Just another day in the office

[JitterJabber]

I wake up to the curtains in my bedroom blowing in the wind from the sea breeze. The sunlight shines through the windows and the smell of freshly made coffee wafts from the kitchen. As my head gets less fuzzy and I emerge from my slumber, I hear the rhythmic *thump* *thump* *thump* of chopper blades as the Eurocopter AS365 lands on the lawn outside. It takes me a minute to remember it is here for me.

A quick shower and change of clothes and I'm ready to go, grabbing my holdall and pouring my coffee to go as I head out the door to the day that awaits. Destination is a ship off the coast of Corfu with a failing VSAT link. Just another day in the office 

Seriously though, the above is not my life, but it might be someones. I'm not very good at the 9-5 Monday to Friday desk job and I'm lucky enough to have a great job with a variety of work and locations.

However, it would be good to hear from anyone who has or does an interesting job relating to networking. Do you visit oil rigs and ships offshore? Do you climb up masts in the mountains and administer 4G networks. Do you frequently fly to exotic locations and save the day Rambo style?? Give me some inspiration of networking jobs that don't just involve sitting in a data centre or behind a desk all day (not that there's anything wrong with either).

[icecream-guy]

I'm siting here on the beach in Antigua with my feet in the sand, remote VPN into work and fixing the days problems......I wish.

More like I'm stuck in a remote government facility data center with no windows,  cant see outside. Is it a beautify warm day?Raised floors everywhere, and the constant whirr of the air conditioners.  solving problems from years past, or planning projects that *might* get completed in the next few years...  We're going to be updating  snmp-server location strings on devices today 

[deanwebb]

I look out my open window to see a gentle rain caressing the leaves of trees in my garden. Days like this are why I enjoy working from home.

I sit comfortably on a sofa as the conference call drones on.

As for being a globe-trotter... I was *told* my job was 10-20% travel, and that sounded great to me. So far, though, I've been told, "You can do that remotely." So I do. I've trained people in Prague and Hyderabad... remotely... I've dealt with major outages in France and Germany... after emailing someone to hook up a laptop with PuTTY to the console port on the firewall - and be sure to keep the laptop plugged in and the screen saver turned off! Everything, I do remotely.

So, yes, I don't travel to the big rigs or anything like that... but I do get to work from home 2 days a week, most weeks.

[dlots]

I am working on a system in Miami my toes in the sand the ocean roaring in the background.  Ok so one of the field guys is the one actually in Miami and I am remoted into his PC and I am in my cubical, and he's not actually on the beach, he's in a 90 degree windowless bunker and has been for 12 hours.

I kinda like the fact that I can work on systems anywhere in the world from my cube (although I wish I was allowed to work on them from home).  My job is design but I still work on the systems that cause people head-aches, as such my "Systems I have worked on" map is kinda cool.  Mostly in on the east cost, but it can be most anywhere.

My favorite story (kinda) is when I was working on a CME in Indonesia with an FXO card in it (so I couldn't get the number from the CME's config), and the field guys kept giving me the wrong phone numbers, so I was prank calling 1/2 of Indonesia at 2am their time trying to troubleshoot this CME.

[JitterJabber]

Everything, I do remotely.
So, yes, I don't travel to the big rigs or anything like that... but I do get to work from home 2 days a week, most weeks.

I think you're right and a lot of the config can either be done remotely or if hands on intervention is needed it's outsourced to someone in the area who just racks and connects.

I'm home based with travel, but do daydream of specializing in an area that involves more outdoor work or variety in locations.

[JitterJabber]

I kinda like the fact that I can work on systems anywhere in the world from my cube (although I wish I was allowed to work on them from home). 

I like this too. I was working remotely on a system in South Korea the other day. I do like getting out and about though. Time for some research I think.

[deanwebb]

What cheeses me off is how *I* get to do everything remotely, but guys at my same level or a level above get to fly to all the high-falootin' destinations, which includes guys from Europe coming to the USA for a week or two to be in a bunch of meetings and then do a ton of shopping, drinking, and golfing. But when it comes to those week-long workshops in Europe, video conferencing is just fine for me. At least they don't make me wake up early to be in the full workshop meeting set.

I suppose the day someone has the stones to ask me to arrive to the office at 5 or 6 AM for a videoconference with Europe is the day I have a resume-generating opportunity. I can do that from home on a phone call, but like hell I'm leaving home at 4 or 5 AM to drive an hour just so I can see the face of the guy I'm talking to.