While it is going to suck when the project is restarted, as some will pressure this to be balls to the wall, ludicrous speed is too slow, I hope that the boss will reset the schedule as a punishment if you will… but I’m not expecting that entirely.

Best part…  I go on annual leave next week.  Starting at 5 PM on Friday, Nov 21st, I’m off until December 1st.   3 days of annual leave for 9 days off.  Usual trip to the Hills for Thanksgiving, dink around during the Black Friday (I’m usually done shopping by then), and do nothing for 3-4 days out there.  Not sure what all I’m going to do for 9 days with nothing to do (sleep comes to mind), but it will be glorious.  Might even throw another day of annual in there too.  Not sure if I need 10 days or not, but it could be fun.  The 3 day of annual leave works nice, as that only takes about 10 weeks to earn it back, which will require that I take time off during February at the latest or I’ll lose the time.  I love being maxed out.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news.  Found out a coworker/friend who thought he had his cancer licked his another primary spot.  From kidney to thyroid now…  Getting sick of the bad news on this front…  got a fundraiser going for him though, so that helps a little.

Hope to see Quantum of Solace this week if I get around to it…  but with some nephew watching, xmas shopping, and vendor dinner’ing to do (that’s a new word, yes), it will be kinda busy.

I’m looking at a Popcorn Hour A-110 for a possible Christmas gift for someone.  It’s not intended to be a full replacement for a HTPC, which might be a better overall pick, but neither I nor the individual it would be bought for has enough spare componentry to build a HTPC for a while (kids do that).

What I see this doing:

Youtube on the big TV

DL.tv/Revision3 on the big TV

Playback of ISO’s and other media files (BitTorrent, self rip, etc)

Not so much as serving media over the local network.  This individual doesn’t have a working desktop anymore (by choice), and uses basically only laptops for computing, so he doesn’t have a large cache of files on a home server somewhere that he’s pulling off of.  Previously, everything has been on the satellite receiver or on DVD/HD-DVD discs.  With small children around, not the best plan.  Ripping the files and storing on the optional internal drive would be safer for the media content.  Can always add larger drives/external drives if more storage is needed.  And the BT client is kind of nice…

Any thoughts on this as a device?  Experience?  Yay/nay?

http://www.holytaco.com/2008/10/14/the-nerdiest-t-shirts-for-nerds/

I won’t steal any of the bandwidth from these guys by hotlinking, but any article mentioning guys in their mom’s basement smelling of cheetos and sunny d is a winner in my book…

For Monday, the three day weekend really isn’t a weekend, as on Monday, I’ll be driving with the upper boss to Sioux Falls for a couple days of meetings, an brief install, a visit to a recovering co-worker, and a lot of hotel room time.  In sometime on Monday, out Wednesday afternoon.  Hopefully I get a few minutes during normal hours to hit up the shoe shop, as it’s time to replace these businessy shoes.

Hopefully Thursday or Friday I won’t need to head to Aberdeen for another install, that a decision is made to not push this install up in timeframe.

The days should hopefully be spent doing benchmarks on some new gear coming in and writing some new language for some contracts.  Fun huh?  Anyone want to join in?

Wow…

I’ve set a few goals for this.  So many minutes on the AMT without dying (beat the first goal on this already), running a mile in under xyz minutes (I’m let to run a mile in my life, so I’ll figure out a time later), drop so much weight, etc…  If I can find some Wordpress plugins to track them, I might put that up there.  Dunno if I will.

Here’s to not giving up…

Well, here you go…  a new pitiful post.

PETA has gone too far…

Yes, that article discusses using human breast milk for ice cream…

I just want to see the comments…  after I get my real ice cream out of the freezer and enjoy it.

While I have a BlackBerry (love my 8830 WE) which technically makes me on-call 24/7/365 via phone or email, email is a more limited on-call sort of thing.  I might not check it, and I don’t have a scheduled “check” time in the evenings.  It’s more convenience for me and the others that at night/weekend, I can put the ball back in their court with a quick response.  The voice part though is the worst part.

Our on-call system is, like I said, a point phone system.  All the field techs, the help desk, the machine room operators, managers, etc… know this phone number.  If they suspect anything is a network issue, they call that number.  If a telco sees an issue that under our SLA they are to call into the help desk/after hours staff, I eventually get a phone call.  Basically, you get a LOT of phone calls.  And 99%, you don’t need to deal with.

I say that because of our uptime requirements.  Basically, we need to have 24/7 five nine’s uptime from 8 AM to 5 PM across both time zones.  The rest of the time, for the most part (there are a few 24/7 shops out there), I don’t care if the WAN link is down because no one is there.  No affected users, and no one to look at it.  Since the first thing a telco will ask is if you verified power and local equipment, and no one is there, pointless to even check on it.  Better to just check the weather in the area to see if a power outage is likely in that area, or check the logs of other devices in the city/region to check for a pattern.  All of this though, can be done from home.  And that’s nice, and not so nice at the same time.

Our system of getting hours for on-call time is:
- You get “straight time” for anything you do from home.

- You get “inconvenience time” if you HAD to come into the office to work on/check on something.  And they ask that you try to work from home first.  That doesn’t always happen, as not all of my team bothers to keep home Internet access (they don’t use it).  So for some, it’s inconvenience time all the time.  That means 3 hours of pay “added” to the week (if you have one period of Inc Time in a 40 hour week, you now have a 43 hour week, 0 overtime hours, minus the number of hours you actually worked on the issue.  So, you are left with a choice.  Go in, ruin your night, and try for the hours (which they will ask you to flex out anyway), or try from home, and get screwed on the money/hours thing.

Not to mention the fun calls that come in.  I get a phone call from a “non-native English speaker” in 3rd shift operations one night.  Guy doesn’t even say who he is, just starts.

Me: “Hello?”

Him: “Tee, juan, down.  Fi juan queue ecks gee eh…”

Me: “Whoa, slow down.  Did _____ call this in?  What city?  When?”

Him: “I don’t know, I just supposed to call.  Will you look at dis?”

Me:  “Send me all of this in an email please.  I’ll look at it.”

Hang up.

Already mad, I log into the support portal to find the list of sites down.  All in one town.  Radar shows….. *drum roll* a giant thunderstorm over the city!  And not a single site is a 24/7!  And it’s Sunday at 1:45 AM!  And it’s the NIGHT AFTER MIKE’S WEDDING!!!!

Needless to say, I dread Oct 1.  The next time I start a week of on-call is then.  Every 18 weeks, I get a rotation.  Must be within 10 minutes of the office is the unofficial rule.  Thankfully, I have an Aircard…