I dislike training
Topic: Work
Let me rephrase. I dislike training brand new employees. Like I liked training Kim and Leigh to be leads but I'm not a huge fan of training new employees.

Monday I started training Paula for the Service Desk. She had previously been Vera's assistant and also worked as operator. So on Monday, since she was staying from 9-5, we went through the training manual. All of it. Oy. When it got busy, we also answered calls. More like I answered and she listened in. Needless to say, my throat was very sore come 2:30 or so. Fortunately, I skipped my lunch and got off at 4 so I got some rest from 3-4. But yes, throat hurt a lot and my voice became scratchy.

Yesterday we had it where I answered the calls and Paula filled out the Remedy tickets. Mainly they were students who tried to activate their accouts too early. I would really like to hurt whomever refuses to listen to us the past 2 years about sending that email about the account being ready the day after the student registers. It takes 2 days to be created. So they activate them too early which just causes a bigger mess. Anywho, it went pretty well.

Today, I had Paula answer the calls and I just listened in. A couple "huh?" things like PINs acting weird and Illustrator refusing to save a file but mainly the same account activation crap. You know, I didn't even realize that I needed to activate my account until I moved into the dorms. But it was all different back then. Anyway, I was pretty bored all day. Paula has the account activation questions down so I just helped her on the other half of the calls. I even let her answer by herself for the last 45 minutes while I did some lead stuff on Leigh's computer.

Tomorrow I had planned on letting her answer calls on her own but we're actually full on Thursdays. Paula would be the 5th person on at 9am and our 5th station is inoperable since it has no network connection. The port was used for the new Dell printer. The computer next to the operator station has a network connection but no phone next to it. Not to mention that that computer is extremely slow. I talked to Jim about it, and he said that he needed to work up a new schedule anyway. I offered to start reducing my hours to allow time for others to pick up more to cover me once I leave and for Paula and Jen to get more time. Jim said that quite the contrary he wanted Paula and Jen to get as much of me as possible and that for the meantime I'll just listen in to Paula tomorrow.

So bringing my leisure book tomorrow.

A first
Topic: Work
I called the Service Desk, or rather Operations, to report a problem. The MyCalPoly Portal wouldn't come up for me. As I tested it on IE and checked System Status, I debated calling 7000 and reporting it. I mean I 'm sure they would have been aware but just in case....

So I called and it turns out it was down...and so was everything else. Apparently there was a big power outage over there and they were bringing systems back up but the Portal wasn't one that was up yet.

Boy that was weird.

The Stupidity of Some People
Now Playing: "Cold Hearted" by Paula Abdul on "Forever Your Girl"
Topic: Work
Work this morning was very busy for two reasons.

1) Something went wrong with RAIN, a dial-up service that offers a special deal to Cal Poly students, faculty and staff. Other than that, there is NO affliation with Cal Poly yet people felt the need to call us. We gave them the number we had for RAIN (okay, for one guy Zach accidentally transposed the last digits but the guy was just annoying, he called 5 times) but when they couldn't get through, they called us again. We had to try to calmly explain that, contrary to what they think, we are NOT RAIN tech support and have no idea what happens with their system. After a few distinct calls about it, we tried to get a hold of RAIN and had problems but eventually we got through and they said "yeah, we're having problems, the users need to talk to us to switch their dial-up number." Ironically the calls pretty much stopped after that. I remember when the modem pool was first shut down and pretty much all faculty and staff on it went to RAIN because it was free the first year for them and then the cheapest after that. They called us then too to setup their computer to connect to RAIN. We even had a RAIN installation guide at some point because the RAIN tech support sucked so much. Doesn't mean that it was our a responsibility though. Problems with Cal Poly servers or on a Cal Poly owned machine? Call Cal Poly. Problems with RAIN on a home machine? Call RAIN!

