Spirited Away
I usually don't like the "here's how my day went" blogs, but seeing as how my weekend got eaten by the unfolding events, I figured I'll just share it as slice-of-life stuff I might find vaguely interesting in thirty years.
On Friday night a big customer of mine was planning to start a big rollout of a software and hardware upgrade. It touched nearly every person in the company and involved replacing a server, upgrades on client machines, and a dozen laptops to configure and ship out. We had tested the bejezus out of all the software, and felt like it was ready to go. I gave theIT contacts my phone numbers, and told them I was available to help if they ran into trouble.
I get a call on my cell around 8 pm on Friday. I'm in bed with the kids, and I don't want to wake them up, but I can see on the caller ID it's the client and I'm sure they need help. I slip down to my office, and pick up the call they are making there. They're stuck on the first step of the installation. I talk them through it five minutes, and they're back in business. Going back to bed, I think, "Ok, that's good. They have my number, they can get me if they need me." I sleep with my cell.
In the morning I get up to feed the dogs, and see the message light on my phone. Three increasingly frantic phone messages from the client: 10 pm, 11 pm, 1 pm. Oh hell. Equally panicky emails from the customer as well, the kind that can't quite decide what order in which they will kill you, your family, and themselves. I check my cell again: no messages, no missed calls.
I call the IT boss on his cell at 6 pm: he's on his way back into the office, to pick up again after throwing in the towel at 2 am. At this point I'm assuming it's my fault they're in trouble; maybe I should have forwarded the office phone to my cell or something. And I've been in their situation before and have nothing but sympathy.
I stay on the phone with them, off and on, through Saturday morning. By noon I can tell they are not going to make it alone; their brand-new hardware is rebooting with a BIOS error every hour or so, but it's too late to roll back and they have to go ahead with all the new software on the old hardware. I drive out to their site, a little over an hour away. I can feel my weekend slipping away . . .
On Friday night a big customer of mine was planning to start a big rollout of a software and hardware upgrade. It touched nearly every person in the company and involved replacing a server, upgrades on client machines, and a dozen laptops to configure and ship out. We had tested the bejezus out of all the software, and felt like it was ready to go. I gave theIT contacts my phone numbers, and told them I was available to help if they ran into trouble.
I get a call on my cell around 8 pm on Friday. I'm in bed with the kids, and I don't want to wake them up, but I can see on the caller ID it's the client and I'm sure they need help. I slip down to my office, and pick up the call they are making there. They're stuck on the first step of the installation. I talk them through it five minutes, and they're back in business. Going back to bed, I think, "Ok, that's good. They have my number, they can get me if they need me." I sleep with my cell.
In the morning I get up to feed the dogs, and see the message light on my phone. Three increasingly frantic phone messages from the client: 10 pm, 11 pm, 1 pm. Oh hell. Equally panicky emails from the customer as well, the kind that can't quite decide what order in which they will kill you, your family, and themselves. I check my cell again: no messages, no missed calls.
I call the IT boss on his cell at 6 pm: he's on his way back into the office, to pick up again after throwing in the towel at 2 am. At this point I'm assuming it's my fault they're in trouble; maybe I should have forwarded the office phone to my cell or something. And I've been in their situation before and have nothing but sympathy.
I stay on the phone with them, off and on, through Saturday morning. By noon I can tell they are not going to make it alone; their brand-new hardware is rebooting with a BIOS error every hour or so, but it's too late to roll back and they have to go ahead with all the new software on the old hardware. I drive out to their site, a little over an hour away. I can feel my weekend slipping away . . .
Labels: Movies
posted by The Thin Man | 8:48 PM
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