Wednesday October 12, 2005

SSG : Endgame

There's been a rather epic gap since my last post. I have been busy doing many things. Job interviews, life, the universe, working, wondering how long I have left, everything.

- I have not yet secured a job, though I have a couple of potentials from interviews still. I'll find something.

- Life is going not badly, you know - can't complain really despite impending unemployment doom.

- The Universe can cope very well on it's own without any help from me thank you very much.

- Work has been alright, getting to know a few more of the US team and worrying about when my last day will be.

- How long do I have left? 2 days. :-) My last day will be Thursday 13th October 2005. Tomorrow! I am relieved to finally know (I found out on Monday) but I am sad too. I liked it here. It's good to move onwards and upwards, but I feel somewhat disappointed I can't do that within the same company. I think perhaps that being in a job for longer than 2 years is becoming a rarity with companies going bust and contracts going overseas and people just not wanting to stick around and be loyal anymore. Same as marriages ;-)

- And everything? I'll let you know.

So in my very last Sun Blog I would like to say cheers - it's been short but sweet. Thank you for the time and attention and I'm glad you enjoyed my ramblings. I shall certainly be browsing the blogs site still and you can still read my outside blogs. Maybe our paths shall cross again one day. If anyone wants to reach me it's no longer emma@sun.com. (Oh how sad I am to be losing that awesome e-mail address!) You can get me on techling@gmail.com. I do hope you all keep in touch.

It's been nice knowing you. Supper Support Girl is hanging up her cape.

Tuesday August 30, 2005

Move Over Wonder Woman

I'm working for the US support desk now. I was pretty sad to be leaving APAC after all this time. I do miss my Australian and New Zealand customers. This US bunch seem alright though. They seem very keen to get stuff sorted, less laid back than the Aussies (in that they sound less drunk on a Friday afternoon) and I have to say, what the hell are they doing to their poor Sun servers?!? I have never encountered so many weird and difficult problems. The case load is a lot higher on this team, but I don't think I've had a single simple case since I started last week. Either the Americans are a rather experimental lot, or the air over there makes LEDs start to blink.

I'm really enjoying it so far actually. I had a small claim to fame when I took a case for a couple of servers that has been at JavaOne. I felt quite left out of that event being stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic, but since I got to fix a couple of problems in the aftermath, I feel much better about it ;-)

Job searching is so far not happening. I have this one potential job for a really excellent company in central London, but they haven't given me an answer yet. I thought the interview went really well, and I absolutely loved the place. I am desperate to work there and wish I knew how to make it so. It is exactly the perfect job I am looking for. I will burst if I don't get it! But it is likely I will need to go back for a technical test on network security and firewalls. This worries me. I am quite technically sound, but I am rusty on networking, and without knowing what kind of test it's going to be, I might mess it all up. Well, I can do nothing but my best, I just hope it's good enough.

Trouble is, once I find a job I really, really want I give up searching. I don't want to have too many fingers in too many pies. I put all my eggs in one basket. It's very foolish of me. But I like to hold out some kind of hope and confidence that I'll get it. If I look for something else now, it feels like I'm giving up. Very foolish, as it looks like I have less than two months left here. No official notice has been given, but they have given us a warning to be prepared for that outcome. If I don't find a job I need a rich husband, or to contemplate moving back in with the parents. Neither seem very appealing right now ;D

Monday July 11, 2005

Super Support Girl -Vs- 100 Other People Applying for the Same Joblash

It's been a while since I have had to endure interviews. Luckily the last time I was searching it only took two interviews to find my perfect job (this one) and also be given a better salary than I was on before. That was fantastic, as I was rather desperate to move on and was willing to take a pay cut. The interview I remember was excellent, one of the pleasantest experiences of my life (I know that sounds strange). The two guys really put me at my ease, and we had quite a laugh. There was a test involved then a bit of a chat followed by some support call roleplay, which I quite enjoyed. After that good experience, I feel quite positive for the interviews ahead. All you need to do is relax and be yourself! Of course, this whole theory is going to come crashing right down when I get some evil pointy-haired boss interviewing me next week. Well, we shall see. It's all good practice. I must point out how incredibly weird it is to be not hiding my 'looking' status from my employers. I can't imagine many circumstances where that will ever happen, so I am making the most of it and will document my progress.

