Neither Here Nor There

Working in the I.T. industry means that you are often faced with more challenges than you would experiance in 'normal' job. User paranoia, techno fear and just a general idea that we are making this smeg up as we go along. Users are users no matter where you work as an I.T. professional, some are a bit more savvy than others but generally if they were truely up to speed; they wouldn't really need me.
Now then I took a job with the State of Colorado when I moved from Vegas in hopes that I would finally land in a job that I could be in awhile. I dismissed ALOT of warning signs when I interviewed for the position, the largest was the nut job pretending to be the CIO (OK he actually is the CIO, and he is a total nut job). I took the job went through the hassle and everything of moving myself up to Colorado. Anyway at about 2 months in I'm begining to notice that things didn't exactly have a direction nor did they make sense in this department, while not uncommon in I.T. this was different, just call it a feeling.
Crazy undocumented policies started to fly around the department and the real techs found themselves struggling just to do our day to day work. Buckle down I thought this can't last. Part of my current job entails my having to drive a minimum of 215 miles round trip one day a week to service my other sites. This too was/is growing very very old. I'm not as good as I used to be at long distance driving and found myself totally wiped out at the end of the day. Still I figured I could make this all work, it's an OK job with OK pay but nothing to get all excited about. But then the directive of all directives from our nut job CIO hits the air. In retailiation to an insodent by our ISO, the CIO hands down that no one shall access any computer in the company without the express written concent of the user, WTF! We have to get written approval from the user to access computers they do not own (They are owned by the State of Colorado)just incase we see documents that they have created (which are also property of the state). In a nutshell this is total BULLSHIT! But our CIO is either a madman, or too damn prideful to admit that he has made some bad desisions. Either way in my minds eye, enough was enough. I've suffered too long in too many jobs to start that cycle again. Needless for me to say; I work to live...I don't live to work. So I went out and got a new job.

So here we are again, after my time at UMC I really and truely thought I had had my fill of medical I.T. I never really planned on going back to it, but I appears that I am on my way to yet another medical I.T. job. Small hospital, not too far from my current job site and not too damn far away from where the new house is being built. So there are some big pluses, oh yeah did I mention they pay better too? So let's do the math, less work, more money, less pressure, no driving to the ends of the earth and no week trapped on the helpless desk = good deal. OK so far I know I'll be asked to 'help out' the help desk person (humm 70 bed hospital - how hard could that be?)and I have to do an on call (paid in money, overtime money - not oh pick a day and we'll get you some unoffical 'comp time').
The Missus (as usual) is absolutely freaked and worried about the whole affair. Can't blame her really the timing was a bit bad, but that is my specialty. We are about a month away from closing on the new house, so changing jobs; esp when the majority of the income falls on me; can be a bit stressful. Got those details worked out with my mortgage company, so that problem is solved. The Missus knows me to well and is also afraid I won't like the new job. Let's face it, the majority of us hate working for a living. We make the best of any situation and find a way to get over at our jobs. It's true I could totally hate it, deal with that problem if it becomes one. i'm not real big on worrying forward a problem that may or may not happen. Life is dealt with on a day to day basis in my universe.

So there you have it, I'll be going directly into my new job as of March 10th. As always we hope for the best and hope for some more really interesting stories for these pages. Much like leaving my other jobs my responsibilities get smaller and I get alot of free time, so expect to see a bit more posting in the next two weeks.