Author Archives: stumpy0166

Back to Creation

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Today’s featured image is one that I took in July, 2011, of a couple of cats on my deck.  I have no particular reason for using it.  I just did.

Much of yesterday and this morning was dedicated to website design, build-out, and modification. You’ve probably noticed differences in this’yere blog – hamburger menu to categories, droplist for archives, etc.  I’m currently trying to get a plug-in to work that will allow me to embed files directly from my OneDrive, but have so far not had much luck.  Email has been sent to the plug-in’s developer.

Yesterday, I made some huge strides on getting GoPaladins.com to look more like I want it to look.  It’s now running completely on a BootStrap base, which is something that I’d just started learning about when AT&T dropped the hammer, and I haven’t had the time to fool around with stuff like that since joining the X-Company, so putting the big site on that code is forcing me to dig into it a bit and figure things out – which I enjoy doing.  Still a lot to do on that site if it’s even going to approach the functionality of the old one that GoDaddy broke; but the original was years in the making.  I’m taking baby steps with the new one.

One said baby step was the purchase of a new monitor yesterday morning.  The television that I was using wasn’t getting the job done, and is slowly failing (colors get all wonky, which is not good when you’re designing sites and/or editing photos), so I splurged and bought a 34″ curved display at MicroCenter.  Truth be told, I was considering doing that anyway, in order to make it not only possible but actually preferable to work from home, which I think I’ll now start doing one day a week.  The monitor is wide enough for me to treat it like two monitors, and it’s got software that lets me break it up into different windows – so I can use half of it for a browser and split the other side into quarters for two additional programs (a ticketing window and a remote control window, for example) and not have to spend my time hunting for the stuff that I need.  It’s also at a good height, which is very nice.  I spent 6 hours in front of it yesterday and didn’t have a headache OR a backache.  Money well spent.

Have a rehearsal with the Gwinnett Wind Symphony this afternoon, which should be interesting.  Haven’t touched my tuba in probably 6 months, and we’re playing Schoenberg and some other weird stuff.  Atonal garbage for the most part, but I need to get my tuba chops in shape for an upcoming Easter gig.  The concert, by the way, is next week.

I felt terrible this morning because I woke up convinced that it was Monday and I’d forgotten to go to the one rehearsal that I told the director I would make.  Put me into kind of a funk as I fed the cats, did my potty business, and prepared to take a shower before finally realizing that it’s Sunday.  Once I figured that out, I went back to bed, much to the delight of all three cats.

I’m considering mowing the front lawn today.  Also need to do some laundry.  And maybe try making some cheesy beef macaroni stuff in a crock pot just to see if it’ll work.  Or I could do it the regular way.  Rehearsal goes from 6-8, so I doubt I’ll be eating afterwards.

Well….that ought to do it for today.  Not much to put down here other than the fact that it was in the 30s this morning, which blew me away.  It has since gone up to nearly 70 in the sun, but still feels rather chilly.  I must be getting old.

A Day Away

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My buddy Brett and I decided last week that we had to get away from Atlanta, so he sent me a text saying, “How about the Chatooga?”   That was pretty much all of the planning.  I knew it wouldn’t give me a chance to try out my new car-camping setup, but I honestly thought we might go canoeing.  After a day or so, I figured out that he meant he wanted to go to Burrell’s Ford, near Walhalla, SC.

That was good enough.

I brought along my digital audio recorder, as I’ve done on a few other camping trips (with some half-assed plan about putting together a ridiculous podcast), and we had a great time recording ourselves getting rather cronked in five-minute segments. I also recorded some stuff on my phone. I’ve discovered that I tend to lapse into a somewhat idiotic southern drawl when I record myself on these camping trips – see for yourself (video will take a while to load):  Southern Camping Podcast

It was a quite short, but enjoyable trip.  I arrived about an hour before Brett at around 9:00 Saturday morning.  Took a hike down the river looking for (and finding) a nice spot to pitch a couple of tents, but when Brett got there I learned that he’d brought a cooler with him and didn’t want to walk very far.  So we set up pretty close to the parking lot in a site next to one that we’ve used many times (there was already a group in our “regular” spot).

