Tag Archive for work

Outages and Inception.

Tonight seems like a great night for train of thought kind of thinking.

Have you seen Inception?  Yes?  Awesome!  You may have some reaction to what I’m going to say.  No?  Oh, that’s too bad but it probably doesn’t matter too much.

I saw it today.  I went out with the engineering team from work.  That was pretty fun.

Anywho, I wasn’t impressed.  The ending did not reveal some hidden truth or question about the universe.  Nothing.  It made me think at times but nothing earth-shattering.  I get that the story has a lot to it and it was well written and directed.  But the hype around this movie is worth diddly.

I did think of this while sitting in the theatre.  The mind tries to protect us on multiple levels, do not question how strong your inner being may try to protect or hide you.  It’s done for a reason and if you try to push it, it will not end up the way you think.

Also in the news today, work had (not really past tense cause it’s still happening) an outage.  A hard outage.  It is going to be an interesting day tomorrow.  So, lesson here: expect the unexpected.

But the important part is to expect it months or years in advance.  And this isn’t a, “your life is never going to be awesome because karma sucks” or “don’t let yourself get too excited because you’ll only be taken down by a disappointment” statement.  This is a “have a backup plan” statement.  Just be aware that should certain things go wrong, don’t leave yourself sitting on your hands wondering what’s going to come around and slap you in the face next.

Nothing can ever be predicted completely.  Which is nice, because life would be boring that way.  It’s also terrible because you can find yourself alone on an island for a few months talking to a volleyball.

So ok, to recap.  Always have a backup plan, never question your own mind, and when everything else is upside down… you can always smile.  A homeless guy on the street had a sign, “If you don’t have any money, you can just smile.”

Work, work, work

So I work at Smarter Travel Media, LLC here in MA.  Probably the coolest job I’ve ever had.  To be fair, I’ve had four jobs in my life.  But being a Systems Administration Intern and getting treated like a Jr. Systems Administrator is one of the greatest feelings I could get from a job.  Of course, this is still just a coop and I have to go back to school in January.  I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work since the day I started and I really wouldn’t have it any other way.  I am responsible for the development environment and although it’s not the real world facing servers, if that stuff isn’t right, it’s time to drop everything and work.

Last night I went to Dethklok at the House of Blues in Boston.  That was a very impressive concert.  After the concert, I was going to buy tickets for another show a few weeks from now but had to check my voicemail first to see if anyone called me, wanting to go.  Instead of getting the message I expected, I had a message from my boss telling me stuff was broken and people were slightly upset.  So at midnight when I got home, I went to work.  It was a quick fix and got things running for the people who needed them but it made me laugh because I was really playing the part of a sysadmin.  I was up, tired, and thinking of different ways to test a config change because I didn’t have a VPN login.

The best though was the reaction I received today at work.  My boss asked me what I was doing last night that prevented me from answering my phone at 1030 but allowed me to check my email at midnight.  The people I fixed things for were surprised that when they woke up, everything was fine.  It made me chuckle and truthfully, it was the right thing to do.  I have a responsibility to keep the environment running and mistakes or broken configs must be changed not because someone asked but because it’s why they trust me.

And somehow, that makes me one happy dude.

So go out there, find a job you enjoy and perform every part of it to the fullest extent.  Make it fun and make it count.

Next time, I’ll have more calendar pages.  I had two ready but they are upstairs and I am not.

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