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Archive for February 4th, 2007

I can’t feel my toes

04 Feb

Today has got to be one of the coldest days I’ve ever experienced in my life! It’s so cold that I can feel my nose hair freeze when I inhaled. I just hope that no one is left outside during this weather. They should have a cold warning and make sure that everyone is kept warm including the bums.

My room hasn’t gotten any warmer since I first turned on the heater. The heat has been on for forty eight hours on full and it isn’t helping. My room is at normal room temperature of 22 degree Celsius. It feels more like 0 degrees Celsius. Last night, I curled up into a ball and remained that way until I woke up this morning. Usually when I sleep, my head is outside of my blanket but not last night. I had every part of my body underneath the blanket and I make sure that no air could get in.

This afternoon, I had to make my way to the library today to talk to some coworkers. It was a bad idea to have gone outside in the first place. I took one step out the door and knew I would be regretting it. At the time, it was -16 degrees Celsius and with the wind chill, it felt like -25 degrees.

Before heading out, I made sure to bundle up on layers. I was wearing a wool coat on top of a cotton sweater on top of a long sleeved micro fiber shirt on top of a t-shirt and I had a scarf as well. But all of that was no match for the harsh Canadian weather.

As I walked down the street, I didn’t have too much trouble with the cold. But then the wind picked up and I couldn’t breathe. My nose started running but the snot must have instantly froze. My lips started to dry up, my ears went numb, my cheeks started to burn and I could no longer feel my ears. I’ve only gone as far as crossing the street when all of this hit me. I still have a couple more blocks to go. I had a hat on to keep the heat from escaping from my head but it didn’t help much. I used it as a wind shield but that didn’t work too well either. I eyes started to water and it blurred my vision. I tried to use my hands to wipe the tears away but I couldn’t bring my hands out of my pockets. I was close to the entrance of the mall anyway so I just wait.

When I got inside, I quickly wiped away the tear and regained my vision. I found myself breathing heavily and felt a little tired. There was a mirror close by and I saw that my head was completely red. My ears were red and felt like they were going to fall off. My nose was red and it felt like my nose hair was going to fall out. My cheeks were read and were still burning. I quickly rubbed my hands together to warm them up and transfer the heat to my ears, cheeks and nose.

As those parts start to warm up, I noticed that I couldn’t feel my toes. My boots aren’t wind proof so some of the cold air must have gotten in. Plus, I think my socks have holes in them. I was too busy walking to notice that I couldn’t feel my toes.

There aren’t too many people that are brave enough to go outside during this weather. When I got to the library, I saw that one of my friends was there as well. She didn’t have to be there but she was visiting a friend. She lives further than I do so I feel sorry for her when she left. I just have to walk for about five minutes to get to my house. She has to wait for the bus and once she gets off the bus, she has to walk to her house. I don’t know if she made it out of the cold alive.

I think the weather got worst when I headed home. The wind wasn’t too bad because I walked between the buildings where as before, I was in a wide open field. But when I got a block before my house, the wind picked up again. The same thing happened to my head and everything went red. Only this time, the wind was stronger. It was strong enough that my hands started to go numb and it was inside my pockets. When I arrived at my door, I could barely turn the key to unlock the doors.

The next time I need to go to the library to talk to someone, I’m going to think twice. Never again will I go out in this weather. I’ll just call them up on the telephone if I need to speak with them. But if I have to go out, I’m going to make sure I dress up like an Eskimo first. Or better yet, I’ll just put on every piece of clothing that I have so I’ll look like I weigh a couple of hundred pounds. I’ll even double up on the socks. Heck, I’ll wear the sock outside of my boots if it’ll help keep my toes from freezing. As long as I’m warm, I’ll go out in any weather.

 
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Company structure

04 Feb

I haven’t been working at my present workplace for that long so there are still some things that I have to get use to yet. I’ve never worked at a place that is structured like this company. The company runs on some sort of hierarchal tree where things are escalated to the person above you. I’m not use to that because when I see a problem, I fix it. I don’t want to have to rely on someone else to do the work.

The other night, I received a call from a client regarding some issues with his online registration form. I visited his website and attempted to create an account for myself. When I submitted the registration form, I received an error message. This was the error that the client was talking about. I have a programming background so I knew what was causing it. I took a screen shot of the error messages and emailed to the appropriate people.

