I spend forty five minutes chasing a ghost through our network, only to find out that this one users issue stems from the fact that she unplugged her unauthorized local switch to plug in a strobe light for halloween.
/sigh
Headed back to Albany - again -, tonight, for memorial services tomorrow. We'll see how that one pans out.
2007-10-31
2007-10-28
For the sake of..
...not missing a post two days in a row, as I said I would no longer do:
- 1) Extended disaster recovery required on a key piece of equipment in the server room. MDS-AS5 took a major, major shit, and Vince and I only recently brought it back online.
- 2) My uncle Harold - dad's brother - died; apparently quite a while ago, and no one noticed. In Albany now, dealing with that.
Enjoy.
- 1) Extended disaster recovery required on a key piece of equipment in the server room. MDS-AS5 took a major, major shit, and Vince and I only recently brought it back online.
- 2) My uncle Harold - dad's brother - died; apparently quite a while ago, and no one noticed. In Albany now, dealing with that.
Enjoy.
2007-10-26
Kilo 2 Alpha X-Ray X-Ray
A seperate, somber announcement: Mark Hoffman - K2AXX - is leaving The Company.
Mark is a brilliant engineer when it comes to anything with a radio onboard. The man has his own giant tower in his backyard for fucks sake. He's also damn sharp with the fundamentals of networking. I've often considered him not just a contact in another department, but as a delegate I can trust to keep things clean on the engineering side of the building. When you work - day in and out - with products that have the potential to utterly decimate a wired ethernet situation (implemented improperly), that's where people like Mark come in. Not only reliable for knowing at a moment's notice what exactly is going on in the lab, but has never failed to own up and take responsibility for a test gone awry, unlike so many of the engineering folk.
Mark is leaving GE MDS for a different set of challenges still in the Rochester area - and he's one of the select few people that this organization will never be able to replace. He leaves behind a legacy - a lab built from the ground up, but a team of well-trained monk-... Product Assurance Group associates (Or 'paggets', depending on the nature of the day... see my most immediately previous post for insight.)
Good luck, my friend. May the deity of your choice smile favorably upon your selected path.
Mark is a brilliant engineer when it comes to anything with a radio onboard. The man has his own giant tower in his backyard for fucks sake. He's also damn sharp with the fundamentals of networking. I've often considered him not just a contact in another department, but as a delegate I can trust to keep things clean on the engineering side of the building. When you work - day in and out - with products that have the potential to utterly decimate a wired ethernet situation (implemented improperly), that's where people like Mark come in. Not only reliable for knowing at a moment's notice what exactly is going on in the lab, but has never failed to own up and take responsibility for a test gone awry, unlike so many of the engineering folk.
Mark is leaving GE MDS for a different set of challenges still in the Rochester area - and he's one of the select few people that this organization will never be able to replace. He leaves behind a legacy - a lab built from the ground up, but a team of well-trained monk-... Product Assurance Group associates (Or 'paggets', depending on the nature of the day... see my most immediately previous post for insight.)
Good luck, my friend. May the deity of your choice smile favorably upon your selected path.
18 Days Without an Update
...which means you now get a reminder in my Outlook (that will be ever so delivered to me via the boat anchor on my hip) to write something every day. Fancy that! Enough.
I had an anecdote about the cat trying to finish me 'Once And For All! /evil-fingers-peak' some time ago, but it's been lost in the static of life.
Where to start? On life? On love, even? On work? About The Mother? Or Louisville? Or Markham?
Life. Oh yes, that topic. Right, I suppose that's what this is all about though, isn't it? This potentially endless dissertation on life, the universe, and everything. That one should be broad enough for me to extol one bit here and there and keep both of us occupied.
So here I sit at my desk, at 0645 hours - arrived 35 minutes ago - only having just done a walk-around the manufacturing area to avoid a repeat of yesterday. Upon entering the site, I was greeted by darkness, did very little for fifteen minutes, until someone wandered over and found me in my cavernous workspace.*
'Hey, Jeremy. You do know that Syteline is down, right?'