I haven't really been looking very hard, as I will still potentially be working here until February, but if I can find something good before then so be it, but I would rather stay on as long as possible as, well, I like it here. Currently most of the options appear to be UNIX admin, or Windows support. Don't really want to do either. I am not a fan of Windows, certainly not supporting it, and I actually think I would be a bit wasted in an admin role. I like helping people. I do not want to be stuck behind a screen writing perl scripts to automate all my work so I don't have to do anything while the unsuspecting boss thinks I'm worth all that money. Well, that's probably an exaggeration. What I'm getting at is, one of my favourite things about this job was the interaction with customers. Some of them are mean, but mostly they are lovely and I enjoy fixing stuff for them. I am trying to look into other fields to get in to, but I am caught up in the tech world now and I find it a hard place to get out of.

I was reading this earlier, which seems to have sparked off a bit of a debate about support in general, specifically Sun's. I'd say I was an authorative voice on how it actually works, and a lot of the speculation here is incorrect. Yes, I am first line support, and yes, if the issue is too complex for us to resolve it gets passed upwards. How else would you manage it? A highly qualified well paid engineer taking memory error calls along with complex kernel issues? And the call routing IS actually quite efficient, certain departments only deal with certain things.

The thing is, if your issue is very complex, you can't expect the call logger to be able to get it all down and understand what you say well enough to pass on to a high-level engineer. Therefore it makes sense it comes to us, as we know enough to be able to at least understand what you are talking about and get all the details needed from a technical perspective so that when we pass it over to the escalation engineer, he doesn't have to waste his time making further calls to the customer asking for basic information. He can just look at the stuff I give him and make a diagnosis. Well, in a simple world. If it were all that simple we wouldn't need support centres.

I just get a little tired of customers who get uptight when I've spoken to them for about 5 minutes and have been perfectly nice and helpful, and certainly not dumb. A lot of the time they seem to assume that I know nothing before I even say anything. Well, after my name that is. It can be frustrating but then that's what we deal with every day, it's not like it bothers us. Getting angry will get you nowhere guys, being nice will make us work on your call a lot more efficiently ;)

That argument was not very succinct but I can't be here all day trying to change the minds of /. nerds. Support! It is a great world. Frowned apon by most it seems, well, looking at the comments in that article. It's a shame. It's not so bad. If everyone has such a negative view of the job, how do they expect anyone good to want to work in it? So, when they call us up, how can they expect an expert on everything? Round and round we go. Treat us with a bit more respect and maybe you will not have so much cause for anger.

The fact it's all now moving to India (well, not ALL, but a lot of companies are doing it) is interesting. I don't know if I'm for or against it. In thoery, I see the point here, it's cheaper. It's a no-brainer. If they can do the job (and I am assuming being Indian, or indeed any race other than American or British, does not make you stupid), then why shouldn't they be allowed to? Let's hope they can, I trust in Sun's decision, I am sure they looked into it in great detail before making it. At the same time I think I may be slapped by a few of my colleagues, afterall we are losing our jobs. The business world is an unfair place, if you choose to work within it you can't be suprised by such things really.

I for one am looking forward to the future. I am sure Sun's support will fare just as well, and if it doesn't, maybe they will call the SSG hotline to come sort things out. I shall be crossing my fingers for them. I feel sad I won't be working for Sun anymore, it seems such a great community to belong to. Even if I didn't strictly belong to it, I feel very welcomed by everyone and all I've done is write a few silly words. I feel as if I will be losing something quite special. Still, there is no point worrying about such things, I am sure good stuff is in store for me. I have interesting future plans, I am thinking of starting up my own business, which is a daunting task but I will not be held back! I would be grateful for any advice my readers can give on that front. Or capital ;) I am researching my need for hardware currently, and I've logged a request with Sun Sales to help me out with some specs. So if a Support Engineer trusts Sun stuff, even when they see nothing but it breaking all the time, then it must be good eh ;)

Friday July 08, 2005

For Rent

One human being, female, willing.

