Work News – Page 3 – ::: jeffphillips.org :::

Junkets Are Fun

In other news, my group at work is going “down south” to Florida next week for a Summit meeting – meaning our enitre practice gets pulled out of our projects and sent down to sunny Florida to spend two days inside a hotel and not out on the beach. We get to stare at the walls and PowerPoint presentations while our wives get to frolic in the ocean. Sounds like fun, eh? Luckilly, we get to go a day early to enjoy ourselves a little.

So, this Saturday at Oh-Dark-30, we get to board a plane. It’s been a while, but I think I remember how…

How’s that for non-computer news?

Is It Over?

After a second 60 hour week, I certainly hope so. At least, maybe it will slow down a little. I’m tired.

Now maybe I can try to fix my server problems… or not…

I Hope It’s Worth It…

I’m at work today. Yes, that’s right – on a Saturday. We have some big project with impossible timelines [aren’t they all, though?] and we have a deadline for implementation by Monday. So, at work I sit. I’m not even the one doing the real work – I’m just here for support… I guess that means that I get to blog and edit my pictures while the “real” work is done by the developer…

And, of course, then there’s all the snow and ice we had to drive through to get here this morning… 😐

All Work And No Play

Makes Jeff a very tired boy.

These last couple of days, I’ve been early to work, late to home and doing home chores/work when I get there. I haven’t gotten to sleep earlier than 1AM or so, but have beeen up before 6AM – 4:40AM on Monday for my first workout of the week [quite an achievement, I feel].

There have been things going on at work – both customer related and internal – that have both increased my level of stress and involvement and my level of hope. I can’t really talk about it here yet, but I feel that big changes are afoot. I’ll let you know what I can when I can.

Wanna Be A Hacker?

I’m thinkin’ about it. Actually, what I’m thinking of doing is getting training to be a Certified Ethical Hacker so that I will know how best to secure my and my customers’ systems. Has anyone had any experience with this training or certification? I’d be interested in your take on it.

Very Cold Today

It’s cold today – in fact, it’s colder today here in Virginia than it is at my sister’s place in Laramie, Wyoming. It looks like the ice will not be melting any time soon. At least I was able to drive into work today. This is a good thing, I think. That means that I might be able to go to the gym in the morning. The snow won’t be melting, which is cool, but it’s not going to get any worse yet – no new ice.

So, back off to work I go – sitting in a freezing cold data center.

Back At “Work”

Laura has gone home now, and I’m stuck up here in dreary Seattle for work without her. I suppose I’ll survive.

The sessions so far have been mixed… It’s alway good to listen to Steve Balmer as he gets so excited about things and the last session I learned a few good things about the next versino of Windows server. But… there was all this business “junk” in the middle that I don’t care about. It is much less than last year, though, and that is good.

So, now I’m going to go learn more about Exchange Server 2007…

This Week In Seattle

This week, starting today, Laura and I are hanging out in Seattle with our friends Jeff & Amy. Now, begining Monday Jeff & I have a Microsoft technical training conference to attend, but we brought the wives to spend the weekend with. The girls go home on Monday morning… that’s when the fun ends… not really, but it will seem like it.

So, as we look out over the cloudy city today, we are trying to decide what to do and where to go. Tough choice, as everything is pretty cool here. I fully intend to take a lot of pictures, but who knows what circumstances will intervene.

New Laptop

One of my work laptops died this week – so they’re going to get me a replacement. The replacement will make my current laptop my “secondary” machine. It will be a dual-core 64 bit system [Intel Core 2 Duo] with 4GB of RAM [which is unheard of in a laptop until the last couple of months] – and I’ll be trying a Dell instead of a Toshiba.

I hope my battery doesn’t explode in flames…

One Of Those Days

Why does everything seem to fall apart on Friday? That’s what’s happening at work. It’s as if everything just waited all week to break today. So – I haven’t been able to relax all morning, but at least I’ve been able to help on one or two things.

I will say that not all is bad: the weather here is WONDERFUL. Riding in the mountains is quite nice, so today had its reward early on. It’s just when I actually got into the office that things began to go downhill. At least it’s Friday. This week will end and I will go home and visit with my friends Rob & Mel, who are coming in tonight to visit.