Saturday afternoon and evening were absolutely gorgeous.  Sunny, warm, quiet.  The water in the river was pretty cold, but I had no intention of swimming in it.  I just used it to keep my beer cold.

Hit the sack fairly early and slept until nearly 7 Sunday morning, when I packed up in a drizzle (Brett had already left) and came home.

At some point, I’ll do some (heavy) editing of the audio that recorded and upload it.  I listened to it at home on Sunday morning and cackled to myself.

 

Consolidation

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I think I mentioned a few days ago that GoDaddy had completely screwed up my website.  If I didn’t, well…they did.   And I, being the go-getter that I am, decided, basically, “To hell with them.”

To that end, I signed up with a new host, and you’re seeing the first tentative steps that I’m taking towards getting everything off of GoDaddy.  My new hosts have – wait for it – actual daily backup service.  They have integrated WordPress service.  They allow subdomains (and if you’re here, you’re on one of them).  And they seem to have pretty fast servers.  So I’m moving everything here.  My blogs.  My forums. My sandboxes.  Not only that, but I’m pulling in all of my OLD blogs, too.  How cool is that?  Remember the original “Stuff Nobody Reads”?  It’s here.  So’s “Frowzy Noise.”  And the ever-popular “Lives of Our Days.”  With the exception of a few very short startup attempts, everything I’ve ever written in blog format is now under this virtual roof.

I’m sure the historians will thank me, although I still have to bring over some photos that are still on the migration site.  If you peruse posts, you’ll see a lot without photos, even though I may reference photos in them.

Today’s featured photo, by the way, is an old picture that I found of Chamberlain.

I’m also moving the football forums here, though that’s going to take quite a bit more effort than this did.  I had them set up, briefly, but realized too late that I’d made a few stupid mistakes, so blew away what was there and I’m starting over.

Oh – I accepted that job today.  The Level 1 Lead for the X-Company.  It’s not a huge step up, but it’ll be an extra $4K a year.  That will be helpful for retirement.

 

Hockey night in Duluth

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Today’s featured image is – what a surprise! – my cats.  It’s not often that I can get all three of them in a photo together.

February has arrived.  As far as I’m concerned, that just means that the year is about 1/12th over, and I’m good with that.  Work has been a disaster since late December and the closer we get to the end of tax season, the happier I’ll be.  I’m actually updating this on this lovely Saturday morning while I’m also working at home.  I’ve got a huge client in Chattanooga & Memphis (surely you remember the story about setting THEM up) which has been having nothing but trouble since things started ramping up for the season several weeks ago.  As usual, someone made a major chance to their environment a few days ago.  Didn’t document it.  Apparently didn’t test it.  The result being that, since Thursday morning, a high percentage of the users at this particular client can’t get any work done.  So they’re losing tens of thousands of dollars daily, they’re yelling at me, and I’m saying, “Not much I can do to help you.”

Oddly enough, in the middle of all of this, I was indeed approached about taking a level 1 lead role, which will put me into more of an administrative/teaching capacity.  I interviewed for it – seemed to go okay.  Waiting for an offer letter to see what kind of salary bump we’re talking.  If nothing else, it will take me out of the first line of fire from clients like the one I mentioned – but it will also put me into the middle of problems with a lot more firms, as the L1s on my team will start sending their problem children to me.  I figure, “What the hell?”  If I don’t like it…well…I don’t like what I’m doing now, but I’ll be making more.

GoDaddy has once again managed to destroy a few years of my life.  They did something to my website early last week – said they were moving my source files and it would only take a day or two.  Most importantly, they swore that they weren’t moving the database.  After several days of not having database access, I called and asked them what the deal was.  They said they’d take care of it.  Yesterday, connectivity to the database was restored – only the database in question was missing about a year’s worth of data.  This includes not only messageboard posts, but also statistics, custom code, forum modifications, vital links….the site is pretty much dead in the water.  I put up a message last night to tell my users what’s going on and today I’ve been contemplating what to do next. Starting over is the logical step, as it would take – literally – a year or more to get things back to where they were last week.  I still have two years left on my contract with GoDaddy, but I’m honestly not thrilled about the chance of this happening again, so I’m looking at alternatives.

