So much to do…

As Hurricane Tammy bears down on the southeast, I feel kind of like I’m caught up in a little hurricane of my own.

Actually, the hurricane is supposed to be right around Greenville at game time this Saturday, which should be interesting. A friend of mine from work was thinking about coming to a game this year and taking some pictures. She went to Stephen F. Austin (in Texas), a team that’s played us one time – and knocked us out of the playoffs in 1989 in a snowstorm. My friend’s name is Tammy. We came to a decision that this weekend ain’t gonna be the one that she goes to Greenville. Hurricanes, snowstorms, Tammy, Stephen F. Austin, losing big games….the karma just isn’t there, dudes…

At any rate, my little storms at work finally got the best of me yesterday, and I was forced to send an email out to a number of people and say, “I don’t know what you all want me to do. Please use little words and tell me.”

I was totally serious. Two days ago, I found myself on a conference call promising to have something done on November 27th. After the call, I had to ask a co-worker what it was that I’d promised to do.

BEI currently has a number of different important (read “company-saving”) initiatives going on:

• IPTV – interactive television sent over extremely high-speed DSL connections)
• HSDA (aka WBB) – Wireless high-speed internet access
• CyberCSR – A web-based ordering/billing system for our current customers.
• ITC 5.503 – An upgraded to our primary customer-service software
• UDM (Universal Domain Migration) – bringing BEI’s networking structure into the larger corporate system
• BEIWEB – A complete overhaul of our affiliate intranet/reporting systems.

While all of these things are wonderful from a staying-in-business standpoint, our president has decided that we should be able to accomplish them all without benefit of any increase in headcount. We currently have two UNIX administrators and one Windows administrator (that’d be me). The UNIX people are sort of overwhelmed with their contributions to ITC 5.503 – you can imagine how I’m faring, having to deal with ALL of the projects at once. I’ve become sort of a deer caught in the headlights.

Take this morning, for example. My part of the ITC upgrade is to upgrade a system called “Compass” – the Windows front-end to the ITC back-end. I wasn’t aware that I needed to do ANYTHING until two days ago, when I was informed at about 7:00 AM that I needed to have the “test corp” updated that day. I scrambled around, found out what software needed to be installed, and installed it. Then I let a UNIX guy on to the box to tweak the database settings – bam. Box crashed. Operating system corrupted.

So the upgrade became a complete rebuild. I’ve rebuilt the box. I’ve installed all of the necessary application software. I’ve engaged developers and experts in Trinidad and California. As of 10 minutes ago, users still couldn’t use the application and nobody knows why. Since this is an application-based problem, I have know idea what the problem is (and, to be honest, that’s not my job anyway). However, because I’m the only Windows admin, I’m the one getting the calls from users…and all I can do is say, “We’re working on it,” before sending ever-more frantic voicemails to Trinidad and California.

The IPTV project, while being VERY cool, is an absolute monster. I’m supposed to have 138 servers delivered tomorrow. All will have to be unboxed, racked, have an operating system installed, and be individually configured to do the job that they’re supposed to do. I’m dearly hoping that we’ll get some help from our corporate brethren on this one, but I’m not actually counting on it.

CyberCSR has been going on for over a year and involves fighting with our corporate internet centers in Birmingham and Charlotte – people who, quite frankly, are so interested in taking over our infrastructure completely that they’re setting up “security rules” that could only be complied with by asking customers to give us their first-born before we allow them to access their bill.

What’s just super-terrible is that all of these projects are inter-related and dependent on each other. IPTV can’t go into effect unless people can sign up online, which needs CyberCSR. CyberCSR can’t function unless the billing software is updated to ITC 5.503. IPTV also depends upon our technicians having access to Wireless Broadband (WBB). We can neither sell this stuff nor work on it unless our reporting system (BEIWEB) is operational – and I can’t complete UDM because BEIWEB is having a problem operating in the corporate network.

One of the UNIX admins, being a very helpful lady, has taken the initiative of “helping me” by ordering Windows servers – but she doesn’t always keep me informed of what servers she’s ordered – I might make the mistake of assuming that she’s taken care of something, only to find out the day before I’m supposed to have it operational that the server hasn’t even been spec’d out, much less ordered. It’s sort of freaking me out.

So today, I’ve got a user screaming at me because Compass isn’t working yet, but I need to go to a meeting downtown for UDM-related stuff.

There are times when I hate my job.

The November 27th thing? That’s when I promised that I’d have CyberCSR working, apparently.

But hey, I took a really cool picture a few days ago. This is my cat, Bo. I set the shutter speed to half a second and zoomed in on him while I was making the exposure. I like the “saintly” effect that it created. Looks like a radial blur out of Photoshop, but this came straight out of the camera.

Later, y’all.