jeff dray

Blog Post

New Year, Same Work

January 6, 2008 6:49am PST

Well here it is; a new year and a new challenge. That’s the usual line but a change of calendar doesn’t necessarily mean an automatic change in your life. You have to make changes happen....

25 Latest comment by jdclyde

Blog Post

People Make the Difference, not Technology

December 29, 2007 3:56am PST

It’s funny how people make the difference, isn’t it? In the few days between Christmas and New Year a lot of people in the UK take a few days off. This means that although there are less of...

2 Latest comment by Jaqui

Blog Post

The Gods of Support were smiling on me today.

December 20, 2007 2:31pm PST

My automated call system delivered five calls to me today, all within a 30 mile radius: Bonus point number one. I wasn’t in for hours behind the wheel in dreadful weather. In fact, the sun...

8 Latest comment by ictvacature

Blog Post

Getting Ready for Christmas

December 12, 2007 2:07pm PST

I don’t know what it is like in other parts of the world but here in the sunny south of the UK it would appear that Christmas is on its way, whether we want it or not. Christmas used to be a...

2 Latest comment by thinkonit@...

Blog Post

A new year, a new career

December 6, 2007 12:52pm PST

I'm the last person to make New Year's resolutions, but this year I have decided to break my own rules and declare publicly that in 2008 I am going to take charge of my work/life balance and...

20 Latest comment by ryan_z_mendoza@...

Blog Post

Going the extra mile just wears you -- and your shoes -- out

November 30, 2007 9:47am PST

I've spoken about the work/life balance before. It is so easy to fall into the trap of working continuously, squeezing just one more job in instead of stopping for lunch, going to one more call...

10 Latest comment by dcolbert@...

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Free software: Can it be as good as products you pay for?

November 21, 2007 11:30am PST

At home, on a lowly field engineer's income, I have to make the most of free software. OpenOffice is a good package for general home usage, AVG AntiVirus consistently outperforms Norton, and...

75 Latest comment by Deadly Ernest

Blog Post

How do you respond to pressure? Work/life balance under threat?

November 12, 2007 1:14am PST

It seems that working life in the 21st century has two speeds -- flat out or unemployed. When you are the "go-to" guy or gal for a large number of customers it is easy to find yourself being...

4 Latest comment by adamblevins@...

Blog Post

Getting certified: Is it really necessary?

November 3, 2007 5:52am PDT

If you have been working in IT for a number of years, it is quite possible that your skills exceed your paper qualifications. Often we take certification long after we have learned and deployed...

155 Latest comment by robert_boyko@...

Blog Post

Remote support planning saves time and money

October 27, 2007 3:13am PDT

In these days of cost consciousness and the demand for instant fixes, more and more organisations are turning to remote support as a way of getting customers problems sorted out quickly and...

21 Latest comment by MariaJones

Blog Post

Putting out fires? Don't beat out the flames, turn off the gas!

October 17, 2007 12:20pm PDT

Are you too busy firefighting to solve the underlying problems in your systems? This is not as rare as it should be, as companies grow and departments merge we often find ourselves having to cope...

Blog Post

Are you an early adopter, or do you wait and see?

October 11, 2007 11:22am PDT

From time to time -- no scrub that, all the time -- things change in the industry. New hardware breakthroughs, new operating systems, new software, new peripherals and updated software all appear...

17 Latest comment by Teufelhund

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The medical profession: How similar are doctors to IT engineers?

October 3, 2007 10:35am PDT

I had to visit my doctor today, I had injured my shoulder and there were complications that involved the visit. The doctor asked me if I had lost consciousness during my fall and proceeded to...

11 Latest comment by CharlieSpencer_Palmetto

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Don't forget to keep the helpdesk in the loop

September 24, 2007 2:40pm PDT

With all the new methods for communications that we have embraced in recent years I feel it is time to re-introduce the world to a method that has been working pretty well for a number of years....

11 Latest comment by Absolutely

Blog Post

Sometimes work is not the answer

September 22, 2007 1:03pm PDT

You may have wondered what I had been up to for the last couple of weeks, I have been taking my annual holiday, a couple of weeks away from work and all that it entails. We packed up and headed...

1

Blog Post

Can you draw pictures on the phone?

August 27, 2007 2:58am PDT

Let’s face it, if you can describe things in a way that the end user can comprehend, you can often get to the bottom of a problem without the need for a site visit. In my employment an avoided...

1

Blog Post

Delighting your customers – Are you a swan or a panicker?

August 16, 2007 2:51pm PDT

I had a tough one this week, a franking machine that had the weirdest fault and did not respond to any of the usual fixes. The customer was getting fractious; the fault was really an odd one and...

1

Blog Post

Bullying in the workplace – Do you tolerate it?

August 10, 2007 1:20pm PDT

Just lately I have been noticing that the more I do the more pressure I receive to do even more. It's summer holiday time so we field engineers are somewhat thin on the ground and the number of...

7 Latest comment by gpellett@...

Blog Post

The Customer is always right?

August 5, 2007 10:35am PDT

These words came back to haunt me this week, I had visited a customer to fix a machine and needed to order parts. The fault in the system could have been in one of two places and with this...

4 Latest comment by sangram.takmoge@...

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Back in the thick of it

July 25, 2007 2:35am PDT

So the holiday in Greece is but a warm memory. My tan isn’t yet fading as the beach here in Swanage is in perfect working order but I have had to come down to earth with a huge bump, yes I’m...

2 Latest comment by Shellbot