Well, today was the completion of Day 2 on the job. As many of you are aware, I was laid off from my job as a Linux instructor for Guru Labs last month. There is no doubt in my mind that being a Guru was the best job in the planet, so losing that job has introduced depression into my life. It doesn't matter the job, but it will always rank second to Guru Labs.
However, let me not put my new job in a bad light. It might be second place, but it's trailing first by mere inches. However, as with a close friend of mine, I would like to keep this job anonymous. This will give me a little freedom to post topics that are close to my heart, and share stories and experiences without putting my employer in the spotlight, or putting my job at risk. Don't get me wrong- I'm not going to post sensitive information, or any of that. Rather, I'll be able to keep my opinions as my opinions, and not those of my employer.
However, with that, I'll tell you that I am now working as a contractor to do system administration. I am a Red Hat / HPUX / Solaris system administrator. My job duties include those of most standard system administrators- rotating backups, installing new systems, configuring software, writing scripts, adding accounts and so forth. I administer around 35-40 servers for a semi-large development team, a database team and a number of configuration managers. My team is rather small, which encompasses a team lead (my boss), 3 system admins and 2 configuration managers. Today, my task was updating a RHEL 4 box with the latest versions of Python, Apache2 and PostgreSQL to power Trac.
With my new job, I'm happy. Very happy. This job seems to be at a reasonable pace, the team is very friendly, and the duties that I'll be covering are vast. I'll be able to get my hands dirty in many aspects of administration, such as storage management, networking, databases, installation, configuration, security and other things. Everything I taught to my students as an instructor, I'll be able to put to practice. Setting up LDAP with Kerberos? Sure. Customizing SELinux policy? You bet! Playing with tape robots? Of course. If the contract stays in play, or the company I'm contracting for picks me up, I could see myself staying there for some time. When a job is fun, it's hard to let go of the job.
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