Stress, Anxiety and the welfare of Doggos

I have a couple of a normal routes that I walk with Max.

A few days ago I was walking and I noticed a basket outside the front of one of the houses.  

The basket contained an array of dog toys and a few leads, with a note marked "Free leads + Toys". Fearing the worst I spent the next couple of days rationalising in my head that it was fine, just that the dog in question had enough toys and leads and it was an exercise in getting rid of some of the old ones that weren't used anymore.

I saw it again last night on my walk and I had to check, just so I could get it off my mind. 

I spoke to my Wife about it and she made a little gift parcel made out of wrapping paper (because she's good at that sort of thing) in which I packed up a few shortbread biscuits.

I knocked on the door, but didn't get a response, so I tried again after my walk this morning and spoke to a lovely lady who assured me that the dog in question was absolutely fine and it was indeed that there were just too many toys and leads and it was time to have a clear out.

As I already had the gift in hand, I gave it anyway in order to generally spread a little cheer.

Since march the level of stress and anxiety has been building up within me. This is understandable. I recently bought a house with my wife, which comes with its own things that need attention, this was my decision and I own that. The current pandemic situation, which is no ones fault, but adds another layer. The addition to that is the workloads that comes from that.

When it all "kicked off" I needed to organise laptops and mobile phones to ensure some 60 staff could work from wherever they were. I was fine with that at the time and got the work done. It was after that when it became apparent that the management paradigm no longer worked, meaning that a lot of processes needed manual intervention from myself. The fact that I was already in the middle of moving all services over to new hardware at the time of lock-down made everything that much more difficult. 

I've been reaching out consistently to management to try and lessen, or at least have the opportunity to sort through to regain some form of visibility again so I could get back to properly planning and managing. Consistently that's been met with either silence or additional work which just serves to add things to an already disorganised pile of work, which I have been trying in vein to organise in my head.

I had a really relaxing weekend, did a lot of fun stuff which involved naps, games and generally relaxing. The house was filled with the smell of Christmas biscuits as my Wife was preparing gifts for the family.

But then Monday morning rolled round, being the first day back in the office. I log in to see another email from my manager with urgent, high priority, needs to be actioned immediately tasks. It seemed this was straw that broke the camels back, I could no longer deal with the anxiety of trying to keep up with other work, like supporting staff with the mails and support tickets that continue to come in, trying to progress project work and provision new hardware in between each high priority email from management. I realised that I was basically trying to fit 8 hours work into 5 hours a day. 

I sent a mail to my manager, signed myself off sick, came home and spent the rest of the afternoon in bed.

I finally got up late-afternoon and did some pottering around, did a few bits and pieces that I needed to do, having to take regular breaks to regenerate spoons. we had dinner and then I spent the evening building a LEGO Darth Vader figure on a twitch live stream which was a lot of fun. A lot of people popped in to chat and wish me well, which made me feel better.

I spoke to my doctor this morning and he signed me off until the 4th of January so I have the next few weeks to try and chill out and hopefully clear my head to the point where I can have a reasonable conversation with my manager about some clear way of dealing with my workload

During this time, there are still a few things that I wish to complete, like finishing off the present purchasing, including wrap and dispatch. In between, I plan on playing games, stream, read, write, and generally try to unplug during the holiday period.

Reading this back, it may seem that this piece is just another opportunity to moan. To whinge about how I am being mistreated. This is not the case. Getting this down is an attempt to offload at least a modicum of the thoughts going around in my head and hopefully this in turn, will reduce some of the stress.

I am aware that lots of you are facing similar issues and to you I say: I hope you're hanging in there, you have the support you need and you are getting sufficient time to relax.

Have a great holiday period, whatever you are doing and lets raise a glass to make 2021 a much less stressful and happy affair.

Administering Server core infrastructure.

There still seems to be some apprehension around server core servers.

That supporting core servers requires all work to be executed from the Powershell command line.

Whilst this is entirely possible, for those inclined, I am not one of those people.

I dabble with scripts when I have to, but if/then and for/next loops are not my cup of tea.

Since working in the industry, it has been known that, there are fundamentally 2 ways of working on a server:

1. connect to the server via a remote desktop connection and administer the roles and services directly on the desktop of the server.

2. Install RSAT tools to your own desktop and use those tools to connect remotely

Enter RSAT – Remote server administration tools.

RSAT has been around since Vista, if not before.

“enables IT administrators to remotely manage roles and features in Windows Server from a computer that is running Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, or Windows Vista. “

• from the Microsoft rsat introduction.

