January 18, 2007

Dear Thee,
I hate status reports. They're much like TPS Reports in my opinion. See, my boss has me fill out a status report and email it to him every day, not because I'm not busy, but because he wants to know how busy I am, or he wants to stay informed, or whatever. In either situation it's relevant to explain to you my position within the company.

I am technically called a Desktop Support Technician in an environmental laboratory that employs about 100 to 130 people. The company is large, undergoing acquisition of another large company, and has about 3500 net employees. My boss is the IT Director and Director of LIMS which is another story all together. It's me and him and I'm low man on the totem pole.

Let's look past the title for a minute, because titles are an easy way to put people in a nice little desk with nice square drawers and, well, most people don't fit very well in those. I'm responsible for all PC up keep in the lab (about 150 PCs) and their communication to the instruments (about 300 instruments, approximately 2 instruments to a PC). I'm also responsible for: Server maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair; Active directory configuration and general administration; SQL server general administration; Data storage and tape backup management; network wiring, switch maintenance and repair, WAN/VPN administration; DNS and DHCP configuration and other general networking tasks; and finally EDF's which are a bane from hell and deserve their own node entirely.

Desktop Support Technician doesn't quite fit what I do from day to day, but you know how I feel about titles (and this one isn't helping my career).
Back to the story, my boss is a good guy; easy to work with, but he insists on having a status report of every little thing I do all day. I don't understand it, I stay busy; easily. Monday and Tuesday I worked till 10PM, I was there till 8:30PM on Wednesday night taking care of administrative tasks - I have nothing wrong with a weekly report detailing big changes, accomplished projects and progress in other issues; but a daily report detailing why jim bob had some illegal operation on HP12 that caused his instrument to stop in a run, that's tedious stuff that I don't think helps me or my boss at all. I don't care to remember that stuff.

I'm not a manager, so I'm assuming (and hoping) that there's some reason to the rhyme in regards to all this status report hoopla. E2, am I a bad employee, or is my boss just a micro manager who wants to keep tabs on my every move? Should I take this in stride, or say something about it at our meeting on Friday? - assuming it's not a meeting where I'm getting fired; I don't know yet.

Hugs and kisses,
Scuzzy

Another terrific run in the rain/sleet/snow. A good class today too, and I didn't feel like an idiot. Bought and wrote postcards to the boys at lunch. Mailed them after work. Am now here in this wonderful library taking a break from writing.

This is definitely how my days would go were I suddenly to be alone. Wake up > run > work > write > sleep. It's 8:45p at home: M_ is asleep (hopefully), the boys are playing nicely, homework done (also hopefully), C_ most likely at Italian class or something. I am probably not missed. Maybe the boys miss me. Maybe.

The weekend is coming up, and I hope it snows. I will not call anyone. I plan to run and write and read all weekend -- perhaps do a little sightseeing if it is walking weather. If it is not something I can write off on my expenses, I won't do it. As much as I would like to go to the mountains, I don't think I could enjoy it knowing the cost. Oh well.

I'll finally meet my new team next week. If I can, I'll pop in before my one class on Monday just to say hi. Next week should be interesting. I don't know whether I'll want to leave or not.

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