December 12, 2006
Long time no update
I haven't posted anything personal in a while so here's a sort of update of what's been up.
Still working, just going through the daily grind doing the same-old-same-old. I need to hang on a little longer an the regional IT position I want to apply for is going to be posted. I also get my stock options in March for reaching the 6,000 service hour mark. Erin and I are gearing up for the holiday, Erin's family will be here the 22nd through the 26/27th. I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet, I've got a couple of ideas for people; otherwise I'm clueless.
I'm studying to take the A+ certification exam early next year and my regional coordinator is going to be spending a day here at my store so I'm going to ask him what kinds of things I can do to prepare for the position I want to apply for. I'm thinking of also going after the Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCNA) certification as well.
I've got an additional computer in the house now, I got it from someone I work with who bought a new Mac Pro. I've been messing with it and µbuntu Linux; got it working then I tried something else so it's kinda in limbo right now. I was going to convert it to a DVR, but the TV-tuner card in it isn't supported by the linux I put on it to record TV.
Posted by djkay at 1:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
November 24, 2006
Can't get any respect
More often than not, the IT guy at your company has felt under-appreciated. This is becoming an alarming trend in large companies trying to take shortcuts by hiring under-qualified or undedicated people and paying them ridiculously low wages. I can say from experience that it definitely is becoming a problem; the only time you hear anything from people is when things don't work. I hardly ever hear anyone say thanks for keeping things working so well.
This article talks about this very subject and rather than reiterate what he says, here's the article:
TWEAKNEWS
The problem is that the PC tech companies put little to no store in their techs, and then pay ridiculous wages and still expect premium service.
Posted by djkay at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
January 20, 2006
Certifications with a grain of salt
Here's an interesting take on the value, or lack of, of getting any type of IT certification. What makes this page more interesting is the value of the comments posted by other people who have read the opinion of the author. This is something I've been thinking of recently and started to look more seriously at relative to cost and time commitment; I've got several years of experience now and I'm looking for a way to broaden my knowledgebase so that I feel more comfortable working on a wider variety of technical issues.
Void Inside: IT Certifications, People Still Believe in Them?
Posted by djkay at 4:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
December 13, 2005
Weather
Well last night it snowed in Albuquerque... apparently. I wouldn't call it snow; more like freezing rain/slush or some such mix of that. It was very wet and was already melting by the time I got to work. Some cars were covered with it so I guess it was substantial, but where Erin and I live we just got rain. It's sunny out now (4:10pm), but earlier it was really foggy and overcast.
Oh well, we got our tree up this past weekend, and we'll hopefully get our icicle lights up soon; we didn't get to it this past weekend or last night. Right now all we have on the tree are some multi-colored tree lights, we don't really have any ornaments; I hope we get some... we don't even have an angel or a star for the top of the tree!
Posted by djkay at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 8, 2005
Firehippopotamus
Yesterday I upgraded my blog software and while messing around with it I erased the style sheet I had created to control how my blog looked. Needless to say I was upset, I spent about an hour recreating it from other files and then another 30-45 minutes further customizing things to get it back to as close I could to how it looked before the upgrade. Next time I'm backing up more than just my blog software.
I also spent my afternoon yesterday rearranging my office to try and get things a little more organized. I also wanted to see what was in all the boxes that I have in here.
Posted by djkay at 9:11 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Supervulture
One thing that sticks in my mind about this store that I work at, aside from the newness of everthing in the store (it's only 3 years old) is the relatively young average age of the TM/TLs. I mean, I think the average age of the people that work here is somewhere in the mid-high 30's. My other store, it was more like mid-high 40's! It's not a negative or a positive, it's just something that I noticed after starting here. More surprisingly for me is the ages of the Team Leaders, save for a handful most of them are in their mid-30's.
Posted by djkay at 4:04 PM | Comments (0)
August 3, 2005
Land of Enchantment
Well here I am in the Land of Enchantment, also known as the state of New Mexico. Erin and I have started our new life together out here and we couldn't be happier. I have a job with the Whole Foods out here in Albuquerque doing what they call the Scanning Coordinator. Today is only my third day on the job and I can already tell that it's going to be different, there are just some things that are going to take a little getting used to. I'm up to the challenge though.
Erin and I have been working hard to make our new place our own and livable; we've gotten some furniture so the rooms don't look so bare, but we have so much space that it will be a while before it ever even gets closed to being croded! That's all for now, more later. I'll be posting pictures from our drive out here with Justin and Meriah, as well as pictures from the wedding once I get some time to work on that.
Posted by djkay at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
February 24, 2005
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz
Last night I was at the store from 8:45pm to 4am!!! I was there to make sure that a software upgrade to the register servers didn't break the system. Everything seemed to be going fine until I got to the register in the cafe; it decided that it didn't want to start up right. It took me, and the guy doing the installation, almost an hour to figure out that I had changed a setting that shouldn't have been changed. Yeah I know I should have known, but it made sense to change the setting, I didn't know how it was setup before so I had nothing to go by.
