Work is boring

I know that’s nothing new, but I’ve noticed it much more lately.

I get the required daily tasks done, then I’m seeking out other things to do – this bit annoys me as I find the lower level stuff really boring, I don’t mind spending a bit of time on a case, and investigating the full details – I do mind if the answer to a simple question is mentioned 400 times on 35 pages of a website, and the user was too lazy to read. That bores me.

The complex cases are challenging, I like challenges. I enjoy them.

Another ‘downside’ of work that seems to be ‘everywhere’, no matter where you go, is incompetence. It’s just about everywhere in this world, and after being exposed to it from the various companies and organisations that dish it out in the plentiful, I have a very low tolerance for it. I don’t show up to work with my head in the sand, my brain turned off. One would hope others don’t either.

There’s a singular area I can think that most of the ‘poor’ actions come from, and the fact that it’s relied on for so much, yet makes so many errors in just a few short weeks of a year fails words. I really shouldn’t care, if they didn’t screw up so badly, so regularly, I’d probably miss that and be looking after even more elementary enquiries.

I’ve been pondering longer term career development. I like to create, that is, I like to put systems in place that work, I’ll happily build a DNS server, a radius server, a web server, a web site, mail server, make them all redundant. Configure a new router, setup a VoIP box / VoIP appliance. The angle there would likely be Systems Administration, Systems Development or Network Administration – each of those come by locally very rarely. The only way I’m likely to get such a position is push closer to Sydney, but that’s not going to happen. I refuse to live in Sydney, I refuse to commute daily to Sydney.

This causes me to reject possible avenues of study, i.e I would like to go get a CCNA, heavens knows I’m good for it, or go through Uni and graduate, but the direction largely depends on career moves. CCNA is valid for 3 years, before you have to renew it – if for the next 3 years, I’m still replying – “reboot”, then that would be 3 years and considerable $$ wasted.

I’m not exactly against a construction position either, it’s pretty similar to the above, I like to see things take shape, and building houses, renovations is something I would say appeals to me. Amazingly, one of my first positions at 14 years old was working in a sawmill, and then later moving onto a window factory, delivering windows to new constructions. And then, I went onto making frames for carparks.

I got away from that, the desire to gain a career in IT was too strong, and I wasn’t getting anywhere in construction (I had a really unstable life back then..)

Back to the only reason for work, the house – we are still waiting for quotes from builders for some of the work we want done, it’s been 3 weeks and we have just 1 quote. I consider myself patient, at times, but I think that largely has to do with ‘knowing what’s to come’. I am tired of waiting on dollar figures, so we know where we stand, and we can decide if we need to rob the bank, or ask them kindly instead.

Once you start looking at the most simplest of tasks, recladding the outside asbestos fibro, to allow for solar power, many other decisions come into play (and yet, there’s more to come):
– Any changes to the windows or doors (these need to be known before hand, so the necessary work is completed, instead of cladding being cut later).
– New windows can require resizing the window frames.
– Relocating walls / doors requires new frames, filling in the old.
– An outside deck requires removing the outdoor half wall.
etc.

So, we went further, the inside layout isn’t open plan, and we’ve spent countless hours, countless edits on getting the interior layout ‘done’. We want to do as little as possible, whilst maximising the overall impact, and today, that layout has found it’s way ‘mostly there’.

We’ll have to sit there and poke holes into it as we’ve done many times already, and once you can poke no more holes, the design is complete.

I’ve got a new Netbook coming from Hong Kong soon, the idea being that we could plug a HSPA modem into it when waiting in the car or whatever, on the train, etc. Plug a GPS receiver into it, and run any combination of navigator software, and plug a memory stick into it, etc.

My first plan is to strip it back and see if we can chuck a larger card into it, and put Ubuntu on instead of the Windows CE stuff it comes with – that’ll be the most interesting. I’d also want to find a way of mounting it into the car, which again should be fun.

And, I’m still currently trying to fit doors to two rooms, this was started approximately 1 month ago, just after Christmas, and is still going. The issue is the door frames are differing sizes, so you have to go over them again and again and again with the wood plane. Still, it beats work – which is just plain boring.