I had a 3rd flight, but I did not blog about it because it basically bit goat cheese. Six hours cramped in coach. My knees has metal bar impressions from the tray that I didnt even use. I tried to fold it down, it made it to abotu a 30 degree angle – just enough for some drink and peanuts to slide down all over your shoes. Super. Oh well, it’s ok. I am here now, and updating you on the last 2 days.
Yesterday was the first day I spent with my clients, and met all the egineers and people who I would be working with. Everyone is nice and easy to get along with. riding to an from the site is a bit scary when you have an old Indian man driving you at 80kph in a roud-a-bout, slicing by 10 other cars, and merging like he was born to do it, but hey, it’s part of the whole experience. Anyway, at our client’s headquarters we talked baout some of the issues, what we “thought” might be the issues that is. It was an entirely different story once we got on site. So, we go to the site on Monday, but we get there “too late”, because everyone leaves work at 2:30. Weird huh? Well, they work from 7am to 2:30 with no break, so they ar eputting in about the same hours, but the IT/Server room guys leave just before 2:30, so we did not get to spend any time investigating until the next morning.
So, how do I describe what is about to follow using a fun colloqialism? Hmm. Let’s see. Oh, here we go…Have you ever tried to put out a forest fire with a bottled water? No wait…have you ever cleaned a gym floor with a toothbrush? Yes, today was an excercise in futility. So, on with the story…the next morning we (Amtel guy and me – at the same hotel) got picked up at 8:30am, by Bashir, our designated Nascar driver, and headed to the site. We went straight to the server room, and were not going to accept any excuses today about leaving early and stayed until 5pm, at which point I might add, we got a call from the security downstairs promply when the second hand hit 60 at 5:00, saying we had to get out! And that it was crazy of us to ask them to stay “so late”. Well, anyway, long story short…I put in about 6 solid hours in fromt of the server rack, and nothing to show for it at the end of the day. One word: viruses. I did the same thing I had done 100 times back in our testing lab in terms of seting up our software. Followed all the checklist items, and even checked a few other things, yet, I stood there, in front a a still virus ridden server, even after about 14 full scans, both on and off line, only to have the amtel guy looking over my shoulder, waiting for something to happen, yet it didn’t. I feel like I let them down, even though they were sitting there and saw the umpteen viruses the primary server had, not to mention the rest of the network. (yes, umpteen is a word)
Anyway, I know I said this already, but long story short…unproductive day. Well, productive in the fact that I learned what a bain this virus can be, and it’s headed toward ‘Grab your party hat, and let’s have a format party,’ but we will see tomorrow. If I cannot get a working server within one or two hours of arriving tomorrow, then formatting is the way to go. We need this up and running, and I KNOW 100% that formatting it will work, I just don’t want to spend the next three days resetting everything up. A nice upgrade install would have been nice to hit the ground running, but NO-No, Mr. fancy server-pants had to go and have huis way with some viruses. Ok, that just sounded weird and stupid all at once. On that note I will stop venting, and go eat some nice hotel food. I’ll save you a seat.
p.s. – The one thing that cheered me up, and you will think this is pathetic, is a feature of the hotel. When I changed rooms yesterday (due to non working internet), I noticed that my new floor hallway was drastically a different temperature than the previous floor. I was curious, so I went up another floor, and down to the floor below my original floor. All of them were different, almost like they were alternating warm and cold, but still none of them the same. then I thought to myself…how cool would it be (no pun intended) if they made the hallway/floor temperatures the average of the rooms on the floor to appease the median of the customer base on that floor. Now, not all the rooms should be taken into account, just the checked in ones, so since the thermometer is digital, the numbers can be sent to a piece of software running at one of the front desk computers, calculated and sent back to the main hallway thermostat. So like if there are 12 people checked in on floor 4, then you would add up all the temperatures of those 12 rooms, divide by 4, then set that number as the temperature in the hallway. Well, anyway, I think it would be sweet. If I were a guest in a hotel like that, like in the winter, I would turn my thermostat down to zero degrees while I was gone, just to throw it all off and be a jerk. Ok, no I wouldn’t, but I’m this close to doing it! Just try me.