Diary of a LAN Manager

I was checking through my list of contacts in my Hotmail account today, when I realized I still had Sarah's old e-mail address. Even though the last e-mail I'd tried to send her had bounced, apparently I just never got around to deleting it. Seeing that was like having the wind knocked out of me - it just punctuated the fact for me that I can't send her e-mail ever again. I can't call her, talk to her, laugh with her, sit at Sunset Grill like we'd planned and drink wine until we got silly. Or in our case, sillier. I wanted to believe she was happy and that was why I hadn't heard from her. I wanted to believe that she and Isaac Tigrett were off seeing the world, because that's what she deserved. She had loved him for years, and had finally gotten him back into her life, and they deserved to be happy. What better life for a hippie than to be living her days out with the founder of the Hard Rock, for crying out loud? But now I'll never know how all that wo

Gloomy, dark, and misty - what a lovely morning we had! The sun's out now, and the heat has crept back, but it was nice for a little while. Welcome to Monday. My weekend was un-fun, in that I managed to pull a back muscle and had to stay in bed all day Saturday and most of Sunday, but hey - I didn't have anything better to do than watch football, football, and more football. Sunday I took a breather from all that football and watched the Olympic marathon. The loony tunes former priest needs to be locked in a cell somewhere with his Bibles for the rest of eternity - there was no point in tackling the poor guy from Brazil. Really - what kind of Christian message does that send? Tackle the non-believers? I don't get it. Then it was back to football, golf, more football, McCloud (I got REALLY bored) and somewhere in the middle of Kojak, I decided I'd had enough. We all got ready and went to see I, Robot at the Hollywood. Excellent flick, by the way, no matter what the criti

Today I had to give a presentation on how to use a program I'm not particularly fond of, and pray that I'll never have to implement in my area. Sometimes I feel like a sell-out, but hey - for the record, it worked as expected and did what I asked it to. The developers deserve kudos for a job well done. It's just slow, and that isn't the developers fault. Using this product to image a machine versus the solution we're currently using is like comparing snail mail to e-mail - both will deliver most of the time, it's just that one is WAAAAY faster than the other. I'm still trying to figure out why I was the chosen one to stand in front of all the other LAN managers and give the presentation - surely it's not my wit and style ;-)

Ya know, it would have been a good day to stay at home. I feel like a left fielder trying to catch fly balls, the calls have come in so fast. So far I've answered "Why can't I send an e-mail to so-and-so's Sprint phone? It says to contact my system administrator..." and "Why am I getting e-mails for this other person?" Must be e-mail day! Haven't had one of those in awhile - I'd forgotten what it was like. The third request was to create a shared calendar in Outlook - yep, looks like e-mail day. Makes me almost glad that it's also meeting day.

I'm detecting a theme here.... because today, I swear they emptied out the looney bin and turned them loose on the roadways. Did all of you just learn to drive? Why can't the idiots with their blinkers on for six miles hook up with the idiots who have no idea why they might ever need a turn signal so that MAYBE their offspring could figure out how to use that little stick thingy poking out of the steering column! Sweet Mary, Mother of God, how hard can it be? Let's do 90 in the slow lane or maybe 45 in the fast lane of a 70mph interstate - it seems to be the latest fad. And for the record, yes, that was me who almost missed the exit at Nolensville Pike this afternoon, but nobody was behind me and I didn't cut anybody off when I sailed across the zebra stripes because my brain apparently thought I should be going to Knoxville instead of picking up my kid after school. Mea Culpa.

You know, I used to be very much opposed to mood-altering prescription drugs - valium, thorazine, etc. - because I felt that they were over-prescribed to "solve" problems, when it seemed to me that they only masked the problems and never really solved anything. And yet today, it seems like if you aren't on meds, then there's something wrong with you. I've seen them help people cope with daily living, and I've seen them become just one more thing the person has a dependency for, so I'm not so sure what I think anymore. There are times when I wish things were more black and white, instead of so many shades of grey. You know, grey's my favorite color....

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Class, thankfully, is over. If I ever want to install SMS at some other business, after I convince them to spend a ridiculously huge amount of money with Microsoft, I'll know what questions to ask and how to plan for the implementation. Otherwise, it was a waste of time. And since the class was 60% Vanderbilt employees, it felt more like three days at work.

I'm in class this week. It's not a good week to be in class. It's not a good week, period. Fortunately, it's only a three day class, so I'll be finished tomorrow. Fortunately, class let out early today so I could go to work for a little while. That's how bad class sucks - I'd rather be at work, pretending to be productive. Fortunately, there are laws against killing my instructor, otherwise I'd be on the 10:00 news. He's a nice guy, but very, very annoying.

Keep a fire burning in your eye Pay attention to the open sky You never know what will be coming down I don't remember losing track of you You were always dancing in and out of view I must have thought you'd always be around Always keeping things real by playing the clown Now you're nowhere to be found Momma called me late last night. At first, I thought surely she was mistaken. People like Sarah don't die. Not at 49. It just doesn't happen. But as she read the obituary to me, I realized it was her - my friend had died of ovarian cancer, and I didn't even know she was sick. I don't know what happens when people die Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear That I can't singI can't help listening And I can't help feeling stupid standing 'round Crying as they ease you down' Cause I know that you'd rather we were dancing Dancing our sorrow away(R

Friday the 13th.... let's try not to think about that, shall we? So far, my luck's all been good - the Freightliner on our ass as we went through the road construction at White Bridge Road this morning did not plow into us, although his brakes took a beating. There aren't many sounds more frightening than the sound of a semi trying desperately to stop - unless you count the sickening crunch that sometimes follows. The servers and/or their various applications did not die this morning, but the day is young. It's cool outside, there's football tomorrow, and I can sleep late in the morning if I want to. Life is good.

