Notice The Hour...

No, this is not a misprint...I am blogging at almost 1 AM. This weekend on call has not been friendly this time around.

Friday night I got a call at 11:00 PM regarding an R&D app in Canada that went down for maintenance and did not come back up properly. I had never worked a call like this and could not find a number for the on call team. I caved in and called another team asking for help but they never returned my call, which was very odd. The customer was understanding and agreed not to press the issue until the next morning. I stayed up until 2:00 AM researching the case and got up again at 7:00 to finalize it. The sad news was that it was not even supposed to have been raised to us. The team who work with that app are to be called directly, skipping me. Nice of them to tell me after the fact.

At midnight the same night I get a call from a third party provider asking me to push an lower severity issue that if not solved in 36 hours, will become a high priority. I transfer the case to the proper team and note the ticket, with intentions of calling on it the next morning. When I get up, I see my European peers (who work 24x7) have already called to push on it so I do not have to.

I get up the next morning and finish issue number one, have my coffee, walk the dogs, and eat my breakfast. I have some chores to do so I do them and am done by 1:00 PM. After a quick lunch, I decided to grab some local geocaches (keeping my phone handy and sticking close to home...no more than four miles away) and nab seven of them:

The Great Pumpkin - A new hide in a new park just west of us.
RR Ghost Nightmare - A Halloween themed cache with one of the best containers I have ever seen.
Rockin' - A cache I have tried and missed twice before...deceptively easy. I felt foolish for missing it.
Old Railroad Dam - A historical spot just north of us.
"Bag" - The Ticket - One of the hardest to get to I have ever seen. Briar factor seven.
Score! - A mystery/puzzle cache I solved two weeks ago but have not had time to nab.
Stacy Ridge #1 - The furthest cache I have done from my home coords yet (not counting the ones near work) at 3.2 miles away.

I DNF'd (Did Not Find) on two: A multi (Where, Oh Where Could My Little Cache Be?) because of an abundance of "muggles" (non-cachers) and "Balance", which is in a bog. Yes a bog. I spent 45 minutes looking for that one and finally gave up.

Even though I DNF'd on two, I still had a great time and did all this in three hours.

After I got home I found my wife working on some yard work, so I joined in on the fun. We worked for about 2 hours and then I grabbed some McD's for dinner (using some of the cash I earned doing PC work) and then my wife grabbed some Braum's ice cream for dessert. Not the healthiest we have eaten but it was tasty.

I walked the pooches and then watched some TV before falling asleep on the couch. That brings me up to the current situation. At a little before 1:00 AM I got a call from the third party vendor who called me the night before. The issue they called me about had still not been completed. and only had 12 hours left. I found this odd since my European peers had already called about it. I called the team in Slovakia and they assured me it would be handled ASAP. I called our third party vendor and gave them the news and told them I would call them back as soon as it was complete. I hope for my sake it is soon.

While this may seem like nothing to those who are on call and get called all the time, this just caps off a very busy week for us. We have averaged two high priority calls per day over the past week and it is beginning to wear on me. Considering that I traded on call with someone I think I got the short end of the bargain.

At least the caching was good.