2) The main reason it was busy this morning was because of an e-mail virus outbreak. We're not sure why our gateway wasn't stripping the messages of their attachments but some went through. But really, people. If you get 5 messages, each claiming to be from a different sender with different yet similiar subjects all saying that you're account was suspended and to see the attachment for more info, do you HONESTLY think that they are legitimate e-mails? Come on! a) We'd never send you 5 messages in 5 minutes from 5 different addresses saying your account was already suspended; b) If we were to send such a message, it would have been from OpenMail Administrator; c) and it would have contained all pertinant information in the message, not in an attachment; d) we give notification that your account is to be frozen a good 2 weeks before it done so. e) If your account was suspended/locked/deleted, how do you login to read that message?
Fortunately of all the people calling asking about those messages, only about 3 of them were stupid enough to open the attachment. And that's not including my roommate who asked me when I got home. Lucky for everyone else working today, as I was leaving Terri gave us the update that the gateway should be stripping the messages of the virus now. *shakes head* Some people....ARGGGGH!

Review
Now Playing: "Carry On" by Jennifer Cihi on "Sailor Moon"
Topic: Work
Hey look! A positive work post! *gasp!*

Terri and Jim gave me my review today. I won't go into all the details publicly though. Basically nothing but goods things they had to say about me, they're very pleased with my work and did reward me for it and offered to write raving references. And knowing that I'm doing a good job pleases me :-D. So everyone is pleased. When I told my mom about the review, she suggested that I definitely ask if I can work there for the 6 months after I graduate since if I'm going to grad school, it wouldn't start until the following Fall anyway. I think I'll take her up on that suggestion and ask Terri tomorrow morning.

Things have just been looking for me haven't they? Speaking of things looking up, I decided that since the Yosemite trip was cancelled and I'm no longer committed to doing anything that Saturday that I would have a dinner party with my friends in celebration that I now have more free time to spend with them. (We'll ignore the fact that I couldn't do this weekend because I'm too busy with 2 car washes and a softball game). It will be good. Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to be making aside from chicken....

I'll take a morning like today any day
Now Playing: "Extraordinary" by Liz Phair on "Liz Phair"
Topic: Work
Today at work it was so dead it was so wonderful. I came in and there weren't any voicemails. I check the Remedy queue and there was nothing to work on except for possible user notification for a guy in Iraq so wasn't really sure about that one. I checked e-mail and there were only 3 messages: 2 delivery failures, 1 auto-reply from Tonia. During my hour and a half, there was one phone call and two wireless requests which came at the same time just before I got off. When I talked to Bridget later at the gym, she said that apparently it stayed dead today. She said she went in around 3 to check her e-mail and the people there said it had also been dead. The deadness allowed me to update the UNIX FAQ that Terri asked me to do last week.

Now if it can only be that dead tomorrow afternoon....

So glad I'm not at work right now
Now Playing: "Different People" by No Doubt on "Tragic Kingdom"
Topic: Work
The e-mail server goes down from 6am today until noon for regular maintanence. Usually though it's back up by 10. It's still not up so I go to http://systemstatus.calpoly.edu to see what's up except that page won't load. No error messages just keeps attempting to load but nothing happens. For some reason I find this very amusing.

Work: By the Numbers
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "Down Once More-Track Down This Murderer" by Original London Cast on "The Phantom of the Opera"
Topic: Work
Resolved/Closed Remedy Cases:
Farhan*-17
Anthony*-56
Zach*-75
Leigh*-115
Peter*-126
Michelle*-185
Mike*-193
Annie-303
Ronak-575
Dan-614
Kim-640
Jeff-737
Matt-1,228
Bridget-1,811
Brandon-2,005
Mandy-3,241

Time Started at Service Desk (earliest to latest with exception to before me people)(people marked with * above started within this academic year)
Sometime before me: Bridget, Brandon, Jeff
January-Feburary 2003: Me, Dan, Annie
March-April 2003: Ronak, Kim
April-May 2004: Matt
September 2004: Leigh, Peter, Michelle, Anthony
Feburary 2005: Zach, Farhan


Granted some of these people left for co-ops or were not here over summer but some of those numbers are utterly pathetic. Okay, I fully admit that Remedy tickets can be a pain to fill out but for Annie to have only resolved 303 documented cases in over 2 years? That is ridiculous! I even noticed that a ticket she did resolve (*gasp!*) was reopened and therefore automatically assigned to her. I wonder if she knows it. I doubt it. I wonder why she gets under my skin so much. Dan used to do that. I guess because I haven't worked with him in a while and now work every day with Annie. Also, Dan's work ethic has picked up a little bit once he was passed over for promotion this summer. But is kind of nice to know that there's proof that I do do my job.

