Thursday, January 19, 2006
The Roads Don’t Love You
I’ll be spending next week in a far away county, working for a customer whose logo nobody can read.
When I was fresh faced and lovely, I sort of looked forward to trips like this, what with travel broadening the mind and all that, and I imagined it would be interesting to see how companies operated elsewhere. Perhaps systems administrators outside the PR postal district would be brimming with vitality and joie de vivre. Without the scariness or upheaval of handing in my notice and relocating, these visits to customer sites might - just possibly - reveal a tantalising sneak preview of a brighter, more sexy life awaiting me in, say, West Bromwich, or Wrexham, or Warrington and Runcorn. All I had to do was turn up and take a peep.
Nowadays, obviously, I’m sour faced and curmudgeonly and all too familiar with the disappointing truth that a roomful of Unix servers in Glasgow or Swansea is not much different from the one I know here in Preston. But I still live in hope that somewhere in the world there are systems administrators who are fun to be around. Who knows? Maybe next week is when I’ll eventually find them.
This morning Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, took a minute in her hectic schedule to remove her face from “You?! A Manager??!” - million selling prequel to the equally successful “No, Really. You?! A Manager??!” - to ask if I’d got my training manuals written, printed out and spiral bound in the funky if rather frightening spiral binding machine. It transpires I’ll be providing a week’s training, which is of course news to me.
I said “A window cleaner is nothing without a bucket,” and scuttled back to my desk to try and think up some interesting questions.
When I was fresh faced and lovely, I sort of looked forward to trips like this, what with travel broadening the mind and all that, and I imagined it would be interesting to see how companies operated elsewhere. Perhaps systems administrators outside the PR postal district would be brimming with vitality and joie de vivre. Without the scariness or upheaval of handing in my notice and relocating, these visits to customer sites might - just possibly - reveal a tantalising sneak preview of a brighter, more sexy life awaiting me in, say, West Bromwich, or Wrexham, or Warrington and Runcorn. All I had to do was turn up and take a peep.
Nowadays, obviously, I’m sour faced and curmudgeonly and all too familiar with the disappointing truth that a roomful of Unix servers in Glasgow or Swansea is not much different from the one I know here in Preston. But I still live in hope that somewhere in the world there are systems administrators who are fun to be around. Who knows? Maybe next week is when I’ll eventually find them.
This morning Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, took a minute in her hectic schedule to remove her face from “You?! A Manager??!” - million selling prequel to the equally successful “No, Really. You?! A Manager??!” - to ask if I’d got my training manuals written, printed out and spiral bound in the funky if rather frightening spiral binding machine. It transpires I’ll be providing a week’s training, which is of course news to me.
I said “A window cleaner is nothing without a bucket,” and scuttled back to my desk to try and think up some interesting questions.

It kind of goes without saying, but this is my blog. I own it. Slightly daft MP3 disclaimer: All MP3's are posted here for a limited time only. Music is not posted here with the intention to profit or violate copyright. In the unlikely event that you are the creator or copyright owner of a song published on this site and you want it to be removed, let me know.