Backup & Restore

The title to this entry, sums up my life in the work place at the moment. I make a backup of a database, I restore a backup of a database, my colleagues work on it, carry out testing and then the circle starts again. Suppose it is to be expected as part of the landscape as I slowly take over more 2nd line responsibilities. Although I find myself stuck between a rock and hard place. While I am keen to spend less time answering the phone, dealing with simple 'first time fix' issues, there is a fear of the complex and critical problems which have system wide ramifications. The honeymoon is over, from here on in it will be a long hard struggle to the top of the mountain and I may not like some of the experiences along the way. Gone are the days of closing calls for fun and getting crazy statistics. Although I must admit I have an able (and sometimes willing) teacher who will do his best to bestow all his worldly knowledge onto his apprentice. Yet I find my confidence lacking, when my cursor is hovering over an execute icon, while connected live to a client server. Is it just me, but could this one click turn me from hero to villain in the time it takes for the DTS package to run!

Our Exchange server was upgraded last weekend, so we arrived in the office on Monday morning to discover e-mail still down due to numerous teething problems. For the next few hours, something strange happened. It was as if the clocks were running slow. E-mail has become the life blood of any modern business. Life grinds to a halt, with your outbox full of messages to be sent and you can only partly action support messages that have come in over the course of the weekend. Just imagine if I worked in academia and had to deal with a constant influx of pointless messages from students that missed a lecture. What we need is a strategy for dealing with e-mail, a company policy if you will. Some say that if an e-mail is important, the sender will either call you if you don't reply or send the original e-mail again, with some words such as, 'Has this been actioned?'. Personally I think my e-mail etiquette is quite good, I have only a few subfolders and tend to action as much as I can and delete all the joke, spam and unnecessary FYI e-mails. One of my constant irritations is someone who uses the subject heading for their whole message, believing that the recipients (usually the whole company) will not go as far as to read the full message by opening the e-mail. Although I think I could improve my use of e-mail in the workplace. As in life generally I tend to hoard messages and although use an archive pst. I have been warned by IT for not keeping the size of my mailbox down. Although archiving mail does come with several problems, particularly when you want to get to a specific e-mail from a specific date. I have three CD-Roms full with PST files from my last two work places and tend to keep copies of all my e-mails, just for my records. Why? I don't really know. Maybe years in the future, I can come back and laugh at that silly joke e-mail that went around the office in April 2003. Perhaps someone knows the best strategy for dealing with e-mail, it will be greatly appreciated. I will however, not expect the answer of deleting everything once it been actioned. There must be a a better option than that simple methodical approach.

That Time of the Month?

The morning had hardly began, when my manager looked over at me with a thumbs up and said, 'Well done?'. Not knowing what he was referring to, I did not have time to check my mail as he had asked. I was busy, trying to manually uninstall an old version of Cisco VPN from a colleagues Dell laptop. Then install the latest edition of our own home cooked brew VPN. It was clearly evident that what this laptop needed was a re-image, or better still sent to that small place way up above. Nevertheless I battled on against, the Symantec firewall, broken network port and crazy software installation, to get it eventually up and running. I had tried to quickly sneak a peek at my Outlook Inbox but couldn't see anything new. My desktop machine was playing up and as stubborn as I am, have refused to rebuild it. Even with three of my colleagues commanding me, pleading with me to do so. Then I saw the message from the Marketing Assistant. Perhaps this was the perfect way to end some thirteen months with the company. (I make it sound like I'm leaving next week, which of course, is not the case) For me personally, this is a great accolade as appreciation for my achievements and contribution, not only to the team but the company as a whole. Yet, I felt it unnecessary to make a big song and dance about it. The announcement would not be made public knowledge until perhaps early next week, so I had some time to reflect and choose my prize.

