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.
Thursday, 9 May 2019
Friday, 3 May 2019
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.....
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.....
Thursday, 2 May 2019
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.....
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.....
Thursday, 23 August 2018
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....
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....
Sunday, 20 August 2017
A Foray into game play recording
I fancied trying do some game content creation, I'm currently playing Hearthstone and Player Unknown's Batllegrounds, so I thought I'd start with those.
I found a broadcast system in Open Broadcaster Software and found it really easy to use.
I had created a card deck in Hearthstone to play arena (a game mode). I'd already played two games because I was messing around with the Nvidia in-game experience, but didn't have any success with it.
So I got my webcam set up and found a template overlay so it looked reasonable.
Basically, you start with a blank "page". You drop a picture over lay which as you will see, is just a background with a few black boxes.
There is a larger one, which you overlay the game screen and two smaller ones for webcam and the chat log, if you are live streaming.
As expected, I was terrible. I lost both games, but whilst I was disappointed, it wasn't about that.
After a quick google, I found a few sites which reviewed open source video editing software. The general consensus was that Blender was a really good choice. It wasn't.
The interface looked so complicated and cluttered. I managed to import a video, but couldn't work out how to do anything else. Uninstalled. I then Tried Avidemux as it looked quite simple. It was crap. The interface itself was simple and easy to use, but was severely let down by its output. It's like it removed the audio entirely as well as every other frame.
In my disappointment, I uploaded as is and posted.
Here they are, if you're interested:
Hearthstone: Arena Run Game 3
Hearthstone: Arena Run Game 4
During post-processing, I realised I hadn't set it to record game audio, so its just my voice and the sound of my mouse clicking right now, but the overlay looks cool, even if its not quite wide screen and there is a blank space where the chat live-stream should be.
I would appreciate any comments you might have on suggestions on game play, but I'm really looking for a simple video editor, just so I can crop the beginning and end, I don't really need to do fancy transitions or dumixing at the moment.
As an experiment, I believe it went well and I have learnt a few things. Hopefully the next ones will be better. I'm planning on doing a Player Unknown's Battlegrounds next, it will likely be a little longer, but hopefully a little more interesting.
I found a broadcast system in Open Broadcaster Software and found it really easy to use.
I had created a card deck in Hearthstone to play arena (a game mode). I'd already played two games because I was messing around with the Nvidia in-game experience, but didn't have any success with it.
So I got my webcam set up and found a template overlay so it looked reasonable.
Basically, you start with a blank "page". You drop a picture over lay which as you will see, is just a background with a few black boxes.
There is a larger one, which you overlay the game screen and two smaller ones for webcam and the chat log, if you are live streaming.
As expected, I was terrible. I lost both games, but whilst I was disappointed, it wasn't about that.
After a quick google, I found a few sites which reviewed open source video editing software. The general consensus was that Blender was a really good choice. It wasn't.
The interface looked so complicated and cluttered. I managed to import a video, but couldn't work out how to do anything else. Uninstalled. I then Tried Avidemux as it looked quite simple. It was crap. The interface itself was simple and easy to use, but was severely let down by its output. It's like it removed the audio entirely as well as every other frame.
In my disappointment, I uploaded as is and posted.
Here they are, if you're interested:
Hearthstone: Arena Run Game 3
Hearthstone: Arena Run Game 4
During post-processing, I realised I hadn't set it to record game audio, so its just my voice and the sound of my mouse clicking right now, but the overlay looks cool, even if its not quite wide screen and there is a blank space where the chat live-stream should be.
I would appreciate any comments you might have on suggestions on game play, but I'm really looking for a simple video editor, just so I can crop the beginning and end, I don't really need to do fancy transitions or dumixing at the moment.
As an experiment, I believe it went well and I have learnt a few things. Hopefully the next ones will be better. I'm planning on doing a Player Unknown's Battlegrounds next, it will likely be a little longer, but hopefully a little more interesting.
Friday, 18 August 2017
First week down
It's Friday, we're live and I'm on the way home...
So that's the first week done.
There's a lot that is still up in the air, but I'm slowly gaining visibility of the problems at least.
There are still a lot of problems, some of which I'm sure I'm still unaware of, but here's a few
I've been hearing that phrase banded around a lot this week and I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that it means people have no idea what's happening with it.
I now have proof of concepts running in parallel on my own machine for network monitoring applications, one of which is actually gathering data. I have a laptop and monitor set up on the end of the team pod which shows a dashboard of the data, which at least gives more visibility in my team. This has been noticed in the office and I've noticed some people looking at it. :-)
It has become apparent that my "team" is made up of two teams, IT and fraud. A group of eight of us, becoming nine. With this in mind I have suggested a desk move in order to better seat the two subdepartments so they can communicate easier. I haven't discussed this with my boss, but the teams seem keen.
In addition, there is a large pile of tech "crap" accumulating adjacent to our teams desks, which seems to be stuff people have dumped when no longer required, after four days of looking at it I got a tidy on. UPS' are now stacked together, along with monitors, towers and monitor stands. I also tidied a few cables into a box and threw some boxes out. It made me feel a little happier about our shared workspace.
I've also started talking to people about the idea of getting it off the shop floor altogether. So this is also going to happen on Monday, again, I'm yet to discuss this with my boss.
During regular conversations with my boss (when he's around) he seems fine with me doing stuff generally, so a lot of the stuff mentioned above I'm just doing until someone tells me to stop.
Everyone seems to be dreading Monday for one reason. The project manager for the department Is due back. From what I can tell, no one really likes him. He sounds ranty and micromanaging. I'm told that he is likely to get me to do stuff, so I'm sure that will be an interesting conversation.
