Today sucked

denverpilot

denverpilot

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DenverPilot
Everyone else out of the office. One recovering from major surgery, another had vacation to go see the sun disappear, another went out sick yesterday. I'm the Lone Ranger today.

Huge problem with ONE VoIP phone multiple states away that was the ONLY phone one critical worker had and THEIR backup was out yesterday and today.

Found at least a dozen things that need fixing and opened tickets for all of it, probably a week's work or more. One of them causing all sorts of hell for the whole network.

Slack note asking if co-worker finished on-boarding a new staff member. Look in AD. Nope. Did that.

A server that has decided it doesn't like ANY disk you put in slot zero of the RAID array barfed out another brand new disk saying it was bad after running with new firmware and BIOS and all since May. (Maybe it is bad maybe it isn't.)

On its way out it froze one of the Domain Controllers running on it as a VM and the phone system management and web remote control server that everyone uses for screen pop/desktop integration.

Multiple informal meetings about "what to do" about that danged phone with three levels up of execs. Took a while to get to the scheduling problem and no backup being an extenuating summer kind of circumstance where if we could have gotten that person some help, I could have gotten them out of taking calls and hammered on their network and VPN to see where the problems were.

And another upper boss walks in at the end of the day and says "disable all of X's accounts", X being a long time employee there and developer who I liked but don't know how well he did he job or anything. Always sucks to be the first to know someone has been fired in a small biz because you're the IT guy who has to lock them out of everything.

Another email that someone else resigned unrelated to the firing and in a group that has a lot of turnover anyway, but disable all their stuff too, please.

Sigh. Yep. Today kinda sucked.

Oh yeah. Check engine light came on in the Yukon too. Gotta hook up the scanner and see WTF that's all about. It's running fine. Grr.

Just venting! Was nice to read a little PoA over dinner here. Place is downright normal compared to today's "fun" at work.
 
I'm sorry to hear that! Tomorrow will be better. Or worse. I don't know, actually.

But at some point it will be better...
Maybe ;)

I spent 15 hrs in the car today with my husband, two kids and two dogs. Don't bother asking who was the crankiest! But family time down in TN for the eclipse was worth it.
 
That's why you get paid the big bucks, hope it gets better.
 
The only certainties in life are "Death and Taxes." Everything else is fluid. Just chalk it up as a day that falls in the "It just sucks" bucket. There will be most excellent days too, and you'll get to experience those highs too... unless the aforementioned death or taxes arrives first. Then that just blows monkey chunks. :p

Seriously - it sounds like there's some poor management going on if most of a department is gone and there's no backup. That's no your fault or doing. That's someone else's goof-up. But at least you were there when senior management asked you to decommission accounts to apps and the AD. Hopefully that will show upper management who they can count on, and that's when you get rewarded with more work and no increase in pay. o_O:p
 
rtk11 said:
The only certainties in life are "Death and Taxes." Everything else is fluid. Just chalk it up as a day that falls in the "It just sucks" bucket. There will be most excellent days too, and you'll get to experience those highs too... unless the aforementioned death or taxes arrives first. Then that just blows monkey chunks. :p

Seriously - it sounds like there's some poor management going on if most of a department is gone and there's no backup. That's no your fault or doing. That's someone else's goof-up. But at least you were there when senior management asked you to decommission accounts to apps and the AD. Hopefully that will show upper management who they can count on, and that's when you get rewarded with more work and no increase in pay. o_O:p
Click to expand...

Yeah I do. Don't know why, I just wanted to vent. Ha. I wanted to be at the airport all day instead of in that chair. :)

No bad management. Just a tiny company. Some days we get away with having everyone out, sometimes it just feels like a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest. :)

I'm cool. All of the above are "first world problems" for sure. They could have been firing ME, after all. LOL.

This too, shall pass. And anyway, it literally wouldn't be any fun if there weren't some challenges. Once in a while I can sit and stare at monitors and surf PoA on the other monitor. :) Probably not tomorrow, I'm guessing.
 
Are you speaking Latin? The only thing I understood in that whole thing was, "my check engine light came on in my Tahoe.". Lol!!

Hope it gets better...