It may be an American import, but I think more and more companies are taking the time to recognise and reward their people. Long gone are the days when it was only the prepubescent teenager (yet to start shaving) working at a well known fast food establishment, with his cheesy grin in a photograph on the wall. Although looking at the funny side, you need to consider some of the dreadful employee evaluations (they are all true, honest!) and of course a fantastic collection of cartoons. Although I very much doubt I will be raised (physically) onto a pedestal, with the a member of management, coming around and throwing posies at me. Later this afternoon, I received congratulatory follow up e-mails from the Operations Director and then the Managing Director. Sure enough, as a Spurs fan, he couldn't resist dropping some Sol Campbell note as a post script. Tottenham fans, just don't know when to give it a rest. Taking stock of the day, as I left the building to go home, I realised that I am happy here. Unlike in my previous job in the city, when I was running to lifts to escape jail as quickly as possible. Sure enough, working in London was a great buzz, and a fantastic experience, but it was never going to be easy ride with an almost two hour commute (each way). Here I have made friends, learnt a few things (inbetween answering the phone), the luxury of a seven mile, fifteen minute journey and perhaps most importantly developed as a person. What does the future hold? I seriously do not know. Perhaps difficult for me to comprehend, for a person known to be such a control freak! Consider the picture from a year ago, when I was seriously looking for the exit. Just as my manager and colleague before me had done. How things change. No, let me re-evaluate that comment. How people change things for the better. Perhaps finally with this entry I have qualified the quote over on the top right.

And finally, in more important news, the call queue has hit the new record breaking barrier of 41 (as of 6pm tonight) and a few more closures will mean the treat of Subway for the whole support team. Even I never thought I would see the call queue so small, when it was at the dizzy heights of 450, in the middle of last year. Perhaps tomorrow a double celebration. Although of course, we are fully focused to not to let the impossible dream, become a grim reality.

Impossible Dream

From time to time, my role changes from dealing with support issues on the helpdesk. I am currently involved in the release of a brand new product to a client. I use the word 'involved' very loosely for I am not hands on occupied with the technicalities, but more a backseat support / training role from the end user perceptive. Nevertheless, an exciting time in the office (as must be any new product launch). Even new product is not a precise definition. The software release is actually just the complimentary handheld version of our V3 Windows edition. Based on the SQL CE engine, the release is a breakthrough from our original handheld solution based on the now legacy Pocket Access. By removing the laptop connection completely from the equation, you have a completely independent device and all the power in the palm of your hand. The latest PDA devices with a range of wireless connections will be able to communicate directly to the SQL server, which alone is quite revolutionary. The user interface has also been vastly tweaked to make searching and recording calls a breeze. This is a leap forward not only our product but our company. Expect an exciting few months ahead as we roll out this product and begin offering the option to our existing (and every expanding) client base.

Quite certain I have mentioned this before, but in any case, let me once again cover the topic of the impossible dream. A dream of a member of the management team, that he has been put on this planet to create the perfect piece of software. Well, it would be unfair to give him all the credit, I think he believes that his development team have the task of making us, support guys unemployable (or at the very least redundant). My belief is that this will never happen. Even if the software was without any holes, bugs, faults, crashes and runtime errors, an end user would still want to speak to someone on the end of the phone. Love it or hate it, you need technical support in some shape or form. What I find astonishing is to find companies out there called Perfect Software? I mean, talk about shooting yourself in the foot! Did they not learn anything from the Master? Perhaps the closes example we have of software that does the job which is bug free and life critical is the space shuttle. Something tells me that our development budget is modest in comparison to NASA. Perhaps what is required is a change in attitude rather than company procedures. Yet, even if you crack the code to produce the holy grail of CRM software, you will always come up against a brick wall. Those beautiful, wonderful always unique end users!

While I may be well settled in my current there is never a bad to update the CV. Sure enough it has been offline from this website since August and I really need to get my act together to put it back live. Perhaps I seriously need to look at some of the key words used and replace them with something that will not hurt my career prospects. Considering the above, if I do suddenly find myself with a product that can support itself I will need to find another position quickly. It might even mean venturing back into the City. How I have enjoyed the bliss of fourteen mile round trip commute.