Had some excitement at work today. (please note the ironic tone). I got a call around 10:30, saying that the second floor was smelling smoke, and could I please go check? (Like I'm the one wearing the fire-retardant bunny suit. Not.) I trot down there, and unlock the cold room door, only to find the room indeed is filled with acrid, bitter smoke, but can't see any flames shooting out from anything. At this moment, a very loud alarm starts to go off. I trot back upstairs for reinforcements, and to get a breath of fresh air, and my boss literally RUNS downstairs wth me.

It's not the fire alarm, the silence button doesn't work, there'e no smoke in the ceiling,and it takes 5 of us crammed into the room to figure out that it's th UPS that's making the noise, and is the cause of the toxic fumes (heh, I kid you not). The UPS powers the Avion database which runs the entire accounting department, and we can't just turn the thing off. I get them organized to turn everything off, one last back up and all the sets turned off (because just flipping the switch on a Unix O/S array is just stupid), meanwhile nasty smell is choking the crap out of me. Ok, we get the thing shut down, and I hit the emergency shutoff.

And I kill all the switches, the phone system AND the two T1 circuits--they are all on the UPS! No one had any *idea* that all of these things were connected to it! Everyone swore that the only thing that it provided inline power for was the database! Fuck me! Major scramble to re-power the other stuff from other sources; meanwhile the company that we contracted service for the accounting system is grumbling because they don't think the UPS is covered in the contract. More scrambling. I call my hardware guys at the accounting service providers, they make sure there's a Purchase order number for repair costs and do stuff at their end to get the model # etc to the Data General guy.

Then, there's some network issues. the accounting provider support folks can't get back in through their back door, the network is screwed. Jesus. What next? I get their router rebooted and re-power the apppropriate switch, and they can get in. Another 20 minutes, more fallout. two of the accounting PC's won't boot--there is no bad keyboard/mouse beeps at POST, but the O/S freezes one loading the mouse drivers, and dies. I call back again, for advise on how to restage nondestructively. Never got a call back. Then, no one can get to the database anyway, there's no connectivity--move the ethernet to the other switch, still can't get in. The Avion has a bad gateway entry that won't go away--I had forgotten that the bad routing entry points to a nonexistent gateway and network. I call AGAIN, and get them to delete the entries, because UNIX and I are not on speaking terms.

Meanwhile, I'm having an asthma attack from the battery fumes, and struggling to help two users to get their PC's out in the branch offices working because their connectivity to a couple of programs has been eaten by fucking malware/spyware/trojans. Which annoys me to no end. I mean you wouldn't walk into a bar and have unprotected sex with every disease ridden whore, what makes you think you can go out on a P2P network and not catch some fucking crap? People. Are. Stupid. Including hackers. They should all be hung up, have their skin ripped off Ala Willow, and then be covered in honey and ants, while their eys and genitals are being gouged out with red hot pokers.

And that would be getting off light, in my opinion.

My cell phone was dying, I'd forgotten to charge it up, people are calling me and getting disconnected when it dies because the forwarding from my office phone I had canceled got uncanceled when the phone switches went down; one of those was the little bike company I moonlight at as their network consultant called and they were complaining about SPYWARE. Fuck me again. I leave one hellmouth of a job, and go over to the other, and spend another 90 minutes killing syware and resolving network issues. I made it home about 5 minutes before Smallville, find out that Boy Unit had REWOUND THE TAPE to the begining nof the tape! I nearly had a spazz attack-no more spare tapes queued up! I get it to the right spot just as the show starts, turn the tape on and run to the store for those emergency supplies, and miss the first 15 minutes. Thank god for tape! Must go back and watch it again.

I know that the Fates and Destiny are fucking with me--just this morning I told A that my stupid Shingles will be fine, as long as I don't get stressed out. I should be drinking. Heavily. Can I go back to answering the telephone, and stapling paper together, please? I look great in a hair net--would you like fries with that sir? They'll clog your arteries, and are the moral equivalent to Fried Sugar, but they're only a dollar more!
- posted by dossier @ 10:41:00 PM (0) comments

 
dossier's smart ass webpage

Heh. discovered the blogger tool on the google toolbar--this makes it much easier to post & publish. I guess I'm more likely to spam the blog this way.

This week marked my jumping into the shark tank that is QA programming. I loaded all the tools and discovered that my PC didn't wan't to run the programs, and further more, I couldn't log into the Citrix server in Denver anymore. *sigh* That meant today was wipe the hard drive and re-load. I got all the way through getting mail to run, so I could get my employee ID to run so I could fill out my online time sheet. I'll be working tomorrow to get it all finished, and sunday to start my Qworker program that the othr programmers are already waiting for. Sheesh.Ovetime!

They have a position open for a leisure assistant, and I sent the notice to Chris. He thought about it, probably talked to his Dad, and decided that changing jobs so soon wouldn't look good. He's going to apply for a supervisory position, but I can't help but think he's going to miss out ona stellar opporunity. At least he considered it.

Tax time, and bill paying. I'm avoiding it like the plague, but I'm going to have to do something asap. yech. Why can't I have apersonal assistant that does this crap for me? Oh yeah--mostly at my level, you gave to marry someone to get that service, and I'm just not going to go there!

I worked on a story a little bit, but I have no taste for it. It's really difficult to be a canon bitch, and gather up all the details to make it fuller and interesting. I'll keep messing with it, though.

If you came here through the web page above, excellent. go to http://www.zonezine.net/~experiment and tell me what you think of the frames layout. I have one person that has seen it and liked it! Also, both feature the new guest book. I'm pretty pleased with the results myself.

- posted by dossier @ 7:16:00 PM (0) comments