I have endeavoured to explain my outwardness to the rest of the team and they seem to be ok with it, but they have said that myself and the other new infrastructure engineer will likely be seen as additional lackey resource to be moved around. This won't be the case.
I have a shit load of reading and information gathering to do at this point and I am under no delusion that next weeks actions will only increase this.
Having said all of this, I'm still looking forward to getting started on Monday morning and see what we can do.
So that's the first week done.
There's a lot that is still up in the air, but I'm slowly gaining visibility of the problems at least.
There are still a lot of problems, some of which I'm sure I'm still unaware of, but here's a few
- Progress seems to have ceased with regards to getting the fibre trunks in.
- Business process seems to be all over the place
- Developers are doing support
- Documenting of projects isn't happening
- Lots of important information is sat in different people's heads
- Lack of visibility of projects and progress across business units.
I've been hearing that phrase banded around a lot this week and I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that it means people have no idea what's happening with it.
I now have proof of concepts running in parallel on my own machine for network monitoring applications, one of which is actually gathering data. I have a laptop and monitor set up on the end of the team pod which shows a dashboard of the data, which at least gives more visibility in my team. This has been noticed in the office and I've noticed some people looking at it. :-)
It has become apparent that my "team" is made up of two teams, IT and fraud. A group of eight of us, becoming nine. With this in mind I have suggested a desk move in order to better seat the two subdepartments so they can communicate easier. I haven't discussed this with my boss, but the teams seem keen.
In addition, there is a large pile of tech "crap" accumulating adjacent to our teams desks, which seems to be stuff people have dumped when no longer required, after four days of looking at it I got a tidy on. UPS' are now stacked together, along with monitors, towers and monitor stands. I also tidied a few cables into a box and threw some boxes out. It made me feel a little happier about our shared workspace.
I've also started talking to people about the idea of getting it off the shop floor altogether. So this is also going to happen on Monday, again, I'm yet to discuss this with my boss.
During regular conversations with my boss (when he's around) he seems fine with me doing stuff generally, so a lot of the stuff mentioned above I'm just doing until someone tells me to stop.
Everyone seems to be dreading Monday for one reason. The project manager for the department Is due back. From what I can tell, no one really likes him. He sounds ranty and micromanaging. I'm told that he is likely to get me to do stuff, so I'm sure that will be an interesting conversation.
I have endeavoured to explain my outwardness to the rest of the team and they seem to be ok with it, but they have said that myself and the other new infrastructure engineer will likely be seen as additional lackey resource to be moved around. This won't be the case.
I have a shit load of reading and information gathering to do at this point and I am under no delusion that next weeks actions will only increase this.
Having said all of this, I'm still looking forward to getting started on Monday morning and see what we can do.
Tuesday, 15 August 2017
End of Day 2 as a Infrastructure Engineer
On Monday, I started a new job.
I had been preparing for the new job by researching DevOps, ITIL and the like.
From the conversations I'd had with my boss, he was very keen on the whole agile methodology and that's where I made an assumption.
I assumed that that would be the method in place. I was wrong.
After two days, I have realised that this is a broken team. Like, properly broken.
The Infrastructure is a mess. It's mis-matched, there is very little resiliency, many single points of failure, there is little-to-no-backup and what little documentation that exists is 5 years old and incomplete.
I have realised there is a lot of work to do. I am starting with network monitoring because there is none. I'm also going to be advocating a who new backup system.
On the plus side, budget doesn't seem to be tightly regulated, or indeed particularly planned.
My boss copied and pasted a PO that a colleague had made in order to fashion me with a workstation. It turns out that order was test rig for a designer.
Its has :
I installed the hyper-V role on the windows 10 pro build that was handed to me on a flash drive (build 1603, so it took most of the date to get updated) and proceeded to get the virtual switch working.
Normally this is a trivial task, but this time around it would not play ball.
After I realised that the virtual adapter disables IPv4 on the NIC, windows 10 once again got an IP leased, but the virtual switch would not allow the guests access to to the external network.I'll tinker with it more tomorrow.
I know, it's been literally ages.
I had been preparing for the new job by researching DevOps, ITIL and the like.
From the conversations I'd had with my boss, he was very keen on the whole agile methodology and that's where I made an assumption.
I assumed that that would be the method in place. I was wrong.
After two days, I have realised that this is a broken team. Like, properly broken.
The Infrastructure is a mess. It's mis-matched, there is very little resiliency, many single points of failure, there is little-to-no-backup and what little documentation that exists is 5 years old and incomplete.
I have realised there is a lot of work to do. I am starting with network monitoring because there is none. I'm also going to be advocating a who new backup system.
On the plus side, budget doesn't seem to be tightly regulated, or indeed particularly planned.
My boss copied and pasted a PO that a colleague had made in order to fashion me with a workstation. It turns out that order was test rig for a designer.
Its has :
- 8 core Xeon processor
- 32GB of RAM
- 2 120GB SSDs (one M2 straight on the board and a kingston from stores)
- 1TB WD blue
- 2 27" HP monitors
I installed the hyper-V role on the windows 10 pro build that was handed to me on a flash drive (build 1603, so it took most of the date to get updated) and proceeded to get the virtual switch working.
Normally this is a trivial task, but this time around it would not play ball.
After I realised that the virtual adapter disables IPv4 on the NIC, windows 10 once again got an IP leased, but the virtual switch would not allow the guests access to to the external network.I'll tinker with it more tomorrow.
I know, it's been literally ages.
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