December 9, 2014 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Holiday Struggles
December 9, 2014 at 6:31 am
Steve your article hits December/The Holiday Season exactly on the head. It is a month to recharge as a human being in this "go go" world of the USA. Many other countries shut down and even have extra holiday's like "Boxing Day". Furthermore in many other countries the only thing open for 3 days straight (Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day) is their version of a 7-11 or gas station convenient store. This forces everyone to be locked up with friends/family and just cook, drink, and relax. Doesn't sound too bad does it? In regards to work you are correct too it should feel slow and quite in the office. Maybe take the time to research little something extra for work or take some time to write a really heart felt card to someone you love.
December should remind everyone to take a chill pill and stop and smell the roses. It's the only darn time of the year when the USA does truly slow down. Let's not let ourselves take that away from each other.
December 9, 2014 at 6:52 am
Slow down? Bah Humbug! 😀
There's just as much or more work this time of year in my industry. Plus you have more priorities to juggle due to budgeting and scheduling around everyone else's vacations. And there's dealing with optimists that start projects late in fourth quarter with the expectation of progress. Trying to locate development staff to fix their code they spewed after the 17th holiday hangover. Plus managing the servers that will be replaced "next year" for another year.
I'd love to get caught up. Or spend a week writing F# code to replace some of the sketchier scripts that are the glue that holds production together. One day I'll have a real SQL Server job and that will happen...
😛
December 9, 2014 at 7:18 am
In my industry, health, it seems that the end of the year I am frantic to get things in order for the new year when new regulations activate. At the same time it always seems like many of us in IT have somehow ended up with too much vacation that we can't carry over to the new year so am forced to use, making the work situation even worse. I thought I managed my time off better this year yet I still found myself taking a week off in November and just got back from a week off in December. I'll do better next year.
December 9, 2014 at 7:23 am
I find people trying to get development tasks done on this year's budget, so there are a lot of email flying around with unreasonable deadlines. I'm thinking the last 2 weeks of this year are going to be slow for me as other people take time off and I already have my list of things I'd like to accomplish. I'm really hoping I get to do at least some of them.
December 9, 2014 at 7:45 am
At a previous retail job, the vacation calender didn't align with either the real-world calender or the fiscal-year calender. The fiscal year ended after January, and the vacation calender ended after June (the slowest time of the year for that particular company). This had several benefits - there was no race to use vacation during the critical Christmas season, the end of the fiscal year, or the start of the fiscal year, so key people were working during key times. And as things slowed down, there was plenty of time for everyone to schedule and use their vacations with minimal business impact.
Just a practice I wish more companies would use!
December 9, 2014 at 8:10 am
We've got plenty of work to do but the hardest part is blanking out the idle chatter in the office from those who have a bit less to do because the phones are not ringing so much.
Our leave year runs to the end of April which is an ideal point so the use-it-or-lose-it leave is taken around Easter and after the financial year end.
December 9, 2014 at 9:23 am
For me it's a good time to finally apply the latest service pack to our servers. And tentatively disable some of those sysadmin accounts that seem to sprout up when you're not looking.
December 9, 2014 at 10:00 am
It's too late in the year to start anything NOW!!
🙂
December 9, 2014 at 10:03 am
Being in a tax-related business, December is crunch time for us. Which also means that summers are usually pretty quiet here.
Tony
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Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
December 9, 2014 at 10:03 am
don.schaeffer (12/9/2014)
For me it's a good time to finally apply the latest service pack to our servers. And tentatively disable some of those sysadmin accounts that seem to sprout up when you're not looking.
Sounds good, but be sure you are watching for issues in Jan when you do the latter. Many people won't notice or test exclusively if they're out much this month.
December 9, 2014 at 10:05 am
I'm preparing to retire and training my replacement. No spare time in my world....
Oddly enough, my employer is in the automotive business and will be shut down from 12/24 through 1/4. I'll get a break whether or not I can spare the time.
December 9, 2014 at 2:37 pm
I used this time last year to create a stored procedure to show me column by column log/audit table changes. So when a user asks when a specific record has been modified, I can run the procedure to give the user the changes made, who made the changes and when the changes were made. It was eventually added to the end user application so they can run it themselves.
I was able to use a combination of "new" features found here on SSC including the "FOR XML", "UNPIVOT", "DENSE_RANK". Learned a ton from enhancing this over the past year.
Thanks for all of the help, motivation and insight
Happy Holidays...
Anton
December 12, 2014 at 1:05 am
If there is any lull for any reason I tend to find it useful to catchup with all those tasks which must be done but are difficult to justify the time e.g. CBTs to demonstrate knowledge regarding regulatory compliance.
The lull has always varied from client to client but Christmas has personally been varied for me as I have worked some (not public holidays e.g. not Chrstmas Day) but others I have taken a week off.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
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