So much to write, so little time

It's hard to decide what to write about today, I just covered a pet peeve topic in my last post, but I'd like this blog to be about my work, my family and a basic diary of events. So I'll try and cover some of what happened today. The vendor that flew in to install the lab devices left satisfied today, he and the lab manager commented to me and my manager that my service was "Fast and Good". Hey that works for me, I try and do what I can to make these requests go smooth. I especially work hard for my end-users who give me a decent lead time on their requests, the lab manager gave me a good 2 weeks advanced notice on this one, more often than not I'm left with trying to manage new installs with little or no notice. Oncall was a little busier today. One issue of note was with a remote mental health facility who reported network slowdown. When I checked it out the response times were 400 times slower than a comparable VPN location. I'm talking 800 ms response versus normal parameters of 20 ms. The site contact had already engaged Road Runner to look into the issue, since I didn't call him back "in time". I had him reboot our VPN hardware client and the problem came right back after the reboot. Road Runner noticed that when the HW client was down, the response time to their equipment was optimal, but quickly degraded as the HW client came back online. This lead me to ask the site contact to take his PCs and servers down one at a time while I monitor the response time - I was fearing a virus. Wouldn't you know it... my theory was correct, his new Windows XP server was shut down and the slowness quickly subsided. I had him leave the server offline and transferred the issue to our server support oncall for virus scanning and removal. Why the site would bring a server online w/o virus protection is beyond me, but as least I diagnosed it for him early in the problem.

I had to re-submit my reorganization preference form today. We're in the middle of a Role Redesign within our IT Division and we all have to choose 2 preferences as to what position we'd would like in the new Org. Chart. Usually CIO's would just place your name in a box on the chart and that would be that, but our CIO and directors have left names out of all the boxes and posted job descriptions and requirements for each box and asked us to fill out a form stating which box we want and provide data showing how we meet the requirements for that box. It's certainly a different approach, some of us are indifferent about it, some are freaking out. I'm pretty much a go with the flow type of guy, and believe they have already placed our names in the boxes, but just haven't told us. It's very hard to read a job description and not say to yourself "that was written for so-and-so...". So it's just an exercise in my opinion, but it does give us all a better idea of what career paths are available to us and what pay scale is assigned to the different job titles.

I turned my form in Monday with Sr. Network Engineer as the first choice, Network Engineer (my current title) as my second choice. Turns out that isn't "allowed". I can only submit Network Engineer as a choice, then the CIO/HR/Mgt. will decide which level of Network Engineer I qualify for, Associate Engineer, Engineer, or Sr. Engineer. They pay class for these positions are 80, 81, and 82. That doesn't mean much to any of us, except we know each class has a salary range, and the ranges overlap. But basically, you want the higher number. For example the CIO and directors are 99. A helpdesk analyst is a 12 and a PC support tech is a 76. It's pretty confusing, but there are no classes between 12 and 56, nor 57-75.

Since my form was incorrect, I had to pick another position as my second preference and re-submit the form. I consider a couple options, but one position in particular really hits on what I want to do moving forward. I don't want to be a network engineer forever, we are too easily replaced - I don't really want to manage a group of engineer's either. So I choose IT Facilities Team Leader. It's an entry level management position that doesn't necessarily have direct reports, but manages all aspects of the data centers and thus coordinates the efforts of many teams and projects that deal with data center infrastructure. This title is also in charge of all disaster recovery planning and efforts. With two data centers online today, and 1 to 3 more on the way, this position will surely keep one busy. But it is a dedicated position, whereas before these tasks were "in your free time" tasks for many people. The pay class for this job is 83 - which is equivalent to my Manager's class. Unfortunately, I know this job is one of those written for an existing person, and she is really good from what I've seen, so like I said before, this is merely an exercise. But the more I think about it, the more the job sounds challenging, exciting and rewarding.

Nothing dramatic or exciting on the homefront today, wife and kids are doing well. American Idol was fun to watch with everyone tonight. I'm sure I'll cover that with you all my readers in the future. MJ out.