The rest of my evening went pretty well considering I was tired. I gave my wife "hockey-puck" to toy around with and she sat in bed surfing the web for about an hour before shutting down. She said it was nice to work that way and she is going to put it through its paces over the next couple of weeks. If it works out, I will move her PDA over to it and a few other things. The biggest thing she is going to have to live with is not having access to all of our printers, saved photos and such. All those are on the main PC that is not on 24x7 and shouldn't be because it is loud and uses more power than I would like. I have kicked around the idea of getting a SOHO NAS (Small Office / Home Office Network Attached Storage) so we could use it as a print and file server. I could get a smaller one (160 gig) for a couple hundred dollars, but I would prefer getting a 250 -300 gig one if at all possible. To be honest, I could set up the Linux server to do all that (I would just need to buy a bigger hard drive for it), but it would not be very fast and it is a little noisy. Well, I am not in any hurry at the moment. We have plenty of time.
I got up tired after a semi-fitful sleep. I got back and went through the normal morning routine, albeit somewhat out of order (I could tell you why, but then I would have to kill you). After eating a quick breakfast and kissing my lovely bride goodbye, I grabbed all my gear (lunch, laptop, and water), trash and recyclables, and left.
I got to work expecting the worst after yesterday's escalation. My day did not end on a positive note and I figured it would just continue today. When I got into my office, my phone was ringing. I quickly answered it, setting down my laptop bag, water, and lunch. It was the tech from India telling me that the issue was fixed, pending customer confirmation. I was happy, but cynical. I had gotten my hopes up before and had them dashed to the ground. I thanked the tech and hung up. After logging on my to my PC, I noticed a lot of e-mails but very few were pressing. I received notice that the customer verbally agreed to close the case, but we have to get it in writing first. I set up a meeting to do a root cause analysis for later that morning and got started on my other duties.
When it came time for the meeting, one of the groups invited started pointing fingers despite what I had told them at the beginning of the meeting. The problem was two fold: No set process for patching the servers in question and the teams failure to read the change reports posted. I informed that when the customer agrees, this escalation will be closed.
Lunch time came around and a question came up about the AS-400 we have sitting in our DC. It seems to have lost network connectivity and we do not have anyone on site who can look at it. Now I am not sure how critical this is since this beast is only supposed to be holding archival data, but the requester seems to think it is important. I offered what knowledge I had on where the beast is and who used to administer it, but that was not enough info.
Well, I have 2 open escalations, but neither are overly pressing. I will not get information on the first one until next week and the newest one ... well I am waiting for the customer to OK it so I can close the escalation.
I will not get home until later tonight since I have a gig downtown. It pays $50 bucks so it will be worth some of my time. I hope I will not be too tired to enjoy a walk since the weather will be pretty fair. I like mild winters!
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