Stuff and Nonsense

Looks like the late night work vacation is over for me.  I decided after the last couple of weeks, I wasn't going to do any late night work last week.  It was pretty awesome.  But there are things that need to get done, and at the moment I'm the only one capable to do them.  So that means it's time to get back to late night work. 

The major goal in all this is minimize the number of versions running in stores in order to make everything more consistent.  Which sounds like a great idea until you realize upgrading a store generally happens between 11 PM and 12 PM and runs until 2 or 3 in the AM.  And then people still call you at 8 in the morning, expecting you to show up and go fix their problems.  Mostly because there is a lack of communication about what is going on. 

Now this is all annoying in the interim, but there is a goal in mind.  The goal is to standardize things.  Standardization creates less work in the long run.  It's the short run that sucks.  The other problem is I'm the only one capable of doing this right now.  So I end up doing a lot of work.

This would be great if more responsibility ended up with more money, but that isn't always the case.  For the most part, more responsibility just means more responsibility and less free time.  That's neither here nor there, and is just something I have to work on. 

Of note, I'm still waking up at 5:45 in the morning.  And I made it to donate plasma this weekend.  So it looks like my body is getting to the point of saying "we've got to do this".  I finished reading ICND 1, and now I'm working on converting everything into MP3 and listening to it constantly.  I'm pretty good before chapter 10 or so, but there are 24 chapters in the book and there's a lot of info to pick up and learn in the next month.  I'm aiming for taking the CCENT test around February 15th.  

So what am I doing in the morning to get ready for it?  As I kick back and convert files, I'm listening to my recordings over and over again.  I'm also using an iPhone app called SubnetQuiz (free, FYI).   Once all the files are converted, I'm going to start working on vocabulary by typing out all the vocabulary words in each chapter.  The last ten days or so, I'm going to take the practice tests over and over again, hitting specific areas to refine.  All the while, I'm going to be spending time on SubnetQuiz practicing subnetting and making sure I get the right answers. 

So that's what the plan is for the next month.  Maybe by the end of February, it will be time to start working on the CCNA level material.  Yay!

iPhone 5

Ok...  so I no longer have a Droid.  I've now joined the Apple contingent with my iPhone 5.  I think that's what it is.  It's shiny.  It's fancy.  It was in an Otterbox before I had a chance to touch it.  I'm not sure what to think about it.  Let me be clear: I didn't buy the thing.  Every two years or so, my company changes phones.  I started out with a Blackberry, then I moved to a Droid.  Now I have an iPhone 5. 

I'm not sure what I think about it.  App wise, the iPhone has a better assortment and better integration with Microsoft Exchange Server than the Droid had.  I wrote something about task orientation versus time orientation.  During that post, I extolled the Droid for being a collection of applications that didn't fit very well together.  Microsoft Outlook 2010 has a lot more to do than just send and receive mail.  It has a calendar and task features.  I used to use the calendar extensively to plan my day, but that didn't work very well because my job is interrupt driven, not time driven.  I can try and plan things to happen at a certain time.  But rarely does it work that way. 

So I wanted to migrate to task driven days as opposed to time driven days.  That works better for me because if something breaks, my task list is still there to tell me what to do.  With time driven, if the even gets more than a couple of hours behind schedule it was a pain to find what I was supposed to do.  With the task list, I just map everything out and check them off as I finish them.  And if I get interrupted, I go about my day and eventually finish what was broken and get back to my list.

Now, I do have to say that most of the stuff you need for the iPhone is built directly into the iPhone.  With the Android platform, there wasn't much built in so you had to go hunting apps down the instant you get the phone.  The iPhone is a standalone platform without anything being added.  That's good in some aspects, and sucks in others.

I still don't like the way iTunes works, though.  Getting music on the iPhone is quite possibly the biggest headache I have to deal with.  And I listen to music a lot.  The other big complaint is the battery life generally sucks.  If I'm listening to music through my bluetooth headset, a Plantronics M50,    Plantronics 85550-01 M50-85550-01 Bluetooth Headset (Google Affiliate Ad)then I generally have to charge the iPhone at lunch if I expect it to make it through the day.  Which is kind of annoying.  But so far, everything else works pretty well. 

Security from salesmen

 Why do security break-ins occur?  From my experience, it's because someone didn't do their due diligence.  My company hasn't had a security breach.  But we've had plenty of knuckleheads that want us to open up a port on our corporate firewall so their widget can offer some amazing service.  As sales people, they are trained to say whatever it takes to make a sale.  Sometimes, the argument gets a little contentious.  

