Simply Charmed

I first mentioned my new position back in October. I’ve had a few days to do the job on my own, and I thought it might be interesting to give you a peek into my average night at work.

My shift starts at 7pm, but I usually come in about half an hour early so I can chat with the person I’m relieving. I get a rundown of any outages or issues that have occurred, what the call volume was like, and general idea of what happened during the day.

The first thing I do is check my work email, look to see if there are any new tickets to be addressed. Go through any tickets I currently own. For the next couple of hours I work any unowned tickets, reply to emails, close spam tickets.

I have to check our Colo¹ temp once an hour. There are 10 different thermometers to check.

For the next several hours I just wait for tickets to come in. Sometimes an alarm will go off, and I have to investigate what caused it. Usually though whatever network is having a problem it clears itself up. If it doesn’t after about 10 minutes, I make a ticket, and then call the person who has to fix it.

Towards the end of my shift I go through all open tickets and report which ones need to be called, and by what level tech should handle it. Any ticket that I create, close, or work also has to be reported. I also have to report the Colo temp as well. Each shift does this at the end of their shift.

Occasionally Colo customers come in and work on their equipment. Or the IT department comes in to do some scheduled maintenance.

Usually though most nights are fairly quiet. I work a 12 hour shift and there are alot of dull times. I fill my nights by working on the website, visiting other blogs. Sometimes I even watch movies online.

About twenty minutes before the end of my shift I have to change the back up tapes for one of our customers, and email in my report. The last bit is just talking to the person who relieves me about what happened during my shift.

That’s pretty much my general day. So what’s your day at work like?

1. Colocation is a type of data center where multiple customers locate network, server and storage gear and interconnect to a variety of telecommunications and other network service provider(s) with a minimum of cost and complexity. Thanks Wikipedia. [↩]

For those of us that are celebrating I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. If anyone is traveling this holiday please be safe.

I’ll be at work til 3pm, and then after that I’m going to my mom’s. So I’ll be away for the rest of the day. Gobble Gobble!

I’m being lazy today. I’ll start returning comments tomorrow. I cleared out my Google Reader cause I had like over 300 to read and I just didn’t feel like doing it. Again have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

So Friday was a fun day before I actually had to go into work. You’ll have to forgive me if this post is a bit scattered, I’ve been up for almost 24 hours now, and I’m a bit tired.

I got an update on my right wrist tattoo. It just didn’t have quite the pop that I imagined. So I had Will thicken out the lines, and add some green shading. He also did some touch up work on 2 other of my tattoos.

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Each day when I get online I do the same thing pretty much every time, and in the same order. The first thing I do is check my Yahoo! mail, and then my work email. I’ll go check my MySpace page and see if there is anything new in there.

The next thing I do is open up 3 tabs, my website, my domain email, and my Wordpress. I look for new comments that have been automatically approved, then I check my email for one’s that have been held for moderation. Once I’ve approved everything I then respond to my comments.

Once I’ve done all that I’ll either write a new Post, or do a little tweaking. If I don’t have either of those to do I check my Google Reader for new posts. I rarely deviant from this little routine. I guess there is comfort in consistency. So I was just wondering, what about the rest of you, what’s your routine?

Question: Do you have any routine? Do you check the same things every time you log on. Do you have to do it in a specific order, or do just do it as you think of it?

As you can see I have a new layout. There were just some things about the other one that was irking me. I still have some tweaking to do with colors, and title sizes, but it’s mostly done. Right now Quick Updates doesn’t show on the main page, but will show up on any other page.

I’ll be working on getting all this fixed within the next couple of days. I haven’t had a chance to respond to last post comments, but don’t worry I’ll get to you. I’ve got a couple of posts in mind that I’m going to write about. So expect to see those in the next day or so. Please let me know what you think of the new theme.

November 18th, 2008 Edit: Apparently the new layout I had put up caused problems. Nobody could comment on the site. I’m going to be looking into this issue, so please stick with me. I’ve tested this layout and it does allow for comments.

November 18th, 2008 Edit: I’m still not sure what’s causing the problem, but I’ve found a temporary fix to it. It’ll require some more tweaking, but at least the comments work now. If anyone else has problems please let me know! I also figured out what was causing the issue with the Quick Updates.

