Friday, June 26, 2009
Indigestion and Introspection
Statement: I wish I didn't have this indigestion all the time. There's this slight heartburn feeling almost all the time, like there's a little candle burning in my guts. This is a huge life issue and represents a lot of repressed emotions and deep psychological issues.
Reply: Uh, have you considered not drinking so much coffee and maybe not putting hot sauce on the majority of your meals?
Statement: Fuck off and die. THIS IS A DEEP ISSUE, MAN!
Reply: Uh, have you considered not drinking so much coffee and maybe not putting hot sauce on the majority of your meals?
Statement: Fuck off and die. THIS IS A DEEP ISSUE, MAN!
Good Service. Creepily So.
Here in the frigid Northeast, we all have secret lovers. Those lovers are the power company and the gas/oil company. Every fall and winter, these companies screw us come bill time.
One such screwing service that one can voluntarily sign up for is the payment plan, in which the companies figure out your average bill over the course of a year and charge you that amount every month. So instead of paying low(er) amounts in the summer and high in the winter you may a happy/painful medium throughout the year.
You must have an account with the company in question for a year before you can sign up for this service. I just signed up for this and it was a remarkable experience in automation. At no point did I talk to a human. I called the customer service number and went into an automated voicemail system. That system, going by the number I had called from, identified my account without me having to say anything. Then I said "payment plan" and "yes" into the phone and that was the entirety of the experience.
Honestly, it was kind of creepy. I think I'd be happier if the experience dragged out for 10 minutes and involved repeating my information over the phone to a belligerent, half-deaf person who was only capable of typing one word per minute.
One such screwing service that one can voluntarily sign up for is the payment plan, in which the companies figure out your average bill over the course of a year and charge you that amount every month. So instead of paying low(er) amounts in the summer and high in the winter you may a happy/painful medium throughout the year.
You must have an account with the company in question for a year before you can sign up for this service. I just signed up for this and it was a remarkable experience in automation. At no point did I talk to a human. I called the customer service number and went into an automated voicemail system. That system, going by the number I had called from, identified my account without me having to say anything. Then I said "payment plan" and "yes" into the phone and that was the entirety of the experience.
Honestly, it was kind of creepy. I think I'd be happier if the experience dragged out for 10 minutes and involved repeating my information over the phone to a belligerent, half-deaf person who was only capable of typing one word per minute.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
This Shit Just Keeps Happening
For the second weekend in a row, I'm spending a chunk of time doing after-hours work, mostly applying Microsoft security patches (they come out monthly) to servers and rebooting them. This happens every month, and is a duty split amongst my team. I probably have this responsiblity about once every three months.
In my patching work today, one of the servers didn't come back up after reboot; this happens probably about 10-15% of the time, and isn't a huge issue by itself because it's the weekend and I have until Monday to make sure it's back up and running.
Per standard procedure, I page the network group that is responsible for keeping the servers up. However, they don't have the server on their 'master list,' so they won't do anything. It's not on their list because we recently migrated this server from one IT group to another. I call the other IT group that, until recently, supported this specific server. They won't touch it because it's no longer their responsibility.
Furthermore, the tech I spoke to just happens to be married to a woman that works with the software on the server. He tells her that the application is down (which it's not; it's just this one server). She then calls her manager and tells her that the application is down. Which it's not.
Now, instead of a simple server fix, I've got a political situation on my hands. This application is very important to the business, and inspires a lot of paranoia because it breaks fairly often. It's fucking 7:30 on a Saturday night, and now what should've been a simple 10-minute server job has turned into a 3 hour+ drama, replete with my manager calling me at home and two different IT groups playing hot potato with the server.
In my patching work today, one of the servers didn't come back up after reboot; this happens probably about 10-15% of the time, and isn't a huge issue by itself because it's the weekend and I have until Monday to make sure it's back up and running.
Per standard procedure, I page the network group that is responsible for keeping the servers up. However, they don't have the server on their 'master list,' so they won't do anything. It's not on their list because we recently migrated this server from one IT group to another. I call the other IT group that, until recently, supported this specific server. They won't touch it because it's no longer their responsibility.
Furthermore, the tech I spoke to just happens to be married to a woman that works with the software on the server. He tells her that the application is down (which it's not; it's just this one server). She then calls her manager and tells her that the application is down. Which it's not.
Now, instead of a simple server fix, I've got a political situation on my hands. This application is very important to the business, and inspires a lot of paranoia because it breaks fairly often. It's fucking 7:30 on a Saturday night, and now what should've been a simple 10-minute server job has turned into a 3 hour+ drama, replete with my manager calling me at home and two different IT groups playing hot potato with the server.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Exhausting
I'm visiting home right now, hanging out with my parents, my sister, and her two kids. As always happens when I'm around children, I'm shocked at how exhausting they are. Even with three different adults to interact with and watch out for my nephew, he wore me out. He's a 2-year old with enough energy to power a small city. I was pounding caffeine all day yesterday but I still had to take a nap after spending just an hour alone with him. Obviously, it's all about pacing yourself, but for someone like me who's not used to being around little kids, pacing is hard to do so I'm usually running on fumes by 3 or 4 PM.
I love the bejesus out of my nephew, as well as my little niece (who's still an infant and therefore not much fun), but... well, when I first got here, I was kicking myself for not assigning more vacation time to this visit so I could spend as much time with my family as possible. But now I see that it was a smart move. As much as I love these people, being around kids is no vacation at all.
I love the bejesus out of my nephew, as well as my little niece (who's still an infant and therefore not much fun), but... well, when I first got here, I was kicking myself for not assigning more vacation time to this visit so I could spend as much time with my family as possible. But now I see that it was a smart move. As much as I love these people, being around kids is no vacation at all.
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