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
 
mwagg737 said:
Are you speaking Latin? The only thing I understood in that whole thing was, "my check engine light came on in my Tahoe.". Lol!!

Hope it gets better...

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
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Welcome to IT! Two drink minimum, $10 entry fee, pay the bouncer at the door! :)
 
Today was first day of new semester at the university. One of my students was an assistant principal at a local school and transfered over to IT. I didn't ask why, but welcomed him to a life of aggravation & frustration. Reminds me of the FedEx pilot - same airplanes, same routes, but the passengers don't complain.
 
Cajun_Flyer said:
I spent 15 hrs in the car today with my husband, two kids and two dogs. Don't bother asking who was the crankiest! But family time down in TN for the eclipse was worth it.
Click to expand...

Don't you have a pilot's licence? o_O
Or did the thought of enduring spin recovery practice along the way deter them? ;)
 
Pfff - IT can really suck

Have multiple clients in multiple states wanting me to be "there" because the are "cool dudes" and I work cheap. Had to cancel a trip to one to deal with family emergency and now that client wants us to share the cost of flying THEIR people in to the training. (Long story.) Also have a billion dollar company wanting us to do work for "free" - because saying we work for them will garner sales. (Yea right.) Every time I turn around, there is another cloud service company wanting us to link into them - yep, for free because they can help us close more sales. And don't get me stared on these "CRM" guys! Then there are the clients that coded an excel macro one time so they are now experts on managing a 2 million line code base. Then there are servers - I hate computers these days. Multiple companies pointing fingers at the other company. The software stack starts at the drivers, works up through the virtualization software, into the virtual drivers, and then the OS. But that's not the end. You see there are virtual environments in the OS made of these silly little relics call DLLs and they are from H***. Pick your flavor (C/C++/C#/Java/VB/blah/blah) for a development environment and start building your multi million line software solution. Its a house of cards and you are the guy getting yelled at when the Blinky little lights no longer go blink.

Too bad I get board drinking - guess I'll just have to fly more: AND IF THAT IPAD GOES OVER TEMP AGAIN IT'S GOING OUT THE STORM DOOR!

Yep, that feels better - good night all....
 
DP: some days it just isn't worth it to get out of bed. Hiwever, this too shall pass. :)

But a good night of sleep and tomorrow is a new day, open to all sorts of possibilities.
 
mwagg737 said:
Are you speaking Latin? The only thing I understood in that whole thing was, "my check engine light came on in my Tahoe.". Lol!!

Hope it gets better...

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Except he wrote Yukon, so I guess even that was difficult:)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
mwagg737 said:
Are you speaking Latin? The only thing I understood in that whole thing was, "my check engine light came on in my Tahoe.". Lol!!

Hope it gets better...

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
You didn't understand people being fired? LOL
 
Came back from a pathetic two days off (Thursday and Friday, only I ended up working Friday morning, phone and'puter, client crisis), and my assistant informs me she's leaving. We pay well, apparently, someone else pays better?

Web site stopped working, DNS not found. First fear, did I forget to renew domain (heh!), no, good for half a decade more. Turns out our IT provider changed DNS record, got it wrong. Oops.
 
Doctor's office kept us til 4:45 so we get to start our hour drive through the rush hour jam and the car's A/C picks now to fail. The sun is on my side of the car the whole way and my phone tells me it's 99 degrees outside. Hubby's phone overheats and shuts itself off.

I did have a bottle of water in the car so when I think I'm on the verge of heat stroke I get the bright idea to open it and pour it on my head. AAAARRGG!!!! Hot shower!

All this with an agonizing wrenched back. The kind that you can't move speak or cough without excruciating pain. Yup my day sucked too. Hope today is better for all of us.
 
Cajun_Flyer said:
I spent 15 hrs in the car today with my husband, two kids and two dogs. Don't bother asking who was the crankiest! But family time down in TN for the eclipse was worth it.
Click to expand...

My turn in the car will start tomorrow evening, leave after work, gotta be in the 'burbs of Chicago for a Friday 1pm appointment. That will last 1-1.5 hrs hopefully, then back in the car and hope to be home by midnight Friday. Will be about 1350mi in 30hrs. But, I will be solo, so no "are we there yet" and "I gotta pee", so that will be a small blessing.
 
