The Internet Home of Kevin L. Collins
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The Worst Part of Being an IT Manager
0Sometimes, I really hate my job. Today is one of those times. Because of the economy, my company is being forced to lay off a significant number of employees. With me being the IT manager, I found out about this yesterday. The layoffs have started as I write this. (I’ve scheduled this post for 6:00pm because they’re not over.)
It’s hard for me to keep a “business as usual” attitude when you know that within several hours the people that you’re talking to will no longer have a job. For some of them, this will be a devastating blow that they may not recover from. For me, it takes a toll because a lot of them are my friends.
I know this is killing my boss. I know if there was any other way for him to get through this he would. I don’t envy him.
Gawd I hate days like this…
What makes all of this worse is that for the first time in 19 years, I’m concerned about my future. There’s not a single engineering firm of our size that has a full-time IT person, let alone a manger. It worries me that if these lay-offs don’t do the trick that I’m going to be next. I’m certain of one thing. If I am next, it will be a life-changing event. I know that finding an IT job is going to be very difficult in this economy – especially one that would maintain my current salary. To be honest, I’m not even sure that I would continue down the IT path. I know it’s late in life for me to think about a change of vocation, but I’ve got to look at all the options for the next 20+ years.
I can’t help but feel guilty about thinking of myself when so many others are going to be affected. But I can’t help but look at the big picture here.
Gawd I hate days like this…
All I can do is pray for those that have lost their jobs today and pray that God will show me the proper path.
Sometimes Chain E-Mails are a Good Thing
1Today I recieved an e-mail with one sentance in it that brought tears to my eyes.
“The only thing harder than being a soldier, is loving one.”
Being the son a retired soldier this sentance is bittersweet for me. On the one hand I can remember Army life. The constant moving, the cookie-cutter base housing, the way my father looked in his fatigues when he left “for work” every morning. For all the bad things that people say about that life, Army life was pretty good.
It’s true we moved a lot, but it didn’t take long for everyone in my “neighborhood” to know whose kid I was. Everyone in those copycat houses watched out for me. Everyone of them knew not only my name, but my brother’s and sister’s as well as my mom’s. Everyone of the parents talked, everyone of the kids played together. We had holiday parties, summer cookouts, we fished and hunted together, it seemed as though we were one giant family. Those were indeed good times.
But there were bad times too.
I can remember my father when he was an alchohlic. The beatings that both my brother and I would take when he was in one of his stupors. The ones that my mother tried to hide from us. I can remember waking up in the morning to find father in the living room wide-awake because he couldn’t sleep. I can remember how still he would get when anyone would mention Vietnam. I can remember my mom and how nervous she got everytime the news mentioned the Army being deployed while dad was still on active duty.
And I know how I feel everytime I see my father after his stroke. This once strong, proud soldier who can now barely walk across the living room without help. I look upon him with pity and I feel guilty for it. I love him. I tell him so. But I wonder if he really understands me.
I am proud to be an Army brat. I’m proud to say that my father served his country. I will never know what he witnessed, or what he endured so we can have the freedom that we have, but I know he did it gladly because he believed that this is the greatest country in the world.
No one will be able to tell me why he did the terrible things to his family, but I know it all had to do with his service. To see my father cry at my brothers funeral proved to me that he loves us. To see the emotion in his eyes when he knew his son wasn’t coming home drove it home that he has a lot of things burried inside.
One thing is for certain…”The only thing harder than being a soldier, is loving one.”
The Impala
0Once again, my wife’s car was put in the shop this morning. Once again, for a “banging” in the front end.
The result? A broken sway bar. Actually is not even a “bar” is more like a pipe. Here is a picture of the damaged part:
As bad as it was, I guess it could have been worse. I’ve really only had to do major repairs to the car 3 times in its 10 year life. So all things being equal, I guess I can say that it’s still a good car.
A Wish for Evernote
0I’ve been using Evernote for nearly a month now in conjunction with a Livescribe pen and notebook to help keep myself organized. It’s been working!
But it does have it’s flaws, one of which I’d like to talk about in this post: The Author field for notes.
If you look at this screen capture you’ll see an area for the entry of the name of the notes author:
This is great, except for one thing, I have to enter it into every new note. While it’s not a HUGE deal it is aggravating. There should be a way in the preferences for this to be assigned.
Just my 2 cents.
Zemanta – Trying it as well
4Brian Ochs responded to my post on Evernote. This prompted me to look at his Twitter page, where I came across a tweet where he asked if anyone was using Zemanta. Well I wasn’t at the time, but I have installed the WordPress plugin to try it out.
- Image via CrunchBase
One of the features that I like about it is the ability to add pictures to a post based on its content. I’ve always wanted to do that easily, but never have done so because it required the extra work of saving, cropping, uploading, etc. With this is simply a matter of pulling related images froom a group and placing them in my post. Just like the Zemanta image in this post.
I’ll try it for a couple of weeks and see how things go.
