When working in Information Technology I consider staying up to date with current software critical. I keep track of software and operating system updates and make sure I upgrade fairly quick to have my environment secured and to avoid being hit by viruses or exploits.I recently listened to some other IT folks talking about the latest Microsoft patches that were released and almost fell of my chair laughing and swearing. I mean - I knew they were already behind. Lightyears behind to be exact. But the attitude of these so-called IT professionals just stunned me. Microsoft had announced end of support for certain products and patch levels and these so-called IT professionals had to question the Microsoft representative a couple of times as if this end of support would mean the end of the world to them. How can you work in IT and run into problems with the end of support time line of a Microsoft product? Nobody expects you to be cutting edge, but there are years in a lifecycle of a Microsoft product. Years!!! And these so-called IT professionals fail to plan for upgrades and patching and then struggle when Microsoft finally pulls the trigger?! That is just bad.

It’s Sunday night (again). A dreadful week at work ahead. It’s very quiet at work and everyone is waiting for a re-organisation to happen - for months now. I am astonished about how upper management is able to suppress productivity so much - especially in times when the business is losing money. So, we will see if there is another Black Tuesday with layoffs coming this week or if it is postponed until next week (following the rumors of the guy 3 cube’s down from me.

On the other side Sunday night’s are very motivating as I am sick of this job and need to push my business further to be able to live of it one day. I am sure this blog will see more about work/business related messages over time. As we currently live only off one income right now (mine) it is not so easy to just quit and work for myself.

It seems like some people are married to their job more than that they are married to their spouse. I see this often in my own job. I am required to carry a Blackberry handheld to be available for emergencies. I am receiving non-critical emails at often ridiculous late off-hours. Stuff that easily wait until next day - you receive an email at 1.00 AM in the morning. This is annoying when being on call as you get woken up for crap. I did test this with some of the worst “offenders” and emailed late Friday nights for stuff that is not even close to be worth looked at on a weekend. Still - within 30 minutes I got a reply. I replied again just for the heck of it and again and at an even more ridiculous late hour I got a reply.

Since I get woken up by this non-critical stuff I made it the rule that they need to call me if they want off-hour support. Filtering out the messages in our current environment and Blackberry/Lotus Notes implementation is just not working well at all. So, you want support - call. And better only call for mission critical stuff and not some stupid thing like rebooting a development server at midnight on a Saturday. It is not a passion of mine to reboot servers at midnight.

A co-worker told me a story where he left office on a Sunday (putting in some extra hours) just to find out the person in then neighboring cubicle died alone an hour later the same Sunday trying to catch up on work that she did not finish in the 80 hours of the week before. I love my work (kind of), but I do not consider it passion to work insane hours and then to die at work. I want to be remembered as a father and husband and not as the co-worker who died putting in extra hours on a weekend. Get a life.