Saturday, April 21, 2007

Start of the second week of nights...

Well everyone I'm alive and well and starting my second week of the night shift this evening. It's weird keeping the schedule of vampires so I'm that I have to have "routines" to keep me awake which is good but also doesn't allow for a lot of tinkering. At the moment I'm able to stay up all night without much help from coffee or caffeine and also still able to get a workout in as well. I'm eating pretty healthy (no fast food or crap open at that time of night) and also getting some stuff done personally that is helping me as well.

The sleep schedule is still getting sorted out but for the most part my sleeping hours are from about about 10:30 am until about 6:30 pm which seems to be about right. Give's me an hour before bed to get any banking or trivial stuff done and give me from about 7 pm until about 11 pm to hang out with friends, talk to the family, etc. Overall it's a pretty good shift but they all tell me the second week is when it begins to break down on you...so I'm preparing for that.

The shift itself is pretty relaxing. It's less phone calls and more emails. But you definitely work a lot more cases. Customers in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) tend to be resellers of our equipment rather than direct end users. Thus they have money to afford competent engineers that also speak english and know how to get things done quickly. I've definitely learned a lot about Americans versus the rest of the world lol. American IT people tend to freak out and need their hands held...the rest of the world just do what needs to be done and don't complain. I suspect more that Americans are overworked at their jobs and their managers have unrealistic expectations (okay I don't suspect...I KNOW) and their European and Asian counterparts tend to have more people to help out due to cheaper labor and thus can focus more singularly on their problems. Either way...it's a LOT less stressful working with the rest of the world versus folks in North America (that includes you lovely canadians too!!)

So hopefully I'll blog more on the shift or just find other things to distract me. Either way I think I'm actually going to get a LOT more positives out of this shift than negatives and that's the important thing.

Also in exercise/weight loss news:

Down 1 pound to 212 lbs and can now run 10 minutes straight without needed a break!!

More to reports when necessary!!

6 Comments:

Blogger carolakabb said...

interesting perspective on the world. glad you are alive and kicking!

5:51 AM  
Blogger Irene said...

Thanks for the hello on my blog! Wow, night shift! I have a few friends who do that and they've adapted ok. Their schedules sound similar to yours. It sounds like you're making it work. Good luck.

9:44 PM  
Blogger carolakabb said...

hey, when do we hit the 1 month mark on soda/sugar? Apparently I am the only one who broke down (only once!)... can we up the ante? Got to get pretzels out of my diet. The extra carbs and SALT are killing mne.

5:54 AM  
Blogger Pamela said...

Glad that you're finding the "good" in having to be doing the night shift... interesting to remember in your line of work that just means different folks somwhere ELSE to have to deal with ..where as for me ..it means staying up while they are sleepin!

9:52 AM  
Blogger KatieFeldmom said...

Down 1 pound to 212 lbs and can now run 10 minutes straight without needed a break!!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

11:59 AM  
Blogger FV Tom said...

Stopping by to say hi. Glad you're doing well.

2:47 PM  

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