/glare
Not that I don't actually, legitimately like responding to emergencies such as that - really, it makes me feel useful and important sometimes. No. A known issue since 0530 this morning, and the first report if it is a Remote Cell manager coming and speaking with me face-to-face.
The year is 2007. We have email. We have phones. We have fucking Post-Its. Don't - DON'T - wait until you FIND someone. Call someone. Call anyone - there are phone lists posted throughout the building! Especially when the one system that actually allows you to produce product so that the company can make money isn't functioning for whatever reason!**
So I go look at MDSERP1. Yup, power. Yup, network connectivity. I can ping 'er. Alrighty. Remote in. Nothing immediately amiss. System logs show five-by-five. Good. Check the DB logs. Red. Oh lordy, red.
This is when I took a step back and called Matt. Why? Because Matt is normally the person in at 0600, and I was covering for him because he felt like having a bit of a break. That's fine. Except for the fact that I know jack shit about ERP1 and exactly which blinky lights are supposed to go how blinky-blinky in what bleeping order. And then when Matt goes 'Oh. Wow. Fuck that.' and calls MP - she who built the damned thing. So now, under direction from her, we wave the correct wands in the correct sequence to realign some paralellogram responsible for intersecting angles in the contingent of space time. Or something. I really have no fucking clue. Doesn't matter - everything is running again by 0745. Okay. Right. Bit longer than I would have liked.
I'm going to have to make some time to go over the more delicate bits involving projects I want to do. I need to record them better. The notebook is nearing capacity, and I realise I don't actually have digital copies of most of that anywhere. Time to dust off ol' OmniGraffle and have a peek.
Oh! Tiger! Tiger's out today. I will write about it in the very near future. I'm not sure when to expect my copy, but I've resolved to write something new each day. Either way, you're stuck with me.***
Ah, but work awaits. I have things to do...
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man,
As still modesty and humility
Footnotes
* Seriously, my workspace looks like Circuit City would if it took a good shelling from a well-supplied mortar position. There's computers stacked left and right, bits of computers scattered all about, and a whole mess of projects up in the air. Literally. The walls are lined with the souls and corpses of a thousand ideas. That ends today - it's time to step back, clean out this corner of my life, starting with these four walls.
** Things I never, ever want to hear Marilee say: "Yeah, I'm not sure what is wrong, exactly. I don't think I've ever had this particular error message ever before." o.o
*** For at least one person, this may not be a bad thing. :)
I had an anecdote about the cat trying to finish me 'Once And For All! /evil-fingers-peak' some time ago, but it's been lost in the static of life.
Where to start? On life? On love, even? On work? About The Mother? Or Louisville? Or Markham?
Life. Oh yes, that topic. Right, I suppose that's what this is all about though, isn't it? This potentially endless dissertation on life, the universe, and everything. That one should be broad enough for me to extol one bit here and there and keep both of us occupied.
So here I sit at my desk, at 0645 hours - arrived 35 minutes ago - only having just done a walk-around the manufacturing area to avoid a repeat of yesterday. Upon entering the site, I was greeted by darkness, did very little for fifteen minutes, until someone wandered over and found me in my cavernous workspace.*
'Hey, Jeremy. You do know that Syteline is down, right?'
/glare
Not that I don't actually, legitimately like responding to emergencies such as that - really, it makes me feel useful and important sometimes. No. A known issue since 0530 this morning, and the first report if it is a Remote Cell manager coming and speaking with me face-to-face.
The year is 2007. We have email. We have phones. We have fucking Post-Its. Don't - DON'T - wait until you FIND someone. Call someone. Call anyone - there are phone lists posted throughout the building! Especially when the one system that actually allows you to produce product so that the company can make money isn't functioning for whatever reason!**
So I go look at MDSERP1. Yup, power. Yup, network connectivity. I can ping 'er. Alrighty. Remote in. Nothing immediately amiss. System logs show five-by-five. Good. Check the DB logs. Red. Oh lordy, red.
