Bein' the Boss

The most difficult thing about my job is the fact that I'm not in charge. I like very much to make the decisions, as I tend to think I'm always right. As a result, if I was in charge, everything would rock. Not that I'd ever attempt to "organise" a speedy exit for my boss or anything, but if the chips could have fallen differently at the start, that wouldn't have been so bad.

My issue de jour is disk imaging. If I was in charge, all our machines would be set up to use Remote Installation Services out of Windows 2003. They could network boot, hook up to the server, ask a couple of questions, and then image themselves. Simple.
But I'm not in charge. And the decision belongs to one of my workmates. The system currently makes it basically impossible for anyone but him to reimage a computer. All the image files sit on his laptop which has GhostCast server installed on it, and he takes it to a lab of computers, and then boots them off floppy disks and points them to his laptop to retrieve the images. Not simple, not manageable, not fun.

So yeah, Justin comments again about need for new job. I'd like a mid-size site (500 seats?) who are completely unhappy with their current system and need someone to create a new one from scratch. They'll have substantial money allocated to this project, and will be able to create and test the new system in parallel to the existing one, perhaps with a parallel implimentation, but I'd prefer an end-of-year cutover with the staff comming back to some staff training (outsourced to appropriate friends...) to get their skills up to scratch. Ongoing sysadmin would be done by me, with a couple of offsiders handling helpdesk. The offsiders would be hardworking, but have an interest in computers outside of a work environment so that we'd all be getting excited about the latest piece of bleeding-edge graphics hardware, or better yet, the new Playstation3 that kicks the pants of that Xbox358.5 thing. :P

OK, enough dreaming for today. Back to my current job, that is gradually starting to have a rather boredom-relieving side-effect: Students think I'm awesome. I now have several students who write me emails about tech-related stuff, and ask my assistance on coding projects, etc. Hehehe... I am l33t. They are teachable... The next generation is k0mm1ng...