v4.6 - TFGIFF

Morning Folks,

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It''s Friday!

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Yup

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Oh yeah

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How was everyone''s evening last night? Mine was just freakin'' great... not. Folks, don''t take your work home with you; leave it at the door when you leave at the end of the day. When you take your work home with you, prepare for a lot of stress and worry in your life.

I have a problem. My problem is quite simple and complex at the same time. I can''t share the entire problem with any one individual and I certainly can''t share it over a musing. It is interesting sometimes to see people preach to other people about bringing their work home and doing exactly that themselves. I don''t want to preach to you guys, I want to share my experiences.

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CompuCom has been a pain in the ass since the day of the "take over". We all signed an offer letter when joining on that simply stated there would be no changes for one full year. Well, CompuCom has made more changes in the last 6 months than I''ve seen with GE in the last 5 years. What does that tell you? Well, based on the changes I''ve seen in the last 6 months, it would appear we are being broken off and thrown out. It is stressful to sit here and "see" that happening, especially when you have two kids, a wife and a whole house full of bills to worry about. My mind has been drifting these past few weeks and I''ve been dwelling more and more on the possible exodus of the IT industry and moving on to something else.

My cousin and I chatted yesterday about this. Basically, he told me my perception of IT work has been destroyed due to the fact this was my first IT job and working for this company is all I know of IT work. He made me look at things from a different angle and I''ve been toying with the possibility of giving IT another shot, but with a different company.

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Making career decisions can bring a lot of stress and pain. Personally, I don''t want to leave but I do want to leave at the same time. I have a few friends here whom I enjoy talking with on a daily basis. I feel comfortable here with the managers and co-workers and I must admit it is a fairly easy paycheque. Am I throwing away something potentially good? Am I getting screwed by a company who is penny pinching their way to eliminating everything that made working here benificial?

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I did a quick search yesterday for other IT work within the City. To be honest, there really isn''t a whole lot out there that interests me. There isn''t another job out there (available) that I would rather be doing than this one.

I had a manager one time say something to me that I will most likely remember until the day I die. We were having some challenges with the site I was on and a couple of us approached our manager to talk about it. His words were plain and simple. Bend over and smile.

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It is funny how the type of manager you have can directly impact the enjoyment of the job. Don''t get me wrong, my manager and I get along just great and we used to chat on a regular basis. Lately, it hasn''t been like that and you can tell he is under a LOT of stress with everything going on. I like my manager, but he is trying to take too much on and it causing his eventual burnout. As his friend, I should talk to him, but as his employee, I am bound to a certain degree and don''t want to cross that professional relationship. He knows the issues we are faced with and is doing everything in his power to assist us. I honestly think the next person to quit will be him, if he doesn''t snap like a dry twig before then.

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I don''t want to bore you with my work talk, but unfortunatly it has consumed me to a point where I just can''t seem to drop it. That mixed with my imaginary home issues makes for a really interesting f''in day. Relationship wise I''ve been hurt bad; very bad. I won''t go into details so let''s just say when I started dating Katie I tried to break up with her over a dozen times during the first few months because I was scared. Katie is strong headed (pig headed? :) ) and she usually gets what she wants, most of the time, within reason. It just so happens she wanted me and I still find that hard to believe even now with over 6 years gone by. I have issues with trust based on some things I don''t want to talk about with anyone except her. Of course she understands, and is supportive but I just can''t shake this "feeling" she is going to just walk out of my life one day. It''s like ESPN or something :)

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Anyway, I have my work and home issues to deal with and I shouldn''t have to deal with them both at the same time. Unfortunatly I am human and I have issues seperating the two. Home life affects my work life a lot more than work affects my home. I am doing much better at leaving work at work and going home with a smile on my face. Despite the recent resignation of an employee and the news another is going on-site indefinately I''ve still been able to keep a decent smile on my face about everything. What''s a person to do? Well I started off by booking some time off (10 days) coming up in a couple weeks. I plan on taking that time and actually doing something other than sit around the house every day. I would like to take the family out to the mountains maybe to Banff or Lake Louise. I don''t want to sit around the house and do nothing. I want to enjoy my 10ish days away from this hell... err... shit hole and do something enjoyable and memorable. I wish I had several t! housand dollars so I could fly my family back East to visit my family. I know my father has never met my daughter and it doesn''t look like he''ll get a chance to meet her anytime soon. Hell, she''ll be going to school before he gets a chance to meet her.

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I''m going to cut this off here gang. I would appear my musing mood is glum today :) Thanks for listing to my dribble. Hopefully I''ll have some good things to talk about on Monday :)

Take care my friends,

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Cheers,

Al