The end result is: 14 working registers and 1 tired SSI. I slept from 5am until about 11am. It felt really good. Today the secondary server was upgraded and it appears to have gone off without any problems, I checked the registers and they are unaffected.
Last night wasn't as productive as I had hoped it would be but I did get some stuff done; that's all that counts.
Posted by djkay at 1:42 PM | Comments (0)
January 8, 2005
Warp Speed Mr. Sulu
It seems as though all the computers know that it's a new year and they seem to be unhappy about it. One of the registers has a bad hard drive (we have one to fix that), another register decided it didn't like the UPS and shut itself off in the middle of an order and now it seems as though the display on that register is gone bad completely; the register is fine, except the display shows nothing?!
The Bakery has a scale that sometimes prints labels, sometimes prints blanks, and no matter what almost always the labels never scan at the registers! Talk about aggravating, I don't know what to do other than to call the company that services them and have them replace the print head or anything more drastic than just cleaning it; I can do that!
And now it seems as though PLUM is acting up as well, I've tried to process a file that contained information about a Bakery item and it causes the process to hang and then anything new that comes down afterwards gets skipped because the process is stuck looking for the file that was bad and nothing else. The worst part is that then I have to call regional and have them remotely control my computer and login to PLUM as a super-user and fix it because I don't have permissions to do that with my login!!!
Needless to say things are starting to get more hairy around here. I should have the new Pocket PC handheld for the new Direct Vendor Ordering (DVO) for Whole Body. That will be neat, I've got to let it charge overnight and then load the software onto it, which takes about an hour for the 3 installs you have to do. The only bad thing about the unit is that other stores that use it have had problems that if the battery dies while the unit is on, it looses all the software as well as whatever order was being made and has to be reloaded, i.e. another hour of loading the software.
Hopefully, things will go smoothly, and I'm not too worried about things. I also need to finish up putting together materials for training people on how to use Outlook and Excel. I would like to have that stuff finished up by this coming week so I can start training the following week. I've got to send out an email with the questionnaire for Excel before I can schedule the trainings as well.
Posted by djkay at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
December 24, 2004
Sales, Sales
Yesterday was a new one-day sales record for the store (I think). We did over $235K yesterday in sales!!! Unbelievable!!! It's been crazier here the past two days than it ever was the days leading up to Thanksgiving... not too long ago. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that people weren't also out shopping for presents before Thanksgiving, but now that people are out doing present shopping, they've had less time to do this food shopping. At least we're only open to 6pm tonight instead of regular hours like we were before Thanksgiving. All I know is that I'm out of here at 3:30/4 today. I'm looking at at least an hour and a half drive to my parent's house, with traffic.
I've already bagged twice today, each time for at least 20 minutes. The customers just keep on coming!!! It's insane. I haven't bagged in almost 10 years! It's not like you forget, but it's a lot more manual labor than I'm used to in this job. Oh well, I'm hoping that it stays the way it is now and they don't need more help, but it's not like I have anything else to do today.
Merry Christmas and have a happy New Year!!!
Posted by djkay at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 17, 2004
blah...
Today I'm back from Cambridge and my day of training. I learned a lot of stuff about tax laws, food stamp laws, and the data systems in place. It was cool, I got to meet a handful of people that I email on a daily basis with corrections and problems. Everyone was really nice, and helped me a great deal and answered my questions.
Posted by djkay at 4:21 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2004
Audit
Today I decided to start auditing the grocery team, so I took the scanner out and started scanning items. I actually found some stuff that I was able to take care of on this end, I'll have to talk to the old housewares buyer (we don't have that dept anymore) and get paperwork for a couple of items, but otherwise things went smoothly.
I Also got some more questions answered by Chris, and I met with leadership about setting up some training/classes on how to use Outlook and the new email system. I probably won't get things finalized until after the new year just because things are too hectic right now, but I'm excited to get that going. I've been answering a lot of questions that are basic to the use of Outlook and I think that a short training session will help reduce the number of questions I get about how to check/send email.
Posted by djkay at 4:26 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2004
Begin again, finnegan
And I'm back... ready to start another week as the SSI for Hadley. It's getting good now, things are becoming more interesting and there's more stuff to do now that I'm the only one. I've got 2 conference calls today alone, then training all day Thursday.
Posted by djkay at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
December 9, 2004
Deja Vu
I spent today in Cambridge with the other SSI's from the area, in a conference call with our counterparts in the Tri-State region. It was fun, interesting and informative. We ended earlier than I had expected so Dan wasn't done with work so I called him and left a vm to call me when he got done. It looks like there's going to be a lot of interesting things going on in the next few months that should make my job more interesting as well as less boring at times. More later...
The other interesting thing was that the building where the regional offices are is right next to the two buildings in Cambridge owned by Wyeth, the company that owns what used to be called Genetics Institute that I worked for for a couple of summers and a fall. I had to drive right past them in order to get to where I had to go this morning, it was kinda weird.
Posted by djkay at 3:28 PM | Comments (0)
December 8, 2004
Slow, slower, slowest...
