Sheep Guarding Llama

No rest for me.  I had to be up after just three hours of sleep, got showered and drove into the office to work a full day from there for the weekend’s COB test that is going on.  Talk about bad timing.  Combining a very long day yesterday, plus the COB test today, plus I am on support all day tomorrow and I was helping Dominica with her migration, all in one 72 hour stretch.  This is going to be rough.

I was a little late getting into the office but not bad.  COB tests are normally pretty low key for me.  My systems always pass with little effort.

I got to do some serious troubleshooting today which was nice.  And COB tests always mean that there is food in the office.  We had bagels, donuts and fully curry for lunch.  It was a slow day, but I was tired.

After getting done at the office I drove straight up to Dominica’s office where she and Art had been working for quite some time taking care of the finishing touches on the migration and making sure that everything was ready for Monday morning in the hopes that there would be nothing needing to be done tomorrow at all.

Art gave me a tour as I still have not seen the bulk of the facility.  It was really cool.  They actually have an entire mock-up of a convention center floor in there with set-up displays, conference area, presentation space, etc.  You could put on an entire small conference in there.  I got to see the manufacturing areas, graphics design areas and warehouse space too.  Very cool stuff.  I had no idea.  That facility is huge.

We worked there for a couple of hours and then went back to the house, finally able to relax after a lot of work.  I have to be up early tomorrow too as I am covering the on call shift for the post COB test problems.  So that will be a long day.

This evening we relaxed and watched the 50th James Bond film Skyrim which Dominica and I have been waiting to see.  The Ralstons had bought it on DVD so we got to watch their copy.  It was pretty good.

Today is the big MS Office migration for Dominica and Art.  They both slept in a bit this morning and I headed off to my office very early, leaving home around six in the morning having been awake since around five.  This is going to be a long day.  This morning is the non-farm payroll numbers so I had to be in early.

Everyone else slept in this morning as much as they could.  I came home after lunch and spent the afternoon working from home.  I had already been at work a full day before working from home.  That helped a lot for the evening allowing me to watch the girls and later on in the evening for Danielle to go into the office and assist on site.

Art and Dominica went into the office around three and got things started.  Danielle hung back to help with the kids for a while but not too long.

The office was pretty busy for me and I worked around nearly eight.  Ugh.  Not what I really wanted to do tonight but I was really glad that I was home this evening.

Overall tonight was a major success.  Dominica and Art were in her office until something like three in the morning.  It was exhausting.  Danielle was there with them too.  All three of them were running all over the place getting everything done.  It was quite tiring and a lot of physical exertion.  For my part I was logged in through LogMeIn with as many tabs open as LMI could handle and did migrations for them as quickly as I could scroll from screen to screen.  It was tons and tons of manual work but it went smoothly, we caught lots of problems and addressed them and managed to complete the entire migration itself tonight and there is just some final cleanup to do tomorrow.

It was a major night of work but super successful.  I should have tons more to write but realistically, there is very little to say.  This was a very long day for all of us.  I was working for twenty four hours straight by the end of it all and was quite tired.  After they all returned to the house we spent about an hour discussing tomorrow’s plans before turning in for the night.

Exhausting?  Yes.  But we were all very happy being able to go to bed knowing that there were no technical obstacles waiting for us tomorrow and that all we have to do is make sure that all of the machines are ready for Monday morning.  The end is well in sight and we know that we will be able to rest this weekend.  Well the will, not me so much.  When we started this there was the fear that all of them would be stuck working the entire weekend, possibly even overnights.

Everyone but me stayed home today.  This morning was the final morning to relax.  This is going to be a very hectic weekend.  I was in the office all day.

This evening we just stayed in.  There was some early migration work to be done so Art and Dominica worked on that some.  These were the early test machines to get ready for tomorrow.  Mostly everything went smoothly and we got our final documentation done and ready to go.  The plan is for Art and Dominica to go into the office early tomorrow afternoon and start as early as possible.  I will join them once I am out of work to see if we can get them out of their earlier.  I have to work in the office this weekend so we are extra busy.

Off to bed early tonight. Need our sleep.

Danielle and I went to Caffe Bene again this morning.  We are loving that place.  This is day three, in a row, that I have been there.  Definitely my new haunt.  We got Belgian waffles and coffee and had a meeting for about an hour before I went on to the office and she got some waffles to take back to the house.  Today I tried the ricotta, almonds and fig Belgian waffle.  Not as the goat cheese and peach, but still very good.

Much of my day was spent dealing with RIT logistics.  I am starting my class today.  I am taking a class on the technical information design.  This is my final semester of classes at RIT and I am very excited.  I can’t wait to be done with the whole thing.  I have been in college continuously for nineteen years.  That amount of time it would be nice to have at least one graduate degree to show for it.  I have to do two classes this semester, one yet to be determined, and then my capstone project over the summer and that will be that.

Normal work day.  After work I drove over to Brookhaven and met everyone there for dinner.  We are really make use of our membership this month!

Art and Dominica kind of had the day off today.  They’ve worked the last two days and starting tomorrow will be working solidly through Monday and we hope that they will be done at that point so today is the one day to relax before the super busy schedule hits.

Danielle was heading into Dominica’s office this morning to meet with some people so we drove out at the same time, leaving early, so that we could stop at Caffe Bene and get coffee and test out their Belgian waffles before continuing on to Dominica’s office.  Dominica and Art are hanging back this morning for a while instead of going in bright and early.  They are going to be on a weird schedule all week.

The Belgian waffle at Caffe Bene was amazing.  It was a real Belgian waffle, not that thing that Americans call a Belgian waffle.  It wasn’t as good as what we had in Belgium but it was really good.  I got one with goat cheese and peach compote.  So delicious.

We went into the office and I tracked down a network issue that has been plaguing them for some time.  Danielle made a few introductions and let people know that she was around but everyone was busy so she left when I did and she returned to the house and I went off to the office as usual.

Dominica and Art went into the office in the afternoon and worked a full day, running very, very late.  So much of their work is only really able to be done after people have gone home for the day that this makes quite a bit of sense.

On my way home from work, the gang had me swing into Rockfish in Las Colinas and pick up dinner for everyone.  Then I delivered Art and Dominica’s food to their office where they were only halfway through working for the day.  I ate there with them and then brought Danielle’s food back to the house and helped to watch the kids all evening.

Dominica and Art worked really late putting in a very long day.  They are taking tomorrow off, I think, or at least are scaling back in preparation for the very long upcoming weekend.  This is going to be one exhausting week.