June 3, 2013: Outage

I got woken up this morning after just two to three hours of sleep to a page that I had a server down.  I get this often on the weekends and don’t worry about it too much.  Normally it takes less than an hour of my time and is not a big deal to get working.

This outage was not like that.  I ended up working a twenty one hour day trying to get this server back up and running.  It was an exhausting day.  I did nothing but work, I even worked through lunch.  I never went into the office as there was never any time for that.

Once there was little that I could do this evening and since I had been working all day and hadn’t even gotten in a shower, after the kids went to bed I showered and headed out to grab dinner at Redneck as I knew that I would get paged out quite a bit tonight, and I did.  I was paged out over and over till one in the morning or so.  So it was very late when I finally managed to get to bed.  Tomorrow is going to be a long day as there is no end in sight for the outage.

June 2, 2013: Caught Up

Sunday.  A lot more work today but I managed to get caught up and wrap up the outstanding work that I had on a test that I am developing.  Liesl and I managed to play more of Ankh 2 today too.

It was a long day of work.  But getting caught up was great.  I feel very much relieved to have this done as it has been hanging over me for a long time.

After the kids went to bed and Dominica went to bed early I went out to Redneck for a late night dinner.

May 31, 2013: Friday

Today is Friday.  I got into the office normal time and had a pretty busy morning.  Nothing bad, just on the busy side.  Sometimes that means that the whole day will be busy and sometimes it means that I am getting all of my work out of the way so the afternoon will be slow.

Dan and I tried to go to lunch today but there were “complications” at the office and we weren’t able to go anywhere for a long time.  We ended up missing lunch completely and finally made a quick run to get coffee at least since we had had nothing all day.  But there were no seats inside of Starbucks and it was pretty hot outside.  Not horribly hot but the cafe seats there are completely exposed and the sun was really beating down and the humidity was high.  So we didn’t want to be outside.  We tried it for a few minutes and then both had the idea of going to get frozen yoghurt.  So we did that but got cut short because I was needed back in the office.  So after three hours of trying to go out we managed to get thirty minutes.

Worked wrapped up around five thirty and I came home.  The family hung out this evening.  Ciana was in bed pretty early.  Once Ciana was in bed Liesl and I played about an hour of Ankh 2: The Heart of Osiris that she has been playing.  It is definitely not as good as the last games that we have played but she likes it.

Watson and I went out this evening to Redneck and hung out for a while.

May 30, 2013: Conference Call Day

I found out this morning that I was awarded the 2013 VMware vExpert award.  Only 581 people received the award this year.  Definitely a major career moment.  I’m pretty excited.

Had to be up early this morning as we had a seven o’clock global conference call at work where we were sure that they were announcing big layoffs.  The rumor mills for these “secret agenda meetings” always crush moral and remind people to keep their resumes polished and never fully leave the job market.  Why the company is so keen to keep the employees on their toes and ready to leave at any moment is beyond me.  A few internal things even require you to have a resume ready internally so pretty much every employee has a ready resume sitting on their desktop that they can access at any time with no notice.  Foolish to a degree I cannot even imagine.

So I worked from a quarter till seven until after nine from the house.  It was a very busy morning.

I got the girls ready and took them up to daycare for the day.  Then into the office.  The office was pretty busy too.  Dan and I did a quick lunch next door to the office.  I got stuck working a bit late, though, so it was nearly a twelve hour day for me.  I didn’t get home until pretty late so I only had about an hour with Ciana before she was in bed.

Worked a bit tonight and then played half an hour or so of Ankh 2 with Liesl.  She continues to noticeably improve day by day as she learns more and more about the game interfaces, puzzle solving, etc.

We watched some Arrested Development tonight.  Still catching up so that we can watch the new episodes soon.