This week, our hardy engineering-and-eye-tee staff is concentrating on cleaning up this dump place. I’ve moved a half dozen old rackmount chassis into the “go to Freegeek” pile. I’ve stored a couple boxes’ worth of connector cables (audio, USB, Firewire) into drawers. I even got rid of that broken-down old chair that’s been taking up valuable space in my server room since the first building expansion project. (Wow. Let’s not even think about how long ago that was.)

Heck, there’s almost even some room in my office to move around a bit. Will wonders never cease?

I’ll get some more cleaning done on Thursday… after my day off… Heh.

Sure, they announced late this morning that we’d be closing shop at 2pm. They needn’t have bothered, really, ‘cause there’s almost nobody here. Going into a three day weekend, arguably the biggest one of the year, is it any surprise that half of the people already have the day off as vacation, another quarter of them are simply playing hooky, and most of the rest are bailing whenever they feel like it?

Mind you, I’m not complaining one bit. I’m enjoying the peace and quiet. I get to listen to music at whatever volume I like, for instance. Nevermind all the webcomics I’m catching up on.

This isn’t to say I’ve accomplished nothing today. I solved a moderately strange email problem for one of our jobshare sales teams, upgraded software at the front desk, and… er, rotated backup tapes. Okay, so that’s all I’ve done today. Your point?

Next week promises to be delightfully dull. Bring it on!

Once again, Backup Exec is biting me in the ass, figuratively speaking. My main fileserver is running under an abend condition caused by the “agent” software that allows me to get comprehensive backups from that server. During my attempt to upgrade the agent I ran into an annoying problem: The installer insisted that I close the agent software before doing the upgrade, but I’d already done so. I even called the “stop” procedure again just to be sure. No such luck. The same problem came up when I tried to upgrade the email server’s agent, so it’s not just a fluke thing with one machine.

So let’s see… right now I can’t reliably run a backup on either server until I can reboot them both and install the new software. When will that be happening? Not during business hours, I can assure you. This means I get to come back later tonight and go through this whole install procedure again.

It’s not quite how I wanted to spend the night before my personal holiday off, but I’m not always given much say in the matter, am I?

I experienced something unusual this afternoon: During the off-site department heads’ shindig, I received heartfelt compliments from a couple of important personages I work with/for. The gist is that my efforts to improve the quality of my communication and interpersonal skills over the last couple of years hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Wow. I didn’t even think I was doing that good of a job at it, really. Apparently a few of my coworkers do. Suddenly I feel a lot better about my job performance; much of the impression I leave on people involves the professional attitude with which I do my job rather than the technical skills I bring to bear, after all. That’s just a fact of human nature. It’s immensely gratifying (and reassuring) to know that I’m making noticeable improvement.

There’s hope for me yet, perhaps.

I’m taking a moment to catch my breath and rest my feet, here in my office, and as I look around I am once again struck by how annoying all of this clutter is. I may not be the most organized human ever to grace the surface of the planet, but I’m also not terribly fond of messy spaces. Every so often I’m able to perform upkeep on my immediate working space, but most of the time I simply lack the time and/or energy.

Let’s see…

• Three sets of writing utensils
• Two sticky pads
• Two stacks of “important” printouts
• One stack of old hard drives
• One stack of computer cards (one video, one network, one sound: the old “holy trinity” of the hand-built PC)
• Five baggies containing random computer-related paraphernalia (such as: screws, cords, connectors)
• One PCI slot cover
• One PS/2-to-USB converter
• Two sets of keyboard/wristrest/mouse/speakers
• Three monitors
• One flashlight
• One stack of KVM gear
• One paper clip

That’s just what’s on the surface of my desk. I won’t bore you with the contents of the shelves, or what’s on top of the filing cabinet, let alone what’s inside the filing cabinet, or what’s piled up alongside both doors to my tiny office. Did I mention there’s a workbench in the server room with its own drawers and shelving?

I think, sometimes, that what I need isn’t a technical lackey but rather an administrative assistant…

While I’ve carefully tracked my vacation hours this year, and have spent them fairly wisely, I realized this morning that there’s one additional source of paid time off that I tend to forget until it’s too late.

Entercom grants all employees one pick-the-date “personal holiday” per year in addition to the regularly-scheduled major holidays. I’ve worked here full-time for over eight years and, to the best of my recollection, I’ve never yet taken that holiday. (Anyone who’s known me for more than a year or two is welcome to chime in with a correction at this point.) I’m going to take it this year, however, in addition to the couple more vacation days I need in order to get firmly under the “carry over” cap.

And so, I’m going to take payday (tomorrow) and Wednesday the 28th off as vacation days, and Winter Solstice (the 21st) as a personal holiday. Mind you, it’s not so much personal as it is merely convenient, but in this case my “sense of proper” is overruled by my “sense of mercenary practicality.” I’m sure my pagan friends will understand.