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Subject:RE: On Office Politics and Being the New Kid From:"Morton, Christopher" <CMorton -at- caiso -dot- com> To:"Lori Olcott" <lori_olcott -at- yahoo -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 8 Feb 2006 09:02:35 -0800
Hi Lori,
I cut my teeth on DOS and know my way around very well at the command
prompt, thank you. The similarities between DOS and UNIX are many, given
the genesis of the former, I believe.
While doing some techwriting for HP I had the opportunity to reinstall
homegrown EAI J2EE applications I was documenting on their departmental
test servers (a process that took about two weeks in total). Being a
UNIX newbie at the time I wouldn't have gotten to first base with the
instruction set you initially illustrated. Your approach is far better,
indeed, though I might suggest being a bit more complete ("change to X
directory" rather than "go to X directory").
More power to you and thanks for prompting the thread. I learned a lot
about protocol, especially from Beth Agnew's great responses.
> Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+cmorton=caiso -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+cmorton=caiso -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf
Of Lori Olcott
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 2:55 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: On Office Politics and Being the New Kid
Hi Y'all -
Thanks to everyone for their insight and ideas. It helps greatly; if
nothing else, for the reassurance that I'm not on crack.
To answer a few questions, yes, we do have the same manager; and no,
she's
not my manager. I've been told the team needs documentation, but it
hasn't been made clear what level of documentation they want. It could
be
nothing more than an ISO buzzword for them, but I sure hope not.
The "personal notes" impression may have come about because she trained
me
on some of the duties I've been documenting. She saw me jotting down
the
process and may be assuming that I'm just giving her a typed version of
what I wrote down. There's a lot more in there now than my "personal
notes", but they were needed in the beginning.
Her version of documentation is along the lines of:
Log into VTG86y and run BigSetupStart.pl
Mine is more like:
Log into VTG86y as topuser. Go to /home/topuser/tools and run
BigSetupStart.pl. You will be prompted for a date range (yyyymmdd) and
volume number(s).
I also include screen and text captures.
Which gives me an idea. The procedures she's written are very much like
a
seasoned admin's check list (as someone previously suggested). It works
well if you already know your way around the system and know what jobs
hit
which data, but it's totally useless to a newcomer. If I pitch my
writing
as training material, that would give it a bit of distance from her baby
but still bring much needed documentation into the team. My work could
supplement, not replace. After all, I would hope that at least one of
us
will be promoted in the next ten years. Others will have to be trained
eventually.
I'll let folks know as the saga resolves itself.
Ciao!
Lori
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