Should you be wondering, THIS site is also hosted on GoDaddy.  Don’t be suprised if it just disappears one day.  I’m trying to keep local backups of the database with this, at least.  Doing so with the football site was nearly impossible due to its size.

Jenny and I are slated to take in a minor league hockey game tonight.  Truth be told, I’d really rather sleep; but it should be fun.

Year 1

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No featured photo today.  Not because I don’t have any, but because I’m sitting in bed and typing on my old Surface Pro and screen space is limited.

Yesterday, I quietly passed a year of working at the X-Company.  I’d forgotten all about it until of the leads sent me a Skype wishing me a happy workaversary.  He was one of the ones who declared that I had a bad attitude 8 or 9 months ago, but now seems to like me a little bit.  Strange.  As for the rest of the day, I continued to try to dig out from under a pile of tickets.  More of that today.  I’ve finally started to get the feeling that I might be able to get back on top of things, though.  So there’s that.

It hasn’t been as cold for the last several days as it was for the weeks before that, but it has still been chilly enough for a jacket and the occasional shiver when I’m walking around our building.  Hate to say it, but I wish it’d get up into the 50s or 60s for a few days and let me thaw out.  The best part of my day at this point is the 5 minutes I spend in the shower under hot water.

The GBB had our first NABBA rehearsal last night and learned just how difficult the pieces we’re playing are.  Lots of notes.  For everyone.  Lots of accidentals and awkward fingerings and fast tempos.  We’ve got an all-day rehearsal (with sectionals) this Saturday.  Should be fun.  I have no idea, however, if we’ll be able to pull this stuff together.  It’s, as a friend of mine used to say, “Stupid hard.”

And that’s enough for now.  As I said, I’m sitting in bed.  And I’m tired.  And I think I’m going to sleep now.

The Big Game

Aside

It’s the night of The Big Game.  Starts in 11 minutes, I think.  I don’t have ESPN anymore, so if I do watch it, I’ll be doing so through the free portion of the ESPN app, which follows all of the action using only those overhead cameras that zoom up and down the field for the whole game.  No commentary at all.  Believe it or not, I prefer to watch the games that way, so it works out for me.

Should you not know, The Big Game is the championship game of the joke of a college football playoff known as “The College Football Playoffs.”  The actual college football playoffs, which has 24 teams and determines the actual Division I college football champion, ended last Saturday, with North Dakota State eking out a win over James Madison University.  I watched it.  It was a good game.  I might, as I said, watch a bit of the game tonight between Georgia and Alabama, but it’s not something about which I’m overly-excited.

I had a decent day at work today.  Knocked out a couple of problems that had been bothering me for the last week and continued to slice into my mountain of open tickets.  I was not helped by the fact that – yet again – one of the Level 2 people ran updates on numerous firms yesterday and didn’t bother to fully test said updates; so that, when we arrived at work this morning, there were already more than 25 of said firms who couldn’t use one of their most vital applications until we, the Level 1 team, manually patched all of their servers.

I don’t understand this trend – and it is a trend.  It happens all the time.  Somebody who has the job of updating applications does so, but doesn’t take the simple step of launching the applications after they’ve been updated.  I know that they don’t take this step because many applications will give a pretty obvious hint (i.e., they won’t launch) if you haven’t completed the update successfully.  Rule #1 for all application updates, going back to the dawn of the computer age: have a rollback plan.  The X-Company just doesn’t seem to grasp that concept; and, frankly, it really pisses me off.  It’s tough to guess just how many man-hours are lost – by us and by the clients – every time they do this, and they do it at least twice a month.

