It's Thursday night...
... it must be update night :)
Something very odd is happening at work- not only did I actually get my pay rise (wot I mentioned a couple of weeks ago), but last week we got funding for all of us admins to actually get MCSE certified, something that Dan's been asking for for the last two years. The documentation and materials for the first two-month module turned up today, and I'm really looking forward to getting cracking on it- it'll be the first real structured learning I've done in nearly 10 years. I suspect parts of the course are going to be rather easy, especially to start off with (quite a lot of it is basically what I've been doing every day for the last year), but it'll get more interesting later on, and it's going to be nice to have real qualifications backing me up at work, rather than just a vague feeling I know what I'm doing.
As if that wasn't enough, we've also been given permission to start looking for a little helldesk monkey of our very own! Dan and I have an awful lot on at the moment, and we're barely spending enough time on things like disaster recovery and backup plans (which are kind of important), not to mention the upgrade and project work we'd like to do, so we're going to hire someone who can be our bullshit filter, sort out the easy stuff (and the not so easy but not taking too much planning stuff once they know what they're doing), and give us more time to dedicate to the project work that we really need to be doing.
On the whole, things at work have gone from it being just a job, to some semblence of a career again, which is kind of nice. The company seems to be doing well- we've got some big things going on at the moment (I can't tell you what they are, but they're things you'll know even if you never go near games), we're expanding, and the people in charge seem to have finally twigged that we can't do everything by the seat of our pants any more.
Non-work stuff: I mentioned that my brother Bob had got engaged- it's way more fun than that. Him and Tree are off to Australia for at least a year in the middle of next month, and they've decided that they should get married before they go, so they're running around frantically trying to organise that as well as everything else in the next few days.
Looking forwards to moving into their flat more and more now- Polish guy's latest annoying habit is to hide mugs in his room, never bring them down and wash them up (he's still not really got the idea of washing up), and just find another every time he makes a drink. Last night he actually took the mug that I'd been drinking from and had left by the kettle while it boiled, leaving me without one when I got back to the kettle. When I got home this evening I mounted a commando raid into his room, took back the four mugs of mine I found (one is still missing in action, god knows what he's done with it), gave them a decent wash and hid them in a cupboard.
Something very odd is happening at work- not only did I actually get my pay rise (wot I mentioned a couple of weeks ago), but last week we got funding for all of us admins to actually get MCSE certified, something that Dan's been asking for for the last two years. The documentation and materials for the first two-month module turned up today, and I'm really looking forward to getting cracking on it- it'll be the first real structured learning I've done in nearly 10 years. I suspect parts of the course are going to be rather easy, especially to start off with (quite a lot of it is basically what I've been doing every day for the last year), but it'll get more interesting later on, and it's going to be nice to have real qualifications backing me up at work, rather than just a vague feeling I know what I'm doing.
As if that wasn't enough, we've also been given permission to start looking for a little helldesk monkey of our very own! Dan and I have an awful lot on at the moment, and we're barely spending enough time on things like disaster recovery and backup plans (which are kind of important), not to mention the upgrade and project work we'd like to do, so we're going to hire someone who can be our bullshit filter, sort out the easy stuff (and the not so easy but not taking too much planning stuff once they know what they're doing), and give us more time to dedicate to the project work that we really need to be doing.
On the whole, things at work have gone from it being just a job, to some semblence of a career again, which is kind of nice. The company seems to be doing well- we've got some big things going on at the moment (I can't tell you what they are, but they're things you'll know even if you never go near games), we're expanding, and the people in charge seem to have finally twigged that we can't do everything by the seat of our pants any more.
Non-work stuff: I mentioned that my brother Bob had got engaged- it's way more fun than that. Him and Tree are off to Australia for at least a year in the middle of next month, and they've decided that they should get married before they go, so they're running around frantically trying to organise that as well as everything else in the next few days.
Looking forwards to moving into their flat more and more now- Polish guy's latest annoying habit is to hide mugs in his room, never bring them down and wash them up (he's still not really got the idea of washing up), and just find another every time he makes a drink. Last night he actually took the mug that I'd been drinking from and had left by the kettle while it boiled, leaving me without one when I got back to the kettle. When I got home this evening I mounted a commando raid into his room, took back the four mugs of mine I found (one is still missing in action, god knows what he's done with it), gave them a decent wash and hid them in a cupboard.