another misAdventure

"We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan."

Sunday, February 25, 2007

The Return of the Reset Guy

It doesn't count as much of a return, since I was Reset Guy on Thursday and Friday, but I'm at it again tonight. Four systems to do tonight -- two after midnight EST and two after 1:00am EST. Shouldn't be too horrible though, as I will have some help to do the checking afterward.

And then I shouldn't have to do this again until Wednesday, and then that should be it for the week. I'll get involved if one of the Baltimore systems needs a reset, but they have been behaving themselves nicely since Friday.

Since I wasn't Reset Guy last night, I actually got a bit more than eight hours of sleep last night, and so I'm reasonably rested at the moment.

We didn't get the ice storm overnight in Baltimore that was predicted. There was nothing on the ground when I got up. By the time I got out for lunch, though, there was about three inches of snow on the ground, and then maybe another inch or so in the afternoon. I didn't do anything exciting today -- I did some laundry, got out for lunch and dinner (not going far), and mostly lounged around the hotel, checking on the systems here in Baltimore periodically and browsing the web otherwise. A nice relaxing day before getting back in the grind sometime tomorrow.

So, I may or may not update again tomorrow, depending on whether there's anything worth saying and whether I have time/energy when I get back to the hotel.

I should be able to get out of here on Friday. There's one thing that may put a kink in that, but since I stayed through this weekend I should be able to make a good case for getting out of here on Friday no matter what else is planned next weekend.


Read more!

Saturday, February 24, 2007

The Reset Master

Things are now going pretty well here in Balitmore. I was up late last night doing some necessary system resets (up until 3am), but the result today has been that everything has been very, very stable.

As a result, I mostly had today off. Not that I did much. I did go shopping for a while to get out and around. I wandered around the big mall here -- equivalent to Gurnee Mills around home. A bit mall that's a mixture of regular mall type stores and big-name outlets, so a step up from a straight outlet mall. The only thing I bought there, though, was a copy of "Games" magazine at Books-a-Million. I then went to Wal-Mart and Safeway, and got a new belt, a few groceries, a few miscellaneous items I needed. Then I came back to the hotel, did some system monitoring, called my mom, went to grab a quick (sort-of) dinner, called Ellen, and now I'm just chilling.

Again, there's nothing much going on here that I couldn't be doing at home, though the focus is stronger. One thing I have been doing is late-night monitoring and resets, not just for Baltimore-Washington. I was up until 5:30am Thursday night/Friday morning, as there was an unexpected problem with one of the procedures I did (and that was for New York, not even Baltimore). I did sleep in that morning though. Then, as I said, up 'til 3am last night, up at 8:30am to make a call, and then I just stayed up. I'll be in bed before midnight tonight, though.

Hotel TV tends to suck. I'd usually just have ESPN on all night, but since I don't care about the NBA there's nothing on there to keep me entertained. They also have all the major all news networks, which are doing wall-to-wall Anna-Nicole Smith coverage. I do have Cartoon Network and Comedy Central, so I can watch my usual late-evening fare, but "Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" are reruns this week, and Futurama is only on so many times a day (though I watch them when they are for the 'zillionth time). So, only Letterman as far as new stuff.

Huh, nothing else I can thing of right now, and the bed is sounding like a good plan. I'll probably check in here tomorrow with more.

On, yeah, my department head referred to me as the Reset Master a couple weeks ago, since I was doing a lot of them and coordinating more of them. Just what I wanted to be known for.


Read more!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Scraping Together the Energy

Time to scrape together the energy for a blog post.

Today wasn't so bad. Not, like, terrific. But not bad. We worked 'til about 8:15 - 8:30 pm, and I don't have to stay up until weird hours tonight. So I can get to bed at a reasonable hour (midnight), and get up 7 hours later. Rather than 4.5 or 6.

Last night I was up working until 2:30 am, then wound down a bit until almost 3:00. That was after putting in a full day, 8:30 to 8-ish, trying to find something reasonable to eat (I settled for Wendy's, so I failed), then working at the hotel from 10:00pm on. At least today I was able to sleep in a bit later, getting up at 9:00. After getting showered and dressed I then made the mistake of logging in to work, and got stuck doing a variety of things until close to noon. Then drove into the office and got in 8 hours there.

I'm not posting so much as I'm babbling.

Anyway, tonight no commitments. And in the morning I won't log into word before driving in.

Again, pretty much everything that I'm doing could be done from my office in Illinois. The one thing that is worthwhile being here is meeting with some other folks in other areas, and trying to concentrate on working the problems of just the Baltimore/Washington market rather than a dozen-plus other markets. I guess the concentration is somewhat important. The folks I'm working with - about half I've met and/or worked with via e-mail or IM. The team is pretty decent. One guy I work with all the time, but his office is in Ohio so I don't see him much.

Working face-to-face is good. So much of the time when in my office in Illinois, even working with folks just down the hall, the interaction is via IM, e-mail, or phone, and it loses a lot. I'm one who, if I need to talk to someone a couple halls over, will actually WALK TO THAT PERSON'S OFFICE, rather than IM or phone.

I don't think this is much of a post, but it will do for now. Tomorrow night I don't think I have any commitments either, so look for the next chapter of babbling tomorrow. Maybe I'll even say something coherent.

For now, it's bedtime.


Read more!

Monday, February 19, 2007

A Quickie from Maryland

Hi everyone. I'm in Baltimore! (well, suburban Baltimore)

I found out about this on Friday morning. Flew out yesterday (Sunday) morning.

Got a chance to drive around a little early yesterday afternoon. Got some lunch, found the Lucent office here. I even got a chance to have a 1 hour nap.

It's a good thing I got that much done.

Just as I was leaving the hotel last night to get dinner and some groceries, I got a call from my boss. Could I join a call for a problem in New York?

OK, sure.

I got off that call at 2am EST, almost 8 hours later. It was still going on, I just managed to beg off because I have meetings here this morning, and I HAD to get some sleep. 4.5 hours.


Oh, and yeah, sorry I've had little energy to post here. We'll see how much I can do so in the next week or so.

More bitching later.


Read more!