Enough about that.   Today’s featured photo is of my boy Joshua.  The tiny little runt of a Maine Coon who I chose – with no close second – out of a little of 11 when he was two days old.  He and his brother, Chamberlain, are coming up on (I think) their fourth birthday next month.  Both tilt the scales at around 15 pounds and, while both are incredibly sweet and loving, Joshua is still the daddy’s boy that he was on the day I brought them home.  The photo up there shows Josh lounging on my Kelti 20-degree sleeping bag on a Sunday morning a few weeks back.  He was there because…well….because I was there.  Joshua wants to be with me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  He wakes me up every morning, he follows me around the house until I leave, he sleeps on my pillow.  If I’m in a room, there’s a 95% chance that he’s in the same room.  At the moment, I’m at my desk and he’s on his little cat tree about three feet to my left.  A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to get a drink, and he followed me down.  When I came back up to my office after all of 5 seconds in the kitchen, he came back up with me.  There is no dog more loyal to his master than Joshua is to me.

He also plays fetch as well as any dog, and it is a constant source of amusement and, in a way, solace for me when I come home and find one of his favorite toys (he has three that he prefers far more than the 200 or so others in the cats’ toy box) at the top of the stairs or on my bed – evidence that he’s been entertaining himself while I’ve been away, by playing a game of solitaire fetch.  Every night before bed, he begs me to throw just a few tosses down the stairs.  He is a remarkable little animal.

So is Chamberlain, and Chamberlain will get his own write-up one of these days.

It has been outlandishly chilly in Atlanta for an extended time, and I’m almost ashamed to admit that.  I generally like to be a bit chilly.  I hate being hot.  I’ve got no problem with camping in the mountains in the winter or driving to the Upper Peninsula in October.  This month, though, has been different.  It’s just been cold. It reminds me of one of our last winters in Shoreham, when Dad commented to me something along the lines of, “It hasn’t gotten really cold – like 20 below – this winter, but this month-long stretch of 5-degree days really takes it out of you.”  Well…this month-long stretch of 30-degrees has really taken it out me, too.  To that end, I broke down last week and bought two pairs of flannel-lined pants from Duluth Trading company.

Naturally, they make me sweat.  But they’ll be good for winter camping.

Well, I must go watch a bit of this Big Game and fall asleep.  Joshua will be waking me up in just under 9 hours.

Two in a Row!

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I made a pact with myself the other day to try to keep this thing updated more often more this year and maybe improve my writing a tad.  So here’s post number two for 2018.  The featured image for this is one of the Georgia Brass Band at last month’s Christmas concert, which I couldn’t play because of the amount of rehearsals I missed for the Memphis & Chattanooga trips.  The band sounded good!  It was the first time since it formed in 1999 that I actually got to hear what it sounded like, and I came away pretty impressed.

Should you be wondering, the shot was taken during a kids’ participation song – which may explain why our solo euphonium player has a toddler in his lap.

Tonight was the first rehearsal of that group since the concert, and also the first time that I’ve put a horn to my lips since mid-November.  I was, to say the least, a bit wobbly – and my lack of practice was not helped by the fact that it’s been quite cold in Atlanta for the last week and I’ve got some seriously chapped chops.  Overall, though, I wasn’t too embarrassed by my playing, and I’m looking forward to digging into the repertoire that we’ve got selected for our next concert (Brass Blast at Kennesaw) and to some extra rehearsals that we’ll be putting in over the next few months as we prepare to once again storm the beaches of the North American Brass Band Championships in Ft. Wayne in April.

Work today was a bit of a downer, thanks to one of my problem clients.  They’ve been complaining about pretty much everything since they came on board at the start of last year.  First they didn’t like their primary consultant….so I became their new primary consultant.  Then they didn’t like their CSM (Customer Success Manager), so they stopped talking to him and started trying to put me into that role – something that I flatly refuse to have happen.  A couple of months ago, they started complaining to me about one of their applications, which is running slowly because their single SQL server is overloaded.  I told them that, not being a CSM, I couldn’t really suggest anything, but that – if it were my call – I’d get another SQL server.  I also told their CSM that they needed another server.  The CSM, however, doesn’t like them any more than they like him, so basically nothing was done….and they just keep complaining to me, no matter how many times I tell them that I can’t work with them about anything involving money.

So they had their lawyer draft a document to the X-Company president, listing 10 areas that they felt we were in breach of contract.  The president got together with the CSM and told him to prepare a response for each of the 10 areas, and I got sucked into helping him do that, in spite of the facts that 1}I know absolutely nothing about many of them (problems preceded me), 2}I’ve given the CSM my recommendations several times on the areas that I do know about, and 3}the whole letter was just them bitching and moaning more about the same stuff that I’m tired of hearing about.  I tried to be their advocate for several months.  Now, they’re just pissing me off.

