It might seem kind of weird that I am talking about a previous job and my subsequent "rehab" from that job. I definitely do not intend to sound bitchy or like I am crying about it. Instead, I am mostly just documenting my own feelings on the matter, as I am aware that sometimes some things are lost in memory as time goes on. In fact, in going through some old document files in search of something, I found an old essay from high school talking about a time that was, literally, completely forgotten by me.

So, this last post about my rehab focuses on my social ability in a company. At my previous job, being social was something that slowly eroded over time. If we were seen talking or having a chat, even for 2 minutes, that meant we weren't working and was usually looked down upon. Or, better yet, talking to people at the company seemed to be invitation for anyone else to stop us admins and request some work, since obviously we weren't busy.

The company even bought the tech teams a foosball table, and, after only minor use for a few weeks, took all the balls away to stop people from playing it. Awesome environment, no?

In the end, the company stifled a lot of the happiness and joy that can be found in the workplace. Instead of being able to take some time to breathe, we were squeezed and oppressed and in turn, socializing diminished despite being thrust into a "collaborative" environment (i.e. no cubicles or walls, just open space with people sitting around tables that small walls in between...).

Now, I have a hard time relaxing and socializing at work. I have been attempting to break my "head down while at work" attitude for the past 6 months, largely unsuccessfully so far, but improving. I have a hard time realizing that I don't have to wring myself of every minute of productivity, or feel bad if I take a few minutes to browse a blog or website or talk to someone about some current event or whathaveyou. I feel that, if I do that, at any minute my manager or someone's manager will report me or give me something to do despite my already stacked schedules.

My previous job did a good number of having fun at work, and I'm slowly relearning that aspect of work, which may explain my heavy emphasis lately on being happy and comfortable at work, to be the most productive.

So I am about 6 months removed from my former job, but I still have scars from my time there. I tend to get very frustrated when I tackle things that I don't know. For instance, being asked to troubleshoot someone's Blackberry highly frustrates me since I've never used a Blackberry nor have been properly trained and shown the ropes of our BE server and such. Or perhaps troubleshoot really obscure .NET errors for developers.

This is weird, and something I still fight with, since I am a curious guy by nature, and love to tinker with things, especially new things, and figure out how they work and become an expert in them.

Unfortunately, my former job paid me (and our whole team) obscenely below competitive salaries for our region (considering this is Iowa, it was even more obscene compared to actual tech areas) and was completely intolerant to mistakes. This meant our team tried very hard to only do what we knew how to do, or risk making a mistake and getting abused even more. Lots of people who left the company over my time there still report dealing with what amounted to managerial abuse even years after leaving. Ack! I stuck there as long as I did just for the experience for my resume, but I have learned that time spent in an unhappy environment is not worth any amount of money or resume bullet points. It is a waste, not just of time, but of life.

At any rate, I struggle with breaking that oppressed attitude, and to get back to my normal adventurous and risk-taking attitude that is fun, useful, and grows my skills immeasurably, even 6 months later. At this point, I think I just need some positive reinforcement and encouragement, like most any abuse survivor. (PS: This is not meant to trivilize people who have truly been through abuse...)

I've had a good series of laughs lately at the expense of the TSA. Some of the best were today from Bruce Schneier's blog. He made a post about a geologist stopped because his rock was a "duel-use" item. Not only is this amusing incident made more hilarious by the subject's own quote below, but the comments on the blog are just awesome. Never challenge the dry wit of the geek subculture!

In retrospect, I suppose I could have put the grapefruit-sized specimen [rock] inside my sock, swung it around my head like a mace, charged the cabin and attempted to hijack the flight. This, of course, never occurred to me until the zealous inspector declared my rock a "dual-use" item.

This is really ridiculous anymore. A small chuckle from the geologist may have even made things worse. That's human reaction for ya.

Here's one that had me rolling:

In the 90s I bought an 8-pound brick-shaped piece of titanium at the Boeing Surplus Store in Seattle. I had only carry-on luggage. I knew putting it through the X-ray would only cause trouble, so I took it out to hand it to the (pre-TSA) screener at the archway. The archway started beeping when I was about two feet away. The screener BACKED UP away from me and said "supervisor!" fairly loudly. The supervisor came over warily, but took the titanium from me, looked it over, asked what it was, I explained in six words, he said "okay" and waved me through. But I sure made that screener's day...

I came across a high school graduation speech given by Guy Kawasaki a few weeks ago and shelved it to come back to it. It is a bit old (1995!), but it has some really cool points in it. What caught my eye though was #9 in his list of hindsights that he wanted those graduates to just listen to and maybe take to heart. He stated, "Pursue joy, not happiness."

