine it was. This prevented them from having to do they did last time -- shutting every machine down and watching the traffic as they came up, one at a time.

Then I made my mistake: I mentioned that I'd used freeware. I shouldn't have said that, but I didn't think about it. What did it matter, right? It was harmless, and it got the job done quickly and easily.

But my boss didn't like it. His response? He decided that I really didn't need to bring my jump drive back and forth to work every day. I only used it in my work machine, and -- per his previously issued rules -- I ran an AV check on it every day when I plugged it in. No matter. I had, to use his words, made him look like an ass, so he decided that the oft-ignored bit of policy concerning such things was going to be enforced against me.

So I got the job done in an efficient manner, but my boss didn't like the way I did it, so he decided to be petty and punish me. Great boss, ne?

[nawlins-penguin.livejournal.com]

What a jerkoff! I can't stand inept managers that can't see the value of a good freeware or shareware app. We've been using Dameware for five years, since it was a fledgling shareware startup. Now it's mainstream enough, but IT managers were insecure about using anything not stamped with ol' Uncle Bill's logo on it.

Not bring a key-drive to work? Gawd, what an idiot.

[greysil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we use DameWare, too. It's a good system, thinks I.

There's supposedly a similar thing built into our help desk program, FootPrints, but we've never figured it out, and since we already have DameWare...

Some of the freeware I've been banned from using: Process Explorer, a much more in-depth version of the Task Manager; Autoruns, a much more in-depth version of the start tab of msconfig; and the one that I was got in trouble with the other day, some little app called Hostname.exe that, unlike the regular Hostname.exe built into the system, can give you a computer name from the IP (you run it from the DOS prompt).

He's commented in the past that I shouldn't be using Winamp to play tunes, but he's not actually banned it. Nor has he banned the external hard drives that both Ryan and I use, mainly for MP3s. I was careful to not say anything about MP3s when he said I didn't need the jump drive at work!