Working late...

[Falco Girgis]

Yet again. We had a Christmas party today, and I stayed late along with everybody else. I need to have some technical document revised by 6:00AM tomorrow for some meeting regarding it (that I'm not attending). You gotta love how the co-ops do the work of the actual engineers without the pay.

But yeah, it's dark and lonely in my cubicle. I have the forums to keep me company. Oh, and I burn a CD a week to listen to. This week's is Guns N Roses. "We don't need your civiiiiil waaaa-ooo--aaar!!"

[Andy K.]

Yeah I feel for you. When I worked IT for a telecommunications company they'd page me at like 3am for an open support ticket, and then I'd have to go in and fix shit that any moron could fix in 15 minutes, so I'd just stay there and sleep in my little office. Workplaces are creepy at night

Also, that causes some relationship problems. I had to deal with my crazy ex because she thought I was going out to see another girl, oy vey.

[Trask]

I once got paged at like 11pm because some new guy on the help desk thought that I should be called when an "urgent" order for a mouse came through the queue. I rather enjoyed my boss's sarcastic email to his boss the next day regarding the proper circumstances on when we should be paged.

[Andy K.]

I once got paged at like 11pm because some new guy on the help desk thought that I should be called when an "urgent" order for a mouse came through the queue. I rather enjoyed my boss's sarcastic email to his boss the next day regarding the proper circumstances on when we should be paged.

If only I would've had that kind of boss... You wouldn't believe what I have had to go in for. Or maybe you could, if such an experience has happened to you

[Trask]

Can you mention what you've had to go in for?

[Andy K.]

A whole assortment of things, such as: rebooting the server, settings that got changed so I had to reconfigure something, network going down, rebooting machines, replacing parts, replacing phones, etc.

They hired a lot of teenagers and stuff to do calling and data entry. Most those kids I don't think were barely out of high school, and had very little troubleshooting experience. Though, I might be glad that they didn't because they'd go into something and mess it up more and cause me more work.

[Trask]

I hear you on some of those calls... there are 2 things that I am grateful for in my 5 years as a professional tech 1.) completely avoided doing any bit of Help Desk work 2.) Never had to work on phones/phone systems. I don't know the first thing about fixing a phone and that's fine by me.

The particular site I work in houses most of the business deals/meetings/VPs/VIPs so I'm used to getting tickets for things that need fixed 10mins before they called in a ticket. It's not that bad though, just keeps you on your toes. I'm grateful that I don't have to work at this one splinter site though, the client my company works for is in the nuclear energy field and this one site actually has a leaky reactor, so they had to cutoff half of the one building.

That being said, aside from some college interns and the occasional high school science fair in the lobby, we don't work with anyone that's under 24 usually, so no punk kids messing things up. :D

[Falco Girgis]

I can talk about it--if I want my clearance revoked and my source of income terminated. XD

[Trask]

Well, when you release the Extreme Deluxe Limited Edition of ES complete with AiGD in full Blu-ray format and a port of the game to every console from the Commodore64 to PS3, you can then rest easy, kick back, and never work again.

I would love to know more of what you do at the DoD, but yeah, I understand the NDA... the tech company that I work for actually does contract work with the DoD, which is a completely account from where I'm working, but I see the job postings all the time.

[Andy K.]

pfft Releasing on the Dreamcast is the best out of all those. The Dreamcast is EVERY system that it needs to be on.

I'm saying this and I loooove the C64. My myspace is even laid out like a C64

[Trask]

I'm probably going to offend at least someone on this board with this but: I never played anything with a C64. I've heard of it, I know of a bunch of h4x that people do with it, it reminds me of the Dreamcast in some respects to... not dying. :D My fiancee got me a Dreamcast for Christmas, so I'm learning all the greatness that is Dreamcast, I'm going to have to do something with a C64 emulator, just to try it.

[Moosader]

I haven't heard or seen much at all with the C64, but I have a secret love for MSX things.
I probably won't have to work "late" until tax season, though that is coming up. I could really use the extra hours.

AFAIK, there's nothing I can do that anyone else can't, but I can process like the building were on fire.
Last weekend, the kids working Saturday decided to leave... oh... TWO HUNDRED ITEMS in the queue to be rolled over to Sunday. Counting what we got Sunday plus the rollover, we had 456 when I got to work that morning.

Five hour shift (300 min), I processed 279 items.

I check everyone's records, and almost nobody who works in my department processed over 100 things in their shift, EVER. Nobody did on Sunday, either.

Of course on the other side, for those days where there are only 150 items in the morning, I have a program I made to help me calculate how much time to spend on each item so it stretches out so I get my full 5 hours instead of going home early.
So far, worked 3 times I've used it, having only about 10 items to spare by the end of my shift. 8D

[Andy K.]

Moosader

I've done a bit of data entry before for an insurance company and drug testing company. So I know exactly what you're going through. I would've stayed there longer if they'd pay more and didn't suck total balls.

[Falco Girgis]

So guess where I am at 5:30AM. Yep, work.

Last one out, first one in. Though I will admit that it will be nice to go home at like 1:30 today. I just hate to be the one who has to get off his ass and make the first pot of coffee.

On the flip side of not being able to talk about what I do, I get a great reaction from the females at least.

"So what d you do for the government?"
"I can't tell you. It's classified, baby."
"oOoOoOh, sexy. Lets have sex."

That's totally exactly how it goes.

[Kleithap]

So guess where I am at 5:30AM. Yep, work.

Last one out, first one in. Though I will admit that it will be nice to go home at like 1:30 today. I just hate to be the one who has to get off his ass and make the first pot of coffee.

On the flip side of not being able to talk about what I do, I get a great reaction from the females at least.

"So what d you do for the government?"
"I can't tell you. It's classified, baby."
"oOoOoOh, sexy. Lets have sex."

That's totally exactly how it goes.

My name is Girgis....Falco Girgis