For a full list of tools available, see:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2693643/remote-server-administration-tools-rsat-for-windows-operating-systems

Of note, top hits are :

• Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools

• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools

• DHCP Server Tools

• DNS Server Tools

So what's the difference between accessing a server remotely that does and doesn't have a GUI?

Practically nothing.

Installing windows server core is the same as installing server with GUI

Its surprising what you can actually run locally on a core server

Not that you ever actually need to log on locally, save for first-time configuration.

This can be done easily with sconfig.exe:

As you can see, a lot of the basic setup needs are right here, from windows updates, to setting network adaptor settings.

As long as 4) Configure Remote Management is enabled, that should be all you need to get going.

The future – Well, not quite.

In April of 2018, Microsoft released the Windows Admin Center.

“Now you can remotely manage Windows Server running anywhere—physical, virtual, on-premises, in Azure, or in a hosted environment. The tool, available with your Windows Server license at no additional charge, consolidates and reimagines Windows OS tools in a single, browser-based, graphical user interface. “

-From the data sheet.

This admin centre can be installed locally on an administrators pc, or on a server.

This installs a web server that gives you the web portal and you can add both client machines as well as servers, querying the domain controller directly and connecting to machines via Powershell, presenting the results within the browser.

This the list of options available on a server can be found here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/manage/windows-admin-center/use/manage-servers

There is the option to add a GUI after the fact, should you have a need.

The process for this is just a web search away.

Why would you wish to add a GUI?

There are a number of use cases that require a GUI, the first one I came into contact with is that Network Policy Server used for Routing and Remote Access requires a GUI to run, but Routing and Remote Access does not, so if you wish to keep the two services separate for contingency purposes this is possible.

Windows Deployment services is another such example.

I have been running the following services quite happily for about 6 months now:

• Hyper-V
• Domain controller
• Routing and Remote Access
• Certificate Authority
• SQL Server 2019
• Volume Licensing

Things that are running with a GUI:

• Network Policy Server
• Windows Deployment Services

Its been a learning curve, don't get me wrong, but the resource savings makes it worth it. reduced RAM reliance in may case, by about 2-4 GB per server and storage of 10-14 GB.

Managing virtual guests by Hyper-V manager makes things easier, but Windows admin center makes management even more central.

Have I missed anything or made a mistake? Do you have something you would like to see in the next post?

leave a comment or drop me message.

Making Coffee this morning:

I was absentmindedly making coffee this morning, when a squirrel came to say hi:

The photos were taken and edited on my phone, I may edit the originals on my PC at a later date.

The intention of this post was to document the occasion, but somewhere other than Twitter or Instagram.
I am aware that this is a Blogger site and so is being scrapped by google, but currently that is a lesser evil as already scraping my emails etc.

Post bank holiday slump

Ok, so it's been a few days, not much has happened since the last post.
Saw some friends, had a few drinks and a few laughs.

I've been trying to continue with the Borderlands Pre sequel playlist.
After a couple of days I actually managed to go live on Youtube with NVIDIA Shadowplay.
I managed to get a half hour episode out of it, but it kept stopping the broadcast.
I'm not sure if it was something to do with the quality settings or the bandwidth, but I got there.

I Downloaded BOINC the other day and have been donating some CPU cycles to the openZika project
from the World community grid.
This is my link, where you can find more information.
The Linus Tech tips forum have a team setup, which is where I heard about it.
I'm currently using about 6 cores to do number crunching, keeping an eye on my power usage.

The Job boards continue to be a little dead, training positions or development.
I've registered with a temp agency doing warehouse type work, I got a call from them yesterday
about some temp-to-perm work, but that's not what I'm looking for.
I'm holding out for some contract work from a company, I've been advised they want to talk with me
and they have my details, but they haven't called yet.

Keeping Momentum

Here, a new day and a new attempt at keeping momentum going.
After the morning job search, I downloaded the new texture packs for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I've played the first twenty minutes, which includes the intro and now uploading to YouTube.

I'm probably not doing it justice as I don't have a 4K monitor, but trying to keep a consistent framerate at 1080p is good enough for me.

I've spent some time over the last day or two watching a youtube gamer playing a pre-release version of the third game, so I was keen to get back into the new looter-shooter as I hadn't played a lot of it.
Looking at Steam however, it appears I've played at least 10 hours of it, but if I recall, that was with a squad. I don't remember much about the story line, so it's pretty much like starting a new game, which is always good.