Available for parties, gigs, decoration and sometimes Real Work(TM).

Soon to be no longer working for Sun Support, thus seeking pimp and/or regular wage packet.

Looking for a break of some kind, as The Register will not give a discount on their 'My Job's Gone to India' T-Shirts. Gutted.

Very low mileage, references on request.

Interest free credit option available.

Buy now get 99 free!

Don't miss out on this amazing offer!

Tuesday June 21, 2005

Better Late Than Never

Well, I missed the OpenSolaris launch by a week or so. I could go into all sorts of humorous lies about my plans to make this an ironic but bold statement about "vapourblogs" and oh, wouldn't that be funny? But no, I'm afraid I'm not clever enough for that. My excuse is, I picked a really bad week to take a week off, and yet another bad week to become sick (the week before my holiday). Us lowly support engineers don't get access to SWAN unless we drag ourselves into the office, so unfortunately I missed various e-mails and notifications and blah blah blah until I returned yesterday.

When I studied at the University of Essex the Computer Science department had a very strict rule about deadlines. If you were late, by even 15 minutes, you got a big fat zero for your work. Now, I'm the kind of person who disagrees wholeheartedly with this kind of system. The amount of times that one more day could have made a significant improvement in my overall work, just because I made an amazing breakthrough hours before the deadline, were numerous. In the real world I am sure I would have been given an extension or a bit of a chance. Surely I would not be given the sack for being slightly late. That's why I like Douglas Adams so much. He knew the score about this sort of thing. I don't know if OpenSolaris was late or not - I am sure there are mixed opinions. In my world nothing's really late, so long as what eventually comes is good.

Well that's enough of that. I was originally going to blog about something really profound, and amaze you all with a spectacularly intelligent insight into the world of open source software. It's too late for all that now though, so I've drawn you a pretty picture instead.

"Hoorah, The Solaris Code has been freed! All in a days work for Super Support Girl!!"*

*SSG more than likely had absolutely nothing to do with any actual 'freeing' of the Solaris code and accepts no liability for anything ever.

Monday May 23, 2005

Very busy this week, but not too busy for....

Damn.

Great fun. Thanks Mary and Roumen

But wait!! YES.

Wednesday May 18, 2005

Job Satisfaction

Sometimes, I get a case assigned to me, I call the customer up, I have the exact answer he needs, the webpage I find has everything I need to tell him, contact numbers are correct, it all just flows and the customer says, "Thank you so much for your help, yes you can close this call." all in the space of 10 minutes.

That is what I call job satisfaction. It makes the 99% of other cases with explorer analysis and core dump analysis and messages files and outputs and networking problems and disk problems and memory problems much more bearable. When I think about it, it's actually very rare I see a case through to closure, because a lot of the time I deal with failed hardware which then gets the case sent off to Australia for one of our lovely FEs to deal with.

There's a much greater sense of satisfaction from dealing with a customer from start to end though, and being able to utter those wonderful words, 'Is it ok to close this case?'.

It's crazily busy here, please stop logging cases!! :)

Tuesday May 17, 2005

Superhero Tea Breaks

Something I find about support here is that is can be either very busy, or not at all. Since I have gone on to a permanent shift I find it much easier to manage my queue and workload. I never seem to be fighting against a horrendous backlog. This is nice, but on quiet days, what are you supposed to do? I toyed with reading through tech notes for a while, learning new stuff slowly. But I found that to be a waste of my time overall, because I would decide to do it one day and we would suddenly have a busy month where I have no time to do anything other than work. Of course, I forgot everything I had read on the quiet day.

It's certainly a dilemma. I don't want to waste my spare moments of life browsing the internet. Then again, that's assuming that browsing is a waste. There are many interesting sites out there to look at, along with the ones I like to check over regularly as they contain a few personal interests. It would be nice to think I was slowly but surely developing my mind through all this spare time, that's all. I'm sure many of you out there know what I mean. It seems to be a bane of this particular line of work. If I'm working on a project I try not to touch the net because procrastination may set in. It's quite impossible to do that here though, as when a call comes in, you deal with it through to the end as quickly as possible. There is no time wasting. But in those moments (like now) where there are no more calls to take, and you're wating for a customer to e-mail you back with an error log, what can you do? Does anyone out there have favourite sites to check in their spare minutes, or any suggestions of a way to fill in time?

