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What did you do this week (and weekend)?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Graduated with my Bachelor's degree! It feels weird as a working adult, but some family and friends came out to celebrate with me which was nice.
Congrats! What's your degree in?
IT! Hoping I can transition from solutions consulting to sysadmin work.
Welcome to Club IT!
Just curious: Why a switch to sysadmin? When I think "Solutions Consulting," I think big bucks. Sysadmin can be big bucks too, but I assume a solutions consultant is more sales-y, and therefore bigger bucks. Not that money is everything, of course.
I've been thinking about how to reply to this one, and in a nutshell, my answer is that money isn't everything. (As you already said.)
I want to do something I enjoy, hopefully for a company I don't hate who offers stability and good benefits.
Totally understand. I worked in non-profit for a long time making alright money. No big bucks, certainly. But it was stable and the benefits were absolutely amazing.
I hope you find exactly what you're looking for! Congrats again!
Touched more grass than usual, the weather is starting to be nice and I want to get as much sun as possible.
I got my first annual performance review at this place last week: 4 out of 5 rating. For us, a 4 is "Exceeding Expectations." A 5 is "Achieving Excellence," while a 3 is simply "Meeting Expectations." A 2 or a 1 are just degrees of unsatisfactory. For a new guy, who's still trying to figure out where I fit into everything, I'm happy with a 4.
Then on Wednesday, we were told that performance-based awards were incoming. I wasn't expecting that as I work for the US government. I figured with all the shit going on, the powers-that-be would've cancelled these types of programs. Or at best, we'd get like a $10 gift card to a Tesla dealership, while also being told we now have to come in 10 days/week and that we should be thankful they haven't fired us all...yet.
But this morning, my supervisor informed me that due to my rating, I could either receive a ~$1500 cash award or 20hrs time off award! With only 8mo under my belt as a fed, and therefore little accrued annual leave, I chose the 20hrs. Interestingly, both the cash and time off award at my level are 50% of what a 5/5 would net. So a 5 would get someone 40hrs off. That's a whole work week! That's definitely piqued my interest for future years.
Though I suspect that it's pretty difficult to receive. My one coworker who I thought would've easily gotten a 5/5, given how much time and effort she puts in, also received a 4/5. So maybe it's one of those "no one's perfect; there's always room for improvement" things that no one or very, very few actually get.
Regardless, a nice way to end the week.
So you know, this 1-5 rating scale is extremely common in the corporate world, I've worked for companies from 10 people to 10s of thousands and I've never heard of someone getting a 5. It basically exists as an unachievable carrot to try to get people to work harder. So, by getting a 4 you (most likely) actually got the highest score possible. Nice job!
Just a warning not to invest any of your self-esteem in that 5-point scale. I did indeed get the mythical "5" a few times (once by saving the company a few million dollars, mostly by doing 3 people's jobs), only to receive a "3" the next time around because "we raised our expectations of you".
It's arbitrary, rarely based on objective data, and a way for bosses to manipulate employee behavior. Do the work you're paid for, to your own satisfaction, and take the evaluations as they come.
We moved! Just yesterday, we are now in a new house. It's been chaotic for the past couple weeks, and we still have much to unpack, but we're settling in. The kitchen is mostly unpacked now, so at least we now have dishes and silverware. Still gotta find the hand towels for the bathrooms (we got the bath towels, and I have a kinda ragged one in my bathroom) and figure out where a bunch of incidentals are (how do we only have one phone charger we know the location of right now??).
But I set up an inadvertent gaming room in the porch/three seasons room! I was literally happy humming while going back and forth moving my gaming stuff. We got all the TVs set up now, and the WiFi transition was smooth (I guess using the same SSID and password is enough for devices to auto-connect?), and... Yeah, I'm content at the moment. The biggest stuff is done, just gotta unpack over the next week and remove the last remaining things from our old house.
