End of an Era

I’ve been with my present company for eight long years. This has been the longest “stay” in one place for me. The company has changed quite a bit over the last few years. I’ve managed to evolve as the company has evolved, but lately the changes have been too much for me to bear. In a two week period of time I lost my bonus, my ability to telecommute, my casual dress code, etc. I can no longer accept the “at least you have a job in this economy” speech.

I’m very saddened, as I really do enjoy the people in the organization. And I really wanted that Coach purse one could get at the ten year mark (oops, did I say that outloud?). I’ve had some very rewarding experiences in this role. However, time marches on and it’s time I moved with it. I hope my colleagues understand how much they will be missed. My last day will be one of the hardest days I’ve had to endure for a long time.

To my future colleagues, I welcome the challenges my new role will present. I think this is a great move for me and you seem like a wonderful group. I cannot wait to work with you. Thank you again for the opportunity.

Five days and counting before the End of an Era (for me, at least).

Taking Geekdom to an Ultimate Low

Ok, so my boss ordered me the blackberry Curve (pink, of course). So that probably makes it a “pinkberry.” Anyway, I ordered two of the staff members blackberries, as well. “Monkey” figures out the IM feature on his blackberry and immediately gets the rest of the staff on board.

So now we go into meetings carrying our blackberries, and we IM each other throughout the whole meeting (rather than actually interface with anyone else).

Meow.

I am such a geek…

I’ve blogged before on how geeks don’t want to interface directly with people. Today’s example deals with a conference call I was to attend. Well, acutally, I was to run it, but being a manager I pawned that off on someone else. Then he motions from across the cube for me to join the call. Ugh. Ok. Rather than get up out of my chair and walk the twenty feet across the room to his cube I pick up my own phone and dial into the conference call.

So now we have two people, 20 feet apart from each other, with the phone on “speaker”. Everytime he spoke it echoed in my phone. Everytime I spoke it echoed in his phone. The noise was horrible. But being the geek I am, I found it rather humerous so I kept going with it (snort * snort).

The neighbors were finally so ticked they forced me out of my chair and made me join MINOR from his cube. Party poopers. Some people just don’t know how to have fun in the work place.

Things That Might Be Offensive If You Aren’t in IT…

My team and I were sitting around talking one day and we stumbled upon the topic of IT gargon. Now for those of us who are a part of the IT industry these might seem like common, everyday phrases. But we started to think what HR employees, policemen, even doctors might think if they heard us talking like this.

For example, my team has been asked on numerous occassions to produce “daily dumps.” To the IT person this is referring to data. But imagine you are a doctor. And you hear that someone is forced to produce daily dumps for another department. You see where I am going with this?

Now imagine that you are asked to provide ”daily dumps” while someone else is checking the size and frequency of your logs.  Again, if you are a doctor, this would be a very politically incorrect way to phrase this request.  It gets even worse if someone offers up a SCSI (pronounced scuzzy) adapter. And people think IT personnel are geeks (snort * snort).

Now if you are a policeman and you overhear my team talking about “killing Maximo”, is it in no way, shape, or form, a reference to a murder. We are simply rebooting a server. Likewise, if you hear us discussing “dropping a session,” this is in no way a code for gang activity. We are removing excess users from the database.

These are things that HR might find offensive. For instance, I am a female manager and I ask one of my male employees to go “harden the box.” I could understand how HR might take that out of context. However, it simply refers to applying the necessary security scripts to a server to comply with security guidelines. I might also ask an employee about his “bang account.” I am not asking this employee for a sexual history, it is simply referring to whether or not he has admin access to the server. But you can see why a simple term might land an IT tech in the HR office.

Anyway, as my team and I come up with more lingo I will make sure I add it to this blog. I must now go apply more tape to my bottle glasses and clean my pocket protector before tomorrow.

My Life as a Geek

I work in the IT industry and experienced something rather enlightening the other day. I do realize that I am a blond female and do not fit the stereotype of an IT Geek, but that’s not what I found to be enlightening. Typically, IT Geeks are not social people. We go out of our way to avoid direct conduct with individuals. An actual phone conversation could send someone into shock. To a geek, email was the best invention ever. Well, hold on — Instant Messenger was the best invention ever; email is second. With IM you can have a real time conversation without actually having to talk to that person.

Let me give you a solid example of an IT Geek going out of his way to avoid direct contact with a person. I was having a conversation with two people in my cube the other day. Yes, I know; it was a real live conversation. My email alert popped up. Now being the true geek that I am, I immediately turned my head away from the conversation and checked the email. I don’t know what the allure is to receiving email (or snail mail for that fact) but it tends to excite people. I couldn’t resist.

So I open the email and discover that the email is from the coworker standing in my cube! He is actually on his blackberry emailing me while he is having a conversation with me! What the hell? Have we really become this lazy? I turned back to him and said “did you seriously just email me while you are standing in my cube?” The other coworker busted out laughing. I mean, is this the ultimate example of geekdom or what?

We are hopeless.