Tag: work

Decompressing

Just finished fighting with a Linux server that somehow ended up re-activating a service which it didn’t need, but which interferes with a service that it does need. *grumble*.

Boss returned this morning from a week out following back surgery…and has jury duty. Figures if he actually gets called in, he can easily get it dismissed, but for now, the only number he has is for the automated message.

Managed to mostly avoid fire+smoke problems this weekend, except Sunday afternoon why my eyes just wouldn’t stop itching. A co-worker had to evacuate his parents from Yorba Linda on Saturday, but their house made it through okay.

Got together with andrea_wot, wayens and gasean for Andrea’s birthday and monopolized a table at Cosi for about 4 hours on Sunday. Fortunately they didn’t seem to mind!

Caught up on comics & Netflix over the weekend. Read Crecy, about the 1300s battle in which the English longbow triumphed over vastly superior French numbers. Mostly about medieval war tactics, swearing, and xenophobia. Narrated by an utter bastard who breaks the fourth wall a lot. Did I mention it was by Warren Ellis? Also read Chrono Mechanics, about a squad of techs whose job is to repair time. A bit too crazy even for me, and I loved Tales from the Bully Pulpit. And finally Harley and Ivy, a collection of stories focusing on Batman villains Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, which was great fun.

As for TV, we’ve finished season 1 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. I also wrapped up watching season 5 of The Batman (though I haven’t watched the earlier seasons, and based on this one, probably won’t). And then there’s Stan Lee’s Lightspeed…I had to watch it because it’s about a speedster, but OMG it was awful. At least now I know Netflix’ "Watch Instantly" service works well with our system/connection. Snarky commentary will go up at Speed Force in the next week or two.

We’ve backed off on the house hunting for a bit. We actually got a counteroffer on one of the places we looked at a few weeks ago, but decided not to take it. We need to reevaluate what we’re looking for before we dive back in.

Drove alenxa to an interview this morning. Thought it was in one of those two new buildings by the spectrum until she told me the address, and realized it was actually across the street from where I work. Highly convenient for today, but the actual job location is off in another direction.

I think I want Monday back

Seriously.

Yesterday morning I got a tetanus shot.  No pressing reason, just it was time to renew.  By lunchtime it hurt. like. hell.  To the point where I was using my right hand to position my left arm on the desk so that I could type without moving anything above my elbow.  Driving home was “fun.”  I think it was worst last night — trying to find a comfortable sleeping position was “fun” too — but it’s not exactly fantastic this morning either.

I seriously considered staying home if it was still bad enough to make driving difficult, until I remembered it was Microsoft Patch Day.  Then I started seriously considering looking up the bus schedule.  It seemed to go better this morning, but that was under the influence of aspirin.

This morning I got in and discovered that our database for spam filter training had collected enough bad data that it was consistently labeling a ton of spam with a 0% rating. Trying to reset it led to ~45 minutes of various services either not working or having to be disabled so that other services could work, and of course phone calls. (In the middle of that, alenxa  called and I had to cut her off.  Sorry!)  On the plus side, it looks like part of the performance problems we’ve been having are related to the large size of the database, so it should run more smoothly for a while.

Edit to add: Also, got a response from a customer to whom I asked several questions in the for X or Y? — all of which were answered “yes” or “no.”  Yes to X or yes to Y?  *grumble*

Email seems under control for now.  Off to deal with patch day.  *Le sigh*

Current Mood: 😡stressed

Tuesday Morning, 3AM

After realizing I was still way behind on sleep debt, I decided to go to bed early last night. I think it was around 10:00. Then in the middle of the night, my phone got an alert from our monitoring system at work. I dragged myself out of bed, checked whether I could get onto the system remotely, and saw that it wasn’t responding to anything but pings.

Whee.

So I threw on the first clothes I found and drove in to the office at a quarter to three in the morning so I could get the server running again.

I never assume that I’m going to be the only one in the office anymore. Some of my co-workers tend to keep late hours (though none so late as the guy who actually slept during the day and came in around the time everyone else went home). And once I was in around midnight to deal with another server crash, and another coworker walked in with a bunch of his friends. They were on the way back from somewhere and he’d stopped to pick something up.

I didn’t see anyone last night, but this morning I got asked by another coworker, “So, what were you doing in so early this morning?” He’d been working late and just crashed at the office instead of going home. Apparently he woke up just enough to see me when I walked by.

You’re Here!