Personally I consider my self domestically challenged. My cooking skills are non existent. If I can’t cook it on the stove top in 20 minutes, or toss it in the microwave, I’m not eating. I really do want to learn, but I just don’t have the time, money, or energy to learn cooking.

I do love reading cooking blogs. When I have the time I want to make myself a little collection of the recipes I find. If anyone has a recommendation of a cooking blog they like let me know! I’m really looking for blogs that have lots of personality, not just recipes.

One of my favorite things to do is spend time with my mom. Over the years we’ve developed a wonderful friendship, one that I wouldn’t give up for anything. Well yesterday she sent me a text around 4 am telling me to call when I was up. I happened to still be up so I called her back. I ended up driving to her house around 4:30 in the morning to hang out for the day. One of the best things about going over to my mom’s is she’s always got something for me.

Since I’m working 3rd shift I was in dire need of some warm fuzzies as I like to call them. I also decided that I needed *gasp* a bigger purse. I’ve recently started carrying one around. I’ve realized that as a female it’s practically a necessity to have a purse. *bangs head against desk* I’m turning into a girl *ack*.

So my mom took me shopping and I got some pretty cute stuff. The black bag with the peace sign is my new purse. It’s really simple, just one big whole. No compartments, just a pocket on the inside for the small stuff.

The pink bag says Bridesmaid on it. My mom got it for me for my sister’s wedding. She says it’ for like keeping my shoes and my bra, and anything else together on the day of so I won’t lose anything.

I also got a really soft and warm blue scarf; two pairs of fuzzy gloves that are just amazingly warm. Mom also picked out a really cute coffee mug, on one side it says, “Life Is Good”, and on the other, “Do what you like. Like what you do.” Which totally epitomizes what my new shift is about.

She also sent me home with a pair of shoes, some long sleeve shirts, a hoodie and some fuzzy socks (which who doesn’t love fuzzy socks.) She also sent home some food home with me. I love shopping and Rent’s Grocery store.

So I got two new tattoos today. I have to first give props to my tattoo artist Will. He did an amazing job. Alright so these make tats number 5 and 6. The first two photos are on the left wrist, and the second set of two is on my right wrist.

I’ll have more information about the individual tattoos later on tonight. It’s a bit difficult to type right now. I have to hunch my wrists up, and they are a bit swollen.

So I’m going to be mapping out some more ideas for the Help Desk Section. It’s really going to make it a lot better. More professional even.

Tonight is my first night in the new position. It’s awesome. I haven’t had to talk to one customer, answer a single questions. I’ve just been monitoring the servers and hanging out with the technician I’ll be replacing. I’m really excited. I don’t have much else to post right now, so I’m just gonna be working on the scenes in the background. I’ve got all night so I might have some new content up.

Okay so not an odd title, but the story behind it is a bit funny. Here in Alabama there are a lot of hunters (like many other places I would imagine.) But the funny thing is, there is a car dealership that’s advertising an interesting mix.

Buy a truck; get a 12 gauge shotgun free!

Am I the only one that finds that a little odd? Some coworkers of mine were discussing this last night and the only thing we can come with for an excuse is, “Only in Alabama, and maybe Texas too!” So this leads me to wonder, what other odd combinations are people trying to sell together. Personally I would like a truck, and if I were to get one… well they can just keep the shotgun.

Question: Have you seen any weird advertisements in your area lately? What were they? Is it something that you, yourself would be interested in getting?

Well it’s November already, and for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, things are getting colder. It’s getting closer to the end of the year. I know many of us are looking forward to Thanksgiving. I know I am. We all know it as the one time a year that we can stuff our face, and nobody says anything. I know my sister is just itching for deep fried Turkey (it’s kind of a southern thing.)

While I know many of you visitors don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, in the Internet world November signifies another important event. That’s right boys and girls NaNoWriMo is back. I want to wish everyone out there participating good luck, and stick with it.

I also want to take this opportunity to plug a wonderful friend Todd who is participating this year. Todd and I have been friends for about 6 or 7 years. He’s a wonderful man, and a very cherished friend. Please visit his site, and wish him luck as well. So again, good luck to him, and everyone else that is participating.

So who else out there is participating. If you aren’t what are your thoughts on those that are?