When It Rains, It Pours

What is it with my life, where everything happens all at one time? Let's recap the past three days, shall we?

Friday: Total outage of the entire building housing our company's headquarters resulted in a hard crash of every single computer. We spent all day scrambling to restore systems to a reasonably stable condition. Needless to say, we are holding an ass-kicking contest at the power company next week.

Saturday: A major software deployment and hardware reconfiguring project rolled out to the data center. We started at 5am and didn't finish until.. well, truth be told, we're still doing parts of it. We lost a day in preparation for this (see above) so we came in Saturday morning with a sense of fear and trepidation we haven't had in releases past.

Sunday: I have a mid-term exam due by midnight. I just finished the damn thing and I need a stiff drink! Another one of those "tell me everything you know about ______." Nine of those questions and 4 hours to answer them, one shot, no repeats. I'd be hard pressed to give good answers if I had four days!

And now, for the monthly news...

A quick update on school: I got an A for IT Security, even if the professor did have a typo in my grade. All I have left is the capstone course, already in progress, and IT Project Management. After that, one HELL of a long nap to make up for all the late nights studying and scrambling to complete assignments on time, then on to graduation. Followed by a party that will probably make international headlines.

A quick update on my transition into management: some days, it sucks being the boss. You try to find ways to make things work, help people out, and you get kicked in the nuts for your efforts. There are days where all I hear is bitching and whining; I'm getting good at tuning out the noise and perking up only at the parts where I can do something about it. Still, it's therapeutic for them to vent, so I let it ride, even if it does get me down at times.

A quick update on family: The Skating Gnu had a great hockey season. They made it all the way to the semi-finals. She's made honor roll again, a perfect record for the entire school year. Mrs. Gnu is doing well, still putting up with my crap. God only knows why, some days I can't stand myself.

A quick update on me: I'm still kicking. For now. Who else did you think was writing this!?!?

Five-Alarm Breakfast

Life is never dull around here. This morning is a good example, not only of how a simple morning activity can turn into an international incident, but also how it never fails that I'll be the one to prove the truth behind a popular saying.

I got up this morning craving a country breakfast. So, I got the biscuits in the oven, the grits in the pot, eggs all scrambled and the ham cooking away in the pan. Country ham... yum! It's salty and tough to some but heaven on a plate to me on a cool mid-winter's morning. Frying away, I hear this annoying beeping. I investigate:

Alarm clock: nope.
Doorbell: nope.
Washer/Dryer: nope/nope.
Cell phones: nope. nope. nope. nope. (Yeah, we got a few.)

About this time, I hear the phone ring. I'm multitasking, so I put it on speaker.

Me: Hello?

Caller: Yes, hello, this is the home security monitoring service. We have an alarm reporting from your location. Is everything okay?

Me: As far as I know, yes, we are fine. [I walk over and check the alarm keypad] Yep, there's a code appearing [I read off the number] what is that?

Caller: It's the fire alarm.

Entire family, all at once: ROTFLMAO

Caller: Sir? Sir? Is everything okay? Did you find out what set off the fire alarm?

Me: We are fine. Shall I cook up more ham and eggs for the Fire Chief?

Caller: ROTFLMAO

Thus, I have gone down in family lore and legend as living proof of Jeff Foxworthy's axiom, "You know you're a redneck if the fire alarm doubles as an oven timer."

One Door Closes And Another One Opens

My last day at the old job was Tuesday. As expected, it was total chaos. I feel bad for my teammates I left behind. The last two weeks I really tried to get as much knowledge out of my head as I could and put it down on paper where they could use it, but there are some things that can't be put into words. Like knowing when a project manager has his head up his ass or how to tell when a QA tech needs a little support in saying "No!" to impatient business sponsors.

That's one of the shortfalls to documentation: you can't write down every piece of knowledge and experience a person has pertaining to their job. There are some things that have to be re-learned every time a new person takes over a given job and you have to stand back and let them go through that process or it will be very difficult for them to grow into being effective at that job.

The problem is, if you have high turnover on a job, you lose more than just that intangible experience, you lose a little bit of the knowledge that can be written down but isn't for one reason or another. My predecessor knew more than me and she was only able to impart a certain amount of transferable knowledge before she left. I in turn was only able to write down so much of what could be documented before time ran out on me.

This is why retaining good employees is so critical to a team's success and ultimately the company's success as well. We've now had 4 people leave this team and when we each left, a little bit more was lost from the team that can never be recovered.

This point is just as important (if not more so) than making the numbers balance on the quarterly statements. What good is it if the numbers look pretty if you have a revolving door of amateurs in and out of a team that is highly specialized and whose work is critical to the business's operation?

I started my new job on Wednesday. Big difference from the old job. Higher expectations (my own being the highest on myself), bigger shoes to fill, more people depending on me not to screw things up. My first day was the usual: Greenhorn Orientation, nickel tour of the office and lots of faces and names I'll have to relearn all over again because I definitely do not have a photographic memory, set up my office.

Yes. I have an office now. With a door. And a view. Happy Gnu.

Second day on the job, I walk in to a 21-flaming-server salute. Yikes! All the troops scrambled to put out the fires. The day's plans took a flying leap right out the 10-story-high window.

On the plus side, I got to observe how the team operates under pressure.

In other news, it turns out I didn't bomb the final exam last week. Got an A for the class. Five down, six more to go!