Forgot to set my alarm last night, so I overslept by about 25 minutes. Though I probably would’ve hit snooze 2 or 3 times anyway, so it evened out. Decided to finish breakfast before leaving, though, instead of eating at my desk, so I got in later than I intended.

Stepped out of the elevator and the VP was just stepping out the door, saw me, and said, “You’re here!”

“Um… I was here yesterday afternoon too…”

“Now you can fix the network!”

Yep — the internal network had gone down this morning, right about the time I walked out the door. They’d been trying to call me at home (which didn’t work, since, well, I wasn’t there). So I spent the next 20 minutes looking at blinkenlights and trying to figure out which boxes needed to be reset and so on.

In retrospect, I’m glad I finished breakfast first.

Music, Christmas, and Deadlines

Ended up missing my company’s Christmas party this year because we had tickets to see Tori Amos at the Grove on Saturday. Good concert, but our feet were pretty much dead by the end of the standing show. Sometime I’ll have to post the experience of trying to eat at El Torito Grill beforehand.

Meanwhile, everyone at my office hopped on a bus last Friday at noon to go out to Las Vegas. Apparently they did a murder mystery dinner for the actual party. It was a bit eerie afterward.

Still scrambling to finish a website at work. Also trying to finish some articles that I’m contributing to a book about the Flash. And Christmas shopping? Hah!

5 days before Christmas is a bad time to find out that you’re almost out of scotch tape, but I suppose it’s better than finding out at 8pm on December 24.

Current Mood: busy

Whee.

Orange MoonGot some nighttime photos yesterday of the orange moon (to the right) and the glow coming from the hills in front of Saddleback.

The smoke is back again, like Monday. It’s thinner, so at first I figured it would be better, but I feel much worse. Maybe because I’ve been breathing the crap for the last 4 days, maybe because without the wind, the smoke and ash are settling at ground level.

Meanwhile I’ve been putting out virtual fires with our network since about 3:00 yesterday. Yesterday my boss and I spent most of the afternoon trying to troubleshoot a computer that was running incredibly slow, but only when the network was plugged in. I was there until almost 6:30 trying to troubleshoot problems that started affecting the few other people who were still in the office at that hour.

This morning, I got to troubleshoot the connection issues that started cascading around the office. Finally I discovered a cable on the back of the stack of hubs was plugged into the wrong port. We’d temporarily disconnected it yesterday afternoon for testing, and someone (presumably my boss) plugged it back into the wrong connector.

And of course, anything that’s already flaky has taken the opportunity to stop working, leading to follow-up “Hey, X isn’t working” visits that have led, so far, to rebooting a server, replacing a network card in a desktop, and resetting a hub. Did I mention my boss isn’t in yet, and no one’s really sure if he’s going to be in today?

So here I am, sitting at my desk, writing this in bits and pieces when I have time, drinking hot lukewarm chocolate, wishing I’d remembered to grab that bottle of Vizine or Clear Eyes or whatever it is from home. I really don’t want to go anywhere at lunch today, between having to leave early and wanting to stay indoors as much as possible.

Current Mood: 😴groggy

Fun with Electricity! (Also Coffee and the Bust of the Year)

Heat wave + 3-day weekend = way too much hot air trying to sneak into the server room. Extra measures are being taken to ensure that the server AC can keep things cool, but I’m probably going to spend much of the weekend worrying about getting a “Server X down” SMS.

Brownout during lunchtime. I was at the Spectrum food court. All the lights flickered off and back on, and the muzak went silent for just a second. Twice. Here at work, most of the desktop machines rebooted. (Servers, of course, are on UPS.)

Coffee Crisis! Coffee maker at work shut off this morning just a few cups in. Determined that the power outlet had gone dead. Tried plugging it into another outlet, via extension cord + power strip. Power strip started buzzing, then circuit breaker tripped. Further analysis of coffee maker’s plug identified melted, cracked plastic. The company we lease it from can’t send out a replacement ’til Tuesday.

So, only 3 cups of coffee for the entire office. No gladiatorial combat, oddly enough. Though I did joke that it must be a fiendish plot by the cafe downstairs to sell more coffee.

Bust of the Century: Yesterday afternoon, got onto the 405 and immediately got stuck in traffic. Turned out to all be rubbernecking from something going on by the side of the road, where police were searching a stopped car. Lots of them. At least 5 squad cars, from at least 2 different cities, and a sheriff’s car.