I've already had the internal argument with myself about sitting around playing games while not having a job.
Having had a conversation this morning with a recruitment consultant about some non-I.T. temporary work, for which I am going to register on Tuesday, I decided to forgive myself and just enjoy the game and the long weekend, hopefully starting some paid work next week.
Even if it isn't within my preferred field, it's something that will lighten the burden on my savings.

For now, I will try to stay calm, help out my Wife wherever I can and fit some game play in between.

Saturday looks like the nicest day over the weekend weather-wise, so it might be nice to take Max the dog for a longer walk. There has also been some discussion of meeting up with some friends now that they are back from holiday.
Will be good to catch up with them and see all the cool photos they've taken.

Was nice to get out of the house last night visiting a friend. We sat in his garden with a beer and fire pit. Conversation didn't exactly flow as we were both pretty tired, but that didn't really matter, we were both happy sitting there staring at the flames, occasionally petting max as he bounded from the bench to the floor. When conversation did flow, we touched on work stuff and inevitably leading to alternative power, as we both have solar arrays, and alternative off-grid living.

I think the rest of today will be a slow, relaxed affair, probably with a few cups of tea.
I should probably do some more reading.....

Confessional Update

Forgive me world wide web, for I have sinned, It's been 8 months since my last blog post.
As expected, I'm also terrible at this too.

So whats been happening since I last posted? Well, there was a period of unemployment.
I spent my time split between job search, being anxious about the situation and trying new things.

I finally picked up a contract position in December as a systems engineer for a public sector service.
Typical 3rd line/projects kind of thing, solution designs, meetings, cost spreadsheets and gantt charts.
Things were extremely slow going to start with. There was no training to speak of, save a wiki knowledge base and asking colleagues in the immediate vicinity. So, my understanding of the ecosystem above the fundamental was patchy at best. It quickly became apparent that things were broken. Policies, procedures, people.
It was quite a mess. The place was awash with apathy, most of the responses to "why is this like this?" would mostly be "yeah, its broken, but its not going to change, so why bother worrying"
So much time was spent going round in this particular circle.
Despite all the talk from project managers and management about reviews and change coming, it was apparent that this was a holding pattern that had been in place for a awhile.
I nearly spat my coffee all over my desk when I heard a project manager tell me "Agile is coming".

Trying to talk to anyone in the management team about the problems I had seen was a tedious and painful affair. It quickly became apparent that they really didn't care about changing anything, even though their workload was high and any seemingly broken or problematic process was met with manual hand-cranking, rather than taking a little more time to try and solve the issue. There was a lot of time spent doing the same thing over and over again, things that could have easily been automated. Any question of feasibility of process or suggestion of alternatives with benefits where met with close-mindedness and the overall attitude that there simply was no problem.

My contract was terminated at the end of march, with a "thank you for all your help, goodbye" conversation. Honestly, I knew it was coming and I was glad of it.
I couldn't have worked in that environment for much longer and I have no idea how people can spend years there.
There were some positives out of the whole experience, however. I met some interesting people and I learnt YAML.

So, here I am. Back to the job search. Back to the anxiety.
Having been doing this now for a few weeks, I find myself in the same position as last year.
Working through recruitment consultants is difficult. continually chasing for roles I've applied for, endless calls and emails from consultants for jobs that I am not experienced to do, despite being told they'd read my CV.

More and more, when talking to directors of companies at interview stage, I find that I am having to explain that I am not a Linux administrator.
I have a short sentence within my personal statement that says that I like to play around with Linux in my spare time and use it at home. I'm paraphrasing here, obviously.
I've since heavily edited this sentence.
The bulk of my CV details roles within companies that are Microsoft houses, if not Microsoft partners. I have Microsoft accreditations, albeit that they're ageing now.

Another thing I find is that it seems people cant effectively manage resource any longer, especially in the contract space.
It goes like this:
company needs more staff -> company posts a new contract -> consultant passes applicants to the client -> silence.
Would it not be better to spend a little more time on hiring, in the knowledge that they will do some of that work, theoretically leaving you with more time?
I don't really understand it, not that I've been contracting for very long, but it seems the same can be said for full-time positions too.

So, while I'm waiting, I'm trying to do constructive things.
As mentioned before, my MS accreditations are now ageing and It seems like a good idea to update them, so I'm revising to take the 740-740/1/2 exams
to update my MCSA in windows server.
My current plan is to complete these and get the accreditaion, then start looking at getting a Cisco accreditation to bulster my networking knowledge.

I briefly spent some time researching the feasibility of going freelance, setting up a small consultancy and services offering, but it quickly became apparent that there is a lot of "peopling" involved, which was exhausting and the want for a mortgage anytime in the next year or so made it kind of out of the question right now.