Now, one of my philosophies is to pursue happiness, so this intrigued me as a different, new way to look at things. Unfortunately, Guy didn't expound very well on this in the speech transcript, leaving both terms fairly undefined and not useful. But what I think he was meaning to say was happiness, to him, it like laying on a couch and just being complacent and satisfied, for instance. On the other hand, joy is about pursuing the things you truly love, and you may just be surprised at how joyful those experiences and effects may be. A little bit of impassioned spontaneity with a purpose, perhaps. I am not sure, but it is still an interesting qualification on the pursuit of happiness that makes me think a little bit.

Check the image at the top of this article. Give me a dress code like that, please! (I currently am forced, actually forced, to wear a tie 4 days a week...while I don't mind it, don't force it on me...) Over time, business conservatives will have to catch up to create a good working environment, or risk losing the talented people or suffer with less productivity.

One of the earliest "big" books I read as a kid, and the earliest fantasy book I read featured a place called Mundania; a place without magic (much like the Muggles in Harry Potter).

Mundania scares me. It scares me to think about all the little mundane things that can steal away ones life. This coming just after ironing my work shirts after doing the laundry. I hate ironing. It is one of those minor little things that pressures me to find a job that doesn't demand and require a shirt and tie every day. My current job will actually send you home if you don't have a tie on one day, and it is a big, huge, stuffy , corporate culture thing.

So, what is 20 minutes of ironing two or three times a week? I call it that "mundane slide." It might be nothing to iron my shirts 20 minutes three times a week, but what exactly is that offering to my life? If that is ok, will it be ok to cook dinner for 45 minutes every other night? Maybe do laundry twice a week for about 45 minutes apiece, shave every morning, make sure that car looks cleanish, etc.

All these little mundane stupid things, some of which have no purpose other than to keep me in my job which itself may not add anything but money to my life, add up to so much wasted time. Ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there, suddenly it is time to settle in for bed, sleep, and wake up for another work day.

My life becoming a mundane, unfulfilling thing really scares me. I don't want to do that, and while nothing is trivial and even the mundane is still part of life, I don't want to wake up some day 50 years old and wondering why I spent so much time playing the mundane slide, the rat race, for so little true fulfillment.

Some people say you should be happy with what you have. I think happiness all starts with knowing yourself and what makes you happy. Then achieving that goal or analzying and changing yourself to realign that happiness with reality.

Give me a job where I don't have to spend wasted time ironing my "work" clothes in my personal time, and I will give that job my productive hours and loyalty. In fact, once that happens, the job is no longer a job, but rather a productive extension to my life.

I'm spending the night watching the Star Wars episodes (the original 3) and was reminded a lot of my childhood pasttimes, the ones the most influenced me or most dominated my time. Here is my list from my childhood in the 80s...

1) Nintendo - My Atari preceded it, but it was not until the Nintendo was released that video games truly became a passtime. The NES and later the SNES dominated my time like no other hobby or toy, and unlike most toys, was rather influential on my life as a whole.

2) GI Joe - I could never play enough with my GI Joe toys as a kid, endlessly playing our fantasized scenarios in various locales, epics adventures and storylines, and yes, unlike the cartoon, I was not afraid to script in character deaths.

3) Star Wars - From movies to the arcade games to collector cards to toy figures, Star Wars was a never-ending masterpiece to me as a kid, and as an adult. It touched something deep inside, something amazing and fantasical.

4) Everything else that I can't think of right now. Wrestlemania was amazingly fun and cool pre-Hacksaw Jim Duggen. His appearance was the spark that drove me away from watching any more wrestling. He-Man was amazing and fun, but definitely during my very young years and not nearly as fantasy-inducing and thus not quite as fun. Ahh...so much more...I think I'll Google for a bit.

I just read an article on HD Moore, one of the most influential and brightest "non-corporate" white hat security researchers, in which he answered a quick question on his favorite hangout, "A dark room full of electronics."

Not only is that cool, but it got me thinking about what my own favorite room or hangout would be. I've been doing some casual thinking lately on owning property sooner than later, and how I would plan to do some stuff with it. Right now, I'm in "money-saving" mode, so my spare apartment bedroom is acting mostly as a place to put things I don't have a place for, instead of being developed into something much cooper.

So, what would I deem as a perfect room to hang out in? Honestly, I have three major ideas on that question.