Current Location: work

The Long Weekend

Friday: Goo Goo Dolls/ Counting Crows concert at it’s-still-Irvine-Meadows-’cause-“Verizon-Wireless-Amphitheater”-just-sounds-dumb. Nifty view of the central Orange County valley before the sun set.

Saturday. Spent the day lying on the couch with a fan running, catching up on the Babylon 5 script book commentaries. So far I’ve only read about 1/4 of one script, but the introductions are a fascinating insight into the process of making the show. Given how much was out in the open (since JMS spent several hours a night online during production), some of the stuff that wasn’t revealed back then is mighty interesting. (Example: we all thought season 4 was compressed because they weren’t sure they’d get a season 5, and wanted to get as much done as they could. It turns out that at the beginning of the season, they were told in no uncertain terms that there would not be a season 5. So getting that fifth season on TNT was a real surprise.)

Dinner at CPK, then Superman Returns Enjoyed it, but no interest in seeing it again. It already felt like deja vu since there were so many references to the first two movies with Christopher Reeve. There were some great moments, but overall it was just kind of okay.

Sunday: Finished Bad Twin. Decent book, but not exactly a major insight into the secrets of Lost. Waited several hours until checking my email, at which point I discovered I really should’ve checked earlier… so I could bring a server back online. Went down to the office, brought the server up. alenxa tagged along and we had lunch at the crepe place at the Spectrum. Happened to glance over at one of the wall alcoves, which held a vinegar bottle… labeled Temeraire. After some shopping for food for upcoming family get-togethers, went home and played Heroes V for a few hours. Fortunately I was still awake when the same server went down again at 1AM. So I drove back, brought it online, figured out a way to make sure that it would automatically start up again next time, then came home. Still trying to diagnose the cause, but whatever it is does seem to like holiday weekends…

Monday: Traditionally, the 4th of July consists of hanging around at home followed by looking for fireworks. This year, both our families wanted to get together. So on Monday we went to visit my grandparents, carpooling with my parents and my brother. My aunt and her husband brought their dogs, which meant I spent most of the afternoon in a Benadryl-induced funk, despite drinking way too much Dr. Pepper to offset it.

Tuesday: I squeezed in an hour or two of Heroes in the morning, then it was off to visit Katie’s family, with more BBQ. Dinner was relatively early, so we cleared out around 7:00 so we could make it back to Laguna Beach for the fireworks display there. They launch the fireworks off one of the bluffs, out over the ocean, and the viewing is pretty good from the beach. We caught the tail end of it a couple of years ago, while driving around looking for displays. Two years ago we got there too late and missed the entire show while we walked from the car out to the beach. (Hey, have you ever tried finding parking in Laguna Beach?) Last year I was sick, so we just walked out to where we could see the local display. This year we made it with plenty of time to spare, parking up on Forest (roughly in line with the Laguna Playhouse, and maybe a few hundred feet from the entrance to Tivoli Terrace, where we had our wedding), and snagged a spot on the beach. The wind blew the smoke in our direction, so a lot of the fireworks were half-obscured, but they lit up the smoke a lot more than I can remember seeing anywhere else. After the show, we did our semi-traditional stop at Diedrich across the street.

Today: Back to work. I’ve been stress-testing the server, trying to get it to crash under controlled circumstances so I can get some information about what’s causing the problem… and it just won’t crash!

Ugh.

5:00 on a Friday afternoon is not an appropriate time to think to yourself, “All right! I can finally get started!”

Today was Office clean-up day. I junked a bunch of old, unused computer parts, tried to put more memory in my brand-new computer — which refused to boot until I took the memory out again, cut a bunch of wires from our old phone/network so I could get the crap out of my cubicle (some panels and jacks have been sitting in the corner since we installed the new network, still attached to the wires coming out of the column), answered email, installed the WMF security patch on a bunch of computers, updated software on a couple of servers, dusted the artificial plant, adjusted the paper clips holding the real vine in place, put a bunch of stuff into a cabinet, moved papers around so I could wipe off my desk, made tea, looked through everyone else’s discarded junk for anything usable, shredded some of the old papers, spent an hour trying to un-jam the shredder… with the occasional trip to the web for sanity’s sake.

I think I’m going to just have to send what I’ve got on this review document and come in for an afternoon on the weekend to deal with the actual programming. I was going to stay late anyway today, but how much can I really get done in 1.5 hours?

Current Mood: 😡stressed