Thank You, Next Window Please

There are many facets of my job that bore the living life out of me. It can be mundane and process oriented work. There aren't enough distractions in the world on some days to keep me from going crazy at what I do. It's amazing to me because there are people on my team that have done this forever and, from what I can tell, never intend to stop. They have found their comfort zone and their little corner of the world and they love it. For them, I am happy, but I still wonder, isn't there something more to look forward to?

Maybe its because I have been working my butt off for 3 years to get my bachelor's degree and want...nay, expect...to be rewarded with a better job. Maybe its just my nature to want different challenges. Does this mean I will never be happy in a job? Maybe...I guess I will know on my death bed how that one turns out. To give you an idea, here is what I do:

When a person is in need of an application, or applications, the local business service liason (BSL) puts in a request for the application to be installed. It is triaged to either a more automated group where things are done with minimal contact with the user or to the less automated group if a manual install (files copied from a server and installed manually) is needed or if the install causes a reboot or is a more advanced install. We work both groups, but focus mainly on the 2nd. Once the request is filed in one of the groups, I, or one of my team mates, will assign it to ourselves and then work the request. This involves contacting the user for a scheduled time to install or to get information such as the computer name or to find out if they work at home.

Once we have the situation scoped out, we perform the install. Sometimes its super easy and we just push an automated package, send a completion email and close the request 24 hours later. This is the majority of our requests. I often say that trained monkeys could do my job, but its more like a drive thru.

"Thank you for visiting CSS. What application(s) can we install for you today?"

"Oh? That comes with a side of Java and Oracle. Would you like Office Communicator with that?"

"Please give me your machine name and drive around."

Thats the gist. There are bumps in the road. Some installs have inherent problems that for some reason our counterparts in the desktop engineering group cannot fix, even though they get paid to fix such things. We have installs that would normally take 25 minutes take 4 hours because of varying and asundry issues. But the bulk of the requests follow the McDonald's model.

So with all that said, I am bored. I rarely am excited when doing my job. Is that part of it being a job? Should it be un-fun? Is it a me problem or simply the nature of the beast? Should I seek out challenges more than I do? I already try to take the harder installs when I can. I volunteer for things. I make an effort. Could I do more though?

I am very thankful that I have a job that requires so little and pays pretty well. I am not in a coal mine and I am not scaling building cleaning windows. Should I just be thankful and not look for more? I have tried to complain less...and don't see this as a complaint, just an idea of where I am right now at work.

What do you do to make your daily grind a little more bearable?

I Had to Have Some Sort of Outlet

After allowing my last couple blogs to go by the wayside, I have found the need to post something on occasion. The good thing here is that I am not paying for it, so if I don't post, I don't see the money as wasted. Its all a trick in my psyche to get me into blogging, I am sure. I can be dastardly with myself from time to time.

I see this being an outlet for some extra energy and the buzz that goes on in my mind. I had a whole post on why churches are horrible the other day and had nowhere to go. Hopefully I can remember it enough to get it on here in the next couple days. I will explain the phrase "churches are horrible" as well...being that I am a professing christian, that may come across the wrong way to the innocent bystander...Not that anyone is even reading this currently.

My previous forays were more aimed at music and movies and just constant incessant babbling about the little stupid things in the world that bug me...like Creed, Nickelback and other things I deem "gay". By gay I do not necessarily mean homosexual, but rather, stupid. Sorry to the gays for stealing their word to fit my purpose.

Thats it for now. I will be back as soon as I have some brain gas (copyright Greg Bunch) stored up and need to let it out.