Really I do!
For all of you that don't know what I actually do, I'm a Technical Analyst. My work is predominantly with databases and servers, so lots of data, and lots of "well this isn't working because of this, and that isn't working because of that relation, and that relation doesn't even exist because it was replaced circa 1990 with a completely muthafucken different relation that doesn't even make any god damn sense".
If you're a geek, then you know the drill. Things can go wrong, at any time, no matter how fucken ridiculous those wrong things seem ("OH NOES I LOOKED AT IT WRONG AND THEN IT BROKENZ!"). Yeah, I moan about it, but I kind of like the challenge sometimes, just not when I have a million other things to do or can't figure out wtf went wrong.
My responsibilities are generally system related, and how the well the system interacts with the users (and vice versa). This involves training users on how to use our systems, and looking at better ways in which these systems can be used.
So one of my responsibilities this year was to hold presentations/training sessions for the 2010 timetable, which meant preparing notes, and running through already mildly confusing systems with n00b and not-so-n00b users.
This was fun. Not.
Who likes public speaking? NOT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
But I had to, it's in my job description, it's something that I get paid to do, and quite frankly, why should anybody else do it, when I'm the expert on it? lol.
So I held these sessions, four of them to be exact, over the past 2 weeks. An hour a time, with approximately 15 people at each. I wasn't dreading it, per se, but I certainly wasn't looking forward to it.
I must say tho, in most of the sessions, whilst I didn't know everybody, I did know some people, and of those some people, I had built relationships with them by helping them out in the past, which in turn actually helped me out because a) it's always nice to see a familiar, and kind face in the crowd b) any troublemakers or sticky questions, these people actually helped ME out. They were the buffers between me, the IT geek, and them, the tutors, staff or general IT n00bulons.
This part I liked. But fuck am I glad that's over.
I still have to run one-on-one sessions, but that's really a piece of piss, and is far easier than running group sessions, where everybody has different problems that they all must have answers for. There's also the problem of not being able to cater to everybody, so what may work for the majority of the campus, unfortunately does still leave some people out in the cold, angry and hurt that they're not getting what they "desperately" need.
Aside from the training, I also had several different projects running on the side, that needed my undivided attention (which obviously got my attention divided!). So it's been busy.
And it's still busy, but at least I now have time to blog. I can sit down and actually eat my lunch with both hands, instead of having one hand with sandwich, and the other hand on the keyboard, typing out queries and making changes. I don't have to be in panic mode that things aren't going to be ready by their deadlines, because they're done. DONE!
And now I just have to wait until August, where I'll be living and breathing data, eating lunch without my eyes leaving the monitor, and only moving from my chair for the brief toilet jaunt, or at the end of a very long day, looking much like something from Dawn of the Dead.
Something tells me I'll be drinking quite a bit over the next few months.