This is when I took a step back and called Matt. Why? Because Matt is normally the person in at 0600, and I was covering for him because he felt like having a bit of a break. That's fine. Except for the fact that I know jack shit about ERP1 and exactly which blinky lights are supposed to go how blinky-blinky in what bleeping order. And then when Matt goes 'Oh. Wow. Fuck that.' and calls MP - she who built the damned thing. So now, under direction from her, we wave the correct wands in the correct sequence to realign some paralellogram responsible for intersecting angles in the contingent of space time. Or something. I really have no fucking clue. Doesn't matter - everything is running again by 0745. Okay. Right. Bit longer than I would have liked.
I'm going to have to make some time to go over the more delicate bits involving projects I want to do. I need to record them better. The notebook is nearing capacity, and I realise I don't actually have digital copies of most of that anywhere. Time to dust off ol' OmniGraffle and have a peek.
Oh! Tiger! Tiger's out today. I will write about it in the very near future. I'm not sure when to expect my copy, but I've resolved to write something new each day. Either way, you're stuck with me.***
Ah, but work awaits. I have things to do...
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man,
As still modesty and humility
Footnotes
* Seriously, my workspace looks like Circuit City would if it took a good shelling from a well-supplied mortar position. There's computers stacked left and right, bits of computers scattered all about, and a whole mess of projects up in the air. Literally. The walls are lined with the souls and corpses of a thousand ideas. That ends today - it's time to step back, clean out this corner of my life, starting with these four walls.
** Things I never, ever want to hear Marilee say: "Yeah, I'm not sure what is wrong, exactly. I don't think I've ever had this particular error message ever before." o.o
*** For at least one person, this may not be a bad thing. :)
2007-10-08
Something is amiss...
I've been feeling... alert, all weekend. And the paranoia is finally setting in. I know what built that, but I don't know what caused the initial event. I know that my brain has taken the alertness so far as to build an event in my head, and I'm not liking the outcome (keep in mind, it's entirely fictional - to my knowledge - at this point). But this is my being programmed to respond to the Worst Case Scenario. I fake it in my head, so that when the real world brings down the thunder, I can react without compunction.
The problem is that I have a tendency to be right - that's what bothers me most about this one.
This song is a...
The problem is that I have a tendency to be right - that's what bothers me most about this one.
This song is a...
A 'Bo' Of My Own...
Over the last month, I've been recruited twice to care for a jet-black cat called Bo - the feline companion of a very good friend of mine. This cat is a skiddish little thing, but so warm if he likes you (he happens to like me, or so I'm told). The charge is simple; arrive, feed cat, entertain if necessary. I leave and lock the door and that's that.
Or so I thought.
My neighbor (a crazy-cat-lady of sorts [?]) knocks on my door saturday evening, after I've seen to Bo. First of all, I was not wearing pants (this is common for me, at home), which was less than convenient. Secondly, after I had hurriedly thrown a pair of paint-covered jeans on, I found my neighbor, and a cat which I could've mistaken for Bo in broad daylight.
Infact, I had.
My initial reaction was "Oh Fuck!" - in front of [Neighbor], [Neighbor's Friend] and [Neighbor's Friend's 11-year-old Daughter]! The cat is a mirror for Bo at first sight, and I had thought that I had somehow let him out of [Friend's] apartment, and he'd followed me all the way back to mine.
Then I realised that I've gotten lost on that particular almost-straight-line trip, and figured the cat wasn't brave enough to make the trek alone. Sense begins to slowly return.
He immediately enters my apartment, and I agree to watch the cat. He's very well taken care of for something to just be found; I'm confident that he has a home somewhere. Somewhere not here. This will do for the moment, though.
