How was your day, dear?

Well, I gotta tell ya…

Good. And bad. And good. And seemingly neverending.

The pool is lovely, bright, and deep.

After a very restless night and very little sleep, I bagged it, got up, and did some work to clear a few things off my list. All the while, I seriously contemplated the distinct possibility that I might wind up puking before going off to get a cashier’s check for closing.

But I didn’t puke, I did get the check, and did head off to sign my life away.

Naturally, in the midst of signing all the papers, one of the servers went down and would not come back. A bit of misinterpretation by one of the guys equaled an issue that lasted quite a bit longer than it should have. I wound up blasting out to the NOC, at the beginning of rush hour, to run some commands on the server. While working on that one, another page from the monitor: another server has bitten the dust. Fortunately, I was already there, as that server, after a reboot, needed a disk check as well. With that running, but before the final reboot to bring that one back online, yet another page: another person has crashed their server (but this one does this on a fairly regular basis). That one, of course, came right back after a power cycle, as it was the one I was least concerned about. With all the disk checks done, everything back online, and the monitor all clear with all services green, I could finally enjoy the moment.

Just the tiniest taste for me, since alcohol and my tongue are still not yet approaching being even the most distant of friends.

Back on the road for more work, then back on the road to return to the HQ. Ding! Yet another server issue, and it’s the same one that went off earlier today as I was working on server number one. Criminy. Manage to get to a safe spot, get logged on to the reboot port via my phone. Ding! Recovery notices. In the five minutes or so it took me to do that, the user has rebooted the server (although, I believe that if you can get into the server, 99% of the time it isn’t necessary). Back on the road, finally to the HQ, settle back in to work.

Only to consider that perhaps our habit of answering tickets almost instantly is something we should rethink, as a user is demanding to know why someone hasn’t answered a ticket in 30 minutes – a ticket related to that very server, in fact. That could be because my vehicle, sad to say, does not travel at the speed of light, it’s impossible for me to answer tickets on my phone, and I’m the one covering tonight. Ergo, no response to that ticket or any other in the preceding 30 minutes.

Take care of that, whip through the other few tickets that have arrived, and then receive a real winner: someone complaining about a charge for domain registration, telling us they have no account with us and to remove it. Well, genius, it would help if you could give us some kind of hint as to who you are, when the charge was processed, what the domain name was on the invoice, what the invoice number was, or perhaps what the last four of the credit card were. You know – any sort of information whatsoever that would let us know which of the numerous charges we process on any given day would be The One.

Oh, and this is what greeted me when I got back to the old house.

What used to be a pillow was now a collection of small fluffy islands in the foyer, living room, and office. And no, Newton was not the culprit. But he did pose nicely.

Mickey had wisely decided to take his ass outside after laying down on the floor at my feet, knowing that he’d been bad. Damn dogs. Good thing they’re so cute.

The first couple of loads of stuff is at the new place. Tomorrow will bring more work and more back and forth between the old and new houses. It will be a rather exhausting weekend, I can see this already.