God Damn I want to be challenged. I want to be asked to setup something I haven't done dozens of times already. I want to be asked to build something I haven't built a hundred times already. I want to solve a problem that hasn't occured a million times, or answer a question thats not clueless and braindead and been asked by the same person more times than I can count. Why waste my time creating email accounts? Why waste my time setting up server space? Cause no other brain dead employee here can figure out a stupid point and click system? Oh sure I can go and find work for myself. Done that already, a hundred times over, there are still things I could find to to do. But how rewarding is it to do something that no one will see or notice or care about, and that may cut a tasks time from one minute to 30 seconds, then you have to find what to do with that extra 30 seconds. For kicks I have installed sendmail, qmail, ipop, imap, ssh, on linux or cygwin, or both. I have found tools to get information from our servers, created a log watching process', setup automatic rolling of logs that were not automatically rolling, double checked the error notification in our scheduled tasks for SQL, removed logs, paired down the queue on both our Imail and sendmail servers, checked in the the discussion forums for anymore jerks, done a lamebrain import no one else seems to do, and checked my mail a million times. I am sick of messing with backups which seem to always find a way to mess up, its always been and always will be the most thankless unlucky job to have. And if things don't work and you express your need for say TAPES, its not important, at least till the data is lost. I am tired of watching the guy next to me play games, and get a contractors salary while people who actually were worthwhile to the company are still looking for new jobs. I am tired of the idiot manager upstairs who has no clue about anything and might as well just spend her day blowing the ceo, cause thats the only way she must be able to keep her position. I am sick of having a boss that cannot communicate the least bit of information back to you or answer a question. Yet when you take the responsibility to do stuff for yoursel there is always the question or concern eminating from his corner of the world. I am furious that an idiot like that still has a job, when the good he has done for the company is negligible if existing at all. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH. Man that felt good, now if I could only get away from here for a sanity break...

Now I do not usually recommend non-profit organizations here, but this one I will. But only for the guys, its definitely not for the ladies, though I suppose if you are a lesbian you might like it but... Well its Tilted Forum Project. Its got the open source motto! Knowledge needs to be free, well with a slight twist, Porn needs to be free! Yes you have to sign up to get in, no it does not cost money. And if you are offended by women with more than their tops missing you might want to just pass this one by.

Ask and you shall receive. Kind of. So about 4 yesterday my boss asks me to setup their old Oracle DB server. I.e. take the box and get it on the network. Its an E4500 (Sun box), gotta boot it off the cdrom and and change the network settings, disable some process' and then voila. Not really much of a challenge, the hardest part was waiting for it to reboot, took about 2 minutes to get past the initial "Hardware Power On" message to actual bios messages. Then actual booting probably took a total of 5 minutes. Reminds me of a couple Data General servers I used to maintain... Of course that has not solved the doldrums, that gave me something to do for a bit that was slightly more interesting than the stuff I usually am doing lately. He mentioned installing Oracle, that could be fun, have not done that in a few years. And only got to do that on Solaris a couple of times...

I am in the work doldrums I believe. I feel totally useless here, as I dearly believe if my boss had the option he would get rid of me. Not because I stink, but because he would rather not have anything of which I support. I.e. if he could figure out a way to get rid of all of our clients, without losing their business, and getting rid of all our infrastructure, without having to do everything via paper, he would. When they do not include you in the future of the company it kind of lets you know that you are not wanted there. I suppose I should be happy he cannot get rid of me yet, he has 20+ servers that honestly he knows little about, that most everyone know very little about around here. If something goes wrong or is broken I am the sole thread that keeps the stuff from unraveling. Most people say that and then when the company has layoffs they go, and are amazed that the company moves on. I think I can honestly say that I think the company would move on, for about a week or two. At that point SOMETHING would cease to function that they could not figure out, or would not even know about. Only until they decide to stop supporting the customers the way we do now, or at all, can they really get rid of me. So that puts me in the wonderful position of being needed but unwanted.