I've posted on Craigslist that I have a rogue cat. There were a few posts saying 'Help! I've lost my black cat!' - both referred to a cat called 'Buddy'. This one doesn't respond to that name _at_all_.
I've taken to calling him Ratchet, and he certainly has a home here if no where else.
This type of thinking could do us in...
Or so I thought.
My neighbor (a crazy-cat-lady of sorts [?]) knocks on my door saturday evening, after I've seen to Bo. First of all, I was not wearing pants (this is common for me, at home), which was less than convenient. Secondly, after I had hurriedly thrown a pair of paint-covered jeans on, I found my neighbor, and a cat which I could've mistaken for Bo in broad daylight.
Infact, I had.
My initial reaction was "Oh Fuck!" - in front of [Neighbor], [Neighbor's Friend] and [Neighbor's Friend's 11-year-old Daughter]! The cat is a mirror for Bo at first sight, and I had thought that I had somehow let him out of [Friend's] apartment, and he'd followed me all the way back to mine.
Then I realised that I've gotten lost on that particular almost-straight-line trip, and figured the cat wasn't brave enough to make the trek alone. Sense begins to slowly return.
He immediately enters my apartment, and I agree to watch the cat. He's very well taken care of for something to just be found; I'm confident that he has a home somewhere. Somewhere not here. This will do for the moment, though.
I've posted on Craigslist that I have a rogue cat. There were a few posts saying 'Help! I've lost my black cat!' - both referred to a cat called 'Buddy'. This one doesn't respond to that name _at_all_.
I've taken to calling him Ratchet, and he certainly has a home here if no where else.
This type of thinking could do us in...
Chevelle - Get Some
I love this song. I don't see it in the teenager-boy sense of 'Get Some', but rather the Marine Corps battle cry - 'GET SOME!'. Come to think of it, they're both teenage boys, but that's not the point; one involves firing a weapon, the other involves discharging a cannon. You see what I did there? That's enough wankery, though.
[Assume the following plaintext are the thoughts / observations of a Marine in a combat situation. I will attempt to guide you through the imagry of my brain. Italics indicate lyrics, and where I find parallels in my head.]
I've tried an idea for no reason; keep the sun off our shoulders
Crawling back to- I black out.
Touching new life, face down. Set the pace again.
"Great. We had to do that. I had to give that order." Just trying to get my guys by.
One thing after another, and now I'm crawling for safety. Fuck. Where's my squad?
A weapon. Thank God. I'm in control again.
[Assume the following plaintext are the thoughts / observations of a Marine in a combat situation. I will attempt to guide you through the imagry of my brain. Italics indicate lyrics, and where I find parallels in my head.]
I've tried an idea for no reason; keep the sun off our shoulders
Crawling back to- I black out.
Touching new life, face down. Set the pace again.
"Great. We had to do that. I had to give that order." Just trying to get my guys by.
One thing after another, and now I'm crawling for safety. Fuck. Where's my squad?
A weapon. Thank God. I'm in control again.
2007-10-05
Origins...
Protodeka. 'proto' - the Latin root meaning 'the first formed'. 'deka' - in some language I can not remember - the word 'of that', or more loosely translated as a 'type of something'.
I took that because my mother always called me a mistake - or tried to. Dad would occasionally pull me off to one side and tell me that she was just angry, and didn't mean it. Over time, he saw that it actually started to affect me. The tune changed - I was his First. The prototype. Flawed, perhaps, but certainly over-engineered. That holds true today.
What follows are what I amicably refer to as the best laid plans of Knights and men.
Judgement means nothing - that's not what we're fighting for!
I took that because my mother always called me a mistake - or tried to. Dad would occasionally pull me off to one side and tell me that she was just angry, and didn't mean it. Over time, he saw that it actually started to affect me. The tune changed - I was his First. The prototype. Flawed, perhaps, but certainly over-engineered. That holds true today.
What follows are what I amicably refer to as the best laid plans of Knights and men.
Judgement means nothing - that's not what we're fighting for!
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