Random Thoughts

1/23/10 - 8:48 pm Facebook... I finally broke down and did it... I created a damn Facebook account. I didn't want to but so many people kept telling me that I "need" to make one that I gave in. I made the mistake of filling in my high school and was greeted by 110 profiles of people that I graduated with... just a tad depressing. I've been in a pretty good mood since the beginning of the year despite my dad having major surgery and all the worrying that brings about, but the Facebook thing took me down a few notches. As always, work is there to keep me going, and going it has definitely kept me. We all got a nice surprise in December with a very unexpected Xmas bonus and raises starting in the new year, neither of which anyone was holding their breath for given the economy. I am still at the organization I've been at for months with no real end in sight. I'm in the middle of deploying Vista to every system so I know I'll be there until that is finished, and for another month after my replacement arrives... and that person hasn't been named, hired, or possibly born yet knowing my luck. I do get to work with some very good people though and out of all the places I have been sent, this is by far my favorite, I just don't want to stay there. Honestly it's all the uncertainty and piss-poor planning that I have to deal with. I was promised four Soldiers for three weeks to complete the project. No one had informed any of the four until the end of the first week. The third week just ended and one of the four didn't help a single day in two weeks, and two others were only there half a day at most on any given day. Needless to say we are behind, but it was completely out of my hands so I'm not sweating it.

2/25/10 - 10:16 pm Things are things and life is life... pretty much the summary for this update. We had our annual benefits meeting today and we all took a hit as expected. I got off lite because I am a single person with no family (one of the ONLY times that is ever a good thing) while any married co-workers, co-workers with children, or married co-workers with children saw a serious rate increase. My company was honest about it... they said they saw a 30% increase across the board and raised the company co-pay as much as they could ($50 a month). Like I said, I got off lite... for the first time EVER my employer doesn't pick up 100% of my insurance (being a single person with no children my previous employers have always picked up my insurance tab). The premiums went up, pure and simple, but I would rather they keep our current carrier than try to switch to someone less expensive (ultimately at our cost). So basically, insurance-wise... yea-company. On to other things... I am STILL at the organization I have been at for nearly a year now. My company is 100% to blame for this since they have been unable to clear any existing employee for this position and have been unable to hire a qualified person directly into the position (which we really do not do). I am unwilling to simply dump a new person into this job without adequate training (at least a month of me working with them at this job). I did talk to one of the major government people involved in the "contractor" option today and suggested two full-time contractors as opposed to the current one full-time contractor and one (insert something less than 1/2)-time-if-you-are-lucky-Soldier. Sadly, during the most recent Vista migration project I was supposedly assigned five full time militia personnel but ended up with an E6/7 (they got promoted) that had Platoon Sergeant duties and spent about 30 minutes helping during the entire project, one full-time E5, two E4's that may have worked 30% of the project as they were tasked out on other things, and one E4 that completely lost their clearance and could not help at all. Such is the nature of where I work and an excellent example of why I am there in the first place. To be 100% fair, the E5 was there well over 90% of the time, followed instructions 100% of the time, and deserves something greater than my personal "thank you" while everyone else gets a "meh, yeah... thanks for what you half-assedly accomplished". Not to say that they didn't want to help, but they are significantly younger than myself, clearly lack the "customer service" mentality, and only desire to do the bare minimum to get a customer working. I and those I work with are trained to get the customer back to as close as their system was before as possible. I have run into that mentality far too often at this location and am doing my best to break everyone of the habit BUT am being hamstrung by units that feel that it is important to have ONE point of contact for all (insert "X" here, up to 50 employees). Person "X" emailing in a ticket for 5 other people does very little to help any of them, especially when the issue could be fixed in two minutes for one and then passed along to the rest in seconds in one email. In other news... my parents are very very broken, my love-life sucks, I worry about my friends hourly, and my outside-of-work customers are suffering because of everything I just mentioned.