I did get a number of things done for other clients, however, which was nice.  And I just finished doing an update (on their lone SQL server) for the problem children, so maybe they’ll leave me alone tomorrow.

Actually, they’ll probably bombard me with questions and complaints about the update – which they insisted be done tonight even though most updates generally take several days and are done by Level 2 consultants  –  of which I am not one.

So it’s now 10:45 and I’ve had a full day.  It’s still rather chilly, but there are three cats and a space heater in my bedroom, and I think I’ll sleep pretty well.

Also mean to start walking in the mornings again – haven’t done that in several months.  I just haven’t felt like rolling out of bed and going out into the pitch-black cold.  But maybe…just maybe….I’ll do it in the morning.

That’s a Wrap

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Today’s featured photo is one of Boo, who never gets enough computer time.  I took it a month or so ago while she was looking cute.  And she’s got a remote control next to her, which is a good place to kick things off.

Televisions have gotten cheap while I wasn’t paying attention.  I think I mentioned a while back that I was considering getting a new TV after Mary moved out to put downstairs in the living room.  I had just about convinced myself not to do that when Mary finally did move a couple of weeks ago, but when I got my television back from her (I’d let her keep it in her room while she was here because her much bigger one was downstairs), I discovered that the remote control didn’t work with it.  Changed the batteries, tried one of my old universal remotes on it, bought a new universal to try…nothing.  Apparently, the television’s remote receiver gave up the ghost at some point.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  “Back in my day, we got up and changed the channels by ourselves, and we watched whatever was playing, and we were happy.”  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.  I did exactly that for about a week before deciding to put the thing back upstairs in my office and use it as a large monitor – which is what I’m currently looking at as I type this.  Then I went out in search of a new television.  And ended up getting a 50″ monster from LG with a built-in internet connection (for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Tablo, etc.).  For less than $300.  I paid more than that for the little thing that is now my monitor!  Wow.   The new one also does a better job of picking up over-the-air channels, so in addition to the three streaming channels that I use most often, I also get 200 internet channels and 88 over-the-air.  That amazes me.  Anyway, that was my Christmas present to myself and I like it.

Christmas itself was pretty laid back.  Spent the day doing a bit of housecleaning, watching football, called Dad, went out for Chinese with Jenny and Herb.  Had a short week at work – culminating last Friday with a marathon of a day that began at 7:30 and ended at 7:00.  What a way to end the year.  At least I think I fixed the problem that I was working on for the last four hours of the day.

So…it’s the first day of 2018, and I figured I’d take a quick look back at 2017.

At this time last year, I’d just lost my job and didn’t have another one lined up.  I did take care of that, accepting a job with the X-Company the second week of January and starting work on the 23rd.  The salary was just under half of what I’d been making, so I lined up a renter, Mary, who moved in in March.  While I figured that I’d be able to live on the new salary, I wanted a buffer just in case.  As it turned out, it took me a couple of months to curb my spending, but I never actually went overdrawn, and I’ve settled into the new lifestyle fairly easily.

In April, the Georgia Brass Band went on a miniature tour through Alabama (Jacksonville and Huntsville) and Tennessee (Chattanooga).  This was shortly after Easter.  I know this because I worked on Good Friday.  Apparently, that’s normally a company holiday, but since I worked I got a comp day, which I used to leave for the tour.  I hadn’t built up much vacation time by then and didn’t want to use is, so the comp day was nice.

When I asked for time off in July to go to Canada, however, my request was denied.  I think it was also around that time that I put my name in the hat to be a data specialist and pretty much got blindsided by my two bosses, who told the guy with my resume that I had a bad attitude and ruined any chance I had at the job.  I went a few rounds with the bosses over that and got things straightened out, but it took a while for the hard feelings to pass.  Truth be told, I can’t say that I’m not still holding a small grudge.