Today is starting to drag by, it's been a pretty quiet week so far, nothing major has happened. Maybe I'm preoccupied by the fact that I'll be in Cambridge for the day tomorrow for a meeting with other SSI's as well as meeting with some regional IT people to get more information. I'm excited and anxious at the same time, I guess I'll just have to wait though.
Posted by djkay at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)
December 7, 2004
And the Beat Goes On
I am going to have to get a new keyboard, I can't deal with this "ergonomic" thing here. I know it's supposed to be better for your wrists, but I can't get used to it and I don't want to!!!!! So we'll see how things go tomorrow, I've got to remember to get something for dinner on my way home so Erin and I can make chicken pockets.
Posted by djkay at 4:53 PM | Comments (0)
December 6, 2004
On the Home Stretch
So after a bumpy start, I'm getting the hang of this thing, my email is set up and I have access to the systems I need a password for. :) Now I'm just here waiting for the end of the day, taking a moment to update this, I've got my laptop playing MP3's all day, and things are good. I'm going to have to clean up around this area a little bit, but once Chris leaves for real a lot of the stuff will be gone as well and I'll have more space to re-organize.
Posted by djkay at 3:12 PM | Comments (0)
Progress
Well after some searching I found out how to get into the system I couldn't before and now things are much better and I'm not as flustered. :) Hopefully things will continue to go as they have been today.
I haven't decided yet if I'm going to keep putting in new entries for today, or just keep appending to the same one entry while I'm here at work.
Posted by djkay at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
First Day
First day on the job and I'm a little nervous. I'm not able to login to all the systems I need to, but I'm working on getting into them. I think I've got enough stuff to keep me busy today, we'll see.
Posted by djkay at 9:55 AM | Comments (0)
November 30, 2004
Migration
Today's tasks include migrating as many users from POP3 mail to Microsoft Exchange Server mail. While the actual process on my end isn't that bad, the other end (back end) appears to be much more time consuming and involved. It would be so much easier if Chris had his laptop here and could set up the back end right as we were converting each user, but instead we're forced to call regional and let them know who we've moved over so they can finish setting up the back end stuff. Needless to say, it's a time consuming process and painstakingly slower than it needs to be. We were supposed to have this all done some time before Thanksgiving and we're only just starting it today!!!! Oh well, I can't complain too much, we're not the only store that isn't done this time. :)
Posted by djkay at 1:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2004
How much does that cost!?
Can you imagine what 1500 shelf tags look like? Well to give you some idea, it's roughly 75 pages of tags that are placed on the shelves under the item they display the price for. Since Wednesday is not only the beginning of a new sale week, it's also the beginning of a new month and in several of our departments they run sales for an entire month so they have lots of stuff going off-sale and lots of other stuff going on-sale!!!! Needless to say it was a rather time consuming task (read, half my day). It didn't help that the printer kept pulling 3-5 pages of stock through at a time and messing up, causing me to have to go back and manually print just that page a second time. Easy, well not so when you've got to wade through +/-500 items to find the 15 or so that were on that page that messed up!!!!!
Well obviously I managed to make it through and it was a good learning experience, now I know some of the quirks I can make it faster next time. Plus, it's not like this every Monday, just that today's tags included ones from the weekend and Thurs/Fri, as well as the ones for Wednesday. Next time won't be so bad.
Posted by djkay at 8:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2004
Last Day
Well, I'm not going to get my hopes up just yet, but today could very well be my last day in the kitchen as I gear up to start my new position on Monday. Right now, I'm scheduled to work the hot bar Thur, Fri, & Sat!!! but the problem is that regional is waiting for C. to start his job, but he's waiting for me to take over for him, and my department is not letting me go when it should. I did talk to our store team leader and he said that he would speak to the deli TL and get things worked out so I'm hoping that this gets taken care of and I'm done in the kitchen.
On a different note, I'm hoping that the cookware that Erin and I bought a couple of weeks ago gets here soon. I'm excited to get using it and get rid of the stuff we have. I'll post pictures of the stuff once it gets here.
Posted by djkay at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
Job, Job, Job
I started working as the backup IS person in my store in August, about 8 hours a week. Then in early November, the person who did the job full-time got hired as a full-time IT person for the regional office in Cambridge. I applied for that position and on Wednesday I GOT IT!!!!! So after Thanksgiving I will say good-bye to the kitchen and all the burns, cuts, etc. and start working full-time in support of the store's computer/software systems.
Posted by djkay at 6:37 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2004
More Interesting
Well work is starting to become more interesting (the computer work, that is...). Today I "programmed" 3 register scales so that they will work properly with our register computers. Chris and I also programmed several MSR (magnetic stripe readers) that are used on the registers so that we can accept credit/debit cards. It's becoming more interesting to do this job and I'm starting to get the hang of certain aspects of the position.
Hopefully things will start to pick up and I'm also hoping that Barbara hires a new cook soon so that I can go to making salads everyday instead of one day here, one day there and actually be able to get some prep done for myself to make things easier and more productive.
Posted by djkay at 2:30 PM | Comments (0)