Monday May 16, 2005

Bloggy Blog, bloggety blog (blog blog blog)

I just came across this article on the BBC website about blogging. Might be interesting in time, but so far it seems mostly critical on the waste of time that is a blog. They fail to mention corporate blogs, however. Perhaps they aren't allowed to advertise so blatantly. I am curious as to what their stance would be, though.

( May 16 2005, 11:01:30 PM GMT ) Permalink Comments [2]

To My Fans

Does that sound big-headed enough for you?

I have had quite a few e-mails and comments now, and blog entries I have noticed about me, of all people (here, here and here, for example). I feel quite suddenly famous. And so I feel a little sad and responsible for painting a 'bad' picture of a career in support. All the comments have been very nice, and thank you, but many of you seem to think I view my job as low or worthless, which is far from the case.

It is, however, very common among my peers to view a 'support' job as the worst job you can get. Whenever someone asks me what I do, or hears I work for Sun Microsystems, they get quite excited, until I shyly admit that I do support. However after being a Windows Sysadmin and web dev for a year prior to this, I consider this quite a large step up in the world. What a hellish job that was...

Basically what I mean by residing at the 'bottom end' of Sun is that statistically, I'm probably one of the least recognised, least paid of their employees. I welcome corrections if I am wrong. I enjoy my work very much and actually look forward to coming in every day. I don't think many other people can boast that much. So, quite the contrary, I am not negative about the job, I'm merely making the most of a negative vibe about support in general which would hopefully spark some debate or attention, and it has ;)

Back to the SunRay Part V

I return, after two weeks away from my support desk, to my wonderful and valued customer base. I bet they have missed me. My first cases have been faulty disks and SunRay 100's, so we're off to an easy start which is a relief, I seem to have forgotten how to do everything. The call logging software here is far from perfect, which is a shame. I'm sure I could make something much better myself. And I can only remember how to do a Hello World program in Java. There's a web based version which is supposedly quicker and more stable, but my browser seems to be killed off every night by the server cleaning itself up and I wouldn't like to put all my eggs in one basket. So I stick with the slow and steady Java client. Bosses here discovered that it becomes much faster if we connect to Singapore via a router, as the database is held there. True, the queue loaded in about 3 seconds instead of 20. But then the rest of the desktop was somewhat lagged. Nevermind all in a day's work. I don't think I'd be able to do my work any quicker if it was faster to be honest, as when I suddenly had speed it was almost too fast, I couldn't think what I needed to do next and my brain ended up slowing the process down more than ever. I realised it had developed it's own methods of using the time it took to refresh or save something, by working on other documents that needed to be updated in between. When there was no lag I felt I didn't have a set pattern to follow anymore and it left me very confused. I love the human brain.

I'm back on track now though, everything's good. I feel like I have been a service to society today too; I discovered a nasty bug on Blogshares and reported it. I was able to login to someone's account and do whatever I wanted. It was quite a tough moment. I haven't been a member for long and don't really understand how it all works as I haven't taken the time to find out, so in reality when I had full access to a premium member's account I had no idea what I could do with it anyway =D Of course I have the kind of conscience that could never have abused that position, I certainly wasn't trying to hack into an account, it was just an accident. So I reported it to the user and hopefully the flaw is now being fixed. I feel all warm inside and stuff. And I got a little reward, hooray! Perhaps I'll look into Blogshares more when I have a little time. I've a feeling it could get quite addictive.