In August, my buddy Brett and I drove up to the mountains of North Carolina, near a place called Big Fat Gap, to watch the eclipse – and we ended up finding an old hunting camp, at the end of a horrible road, which is one of the nicest places that we’ve ever found.  The bugs were a little bad, and the stream could be bigger; but the solitude is fantastic.  The eclipse was also pretty cool, and I took a few pictures of it after hiking up a mountain to get a good view of it.

At some point – I don’t recall if it was before or after the eclipse – I went on a project to Maryland to set up a new client.  It was on that trip that I learned how completely disorganized such projects are, but apparently made a name for myself, because after coming back, I was given a few new clients – including one known for being tough to work with – and taken out of the phone queue.  I didn’t complain.  At about the same time, people that I’d been working with since January – most of whom had been at the X-Company for longer than I – started asking me for help.  That has continued to this day, and I’ve somehow gotten a reputation as the guy who knows systems (imagine that…after 20 years administering systems, somebody finally noticed that I might understand them).  After the more recent project in Memphis and Chattanooga, the questions have been coming with greater frequency and I’ve found myself helping other people out, sometimes at the expense of my own numbers.  More on that in a bit.

In October, I finally got some real time off and spent it visiting with Dad, Diane, and Dianne in Myrtle Beach and then heading north to Cheboygan, MI, where I spent a week in a campsite and a cottage and realized that I wanted to retire.  To that end, I visited a friend of mine who bought some land in SC last year and, together with another friend, has put up a couple of very small cottages (sheds, really), drilled a well, brought in electricity and internet, and has plans to build a small house sometime this year (to comply with some sort of county rule).  I visited her last week, too (Christmas Eve), and we talked about me buying an acre or so from her and putting my own little shed on it in a few years.  Since she and her friend will have built an actual house on the property (about 5 acres) by then, I won’t have to.  Also won’t have to dig a well or put in electricity or internet.  Pretty sweet.

Also went to a Furman game in October.  Furman did surprisingly well this year, nearly winning the conference and gaining a spot – and a single win – in the FCS playoffs.  Good for them.  Hope then can continue to improve and get back to the dominance that they enjoyed in the 80s.

The end of November and much of December were taken up with the Memphis/Chattanooga project, which – as I’ve pointed out previously – was a complete disaster and ended up with me buried in tickets.  I also gained a measure of respect, however, by handling the client during and after the on-site visits.  My boss asked me if I wanted to do more projects (I said not really), then told me that, because there isn’t a Level 2 position open right now, he’s put my name in to be a Level 1 lead.  Might be a little more money, which will be nice, but the real upside to such a move is that I won’t have primary clients anymore.  I’ll be in more of mentor/clean-up position, which is fine with me.  Hopefully, I’ll also be in a better spot to move to Level 2 at some point, which will give me yet more cash and – most importantly – more interesting problems, as well as the rights necessary to actually solve them.

So I’m waiting to hear about the L1 lead spot.  Will hopefully know something this month.

And that, in a nutshell, was 2017.  It was not my finest nor my favorite year – I’d put it pretty far down the list…let’s call it #45 out of 51, as I’m sure I must’ve had 6 worse years – but I can’t recall them at the moment.

Am very much looking forward to a better 2018 – and the countdown to retirement has begun!  I just have to figure out how I’m going to do it.

 

Is this year over yet?

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Today’s featured image is a shot that I took of the cat house on my deck on December 9th.  It began snowing on the morning of the 8th and continued for about 24 hours, leaving an ecstatic Atlanta populace to deal with four to eight inches of the white stuff.  I think the last time I saw that kind of accumulation down here was probably in the early 90’s.  My car and I had no problems with it – in fact, I almost enjoyed driving home on Friday night because pretty much everyone else in the city had panicked and gone home at about 1:00 Friday afternoon.  The roads were nearly empty.  The snow hung around on the ground for several days, but was pretty much gone by last Wednesday (the 13th).  It has remained pretty chilly, however.  Mid-30s this morning.

Memphis.  Someday, I’ll laugh about Memphis.  If you go back and read my last post, detailing what the plan was for Memphis, you’ll see the difference between a plan and reality at the X-Company:

Plan – Add machines to the domain and install anti-virus software from my hotel room on Sunday night.  Reality – All of the machines, including the domain controller, were offline on Sunday night.  I ate a sandwich and watched television from my hotel room on Sunday night.

