It Has Been a Day

I should have seen it all coming, of course. It was, after all, a Monday.

I had hoped to get a short list of tasks completed today: get my hair cut, check out a local community center for a dance space, approach my boss about attending this November's LISA conference and upgrading the firmware of an HP blade chassis.

Well, I got my hair cut. The rest... not so much.

Just as I was approaching the community center, my pager began screaming. Thanks to some as yet undetermined issue, one of our production systems did an automatic failover to the backup system; while most computing activity picked up automatically, I needed do clean some messaging queues and sit on a conference call for an extended period to analyze the issues and assess the stability of the system. I never did make it inside the community center: I worked for an hour from my car using my laptop and wireless broadband before ultimately packing it in and heading two miles to home so I could work under more comfortable conditions.

Because of the crisis --and a second unrelated one later in the day-- it just wasn't a good time to approach my management about LISA. Their plates were full and adding this trivial bit to the mess would be spectacularly bad timing.

Even upgrading the firmware for the HP chassis didn't go as planned. As near as I can tell, the chassis I was going to upgrade was not online. Since it's based in San Mateo, CA, and I'm in DC, I couldn't check it myself and no one could be spared to look in on it because of the prior service interruption issues. Figures.

Tonight's C2 class went well though. The hall has some air conditioning so if it wasn't exactly cool, it was at least dehumidified. We had only one new call tonight ("detour") although we tried a different approach to working in staggered formations. We had only two squares thanks to various dancers travelling or injured but it was fun nonetheless.

I'm ready for bed, eternally grateful for the air conditioning which has left our happy home very comfortable indeed.

It Has Been a Day

I should have seen it all coming, of course. It was, after all, a Monday.

I had hoped to get a short list of tasks completed today: get my hair cut, check out a local community center for a dance space, approach my boss about attending this November's LISA conference and upgrading the firmware of an HP blade chassis.

Well, I got my hair cut. The rest... not so much.

Just as I was approaching the community center, my pager began screaming. Thanks to some as yet undetermined issue, one of our production systems did an automatic failover to the backup system; while most computing activity picked up automatically, I needed do clean some messaging queues and sit on a conference call for an extended period to analyze the issues and assess the stability of the system. I never did make it inside the community center: I worked for an hour from my car using my laptop and wireless broadband before ultimately packing it in and heading two miles to home so I could work under more comfortable conditions.

Because of the crisis --and a second unrelated one later in the day-- it just wasn't a good time to approach my management about LISA. Their plates were full and adding this trivial bit to the mess would be spectacularly bad timing.

Even upgrading the firmware for the HP chassis didn't go as planned. As near as I can tell, the chassis I was going to upgrade was not online. Since it's based in San Mateo, CA, and I'm in DC, I couldn't check it myself and no one could be spared to look in on it because of the prior service interruption issues. Figures.

Tonight's C2 class went well though. The hall has some air conditioning so if it wasn't exactly cool, it was at least dehumidified. We had only one new call tonight ("detour") although we tried a different approach to working in staggered formations. We had only two squares thanks to various dancers travelling or injured but it was fun nonetheless.

I'm ready for bed, eternally grateful for the air conditioning which has left our happy home very comfortable indeed.