On Call, Day One

The work day started off blustery and mellowed out during the course of the day. By the time I was ready to go home, one issue was just being opened...one that would be handed over to me at 5:00PM when I was home and ready to manage it.

I got home and set up my laptop. Since I had a few minutes to spare until handover, I decided to help my wife with dinner. She gave me grill duties and I managed that and handover with little problem. It was one issue and it appeared to be easy enough for the Wintel team to resolve, but as usual, looks can be deceiving.

We ate dinner and I went to check on the progress of the issue. I was called by a tech in Asia who informed me that they needed to reboot the servers in question. They told me they would call me back when this had been completed. Needless to say by the time the next update was due (at 7:00 PM), they still had not called me. I saw that the ticket had been updated and the customer contacted by mail, but nothing else. I decided to try to call the customer on his mobile, but he sent it to VM both times. Since he was my only PoC (point of contact), I had no choice but to put the case on hold until he contacted me or I made it to work the next day.

Since I could not do anything, I washed dishes and walked Little Man. I had not gotten a call back and it was about 9:00 PM, so I watched a littlt IFL Battleground MMA on My27 TV. I watched it for a while and then I noticed I had an e-mail from China stating that the issue that had been reported was affecting them as well. Since this now was considered "global", I notified the Global group (I am not sure why my colleagues in China did not do that) and handed it off to them. With that issue handed over, I went to bed.

I slept all the way through the night, but it was not a restful sleep. I awoke 5 minutes before the alarm went off and I was still tired. I checked my e-mail and noticed the issue was still being kicked around even though I could access the areas that were offline last night. I figured since it was not mine to track, I would just get ready for work and check on things when I got there.

The days that I am on call I need to be at work as soon as possible, which translates to 7:00-ish. I normally get there around 7:30 or so and to get there any earlier I need to alter my routine or get up earlier. Since I get up early enough (5:00 AM) I decided to alter my routine. Less e-mail time, no dish washing and a quicker shower gets me to work at 7:10 or so...close enough for my TL/colleague.

I got in to work and noticed that a case that had been open for quite some time had been finally closed so I started working on the final report that was associated with the case. By the time my TL/colleague arrived, I was mostly done.

So far this morning it has been a beehive of activity here. The phones have been busy and the hallway is full of noise from a group of sales people chatting outside my door louder than I would prefer. Issues are flying aroung but most are under control. When I get time I will have to blog the more ambiguous items.

Back to work!