(BTW, is anyone keeping track of how many times I complain about this? ;-P)

Mood:  surprised
Now Playing: Math Lounge background noise
Topic: Work
I think I almost died of shock this morning. Not only did someone beat me to work this morning (second time this quarter, Michelle was first on a Wednesday a few weeks ago), but it was Annie who did so. Annie, who normally walks in around 8:18, was there at work, working at 8am. I was very tempted to ask her "what are you doing in so early?" but I decided to go with the less insulting version of "what time did you get here?" Apparently she's going south this weekend and had to be dropped off on campus by someone who had an early class so she had been on campus since 7:30 but had only been at work for like 10 minutes.

I'm so glad work has finally settled down. We are finally at the point where there are no voicemails, no e-mails in our inbox and only 6 items in the queue all pending, mainly for user action. We were finally able to get around to creating a new FAQ for the Oracle Calendar system (it's been in effect for 2 weeks now), and Terri has been able to catch up on her account stuff. And I got to leave on time again! Well, I did stay for a few minutes to print out my project proposal and to talk to Matt and Leigh for a bit.

Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: "Enjoy The Silence" by Tori Amos on "Strange Little Girl"
Topic: Work
I walked into the Math Lounge at 10:05am this morning.

Do you have any idea what that means?

It means that I acutally left work on-time for the first time this quarter under normal circumstances! (Last week I left at 10:05 (relatively on-time) because I was desperately in need of studying for test in 3 hours). Not only did I leave on time, but I was actually putting my headset away a whole minute early!

Do you know what that means?

It means there was nothing for me to work on! It took 4 weeks but work has finally calmed down! And thanks to Bridget, our queue is fantastically small at the moment. I actually had moments today where I just got to relax and immediately reach for the phone when it rang. Because I even checked voicemail and e-mail (both accounts) and there was nothing new. It was so wonderful!

Hopefully tomorrow will be just as quiet. Working 4 less hours should help in that for me.

(Hahaha! I just noticed the music title. How appropriate!)

Changes to the system
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "Infest" by Papa Roach on "Infest"
Topic: Work
Perhaps I'm rare in this thinking, but if I received three notices of some system I use constantly was being changed, I would read the notice over carefully and pay special attention to part of how it would affect me.

Cal Poly's calendar server was upgraded over the weekend to the Oracle system. The PolyComm sent out a few e-mail notices of when this was going to change and how it would affect the users directly. Somehow most of the people who got those e-mails read the part about the conversion and having to change their password (which wasn't necessarily true by the way) but missed the part about the username changing from their full name to their e-mail address.

This made work very crazy this morning. Apparently, the staff members came in early and started fielding calls around 7am or so. Jim asked Matt to come in and help in the morning and Matt was already helping someone at the window when I came in. Good thing Jim asked him to come in because Michelle overslept until like 8:40 and then had class at 9. Annie arrived at her usual time of 8:18ish. When I got in, I glanced over the documentation at the workstation quickly (I had read it the night before when Terri sent an e-mail to all of us) and then decided to check voicemail. There was already like 10 messages when I tried to check it. I say tried because I kept having to hang up in the middle of the first message to answer the phone. On my third attempt, there were 20 messages but I was able to get through the first one. I decided to do a "one message at a time" appoach instead of trying to listen through all of the messages at once. A few of the people I called back either kept calling and got through and fixed their problem or called someone else and figured it out.

I made one attempt at looking at the Remedy queue but that was at like 10:45 and then the phone rang. I did notice that we had 40+ tickets in there though. At least 5 of which were submitted by users as "medium" priority with log in problems. And the forms and account info that was in the bin? Forget, I didn't even get a chance to really look. I noticed some password management for account creation in the queue but I just couldn't get to them. I did do some forms but they were hand delivered or came fresh off the fax.

Add on top of all of this a stuffy nose, a cough and a sore throat. Yeah talking on the phone for 3 hours is not a smart thing to do. And had it been almost any other day, I probably could have asked the other people there if they could get the phone first. Thank goodness for cough drops. Hopefuly tomorrow all this calendar craziness will die down and we can work on all the e-mails we undoubtably received today but just couldn't get to and work through the queue. And hopefully my throat will feel better. *sigh* Hopefully.