In addition, I have the usual plethora of half finished projects that I dip in an out of.
Most recently trying to set up a reverse Apache proxy based on domain headers as my current provider doesn't offer additional IP addresses.
This has been going on for a month or so and is proving to be somewhat awkward.

Next up is the next iteration of a hardware firewall after the last one died the night I stood it up.
This time its on a raspberry pi, with an additional network interface. I've got to the stage of setting up both interfaces and installing things like DHCP, DNS etc and its now sat next to my desk, waiting for me to get back to it.

I also recently spent a not insignificant length of time trying to stand up a windows server 2016 virtual machine on the QEMU hypervisor, this too continues to evade me.

I have a lot of respect for people who manage to blog on a daily basis. Being able to pick a topic, construct an article with hopefully some interesting content, proof read and post all in a day, alongside anything and everything else they have to do on any given day.

I'd like to say that this will be the first in a line of new blog posts, with renewed vigour! but I doubt that is the case.
I seem to spend a large portion of my time watching YouTube gameplay videos, wondering what I should do next, has it been long enough that its worth checking job boards again, etc ad nauseam.
If you do stumble upon this and are interested in hearing more of anything noted here, feel free do drop a comment below and I will do an expansion post.

Until next time.....

A day in the life of an IT employee at this one company

Every day I come in to the office at 08:30. I sit down at a desk that is too small for me.
I cannot sit at the desk correctly because my draws dont fit under the desk.
I have to sit at a funny angle due to the fact that my monitors dont fit on my desk properly. My desk is also taken up, in part, by things that are from other peoples desks, such as monitor mounts, cables and paper, etc.
In this cramped confined desk, I no longer have sufficient space to write in my notebook, let alone any space to test equipment.

In addition to being sat at a cramped desk in a cramped office, which will once again be downsized to accompodate more people in to the team, a cupboard upstairs is being renovated into another office. This is done during the day, during work time, so not only am I cramped into an awkward position, I have to put up with driling from above and the side. I have a headache most days.

There are eleven of us in this office with at least four to come. So, I am not alone in my discomfort and it will soon become a lot more cramped.
There is talk of my current office also being renovated at the same time as upstairs. There has been no mention of where we might go, having already been moved out of the main office space.

In the nine months I have worked for this company, I have engaged and been involved with many projects, from business process to infrastructure configuration.
I am not aware of any of these projects being completed.
I am constantly chasing pertinant parties, including my direct management, senior management and more recently directorship, for updates and to raise concerns.

I sit at my cramped desk most days wondering what I can do next, going over all the projects to see what work can be done, yet frequently I am reduced to chasing people for updates, only to receive words of conjecture and hearsay.

I would like to do some work. I would like to set up a project, plan for the project and do work to implement a finished product. This doesn't seem possible however, what with indecision and micromanagement. I would like to feel like I've achieved something at the end of the day. I would like to have a sensible conversation with someone, without shaking my head in dismay or holding my head in my hands out of sheer mental exhaustion from the lack of any coherent, logical, fundamental practice.

Three months passed after writing the above lines.
Our team have been moved into the upstairs room-formally-known-as-a-cupboard.
There is no air conditioning and so, being summer, it can be extremely hot.
I managed to aquire a spare large fan from the warehouse, but that can no longer be used as it gives of a distinct burning smell. There is a small, portable conditioning unit, which does cool the place down, but is extremely noisy.
This is drowned out every so often with the drilling and banging from the refurbishment of our previous office downstairs, so despite the move, the situation remins the same.

It is at this point I updated my CV and started looking for a new position. I'm a guy in my mid-thirties, with a broad knowledge of the IT industry, with varying experience that gives me the ability to see a bigger picture and guage outcomes with a level of accuracy.
I have rarely had difficulty finding the next challenge or opportunity to learn a new skill.

By now, I have been taken from all projects but one. Due to continued lack of scope, I am unable to work for more than a day or so, before needing conversations with management about what it actually is they require. The head shaking continues.

Until yesterday, when management decided they could no longer cope with the arguments and they no longer wanted me to work for the company.
By both periodical review and management admission, my work output is first rate, so they are unable to simply dismiss me, so they offered me a months additional pay to walk away.

Suffice it to say, I took the money, along with my belongings and walked.
I remain ambivelant about the entire situation and indeed the time I spent at the company.
If management conceed that I am right, why am I wrong? Why is my opinion ignored if it is considered to be the right course of action.
A friend of mine said some time ago that it was never about the technology, its probably got something to do with that....