We're in the process of moving and finally finished our clean of our previous rental tonight. Giving the keys back in the morning. This week was way more strenuous for me with work than basically any other week recently, plus we've been spending 3 or 4 hours every afternoon/evening at the rental getting stuff moved and cleaned... I've been getting 4-5 hours of sleep and waking up not knowing where I am (in our new house!).
I'm so glad it's the weekend and that maybe I can actually sleep a regular amount. I want to be able to relax for a significant period of time (hours?) with our animals and just bask in the comfort of the new house, the new neighborhood, etc... but I think we have more unpacking and maintenance to do before that'll be a reality. We're having some work done in our kitchen on the 16th, after which we can unpack in there, which will pave the way for us being able to actually unpack everything (since right now our pots and pans are in the linen closet, among other things...). The countdown begins!
Aside from moving, the thing that made my week more stressful was that a committee I'm on at work (which is comprised of volunteers for a project) suddenly became a huge point of friction. I was steamrolled by my boss's boss during what was supposed to be an open discussion, which was a hideous feeling. I've since been told by a couple of coworkers on the committee that they didn't agree with how my question was handled. It was nice to be validated, but I'm definitely not signing up for any more projects run by this person. This is one of two of their projects that I'm involved with, and they're both being handled with shockingly little regard for staff time and existing commitments. My job position is a boots-on-the-ground type of role (helping customers every day and completing tasks to get things moving along), which they claim they want on these committees for perspective purposes. However, my job doesn't include taking meetings like, ever, so suddenly having a ton of negative experiences now that I'm involved with meetings pretty much sucks.
Back to the house stuff, send good healing thoughts my way as I prepare to do battle with the scourge of thistles in our front yard this weekend... hoping to listen to my audiobooks while working on it so I can have some time in the sun and fresh air with manual labor and a good book. I'll be tired, but if it goes as planned, it'll be the great kind of tired.
I've had a second MiraDry treatment for underarm hyperhidrosis, or simply put: I used to sweat a lot.
From my teens to late twenties, my day to day was focused on hiding my condition. By the time I got to work in the morning, my t-shirt was already showing underarm sweat patches and that would remain like that throughout the day, no matter the temperature or if I had any stress from work. My mind was always focused on this: I was always trying to figure out when to sneak off and change shirts, wore only white to hide it as much as possible, tried to avoid people as much as possible, etc. It was hell.
During my twenties, I saw a TV show about hyperhidrosis. It was such a relief to hear about doctors that specialize in that field. I was so sure I was alone before that. It let me to try various treatments, none of which ever worked very well. It took until my late 20s that I got enough money to try Botox and it was the first treatment to actually work. It was expensive, it was painful, but it at least relieved the sweating for a couple of months. My anxiety slowly improved and I did this 2-3 times a year.
I think it was around 35 that my body stopped responding to the Botox treatments entirely. The time between treatments was already getting shorter and shorter, but since my anxiety was also a lot lower, I managed. I was still getting the shots, because the placebo effect was still working just fine. It gave me peace to know I had some help, even if it wasn't as effective anymore.
There had always been the option of surgery. Online I had seen quite a few negative reports, as the removal of glands could lead to other issues. So I never really thought of this as a solution for me. At one Botox visit, a doctor recommended looking into the MiraDry treatment. It was expensive, but permanent. One treatment could stop all sweating in the treated area, instantly. A second treatment could be needed, but not in everybody's case. So at 42 I finally pulled the trigger and got the first treatment.
It is hard to explain how much of a change this has been for me. I've been able to wear shirts that are not black or white, I don't worry all day long people will tell me I sweat a lot, no anxiety, no stress... It's been such a life changer. But last year, it started coming back. It has been much much less than it was before the treatment, but still difficult for me to handle. So a couple of weeks ago I made the second appointment and was treated this week. It's painful now, but its such a relieve to know I'm now done for the rest of my life.
Cleaned my parents' inner AC unit filters. It was enjoyable and worthwhile.