Not Enough Hours in a Day

Last Thursday, I did an all-nighter at the data center. It was scheduled maintenance, a complete site outage in which we would update our production software, upgrade the RAM in some servers, update the firmware in our storage array and shuffle some existing servers between various racks.

It didn't go exactly as planned.

While the RAM upgrades and software updates went well, there were some challenges. Two of the re-racked servers didn't reboot as they should. One had developed slight amnesia and couldn't locate its boot disk: that was quickly fixed. The other server's motherboard went bad but it was part of a cluster so we were able to run on reduced capacity until a replacement was installed Monday.

The storage array firmware didn't happen either. The upgrade process requires a fully functional array but as we were preparing to begin, we found there was a bad disk. Checking the logs, we found the array did try to tell us but because our service agreement had lapsed briefly while our finance dept quibbled about whether or not to renew it, the reporting mechanism which would automatically issue the work ticket was disabled. And while we did get a replacement disk before the night's maintenance window was out, we couldn't do the firmware upgrade while the disk RAID group was being reconstructed, a process which would take another 12 hours or so. sigh

I got to bed around 4:30am.

I nominally had Friday off work to recover. Later that morning, the guys placed me more or less vertically in the minivan and we headed to the trailer for the last camping season of the weekend.

The campground was very quiet: we had perhaps a dozen people attending. I had hoped the trees might have more leaves so I could photograph some fall foliage but they were nearly all barren, the bulk of the leaves taken down by the weight of snow the weekend prior. That snow had since melted away and despite that unexpected cold snap, our weekend was bright, warm and sunny. And I spent nearly all of it catching up on sleep.

I'm happy to report my Droid Bionic mobile phone works well at the campground in rural West Virginia. Having a working mobile phone and wireless Internet allows me to work from the trailer if I want a long weekend or need to deal with a work-related emergency. The campground is remote enough that most AT&T and Spring users have spotty voice access at best; while Verizon has better coverage there, not every model of phone can pull in sufficient signal to be reliable. My old Blackberry Storm worked well enough even if my old wireless broadband modem only worked if I was outside the trailer. It's a huge relief that my new phone and its mobile hotspot functionality seem to work solidly.

Winterizing and wrapping up the trailer was all very routine. It's always sad when another camping season comes to an end but we're planning to open early, possibly mid-March next year so the interregnum will be shorter this time.

We were home by early evening and the real fun began.

Counting Down to Our Harvest Festival Hoedown

DC Lambda Squares' Harvest Festival Hoedown comes up next weekend Nov 11-13.

Everything seems to be more or less falling into place per our checklist of tasks. I've designed the dance schedule this year and although there have been a couple of minor tweaks here and there, it's been largely ready since January, something I'm quite proud of. I've also ensured our callers are updated with any revisions so they know what to expect --and can make any suggestions or objections well before the event begins.

We have a growing pile of supplies, stationery and items in our basement in preparation for transport to York, PA, on Friday afternoon.

I've programmed in three half-hour guest calling spots in each of the three dance halls. At the moment, I have six guest callers: Abe Feldman, Dan Foust, Blaine Knupp, Alan Hirsch, kent4str and myself. Sunday evening, I assembled a draft schedule for these guest callers, giving them the dance programs they wished and arranging them so that each person gets to be the headliner in at least one half-hour slot. So far, all of them have agreed & approved of my initial draft.

We did, however, hit a major problem yesterday: one of our staff callers has been admitted to hospital for urgent back surgery so he's not going to be available this weekend --or even for another huge weekend he usually works in a couple of weeks. We have a number of options available to us, and I hope to have a decision hammered out by Wednesday afternoon. Suffice it to say this isn't the sort of problem I want to have in the week before the event, but it can't be helped and I'm eternally grateful the crisis didn't happen during the event.

In other fun activities, I'm updating my stack of written square dance figures, checking body flow. I have difficulty sometimes seeing flow in a global sense for all eight dancers simultaneously so for this exercise, I'm looking at sequences with specific calls whose flow has tripped me up in the past (left/right turn & deal, right/left roll to a wave, etc.) and making adjustments. While most of my later material is still solid, a few of my earliest writing attempts from 6-7 years ago have needed severe redrafting. If I stay focused, I should have this done by the end of today.