I didn't have a very nice weekend, unfortunately. I haven't felt very well so spent a lot of it in bed. Hey wait, that sounds like a great weekend! I rented out some movies and a game and had quite a fun time really. Hopefully this week should pick up and I'll find some kind of social life. I haven't mentioned my latest venture for personal development have I - I'm learning the drums. Quite a strange thing to do but it's going really well so far and I really enjoy being creative again. The lessons aren't cheap but I've bought a kit now and I don't think I'll need loads and loads as I seem to be picking it up quickly. My kit should arrive this week so I'm quite excited about making some noise. I imagine I'm ok at it due to having played the guitar for some years (badly) and being relatively good at Dance Dance Revolution. A lot of strange hobbies have developed from spending too much time in my own company... perhaps some day I'll be in a band, I'll update you on my progress so you can all go out and buy my album ;)

Wednesday May 11, 2005

All Our v40z Are Not Belong To Me

I have been checking out the progress on this, which is fascinating. Thanks for pointing it out John. I think it's pretty funky and all, and I would think about taking on a fun project like this myself if I didn't live my life in a single room. That would be a bit silly. Although, silliness is a Way of Life. My main reservation with the whole 'using Sun stuff instead of a PC' is, erm, I like playing games =[ And, Being a lowly support employee, I aint got the moolah. It makes me cry to see things like this which are quite blatantly oh so sexy and everyone should have one to play with. But it aint gonna happen. Anyone got a spare one lying around they want to donate to me? I'll do something interesting and innovative with it, promise ;) Mary, how about offering one up for next week's Friday Free Stuff?

Tuesday May 10, 2005

Jumping on the Bandwagon

I copied this from all in a day's blog who copied it from alan coopersmith. See the cynical look on my face, the scruffy hair and the sexy super outfit. Spitting image of me, though since I started working nights I have not been required to wear the uniform.

Create Your Own South Park Character

SP is clearly one of the best shows ever made. I would love to meet those two guys, they seem to have infinite levels of funniness. I have recently watched them all from series 1-7, now I need to catch up on 8. It's turned me into a foul mouthed crazy loon though, I wouldn't recommend it. I am weening myself off it slowly.

Super Support Girl's Level 5 Nemesis - The Wrath of 3am

Sleep attack plus ten knocks SSG out for next 3 stages. Survival now pinned on Base to provide remote support. Request S to ship me in some hi-tech matchstick eye-open supports, or all hope lost.

Fascinating as Administering Packages From the Command Line is, it is not handsome enough to tempt me. A 6 hour long battle and the aftermath is not pretty. Still, now I know how to install Solaris 10, which I think should help me defeat the boss in endgame!

Monday May 09, 2005

Solaris 10 for x86: A New Hope

Well, I am back. I had a lovely week off and really made the most of my precious time off (we just don't get enough of it in this country) and have seen many of my friends which is good as I rarely get the chance to, what with them living a couple of hundred miles away. I attended a party or two and a gig in Northampton as well (The band was called A, they are actually well known which is a novelty for this town).

I am now allocated some training on Solaris 10 on x86 systems, which is web based. I relish the opportunity for all training here (we don't get enough, Sun, give us more!) as I have found the Sun training to be the best I have ever experienced. It is nice that I do not have to pay for it, but if I had the money, I certainly would. Worth every penny. Those guys down at Guillemont Park really are great and deserve oddles of praise. Unfortunately web based training means I get to sit in my usual office, no all expenses paid hotel break in Surrey. Damn!

I am finding it very hard going so far, I am making notes to keep my brain active but reading stuff for hours is pretty mind-numbing. Plus it's only been the basics so far, about file systems and disk slices and whatnot. Occasionally something funky crops up about SMF or Zones, but it's teasing me. I want to get to the real meat on that, however I am a completist and will soldier on. It is actually very nice of my Team Leader to allocate me some time off from the normal work to do this training. It's good to get opportunities like this.

I've been thinking a lot over the past week, about what I would like to do with my life. I have been in a bit of a rut lately, but I feel quite positive now. I would like to get into some kind of technical management role I think. I would also like to move to Sweden one day, after a discussion with a friend of mine. The lifestyle appears to be so much better over there. I have always been quite blindly patriotic, but there's a lot of things I have taken for granted that happen which really don't need to. Any Sun jobs going in Sweden? :)

The answer to my little quiz was, of course, the German Guy. One free voucher for a rescue from a perilous situation* for all who got it right.



* Not to be used in conjunction with any other type of hero work, subject to availability and status. Underwear worn outside of clothes on request.

( May 09 2005, 11:52:25 PM GMT ) Permalink Comments [13]