Tuesday, October 19, 2010
3 am
Yeah, it's 3:00am and I'm writing a blog post.
Why, you might ask? Because I'm working, of course! ...but I'll get to that in a moment.
Got up this morning at 5:00am – nearly 24 hours ago, got the teen off to school, then headed to NJ for eight hours of slamming my head against a brick wall.
No project requirements? No design documents? Got a project that was mishandled from the beginning, and need someone to make it look like it works?
That's me. It's what I do.
Currently, my boss is upset that the most recent turd rolled onto my desk isn't ready for install.
It also helpful when he pokes his head into my cube every five minutes to ask: "Is it done yet?".
"Is it done yet?"
"Is it done yet?"
"Is it done yet?"
Is there an echo in here?
We're re-writing an entire business process as a "bug fix" instead of a fully funded project, so there's no actual instructions or direction on to how this needs to work. So it will be fudged together into something closely resembling what the business needs, in an insanely short time frame.
Left NJ at 5:00pm, no traffic issues, thank God. Made dinner, cleaned up, laundry, checked email, spent some quality time with teen and hubby, then caught an hour of sleep between 11:00pm and midnight.
Got up again at midnight to run off-hour testing. We all have to take turns doing this, since there's no night shift team.
So I'll be awake for the remainder of tonight, periodically running tests when needed. Hopefully this will wrap up by 7:00am, because that's when I'll need to leave again to drive to NJ for a "mandatory" meeting.
WoooHooo! Livin' on the edge!
One hour of sleep in 24......I can feel the buzzzzzz. Zzzzzzz.
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3 comments:
Hey, getting old has its drawbacks, but this no work anymore does have some advantages as I never get up before 8-9 these days.
I do remember many of those 'bug fixes'. But we (i.e. that biggest phone company) were a little smarter. I remember getting on this project when it already 3 months overdue. Responding to client pressure, our 4rth level told them 'we would work around the clock'. What did that mean? Well take the team and split it into three groups. Group 1 works 8-5. Well you can guess the rest.
I was on the graveyard shift. After a month or so you get used to it. But speaking of 'are you done yet'. I remember that my immediate boss would want to know our progress. Of course she wasn't there at 3AM so she called. I remember walking down the hall and hearing phones ringing behind me chasing me down (this in the mainframe / punch card days so you had to walk to a counter to submit your deck).
My worst 'up time' was once I went in on Thursday and finally went home on Saturday. One can only imagine the quality of the late Friday work.
At least your company was smart about it and split the group. Mine just works everyone around the clock. Easier to do when you're 25, not so much when you're over forty. But, I've also found out this isn't necessarily systemic of our company as a whole, but mostly my department.
I think when you're younger, working like that is sort of fun and challenging. Everything's new, and it's exciting.
Ahh, the olde days!
yes,
when I was roughly 35-45 I was moonlighting. I did sub-contracting for guys like GM, Texaco, etc. who were in the early stages of going to PCs and windows. Mostly I did derivatives of some of my shareware to fit in to their systems. I would come home, eat, neglect the kids for awhile, then get to work. I'd go to bed around 3 or 4 and get up around 6-6:30 so I could beat the I-78 jam on 287 (get there by 7:09 and cool. get there 7:11 and it took an additional 20 minutes to get up to Morristown).
Now I get tired just thinking about doing that stuff.
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