Christmas eve...

Today is X'mas eve, but I'm still in office, working. Why am I working? It's not because I don't like holiday, but I got to finish up with some outstanding work, so that I can go on leave till 28Dec.

Although, I don't really celebrate X'mas as a religious day, is a holiday to me actually, but, I do buy a gift for my little niece, as she is such as loveable girl. I always make a point to get her a present or gift on her birthday and X'mas.

I have also send e-greeting cards to my colleagues, wishing them a happy and joyful X'mas and new year.

Leaves approved! But...

Although, my boss had already approved of my two days leaves for Thursday and Friday, but, I still got some unfinished work to settle tomorrow. I got a meeting minutes to do, some documents to review, I reckon this should take me at least half a day, so, meaning I can still go on leaves in the afternoon. Also, I intend to take two or three days next week, after Christmas day, that would be good. Yeh.....

Take a break

I have applied for two days leaves for this coming Thursday and Friday, my boss has not approve it yet, anyway, as usual, I will still go ahead and clear my leaves. So finally, I'm going to have a long weekend till Christmas. I may even clear the rest of my outstanding leaves days next week, till the end of the year! How nice, huh ?!?!

Before going on leaves, I still have work to clear, got a meeting tomorrow, and I will be taking the minutes, supposed to be today, oh gosh! Then, there's some document reviews to do, not sure whether can finish them, but will do my best.

Any advice?

Some people has said that I'm too much into work. It seems like my life revolves around work, and nothing else, if you look at most my entries here, they always talk about work. Reading the posts, you will roughly know what I do for a living, right? I don't make alot of money, even though sometimes I have to work on weekends or overtime.

I think I need advice, perhaps plenty, if you do have any, do put in the Comments.

What's on Sunday

I'm thinking whether I should go back to work on Sunday. Just three week's ago, also a Sunday, I had tried to test swing over of SAN disk connectivity from one Windows server to another, but, this was not succcessful. So, i intend to do it again, this time, I had made some changes to the SAN's configuration.

Let's see whether I will be able to wake up early tomorrow.

I would like also, to share with you a very interesting blog at http://aaroninafrica.blogspot.com/. Aaron, a peace corp volunteer who is in Africa. Lots of video to watch.

Today

Today is Friday!

Today is the day, the day! The day you will return back home!

I am working today, so, not sure whether can make it to the airport to meet you, the time is pretty tight. I have got a couple of problems to solve today, application stuff, let's hope that they can be resolved today, or at least find something of what may have caused the issue.

Anyway, I will always do my best I can....

Questions from the team

I have finally completed the mount points setup for the second HP-UX server which is connected to a SAN system for another customer. The external SAN storage requirement was for at least 1TB to be configured solely for this server. This was done yesterday.

On the same day, I got questions from the team, asking me whether we should have a KnowledgeBase or 1st level troubleshooting guide for helpdesk. In order to address this, I spent about 3hrs last night creating the guide, will send to the team for comments or inputs.

There was also the question of data migration/batch support, one colleague claimed that he played multiple roles doing both in some weeks, which I presumed that he meant this is unfair. Ok, I will think about this, in fact, I'm more willing to scrap this batch support thing, let's see whether they are in favour.

Two more days..

Hey, how time flies, two more days and you will be back! Have you started packing?

I maybe busy for the next 2 weeks or so, have got another task to do in the afternoon, and this is due on Friday. Next week, I may need to provide support for another customer's disaster recovery exercise, mainly to assist if there's any server related issue. The other team who handles the Data recovery portion encountered some issues this week, so might need to help take a look at the server's configuration.

I still have about a week's annual leaves left, hopeful around the mid of next week, I will be able to clear them.

Hey, it's me!

Ya, it's me (not the man in the photo), way past midnight, and haven't sleep yet. I guess I got too much nap this afternoon, so I'm still pretty awake now.

Been troubled by an application issue for the past one week, did a search of the web just now, looking for solution or fix, but no luck, couldn't find much useful stuff, other than those I already know. It's just one of those times where you will spending time after office hours to solve work related problem, so used to it already. No worries, the storm comes and goes, will definitely get over it....

Coup in Fiji

Just heard from news today that there was a coup in Fiji, and the military has taken over the functions the government. Wondering what's going on there.

I remember that time you told me that you wanted to visit Fiji, hopefully, that it is not part of your travel plan.

How's everything? Have you been enjoying yourself?

I'm actually counting down on the day of your return. I have been keeping myself busy here, very tired sometimes, but I know I'm doing something very worthwhile.

Busy work week ahead

Mostly likely, next week is going to be a busy work week for me. I have planned work for some OS installation work at two different Disaster Recovery sites, software installation for two servers at my office's data centre, hmmm, maybe I will get our Windows Administrator to do that.

There's also my progress report to write, prepare learning plan for our team members and also preparation for take-over the duties of our DBA who is confirmed will be secondment to an overseas assignment next month. Let see how I can manage....

I read an article today, this guy said something interesting, it goes:

"If you are technically competent, but lacks communication skills, you will be struggling."

I think it's true, expecially in the IT line, most of the people I know are very technically capable, but when it comes to communication, it's just not there.

Here's another, a modified version by me:

"To survive in the IT industry, no matter what position you are in, you should continuously seek to enhance your technical, professional, communication and mangement skills, else you are just wasting your work life."

Go for training

I have also emailed my boss on a specialised skills (e.g. AutoSys, WebLogic App, PeoplelSoft Admin) learning approach for our team members, he supportive of it. My plan is to ensure that we can attend external training so as to supplement the knowledge learned from hand-ons, as well as build up team compentency, confidence and expertise, not only in running of current projects, but also external ones. In future, we do not have to rely on others, esp. vendors and other technical teams.

You know, this idea arose because I have been pretty frustrated at having to beg other external parties for help, alot of time wasted doing that, that's because we do not have that technical speciality skills. If we have them, people will look at us differently.

Overseas posting

It has been confirmed, one of our DBAs will be deployed for an overseas assignment. He will either be in Australia or Malaysia, working on a Sybase Database project for a Telco company. This assignment will last three months, starting early January next year.

I think this is a good exposure and experience gaining opportunity for him, so I'm not opposing to his overseas' posting, but hopefully he will be back with the team here after the end of the posting period.

Meanwhile, have to start preparing the hand-over and take-over process, critical for our only DBA who will be taking over his tasks.