Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Ups and Downs

I really need to take a picture of the back of my truck when I get home. You should see all the stuff that's in there. And you'll fall over when I tell you Mom and I got it all for only $207. Yes, that's right, $207. No, I didn't forget a zero.
We got way more than I was expecting for way less. We still have plenty of money left in the furniture fund to get a nice closet and rocking chair or glider. Now to just find said items. This would require Gak and I to have time off at the same time. That's not been happening a lot lately. Hopefully we'll be able to. I think he might have Friday off. I know I do.
Anyhow, as much as I'd love to gloat and gush and go on and on about the finds from last night, that's only secondary.
I've been in this "new" job for about 2 days now. I'm lost. I can't focus. I feel like I've got about a million things to do, but can't, or don't know how to, do most of them. And the ones I can do, I can't focus on because I keep getting called away.
I've been assigned 10 service requests. Only 1 can I possibly work on right now. But I can't get into that computer because someone else is. You see, I can't dial out because I don't have a license for the modem server. (That should be fixed tomorrow). 9 out of the 10 need me to be able to dial a modem. The last one I can hook up through a KVM switch, which I'm still trying to figure out, but the one I need is being used by someone else. Of course, I am expected to know a lot of this already (which I don't) and because a few people are out, I can't just monopolize someone for a few hours. Yet again, I so wish Al was still here, he always had time to help me out.
The other problem is the new way that requests are being done. We used to use Lotus Notes. It was a little slow, a little clunky, but you could find everything you need, see all the notes that previous people had made and could make as many notes as you needed. This new system is just plain murder. The only remote advantage it has is that it's connected to all of corporate. I can't find anything, you can't just open up the request and see all previous work and notes laid out nice and neat and I can't get the email attachments to open up for me either.
I finally have it to the point where I can at least access it and get to stuff. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do this again in a week or two when I get my new laptop. (I think this is part of my productivity issue... I just don't feel like tackling it right now when I've got to do all this crapola again in a few days...)
Oh well, I wanted this. I'll figure it all out and get back into the swing of things soon enough. I think what annoys me the most is that over half the things I'm supposed to be working on aren't very well documented and from back in oh... December. (I know... they aren't the oldest requests in there, but still, it's been an entire quarter!) I guess I was spoiled by the fact that I, and the others that used to fill in the requests used to give lots of details. I feel like I have to call each of these customers to get what the real issue is, as what's in the request is pretty vague. I feel kinda embarrassed to call up these people and say "I was assigned this job, but because of the way the system is set up, I have no idea what's already been done on this or what you're actually after". Not very professional in the least. (Not to mention that at least two of them are for customers I don't like or get along with.... oh well.)
Well, I'd best try and figure out some plan of attack. I've got a cranky conference call tomorrow with a PIMA sales guy, training to figure out for someone from ISG coming here next week, what to do about the June seminar and try and understand the calls that have been assigned to me. They shouldn't be hard, if I could just have all the info in one place!
(And to top it off, I've had a minor headache all afternoon.... Here's hoping it goes away soon. And I'm still waiting to hear back confirmation from Kat or Andy about tonight... grrrrr.....)
Peace to all and may you have major windfalls and only minor annoyances.

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