The problem is, I was trained by people who understood security as a life or death matter.  They took it all very seriously and fought to the ends to prevent anything whatsoever from happening.  The effects of a security breach are always dead friends.  Those people did their due diligence because they instinctively knew that seconds after the breach, someone would be trying to put a bullet in their brain.  In everything they do, they were absolute professionals. 

Transitioning to the civilian world, it's no different.  In a corporate environment, a breach can mean the death of your company.  Encrypted data, unencrypted data... it doesn't matter.  Perception is the truth, no matter how wrong the perception is.  If nothing else, my study of media has taught me that you don't have to be right, you just have to scream the loudest for the longest and put together the right graphics. 

With that in mind, I know that a breach would destroy the company I work for.  It wouldn't matter what really happened.  The entire town would know we were broken in to and no one would ever shop there again.  And I'd be out of a job.  And I'm especially not giving up my livelihood because some knucklehead salesman that doesn't even know what parts of IIS need configured on Windows Server 2008 to make their product work hasn't got the ability to think around corners. 

Luckily, I can think around corners.  And in the end, no ports have to be opened.  If it's an email campaign, then realize HTML email is just a series of links and formatting sent in plain text.  The interpretation layer of your web browser does all the real heavy lifting.  So why not store all those images that "required" me to open port 80 on my corporate firewall with our offsite, 3rd party webhosting service?

Open port 80?  Are you out of your mind?

Learn your job and learn how your equipment works before coming to me with a ridiculous request.  

Today (written about yesterday)

I almost didn't make it today.  I've been waking up faithfully at 5:45 AM to study for the CCENT.  I only have three chapters to go to make it through the entire book, and then its study and test, study and test for a few weeks before taking the actual test.  But this morning I didn't want to get up.  I got up, walked into the kitchen to turn off the alarm, and walked back to bed. 

And a part of my brain started screaming.  It said something like this, or maybe it was other motivational things.

What did you just do?  You got out of bed to turn off the alarm, set another alarm for an hour later, and you've walked all the way back to lay down. 

But I'm tired.

Wah.  Go cry to someone else.  Do you like what you've been getting?  Because if you do, rolling over and going back to sleep is great.  But I know you don't.  So get your lazy butt out of bed and go study.  If you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. 

But I'm tired.

And somewhere in all that, I got out of bed again, roughly ten minutes after I was supposed to.  So I got up, and I studied.  And I finished with chapter 21 and started chapter 22, two days ahead of schedule.  Maybe taking the CCENT in late February is a little late.  I might be able to move it up to early February or late January.  Why?  Because I finally got the part of my brain that advocates for me to wake up.  That tiny little piece of motivation that everyone is out screaming to find.  I finally beat mine into submission and got him speaking the correct language at the correct time.  It only took a good six or seven months. 

Task Orientation vs Time Orientation

Over the course of my reading, I think I've read a lot about time management.  Time management makes perfect sense.  If you properly manage your time, then you get more out of your day.  And that works great for people who aren't an in interrupt driven job.  That's my real problem.  I can plan my day as much as I want, but people do what people do, and machines break.  Depending on what breaks, I may not even make it to the office.  And for the plans I made?  Those go completely out the window.

So time management doesn't work for me.  I want it to work, but it doesn't.  If I could follow all the wonderful time management principles then my day would go wonderfully.  But task orientation works slightly differently.  Task orientation is more concerned with producing results than it is about following a clock.  And that fits more into what I want.  But no one ever talks about task orientation.  I think it's because time management focuses on the wrong thing and is based on the wrong ideas.

All my life, I've been expected to perform.  In order to perform, tasks have to be completed.  As skill grows, the time needed to complete the same task changes.  Time becomes less important than completion of task.  Should I spend more of my time trying to determine how long it will take me to finish a task, or should I just go from task to task as I finish each?  Initially, a problem may take me two hours.  Thirty or forty repetitions in, it only takes 30 minutes.  But everything is still based off the time it took to do the first.  So I finish four tasks of the project my phone kicks back and reminds of the second task of the four is now supposed to start.  My phone is time oriented and is behind what I need to do. 

So I think I came up with the Java project.  I need to make a program so I can work towards producing my task oriented day.  As each project or section is finished, that can be completed.  And whatever I prioritize next jumps into my list, constantly giving me a task to work on.  I think that's what I'll do.