Work sucks. That's all there is to it. Just once, just once , I'd like to be able to tell a user what I really think without being worried about losing my job. How many times do I have to tell this guy that we a:) Don't have an IIS server and b:) Neither want nor intend to get one? How many times? How many times do I have to tell him I am not going to create an internet solution for his piddly problem that could be handled in a better, more cost effective, more secure way? Can't I just beat him soundly ?!

The word of the day is "bitch-slap" - Help spread the word. That's about all I got out of the meeting this morning. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a user who needs to "hear" the word of the day....

I skipped work yesterday ;) Took a personal day to take Michael to the allergy specialist and to get Heather to orientation at Nashville School of the Arts. I realized today that her sudden outbursts of anarchy (ie, "I'm not buying one of their stupid planners. I'm going to get one from Staples. I don't care if they do put me in ISS.") are really her way of panicking - she feels totally scared and out of control, so she attempts to regain that sense of control by being obstinate. But we worked it out, talked it out, and by the time she'd gotten her photo ID and met up with five or six of her friends from previous schools/school years, she was in much better spirits. The defensive posture was pretty much gone. She was disappointed that she'd have to take Algebra again this year, but passing the Gateway with a 96 wasn't sufficient to excuse failing the class. Same thing for physical science - it's round two, but hopefully with different results. Span

Ah, Monday. Back to work, back to reality. I spent the weekend on home improvement - Saturday we finally got the clouds painted on the walls in Heather's room, and painted the trim while we were at it. Maybe tonight I can get the border up. Afterwards, we went to the Saturday night church service, then to the Pub like good little protestants. Mulligan's is great fun on the weekends - live, rowdy Irish drinking songs. Then Sunday morning we were up at 5:30, getting ready to show up for the Bellevue Community Church Habitat for Humanity build at 7:00. The weather cooperated beautifully, and even though it did finally warm up, the breeze was always refreshing. I'm only a little sunburned, thanks to somebody's donation of SPF 45 sunscreen (It had so much zinc oxide in it that I looked like I had a thin coat of clown-white on, but hey - I'm not fried). We helped build a decorative gable for the roof, and we worked on finishing the trim for the front porch. We got the po

Got a late start today, so apparently Karma says I have to make up for it by being incredibly busy. I've been in the office for three hours, and I've spent at least one hour answering e-mail, one hour acting as counselor, and one hour on the phone. It's 2:00 and I'm finally getting my first cup of coffee for the day - what does that tell you. So far I've learned that most doctors are quacks - they all just guess at the problem, and sometimes they get lucky and guess right. I've learned that if you subscribe to Ifit.com, eventually you'll catch an ear-worm - I've listened to essentially the same music over and over for so many months now that I often catch myself humming it. I've learned that my sister is a nutcase and sends me way too much funny stuff. At least it's Friday.

So, feeling like the empowered, super-feminine, sysadmin that I am, I decided to do a little "real" sysadmin work today - I would set up a 'special-source entry' employee who started her temp job here on Monday. Now I know what you're saying - if she started Monday, why wait until Thursday to do this? Well, I'm glad you asked. You see, this is the time of year affectionately known as Fruit Basket Turnover - either they're leaving as fast as they get here, or they get here and the department decides it's time to do a massive reorg of seating assignments. Either way, there's usually not much point of getting in a hurry to set these things up. I used to insist on waiting at least a full week before we created the account and e-mail access, but some of the supervisors whined, so I caved in and started doing it within the week that they showed up. I never create them on the first two days, because they're in training. And yesterday sucked from star

ThinkGeek :: No, I will not fix your computer I need this. And the sticker. And everything else this site has to offer. I need a copy of the despair.com poster that says Meetings: None of us is as dumb as all of us. I need more coffee and more reassurance of job security. I need to learn how to keep my mouth shut at meetings. I need to learn how to restrain others from speaking at meetings with some sort of Jedi mind control trick. I need more coffee.

One of my friends sent me this link: http://sysadminday.safeweb.be/Time.htm . Of course, she sent it four days late, but hey -it's the thought that counts, right? Today is a wonderful day because apparently all the problem-children have decided to go on vacation. I've had one phone call, one e-mail, and one virus-hoax to quash. Other than that, there's nothing to keep me from my studies.

Things that are un-fun - Sitting in an emergency room on a Sunday afternoon. Michael had an allergic reaction to something that went from itching like he'd been given morphine to difficulty breathing. No one has any idea what might have caused it, but it took two shots and about an hour before he was stable enough to come home. We're concerned that it might be his blood pressure medication, but since he's been taking it for a month and a half with no problems, the doctor doesn't think that it's the culprit. The only other thing was the fresh spinach salad I fixed for supper Saturday night, and it's doubtful that it would have taken that long to cause that much reaction. At any rate, I'm tired today. Welcome to Monday.