I didn’t just email it to the right person, I emailed to just about everyone who works in the technical side of the company. I assumed that the person who’s going to be fixing his issue will want to see the error message so he doesn’t have to waste time trying to duplicate the problem. And just so my fellow coworkers are aware of the issue, I sent them a copy as well.

The next day, I get a reply from the Engineering Manager suggesting that I not forward the information to the other Engineers. I couldn’t understand why I shouldn’t pass on this information to the other Engineer since it’s the other Engineer who’s going to be working on this issue. He will get the information eventually anyway so I don’t see what’s the problem.

“Don! Please do not CC your requests or information regarding any task to any Engineer, just send it directly to me. If you have any update about a task previously assigned to an Engineer, then you should CC that information to the engineer as well. Sending unnecessary and unrelated emails to engineers wastes a lot of their time in reading and answering such emails.”

I’ve looked over computer code before and I know how much of a hassle it is to track down bugs. Computer programs can have a lot of line of code and narrowing down the section that is causing the error can take some time. Most compliers will tell you what line the error occurred at but it’s not as accurate. That’s if it’s a compiler error. If it’s a logic error, you have to run through the code in your head to make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.

If I was coding something and someone found an error in my code and told me exactly where to look, I would appreciate the help. I don’t really care who tells me, as long as someone tells me.

Firstly, I don’t see the harm in passing along useful information. Secondly, I don’t know how reading a short email is a waste of time. It’s email for crying out loud. How much time can that consume? It’s not like I took a picture, hand wrote the letter and snail mailed it to him. He didn’t have to carefully rip open the envelope with a letter opener, take out the letter and read it.

I’m sure the email client would have downloaded the email, displayed my message and showed the attached image. Something like this takes half a minute or maybe not even that long. You’d have to be living life at light speed to think that reading email is a waste of time.

In the email, I didn’t ask for a response. I only passed along the information and with an image of the error message. I didn’t email it to them and asked what they can do about it. I’m sure they know what do, they don’t have to tell me what they’re going to do. I’m not their boss. I just want them to know so they can do their job and make the customer happy.

If there’s anyone who’s wasting time, it’s him not me. If I emailed him the information, he would read it over and then decide who to forward the information to. Once he decides who the task gets delegated to, he will forward the information that I’ve sent him to the correct Engineer. Is it not faster if I just sent a copy to the correct Engineer in the first place? I already know who’s going to be fixing the problem so why not skip the middle man and go straight to the source?

But no, some people want to be in control of things. I don’t really care who’s in control, I just want someone to fix the problem. The customers like to complain about things and Tech Support gets to hear about it. I don’t understand why they’re complaining to me since I have no power to do anything about it. I’m at the bottom of the ladder while the person whom they should be speaking with is higher up.

When I was working at McMaster University, I fixed things. If I was busy with something, my boss would fix things. The staff members would open up a trouble ticket and who ever saw it first would take care of it. Every trouble ticket that I opened was closed before I left work for the day. Any task that I had to do was taken care of that day.

At my present work place, task can be left alone for days, weeks or even month. I don’t understand why it would take that long to get something simple done. The Engineers don’t want to do anything unless there is a task opened for them to do it. If a task hasn’t been opened and you ask them to do something, they’ll say they get on it but they don’t tell you when they’ve started or finished.

This is bad because now, Tech Support has to play the role of Customer Service. When I’m at work, I’m the only one there. If the customer asks for an update on a task, I can’t give them a specific answer other than the fact that someone is working on it. But according to the task logs, nothing is being done. It’s just sitting there. If I had the ability to work on it, I would because you have to keep the customers happy. And they’re not happy customers if they’ve been waiting months on an simple issue.

I think the company needs to be restructured a little bit to tweak some things around. It would be nice to have an Engineer on site during the same time as Tech Support. If anything goes down, at least there will be someone with authorization to fix the problem. Not all of the Engineers like to answer their phones at 4:00 in the morning. Tech Supports needs to get more access as well. Our access level is limited and we can’t do much. Heck, if I wanted to know the date, I don’t even have enough authorization to double click on the system time to bring up the date and time properties window.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be with this company but judging by the way things are going, I doubt I’ll be there for too long. It’s an easy job and all but there just isn’t any room for improvement. Everything that I’ve learned my at job are things that I’ve learned on my own, at least, majority of it is. I would like to start out where I am now and maybe work my way up but I don’t think I want to. Not for this company.

 
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Posted in Rants