Anyone who has been reading my blog (poor you) will know I'm changing jobs. Well I've learned a another valuable lesson. Don't save your holidays up when you want to leave, so you can have a quick break.
The Thursday just gone my boss called me in after I had been doing abit of delicate work on the system (the sort you don't want to break off half way through).
Anyway he decides it is time we had a clean break, the company needs to learn to work without me. So he offers (like I going to argue with him) to put me on garden leave. I try to not look too happy, but if that's what he wants, I was quite willing to work my notice and I made that point quite clear.
So I've spent the last two working days at home, not in the garden but working around the house. It's been a dream, I only feel slightly aggrieved that about 7 days of this garden leave is actually my own.
To add to this I met a (ex-)colleague for lunch the next day. Apparently it was sort of planned, but has left him somewhat in the lurch, I could not see the urgency he had in a few of the system changes, until you take into account I was the one that really know them.
My boss also had slagged me off afterwards to a couple of the managers, among other things calling me "unprofessional". Of all the things to level at me this I have to say is the strangest, and it makes me truly glad not to be there anymore.
I feel sorry for the rest of them having to cope with his ever more erratic Jekyll and Hyde personality.
ttfn
Tuesday 23 October 2007
Thursday 11 October 2007
Counting down the days
Well I'm finally off. Handed my notice in on monday, finally chose which of the lucky companies get to employ me.
Somewhat of a relief it's been hard with only a couple of people knowing. For some reason it's been a bit of a shock to a number of people, I must have been hiding my discontent more than I knew.
Now comes the interesting bits. When you leave you get the obvious questions of why. So far I've managed a number of answers and I think I've got away with it. It's amazing what fun it can be thinking of bizarre reasons and seeing if you colleagues take it.
The other interesting observation is those colleagues who become abit envious. They seem to be the ones who are most interested in knowing where you're going, maybe if you could give them a shoe-in to whereever you are going.
I suspect another would like to leave, and I'm certain for sure another is going to go while the going is hot.
Also interesting the ones that seem totally disinterested, almost seem to avoid me. Perhaps they wish to distance themselves from me as regards to the view from management. They also seem to be the ones on the cushiest wages.
Oh well off for a drink
Somewhat of a relief it's been hard with only a couple of people knowing. For some reason it's been a bit of a shock to a number of people, I must have been hiding my discontent more than I knew.
Now comes the interesting bits. When you leave you get the obvious questions of why. So far I've managed a number of answers and I think I've got away with it. It's amazing what fun it can be thinking of bizarre reasons and seeing if you colleagues take it.
The other interesting observation is those colleagues who become abit envious. They seem to be the ones who are most interested in knowing where you're going, maybe if you could give them a shoe-in to whereever you are going.
I suspect another would like to leave, and I'm certain for sure another is going to go while the going is hot.
Also interesting the ones that seem totally disinterested, almost seem to avoid me. Perhaps they wish to distance themselves from me as regards to the view from management. They also seem to be the ones on the cushiest wages.
Oh well off for a drink
Thursday 4 October 2007
Don't believe the lights
Or why flashing lights don't always prove things are working
Just spend an inordinate amount of time today trying to get a fairly simply device working.
A wireless AP from 3Com, which is also now out of production, it takes wireless packets and drops them onto your LAN. Or so I believed.
Now with corporate data sensitivity the way it is, I would not want someone being either able to sniff or abuse our network. So I took the usual security precautions.
Choosing the strongest level of encryption and authentication I could, that was compatible with the wireless cards we use and the aforementioned AP.
However, it seems that one, the other or both seem to have taken different interpretations of the standards. It wasted some of my colleagues time, and alot of mine.
I got to the point were I almost believed the thing was broken (it was handed over from a director who had dubious use from it).
I could connect to the wireless network, but be damned if I could pass traffic. Now the better among you will spot my error, something I should have thought of alot earlier.
This was all until I decided to take off all encryption and authentication and provided full open access.
Now before you security guru's start screaming, I had taken a number of precautions. First of all segmenting it off from the main network, even onto it's own iNet feed.
I now could prove that despite the choices, the encryption was not working.
I then spent a further deal of time trying to find out which combinations actually worked. Despite the advanced nature of both, we've ended up back with no better than a shared key and 128bit WEP.
It'll keep the script kiddies out, but it's looking somewhat less secure than I intended.
So beware of vendors bearing certificates of conformity.
ttfn
Just spend an inordinate amount of time today trying to get a fairly simply device working.
A wireless AP from 3Com, which is also now out of production, it takes wireless packets and drops them onto your LAN. Or so I believed.
Now with corporate data sensitivity the way it is, I would not want someone being either able to sniff or abuse our network. So I took the usual security precautions.
Choosing the strongest level of encryption and authentication I could, that was compatible with the wireless cards we use and the aforementioned AP.