Plan – Down day at the office on Monday.  I’d go in, set up the new network, put work on machines and printers.  Get things ready for Tuesday.  Reality – Got to the office at about 7:30 and there was no power.  Power remained out for about 4 hours.  Down day never happened, as everyone came in to the office and wanted to work.  Not only could they not do that because of the power situation, but they weren’t supposed to be there at all.  When the power came back on, they all tried to work while I kept telling them to stop working so that I could set them up.  Disaster of a day.

Plan – Train the users on Wednesday, then help out with individual problems on Wednesday and Thursday, come home Thursday night, prepare to go back for the office move on the following Monday.  Reality – I did go through the training presentation with the users, but it did not go well because the X-Company was having a full-blown crisis.  Users were getting locked out left and right, email wasn’t working, provisioning users (unlocking their accounts) was hanging up everywhere…we basically were dead in the water.  I spent most of the day trying to assure users that no, things didn’t usually suck this badly.  By late in the day, I’d gotten most of the users up and working and had their printers set up.  Then the firm admin – a network guy from Chattanooga – arrived at the Memphis office and announced that we’d be moving to the new office in 20 minutes.  This was Wednesday (planned for the following Monday, remember?).  So I grabbed the firewall and domain controller and moved them to the new office to get set up there.  With movers running around and people trying to determine where to set up, I basically locked myself in the network closet and got my domain controller and firewall plugged in, then went home early.   Got back to the office on Thursday to help people get started and discovered that the network guy had changed the network scope – so I had to reconfigure the domain controller and all of the printers.  I did this.  20 minutes later, he tried to set up the phones and ended up killing the entire network.  A vital piece of hardware had failed in the network closet and it couldn’t be replaced until the following day.  So I left at around 4:00 and came home.

Plan – Go back to Memphis on Sunday and help users settle in to the new office until Wednesday.  Reality – I went back to Memphis on Sunday, and ran the anti-virus setup on machines that I’d missed the previous week, then went to the office on Monday morning, where everything was actually running pretty smoothly.  Helped some users with little problems, tweaked some printer settings, was just getting into a good groove….and power for the entire block went out.  I informed my office, then, after sitting around for a few hours without power, I texted my boss and asked, “What am I supposed to be doing here?  They’re doing fine (when they have power) and there’s no moving going on (remember that was the plan).”  He agreed that I didn’t need to be there, and decided (I don’t know why) that I should go to Chattanooga instead and help the people in that (much larger) office until Wednesday.

So I left Memphis and drove to Chattanooga.  Spent Tuesday and Wednesday there, fighting a losing battle against people getting locked out of their accounts (because of settings from their former domain that kept throwing out bad credentials), and escaped on Wednesday night.

Oh, yeah – it was also decided to make me the primary consultant for this firm after all of this.  So I’ve not got thirteen firms and something like 600 users.  Two of those firms are having a terrible time getting anything done because, I suspect, they weren’t setup correctly.

I am buried in tickets.  Normally, I like to carry 8-10 open tickets.  I currently have over 60.  I need for this year to be over.

 

Onward to Memphis

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Today’s featured image is of a deer bouncing away from me as I stand in the parking lot of my office in Alpharetta. Apparently, there is a small herd of the critters living in a rather cramped bit of forest in the middle of the office park, and they come out to graze or pee or people-watch or whatever just about every night when I’m getting ready to leave.

Speaking of leaving, I’ll be driving over to Memphis in a few hours to start a 5-day stint setting up a new client there.  I am somewhat nervous about this, as I’ll be the only person at the site.  It’s an offshoot of a Chattanooga firm, and everyone else on this project (5 people, I think) are going to the Chatty office.  My concern is that, while I’m not overly worried about the technical aspects of the job, I’m not entirely sure about the procedures that I’m supposed to be doing.  The X-company documents pretty much nothing.  You’re just supposed to pick it up from osmosis, I guess.  Problem is, I’ve only been on one other project, with one other person, and I really don’t know what’s expected.  Guess I’ll find out.