1) The dark room full of electronics. Some people feel at ease and most happy when surrounded by other people or doing social things. For people like myself, I feel similarly when surrounded by electronics and maybe a person or two of like mind. A dark room illuminated by the soft glow and unjudging winking of LED lights and monitor displays. Maybe an indirect light source or two with a narrow cone of light to important places that need lit. It would need to be cooler than warmer. I would also prefer a house as opposed to an apartment, so that I could set up a decent (but not high-end) speaker system so I can play such music from quiet classical/ambient to pound out some industrial or metal depending on my moods. A clutch of test machines, a couple separated networks (one a main network and the other a sniffed, testing one), a workbench for system surgery and parts. The monitors would preferably be displaying specific things as opposed to operating screensavers. One should play movies that I can half watch in the background, another display an active packet watch on my main system (just to watch now and then and learn more) or even my test network if I am running something, another with network monitoring, and another with a security dashboard up or even cycling through a few. That would be an awesome hangout.

2) Now, even the most hardcore of us needs to unplug every now and then. For a more unplugged experience in my abode, I would love to have an entertainment room that has a nice tv and sound system, is ideal for watching movies or sports events (about all I watch, I don't take to television anymore), and is filled with plants and a pleasing atmosphere. Something calm and idyllic, a place to relax and lounge and sprawl out in, to read a book, magazine, listen to some music, or watch a movie, or even pull a laptop into to just chill out, but not dominated by obvious electronics all over.

3) Lastly, completing the unplugging, my third preference would be the great outdoors, away from most everyone else and anything technological. Give me a breezy, amazing woodlands or mountaintop or tropical island beach, and I could find some real peace there. Give me a cabin up in the woods that I can escape to and some space to roam. Internet connection...debatable. :)

This made me giggle a little bit more than I should admit... stolen cell phones will scream.

Which reminds me of this from Jack Handy:

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

I would just outright love to call in and report random cell phones as missing and hear the stories. "I was in church and suddenly my cell phone started screaming like it was possessed by the devil!"

Having started a new job this past spring, I've had some firsthand experience in starting out in a new IT (networking/sysadmin) role. And I have since become pretty sensitive about what I think is one of the most important things with new IT hires.

Recently, more talk has surfaced about IT hiring the right people and then training them for their job, as opposed to hiring only people trained for the job and hoping they have the ethics and soft skills needed to do a quality and loyal job.

One of the biggest challenges, and in my mind, mistakes, in managing my new employment has been lack of real training when starting the job.

Let's face it, even in the midst of regulations and standards flying around about how IT should secure and run their operations, there are no two shops that do something even as simple as track and allocate IP addresses the same, let alone all the other little stuff and multitude of settings in servers and devices (one of the reasons I really do not enjoy Windows Sysadmin work as much as networking). This means that any new people are either going to sit back and wait to be shown what to do, or will attempt to dive right in and possibly screw something big up either right away or maybe not even detectable for months or years. While I do believe in just getting things done, I've seen what happens to people (especially in my last job) when they make a simple mistake or move forward too quickly and how that will paint them in the eyes of the people who matter and write the checks, even if those same people were the ones who put the pressure on getting things done quickly.

So I feel that job training early on is paramount, especially for any Windows Sysadmin type of support work that is not very finite or narrow.

Training will also acclimate new employees with existing employees to gain some team cameraderie, which will more quickly open the avenues of discussion, collaboration, and comfort in asking for help when needed.

I think the best form of training is not necessarily documentation, although that is highly important, but actually just doing some shadowing of coworkers for not just a half day or even a day, but for a few weeks, to get used to the tasks, load, culture, and attitudes of the job role and team. In this way, also, the new employee made confide their own comforts, interests, and desires to their colleagues more than a manager, and thus their niche in the team may more quickly develop. This might bog down the existing employee who is being shadowed and sharing some of his workload with the new person, but in the long run, this is far better and I think will lead to a happier worker.

I feel that very, very few IT sysadmins and networking people can step into a job and do an effective job without lots of experience or in a contractual role that is narrow by definition.

Unfortunately, with my current job I had about a week and a half of corporate training with HR, phone systems, and other general stuff like benefits and customer service. This is all good and fine, but I had maybe a half day with the most senior analyst that I work with, and got shown the physical data center and where some things are. That was about it, for the most part...which has left me, 6 months later, still feeling disengaged and not entirely happy or comfortable with the job and network I work in. It is definitely an uphill battle that I am having to slowly tackle as the tasks slowly mount.

Not often I talk about my job here, but it has been a big thing in my life in the past year, especially since I switched jobs this spring. In my old job, we were quite a lot more casual and the development group was definitely a bit younger overall than my current job. The development team here tends to include a lot of older guys, and for once I actually feel very young here.

In a way, this is still part of my rehab. It is nice to see guys older than me who are good at their work, but they really just know a small slice of coding or programming and that is what they work on all day, even though they're older and by that right should be superior.

The most fun thing is when I see other people's typing etiquette or when mine is complimented. It is not often, I am seeing, that someone actually types faster than me in IT, which is kinda weird. I guess that comes from my long history in IRC and gaming where faster typing is definitely a developed skill.