Friday, July 29, 2005

We Saw It First

AT&T's DSL service went down yesterday in the Western states. Our monitoring board lit up like a Christmas tree all at once. Our company is apparently using AT&T DSL for a lot of VPN traffic, or making our Internet traffic safe from your prying eyes.

We had Qwest chasing their tails for quite a while, telling us it wasn't they who were having any problems. Finally we realized our traces were dying at an AT&T router.

That was a hectic little spell I didn't need at the end of a 10-hour all-night shift. My firm and long-held belief that AT&T sucks donkey has been reaffirmed.




I know. What a lame post. Really, it's hard to come up with anything when you work all night and sleep all day. I'll work harder.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Snake Killed Dumbledore!

You know what? I’m finding little worth blogging about while the world sleeps, and I vigorously monitor the ‘Enterprise Network Operations Center’.

One cool thing happened, though. I was riding my bike along the American River Trail on the way in this evening, and saw a large rattlesnake stretched out on the asphalt. I thought he was dead, but nope, just chillin’. He was a big sucker. I turned around to have a better look, but he decided discretion was the better part of valor and high-tailed it into the bushes.

So watch out for those bushes, Kah-lee-foan-eeyans. Snakes might be under them. And this boy was big.

Oh, the title? Just something I heard an idiot say the other day.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Ah Canna Gie Ye Any More

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Yesterday, James Doohan, who played Scotty on Star Trek TOS (The Original Series, for non-geeks), went to the Final Frontier.

He had not been well, was suffering from Alzheimer’s. About a year ago, Trek geeks in Los Angeles set up a benefit ‘convention’ for him. To my knowledge, that was his last public appearance. He will be missed. Better to go though, than to linger in that kind of state.

Also, it will always stick in my mind that he died on Moon Landing Day.

Hailing frequencies closed, Mr. Scott.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Missive from Dawn

This might be a fun experiment. I'll post around 5:30 AM, when I've been up all night and I'm starting to get weird. I'm wasting too much good material on message boards, I ought to put some up here. But, maybe you aren't interested in debating the merits of being a 14 year-old boy and crossing paths with Debbie Lafave.

I lost my 'NOC (Network Operations Center) night - shift cherry virginity' tonight. I had to wake up an on-call person at around midnight, because it seemed a server had gone down. She sleepily and not-too-crankily explained that it has been taken out of service. I managed not to mention that if her group would update the freakin' database to reflect that this server is no longer 'production' then I wouldn't have called. Oh well. Boo hoo.

I had to wake her up again at 4. Heh. This time a legit server had crashed. She stepped me through remote reboot, and all was well. Then, she mentioned that I need to look at the "Memory Dump Procedure", which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anyway. She wasn't quite so not-cranky this time.

Now, the sun's coming up and it's really beautiful. I'd appreciate it more, but I'm the parent of a toddler. I've seen enough effing dawns the past two years to last me a lifetime.

I have a little over two hours to go. Weird part about this shift on this job is, my brain is beginning to shut down, but now the East Coast is reporting for work and problems are about to start, meaning I have to be sharp. By the time 8 AM rolls around, I'm in a real state. Luckily I ride my bicycle home, so I'm not tempted to road-rage on anybody's ass. It's a nice decompression. Also, I get to check out the milfs who are out pushing their babies. You don't see them before seven, when I used to bike in for the day shift.

OK, peace and love.

Sheri, hang in there. I'm sending you the good Kalifornia energy.

Oh, yeah. Is anybody else reading the new 'Harry Potter'? Dumb question, I know. Without dropping any spoilers, I can't believe Rowling put the word 'slut' in there. I had to blink and check again. My my, Harry's growing up.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Hey, It's Great to be Back! I Know that Sounds Fake, But, Hey, it's Great to Be Back!

OMG, we’re back!

Many thanks to those of you who have kept a link to this humble virtual place in your blogs. You may have noticed that I’m coming back around.

And that’s because I got promoted. I am no longer a ‘network technician’, meaning going around with a screwdriver in a pouch on my belt; now I’m a ‘network operations specialist’, meaning I’m locked in a secure cavern all night making sure the denizens of the enterprise will still be able to get their email when they log in after the sun comes up.

If we get lucky, some worthwhile writing will spring from the keyboard as I while away the wee hours here.

But not today. It’s almost five in the morning. The hard hours are coming. After eight though, my weekly three-day weekend will begin. Woo hoo!