The plan is for me to start doing some off-site work (joining machines to the local domain, getting antivirus installed, etc.) tonight – from my hotel room – and then there will be a down day tomorrow, when I’ll go to the office, physically connect our server to the firewall, set up printers, patch the workstations that I can’t get to tonight, etc.  Then I’ll work with the users Tuesday-Thursday (including a training class on Tuesday, for which I have no documentation, though there is supposed to be a PowerPoint presentation somewhere) and hit the road for home after work on Thursday.  With the time change, I should get back to Atlanta sometime around midnight Thursday and will take Friday off.

After that, I’ll go BACK to Memphis on Sunday because – I really don’t get this – the office that I will set up this week will be relocating to a new office next week.  Why they didn’t just do everything on the same week is completely beyond me, but it’ll be a shorter week for me.  I’ll drive out Sunday, move our server and firewall to the new place on Monday, then hang out and help the users until Wednesday, when I’ll again come home.  Will take the following Thursday off.  Not sure about that Friday.  I’ll probably go to work because I know that I’ll have email and old tickets backed up beyond belief by then.

I was made the primary consultant for two more firms over the last couple weeks.  One in Baltimore, the other in St. Cloud, MN.  Both are problem children and the one in Minnesota is a particular beast.  Whoever set them up (from the X-company) did a terrible job, and the firm is paying the price.  Their email system was set up incorrectly.  A couple of vital software packages were only partially installed.  Worst of all, the client opted to go with “cloud only” support, which means that I don’t have remote access to their workstations.  So this company is opening probably 20 new tickets a day, most of them having to do with their email or the poorly-installed applications, and I pretty much have to say, “Yeah.  Our bad.  We’re working on it.”

Did I mention that the project manager who did that job (in St. Cloud) is the same guy who’s leading the effort for the firm in Chattanooga and Memphis?

So yeah.  I’m a bit nervous about these upcoming trips.

On the home front, Mary is indeed moving out later this week, though she says she’ll take care of the cats into the first week of December for me when I’m gone.  As I said in a previous post, I’m mentally taking back my house and I’m sort of excited about that.  Haven’t decided yet if I’ll get a new television, since I’m strongly considering putting the one in my bedroom into my redesigned office, for use as a large monitor.  If I do that, I think I’ll be more comfortable working from home once or twice a week.  I’ve not done that yet (the offer is on the table) because working on a single screen really sucks when you’re doing the kind of work that I do.

So if I do that, I’ll move the television that I put in Mary’s room (the office) into my bedroom, and then I’ll probably want to put one downstairs.  If I decide to do that, then I’ll probably want to get a decent-sized television with all the Roku stuff (streaming channels) built in.  So I’m window shopping.

Ironically, I’ve also decided to basically stop spending money, as I’ve decided that 55 would be a great age to shoot for for retirement.  I know, I know.  It’s too young and blah blah blah.  But the fact is that I’m tired of doing what I do.  I was happy – and well-paid – in my AT&T gig, and I’m miserable – and making half of my old salary – with the X-Company.  By 2021, I’ll have about a half-million in my 401k, about $120K in my AT&T pension (from which I’ll be able to draw around $800/month – I’ve checked); and, assuming I can sell the house, I should be able to buy a few acres in the woods and put up a hovel for cash.  I recently visited my friend who did exactly this over the last two years, and – while I’d find better land and put in a few more amenities (a wood stove for sure) – she’s got a pretty sweet setup.

So there it is.  It’s out there.  I aim to retire in 3 years.

In other news, Furman won a playoff game against Elon yesterday.  Very close game, and a bit of redemption from the 2nd game of the season, when Elon won a squeaker on a last-second field goal.  The reward for the win is that Furman will travel to Wofford next week for the second round.  In the 1st week of the season, Wofford beat Furman by 1 point by stopping Furman’s 2-point conversion attempt on the last play of the game.  Furman fans are calling these games, “The Revenge Tour.”

Not much else to talk about these days.  I get up before dawn, go to work, come home after dark, and go to bed.  Not depressed.  Not elated.  Just sort of bored.

Maybe Memphis will give me something to write about.