Bill Jennings said:
My turn in the car will start tomorrow evening, leave after work, gotta be in the 'burbs of Chicago for a Friday 1pm appointment. That will last 1-1.5 hrs hopefully, then back in the car and hope to be home by midnight Friday. Will be about 1350mi in 30hrs. But, I will be solo, so no "are we there yet" and "I gotta pee", so that will be a small blessing.
Click to expand...
If only the Mooney was an option, right? Ha. Safe travels to ya.
 
abqtj said:
Except he wrote Yukon, so I guess even that was difficult:)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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Yep! I r just a airline pilot..... although the IT at my airline SUCKS right now.
 
Nate, how do you actually get work in between posting here????
 
denverpilot said:
Welcome to IT! Two drink minimum, $10 entry fee, pay the bouncer at the door! :)
Click to expand...
Nate,

We're going to have to get together one of these days and ***** about work and talk airplanes. Most days I feel like I am the only sane person in the nut house. I've been telling the director of IT for months that the growth rates on the VMware datastores were unsustainable, and he had about a month before LUNs started running out of space... Guess what happened tuesday...a LUN ran out of space. Thankfully Storage DRS was able to migrate the workloads, but not fast enough to keep a dev VM from pausing.. His answer, create more thin volumes on a SAN that's already running 4:1 overprovisioned. Some days I want to say f it all and weave baskets.
 
Cajun_Flyer said:
Some of us are lowly renters who can't afford long journeys ;)
Click to expand...

Well I just got home from a 9 hr round trip drive today for a business meeting. And I OWN an airplane...which is down for annual. :mad2: So having a plane ain't always what it's imagined either. :sigh:

It just seems bizarre there are so many planes out there that NEED to be flown by owners that can't or don't. You would think in this age of apps someone would figure out a way to pair them up with pilots like you that could then fly them for fuel or something like that.
 
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Indiana_Pilot said:
I hate IT.... and have for the past 15+ years... time for me to win the lottery!
Click to expand...

Not if I win it first! :fcross: I'm right there with you about IT though.

I took the week off for vacation, but have been working 10-11 hour days the first 2 days of my vacation because "stuff" happens. Note that I took the vacation to de-stress since I have been grinding my teeth. Sadly that led to today where I had quite possibly the most painful root canal (well, until the next one). So yeah, my day sucked pretty fierce as well.

Did I mention that my state sent me a Use Tax bill today also? :incazzato:

Tomorrow will be a better day. I know, because I clicked my heels three times.
 
rtk11 said:
Not if I win it first! :fcross: I'm right there with you about IT though.

I took the week off for vacation, but have been working 10-11 hour days the first 2 days of my vacation because "stuff" happens. Note that I took the vacation to de-stress since I have been grinding my teeth. Sadly that led to today where I had quite possibly the most painful root canal (well, until the next one). So yeah, my day sucked pretty fierce as well.

Did I mention that my state sent me a Use Tax bill today also? :incazzato:

Tomorrow will be a better day. I know, because I clicked my heels three times.
Click to expand...

Why is your phone even on, or being answered? :)
 
From the day you're born till you ride in the Hearse,
It's never so bad that it couldn't be worse!


I never have IT problems...Windows 98 just keeps on pluggin along =-O
 
denverpilot said:
Why is your phone even on, or being answered? :)
Click to expand...

LOL! In the world of modern IT, there are always ways to find you, and you are never, ever "disconnected." Especially since belt-tightening in IT costs means you have no employees and backup anymore. o_O:p
 