However, it seems that one, the other or both seem to have taken different interpretations of the standards. It wasted some of my colleagues time, and alot of mine.
I got to the point were I almost believed the thing was broken (it was handed over from a director who had dubious use from it).
I could connect to the wireless network, but be damned if I could pass traffic. Now the better among you will spot my error, something I should have thought of alot earlier.
This was all until I decided to take off all encryption and authentication and provided full open access.
Now before you security guru's start screaming, I had taken a number of precautions. First of all segmenting it off from the main network, even onto it's own iNet feed.
I now could prove that despite the choices, the encryption was not working.
I then spent a further deal of time trying to find out which combinations actually worked. Despite the advanced nature of both, we've ended up back with no better than a shared key and 128bit WEP.
It'll keep the script kiddies out, but it's looking somewhat less secure than I intended.
So beware of vendors bearing certificates of conformity.
ttfn
Wednesday 3 October 2007
Ranking your page
Geting your page ranked is somewhat difficult, I've found. Not the blog, but my little site.
I played a game years back, called virtual poohsticks. Fun little thing that doesn't take up too much time at work, and you can beat your friends at.
Effectively you get a free account write a stick description and play in a game against 10 others.
The site does something complicated (to do with emails I believe) and the first to reappear from under the virtual bridge is the winner. Simple great fun. It also had a chat room that you could hurl daftness at fellow poohstickers.
One of the main features of the site was "fruiting" a method whereby children were saved from profanity by the site replacing inappropriate words with names of fruit.
Anyway a few years back it simply stopped working. Eventually I decided to do something similar myself. The basics are there at the moment, just needs a few more bits of candy to keep the kiddies interest.
I could do with some encouragement, as I seem to be the only one to have found it.
The site is http://poohsticks.crowsfoot.net I'd love a few links and some assistance in where to go with the site.
Things have kind of ground to a halt while I look for a new job, but hopefully a few things will be added soonish.
ttfn
I played a game years back, called virtual poohsticks. Fun little thing that doesn't take up too much time at work, and you can beat your friends at.
Effectively you get a free account write a stick description and play in a game against 10 others.
The site does something complicated (to do with emails I believe) and the first to reappear from under the virtual bridge is the winner. Simple great fun. It also had a chat room that you could hurl daftness at fellow poohstickers.
One of the main features of the site was "fruiting" a method whereby children were saved from profanity by the site replacing inappropriate words with names of fruit.
Anyway a few years back it simply stopped working. Eventually I decided to do something similar myself. The basics are there at the moment, just needs a few more bits of candy to keep the kiddies interest.
I could do with some encouragement, as I seem to be the only one to have found it.
The site is http://poohsticks.crowsfoot.net I'd love a few links and some assistance in where to go with the site.
Things have kind of ground to a halt while I look for a new job, but hopefully a few things will be added soonish.
ttfn
Tough love
Had a few interesting conversations with my boss since he found out my intention to leave.
The obvious question, "Why?". Not entirely sure I convinced him, but he's battered me down to at least giving him a full answer when I hand my notice in.
The good thing is that I have finally convinced him that I don't want to stay and he has wished me luck.
I have to say it has been harder than I thought. Before talking to my boss I did not give two hoots about what would happen when I leave. Now I am wondering what will be left in my wake, most of the others do not deserve to have their livelihoods risked, but listening to my boss he is declaring it a complete disaster.
I think he's playing on the dramatics. That said, it will be when my colleague leaves, as he now declared to do again (personally to me).
It seems my boss is on about outsourcing the IT, and just using my colleague and a recruited tech monkey to observe the system. Not entirely sure what they really will be doing, but personally it's another example of madness that goes on with my soon-to-be ex-boss.
A company that is totally IT-centric, such as the ASP we are surely must control the one thing that the business depends on, i.e. it's IT systems.
My colleague has declared he wants no part of it.
Well they'll learn, either that and they'll bugger up and go under.
ttfn
The obvious question, "Why?". Not entirely sure I convinced him, but he's battered me down to at least giving him a full answer when I hand my notice in.
The good thing is that I have finally convinced him that I don't want to stay and he has wished me luck.
I have to say it has been harder than I thought. Before talking to my boss I did not give two hoots about what would happen when I leave. Now I am wondering what will be left in my wake, most of the others do not deserve to have their livelihoods risked, but listening to my boss he is declaring it a complete disaster.
I think he's playing on the dramatics. That said, it will be when my colleague leaves, as he now declared to do again (personally to me).
It seems my boss is on about outsourcing the IT, and just using my colleague and a recruited tech monkey to observe the system. Not entirely sure what they really will be doing, but personally it's another example of madness that goes on with my soon-to-be ex-boss.
A company that is totally IT-centric, such as the ASP we are surely must control the one thing that the business depends on, i.e. it's IT systems.
My colleague has declared he wants no part of it.
Well they'll learn, either that and they'll bugger up and go under.
ttfn
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