I cant recall if I've blogged about my work hours, so if this is a repeat, sorry: When I started here, I'd come from working 9 day fortnights (8.5 hours a day) in the UK, and so I asked my boss of the time (Doug), whether that was available here. He said sure, altho - of course - it's 9 hours a day here as they usually work 80hour fortnights. So, I work all of week one, and take every 2nd Friday off: and I work from home on Mondays, and on the Fridays that I don't have off.
However, the DBA who preceeded me here (John), keeps forgetting about this. It's been happening for a year, so I'm starting to think it's not an accident that he keep scheduling appointments & other issues on the Friday I'm not working.
I had planned to ask for leave, to cover my birthday, as I always do, but when I checked the calendar, my birthday fell on a rostered day off, so I thought, great, no need! Steven (the new DBA) then asked if he could take the day off, & that seemed fine - we don't really overlap and John would be here to cover any issues.
Then, yesterday, John sends out an email announcing he wouldn't be at work until late morning on Friday, because he's got a doctors appointment. Hmmf. No real way of saying no - he wasn't asking, he was telling - so, here I am, working from home this morning. I wouldn't mind too much, except I was aiming to sleep in :(
Oh well, so be it. John is old & cranky at the best of times, approaching retirement age and very resentful of having to leave PNM and join SAIC - I think it was a contract condition of SAIC that PNM provide one of their experienced DBAs, if they took the contract - and, given that they had 11 friggin' DBAs, I would guess the resentment stems from actually having to, yanno, do some work for a change: plus, I'll admit, production DBA is the least exciting bit, as you don't get to help out with the coding and design, just implementation.
Even so, he needs to rise above it: all he's doing is spreading his misery, and acting fairly unprofessionally. It's a shame, because when he forgets to be resentful, he's actually quite amiable & pleasant, with a quirky sense of humor. Oh well.
It does remind me tho: after 7 years under Graham the Engineer, and his high standards, I'm actually quite shocked at the lack of professionalism and competenece I keep encountering over here - to quite a frightening extent. I know standards have been falling in IT for the last 25 years, as numbers expand (and intellect decreases), but geez, how do some of these buffoons manage to get out of bed and get dressed each day? I keep looking at their shoes to see if they can tie their own laces yet (mostly, no, they depend on velcro'd sneakers).
Let me provide an example (a rant I already had at Ray):
On Monday I got contacted by 3 new consultants hired by our client firm, to do some programming & set up a new software application for them: they couldn't connect to the (existing) databases on 2 servers, so there must be something wrong with the servers (of course).
After much fussing about, we determined there's nothing wrong with the databases or the servers, and it must be their connection file that had errors, so I forwarded them a copy of the master connection file, and forgot about it.
On Tuesday they reported that that wasn't working either, they still couldn't connect to the databases, and there MUST be something wrong with the databases, and WE"RE WASTING THEIR TIME AND THE COMPANY'S MONEY so do something about it. Well, after having to verify (and print off a copy for the IT manager) to prove there was nothing wrong with the databases, I tried to analyse what was wrong, and it turned out that they couldn't even connect to the servers or see them on the network at all. Fine, a network problem, I turned it over to Networks to fix it, and forgot about it.
Wednesday I was of course off on leave, driving to Memphis & back.
This morning, I get a phone call SCREAMING that I still hadn't fixed it and my databases weren't working right and I have to fix it RIGHT NOW!
The databases, of course, were fine. I talked to the Network guy, who thought he'd fixed it yesterday (but hadn't of course) ... it turns out that these turkeys were set up on their own (non-company) PCs, and had no connection of any sort to the Clients network. How they thought they could connect to secured databases on our network, I have no idea - magic wands, perhaps, or ESP.
Anyway, it turns out that the network guy yesterday sent them the VPN software, so they could connect via the Internet, except ... they're running 64bit VISTA and the VPN software only runs on 32bit ... which he had explained to them already.
How this is my fault, I have yet to hear, but no doubt they will try to blame me.
What -really- bothers me is, these guys are supposedly IT professionals with tons of experience, and yet it's quite clear that they have not the slightest idea of how networks are meant to work, or simple network connectivity, or even really how O/S's work.
Talk about doomed projects.
End of rant
Well, enough blither - one more phone conference, then John should be here, & I'll be able to hand over and shoot off to the Satellite for latte's and brunch :)
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