Bad news #1: Three cases of West Nile Virus found in my 'hood. Good news: "The City" is spraying this week between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. in affected areas. Cover your grills and then clean them real good before using them this weekend!
Bad news #2: "The City" is having one of the "big 3" cell phone companies (I'll bet you can guess which one ;) ) bid on outsourcing my departments services. They came in last week to evaluate what we do. Good News: They went away dumbstruck when they found out that we do mountains more work than just service "their" equipment. When shown that we performed everything from maintaining a 11 yr old Win 3.11 network and workstations at peak efficiency to performing the IT function for our latest closed system network, to keeping the (also 11 year old) operator consoles running (they are heated/ventilated/adjustable surface-keyboard-wrist rest and equipment filled), to running cable and cross connecting/maintaining a massive network of equipment on a daily basis (not to mention the same for the field equipment). They were also quite surprised to learn that we also train the operators to use those systems well beyond the limited scope of their original employee training. Another eye opener for them; that we maintain three separate databases (based on each shop) of our day to day operations with much more detail than the in-house Lotus Notes Network management system. The "expert" who was sent to watch us told us that his best suggestion would be to "enhance" our staff with additional techs for "their" equipment and basically leave us to do everything else we already do. This will be the third time in 13 years that "they" have bid to perform our services. It gets tiresome to have to justify your job every so many years, especially when everyone tells you that you are good at it. They seem a bit more determined that the last two times. Bad news: Worst case scenario: They outsource and the usurper hires us (at a lower rate) to do our own jobs. That's O.K. for someone over 50 with 20 years or more on the books (who could retire and take the pay in addition to their retirement pay), but for me it is unacceptable (and unavailable), as I would lose my pension and other benefits I've put in over a dozen years for. I would be forced to enact union rules and "bump" another tech with less service time somewhere else in "The City". It would be a last resort, as what a shame to effectively have two people lose their jobs to satisfy the Mayor's "newer" patronage system which appears to be contracts and big companies (as his older patronage system just fell apart). I have been thankfully insulated thus far from either of his patronage schemes (It's called doing your job).
I can't wait for the election..... (cue "Winds of Change" from the Scorpion's)
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