You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. -Camus

So I haven't been posting a lot... as I'm sure you can notice. I've given a majority of my waking hours to work, and what's left of those hours is spent recovering from work. Against my better judgement, Ive even become superstitious. I speak in vague statements, not committing to much of anything. If I could sum up my involvement in this project it would be, "If it could go wrong, it will, and at the absolute wrong time." Fortunately, I've managed to recover from most of the downs of this expansion, but not without turning the staff against me. I'm out there doing incredible things to make sure everything works, and I get bitched at because I didn't spend 10 minutes holding someone's hand to help them add a printer, even when I've sent them a tutorial on how to do it... with screenshots. It's a really strange feeling, but I'm so proud of what I've done but so defeated at the same time.

So I'll recap what happened the last few weeks:

-I rent the Red Minivan and fill it full of computers and head for Springfield. Something tells me to stop in Dayton instead. I'm playing with some router stuff to make sure the T1 in Springfield is up and running, notice after a bit that there's an alarm on the router and I can't make outgoing phone calls. Staff start to complain. Checking out the PBX, I realize that I'm not getting anything on the PRI so I give the NEC guy a call (who is currently in springfield, messing with stuff over there). He has me check a few things and we come to the conclusion that it's a telecom problem. I give KMC a call and they tell me they'll check on it and call back. Of course they never call.

I've realized that waiting for a call from KMC is like waiting for godot...

We manage to switch the PRI to the new data circuit that was supposed to be the one that I was going to setup on Friday to help solve some latency issues with the Dayton-Toledo VPN. It was the T1 everyone had been waiting for... and now we were using it for our phones. At least we had incoming and outgoing phone calls at that point. I had them test the Springfield T1, but still no luck. I spend the night at a Springfield Hotel and head to Dayton the next day (remember, I wasn't even supposed to be in Dayton until that afternoon). I find out that SBC had just... cancelled the T1 for our PRI. I mean, you know, a live circuit with heavy traffic on it, of course it would be logical to cancel it without an order or calling the customer first. And T1's aren't like your average lines. If it's cancelled, you have to rebuild it. So a new T1 was ordered with KMC profusely apologizing. It wouldn't come in for another week... so I had to go back to Dayton.

That weekend, I had a good time with the Tommy and the BK crew and had some much needed recreational time. Work Hard, Play Hard.

Monday, I go back to work and keep doing my thing, trying to get to the every day sort of problems there. Mid week, I managed to bring the Case Management System down to it's knees by replacing some files that needed to be updated. Fortunately, I saved copies of the old files and was able to revert pretty easily, but not before the bitching started.

Thursday I go back to Dayton and get everything ready for the new T1 switchover that evening. I plan all the changes I'm going to make to the router configs and have it all highlighted and marked. I'm ready for anything. Except, it's really fricken hot in the server room and surrounding hallways because there's something wrong with the a/c heat in that part of the building. They eventually get this huge fan, and I'm feeling a bit better, but not much.

So I go to do the switch and I'm not getting anything on the line. Naturally, I call KMC and ask them what's up. They tell me that they'll work on it and I start chatting with the support tech. He tells me that he remembers me from the previous week and that I was so mad that I was "coming through the phone." I told him, that if someone just up and cancelled his live circuit, he'd be pissed too and he agreed. He told me that they all got yelled at because no one called me back. Fortunately for me, I do not feel guilty about that one.

Eventually, Maria, the KMC tech gives me a call and tells me to go get the circuit ID from the basement. When I go down there, I notice that someone had unplugged the T1 from the smart jack, and that was the obvious problem. I call Maria back, apologize, tell her that I'm a dumbass, and get back to what I was doing. After some config changing, I was still stuck. Brandon called and gave me some great advice:

"Be the packet." Best advice I could possibly get at the time. And it totally worked.

I realized that all of my traffic from dayton was getting forwarded through the vpn to toledo and that my pre-shared keys did not match. After I was able to change those, everything worked fine. Except for that fact that *all* of the traffic is going through the VPN, but since it works for the most part, I'm going to catch my breath and work on that some more later.

I drive to Lima at about 10:30 / 11pm that night and check into the hotel where the managers meeting is the following morning. Let's just say that this hotel is a bit lackluster. I couldn't sleep and when I finally went to sleep, all the people who were staying in the next two rooms woke me up at around 6:30 am. So I watch tv and drink some coffee, and eventually get ready. Then I get a call from my mom...

Now, when my mom starts out the conversation with "Okay, now I'm gonna tell you something but you can't get mad," you know that someone in my family has done something to piss me off. She continues to tell me that my Gramma had called her because Gramma wanted to write a letter to Dr. Phil about me, but couldn't type it, and she wanted my Mom's help. Fortunately for me, Mom informed Gramma that writing a letter to Dr. Phil about me would *not* be a wise idea and that Gramma should talk to me about it. Gramma mentioned that these people on TV get 5000 dollar treadmills, new clothes, and promotional items. My Mom tells Gramma again that it is still a bad idea.

Of course, I'm pissed. Why would members of my family want to publicize my issues to the whole country? I realize they want to help, but taking issues to talk shows, be it Oprah, Dr. Phil, Montel, or Jerry Springer, is NOT the way you solve problems and I refuse to have any part in such nonsense. There are many more helpful ways to go about addressing my issues and none of them involve making a spectacle of me in front of the whole country. Thanks, please pull through. May I take your next strange problem please?

I put that issue on the stack of the many work and non work related issues I'm dealing with right now, check out, and head to the meeting. I find out that people are having problems. My mind is boggled because I triple checked everything to make sure that it worked before I left the office the prior evening. I sit through the beginning of the meeting, give my report, and head to Dayton. I go into the switchroom and realize what the issue is. The 3com switch that we were using until I could get a chance to buy some cable to connect the servers, etc to the new cisco switch had no power. I try to get it to come up again. No luck. It was fried. I switch everything over to the new switch and all is well again. I hang out for a little longer, let them bitch at me some more, and head home, ass tired. The drive sucked as the weather was horrible. I was glad to be home and watching the snow with Tommy as opposed to being in the snow.

At least it's the weekend... but Oh wait, I have to work. Nevermind.

I want my life back.

01.24.04 10:19am(3 comments)

*sigh*

01.07.04 8:17pm(1 comment)