brian] said:
Pfff - IT can really suck

Have multiple clients in multiple states wanting me to be "there" because the are "cool dudes" and I work cheap. Had to cancel a trip to one to deal with family emergency and now that client wants us to share the cost of flying THEIR people in to the training. (Long story.) Also have a billion dollar company wanting us to do work for "free" - because saying we work for them will garner sales. (Yea right.) Every time I turn around, there is another cloud service company wanting us to link into them - yep, for free because they can help us close more sales. And don't get me stared on these "CRM" guys! Then there are the clients that coded an excel macro one time so they are now experts on managing a 2 million line code base. Then there are servers - I hate computers these days. Multiple companies pointing fingers at the other company. The software stack starts at the drivers, works up through the virtualization software, into the virtual drivers, and then the OS. But that's not the end. You see there are virtual environments in the OS made of these silly little relics call DLLs and they are from H***. Pick your flavor (C/C++/C#/Java/VB/blah/blah) for a development environment and start building your multi million line software solution. Its a house of cards and you are the guy getting yelled at when the Blinky little lights no longer go blink.

Too bad I get board drinking - guess I'll just have to fly more: AND IF THAT IPAD GOES OVER TEMP AGAIN IT'S GOING OUT THE STORM DOOR!

Yep, that feels better - good night all....
Click to expand...

Listening to voice mail this afternoon there was a call I missed earlier. Glad the ringer on my cell phone was turned down. Some guy saying they were holding a line of credit for me and it's really important that I call back. Yeah, right. My business does NOT need a loan or line of credit. I'm doing just fine, thank you very much. If I happen to answer and it's him again I'm going to let him know that I don't need his loan, and if I did I wouldn't be calling some unknown (to me) financial company to get it.

And the emails from this, that and another company saying they can get me more clients, etc. No thanks. If I need help I'll contact someone I've heard of, not someone who sends me emails out of the blue (and which Outlook has already, correctly, placed in the junk mail folder).

I know, first world problems. Thank goodness.
 
After buying this company in May, I was basically getting kicked in the 'nads every Friday because of some mess left by the previous owner. Cleaned most of that up, and have had 3 weeks' worth of Friday's with nothing going wrong, so I'm on Cloud 9!!!

Though, I did discover on Tues that one of my techs put the .vhd for one of our clients on a USB drive. Found that out when another tech pulled the drive to bring to the office. Sometimes there just aren't any words.
 
denverpilot said:
Someone called me at work today and asked me if we wanted them to make us ... a web page. LOL.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I get emails from people wanting to make one, or improve the one I have. Thanks, but that's what my son-in-law is good for (well, that and being a great daddy to our grandsons).
 
Honestly today went pretty good. Got a bunch of stuff done that needed to be done and nobody will remember or care about in ten years. Ha.
 
Ghery said:
Listening to voice mail this afternoon there was a call I missed earlier. Glad the ringer on my cell phone was turned down. Some guy saying they were holding a line of credit for me and it's really important that I call back. Yeah, right. My business does NOT need a loan or line of credit. I'm doing just fine, thank you very much. If I happen to answer and it's him again I'm going to let him know that I don't need his loan, and if I did I wouldn't be calling some unknown (to me) financial company to get it.

And the emails from this, that and another company saying they can get me more clients, etc. No thanks. If I need help I'll contact someone I've heard of, not someone who sends me emails out of the blue (and which Outlook has already, correctly, placed in the junk mail folder).

I know, first world problems. Thank goodness.
Click to expand...

You left out the phone calls and emails from the groups wanting just a few minutes to answer questions about the company- all to help them rate you for creditors (we don't operate that way). Then returning from a business trip there are always calls and more emails from various equity groups wanting you to attend some conference for mergers and acquisitions (read- they have stuff to sell you). The new one appears to be some veteran looking to buy a small company "just like mine". (As a vet hiring vets- I don't get the angle.)

But the biggie: being the boss has some down sides. 3/4 of your time is spent making clients happy. 1/2 of your time is spent keeping staff happy. And 1/2 of your time is trying to keep family happy. Like a small business owner up the road from me said the other day: Carla needs some Carla time.

And people wonder why I bought a shiny airplane.
 
rtk11 said:
LOL! In the world of modern IT, there are always ways to find you, and you are never, ever "disconnected." Especially since belt-tightening in IT costs means you have no employees and backup anymore. o_O:p
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You're not trying hard enough.

The people above you that make the staffing decisions chose not to have coverage when you were a unavailable. Stop being a sap. Turn all the **** off, forget the job exists and enjoy your vacation.
 
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