how to rejuvenate this blog?

seems that full time working life is draining some time resources from me - i'd wake up at 8am (pretty late for salaried employee actually), play Street Racing a little and take my 1st job at 10+ if there's any pre-arranged ones. Otherwise, wait for IBM KL to give me a call and assign something to me. If i'm done by lunch, i'll touch wood during the later part of the day. Sometimes i get the 2nd, sometimes i don't. So the time is spent waiting or helping my colleagues in their installation jobs.

taking a job is quite stressful actually. For the very first call, i almost freaked out since training don't cover 90% of all problems - training materials present the very perfect scenario, no need to troubleshoot you see. By the way, the first call was at a really obscure location - Singapore Prisons HQ.

besides the technical side, i have to get my partner for the day to tag along. Some days, i really had problems finding anyone free, so in the end had to grit my teeth and go down alone. It's scary actually, especially if the customer tries to be funny.

so there are many things to handle in a typical job - the machine, my brain (skills and experience), plus the customer. I always liked touching computer hardware, so loving it is not an issue. But then it's a totally different world, not the cute little hard drives, processors and Microsoft Windows we use at home. A misstep can mean everyone's Internet banking application goes down, a factory production floor halts... you get the idea.

lucky i'm able to move around, not stuck in a cubicle from 9-6pm. There's no need to report back to office, unless there's real admin work to do. So i see some data centres more often than i see the IBM HQ in a week. But it cuts both ways, highly debatable.

i'm given some formal responsibilities; assigned the backup engineer for 3 companies; 1 ministry, 1 govt linked healthcare group and a health supplement MNC. Seems that the workload will get heavier soon...

i'm also at a mental crossroad at this time regarding my career - should i continue to develop my skills in IBM AIX hardware and software, never mind the physical nature of the work? Should i move into software programming? Or should i join civil service (if i can even get in)? I feel the 1st option will be the most valuable in 5-10 years, even more than software development which anyone can do it with a couple of books and projects. The 3rd is purely for the pay packet, but i don't think prospects and compensation curve are that great in the same 5-10 years.

but why am i not decisive over this?

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so what happens besides work? Go out with my dearest, do nothing on weekends, recoup some freedom lost during the weekdays. How boring life can be?

hope i can take down more snapshots and details of my life, and spice up this blog a little!