Yesterday was a very long day. I got up and headed out the door early to go take a test at the hospital. They were checking for bacteria buildup in my intestinal tract. (Yeah, really yummy subject matter) The test involved breathing into a bag once and they take a reading of my methane and CO2 content in my breath. Then they feed me a substance and they continue to take breath readings every 20 minutes for about 4 hours.
So, I get to the hospital and they check me in with five other people and we go into the test room. In the test room is a big table, a computer for the testing, the bags we are going to breathe in, some magazines on the table and a TV that is turned up really loud on the wall. The test would’ve been bearable if it wasn’t for the TV. The lineup of shows I was subjected to were:
• Good Morning America
• Regis and Kathy Lee
• Martha Stewart
The only positive purpose any of these shows provided was that it reminded me of how important it is to have a job and be employed. There is no way I could become one of the slobs that sits at home watching TV during the day. It is truly unbearable. Good Morning America had such awful guest as the lady who has some personal vendetta against the planet and popped out eight kids all at once. They also had a midget body builder on. Those of you, who know me well, know how much I was looking forward to that. :-/ Regis and Kathie Lee were just as bad if not worse. I really do not know who or what was on that show because at that point I had found that could tune out the blaring TV by preparing my final exam for my class on my laptop. The last show was hard to ignore though. Martha Stewart is an awful speaker. She said, “uh” and “you know” so many times I was surprised that nobody got up and turned off the TV out of sheer annoyance. She also stutters. How anybody can bear to watch this show on a regular basis is beyond me.
Oh… and I forgot to mention… The two nurses who conducted the test… They spent most of the time talking to the TV and the people on it. With such great phrases as, “OH NO YOU DIDN’T!” and “WHAT? TELL ME DAT GURL DIDN JUZ SAY THAT??” It was by far the most unprofessional hospital visit I have ever had in my life.
Then I get to meet with my Gastroenterologist. The lady who checked me in mostly bitched to me about her computer. Then I get back to my doctor and he spends over half of the visit bitching about the computer system to me. One, I find it very unprofessional to be taking my expensive time for a doctor visit to listen to your unsolicited office problems. Two, how does he think that sitting there bitching to an IT guy about his computer system when I am trying to get help is going to help my stomach?!? I think one thing is fairly certain about this visit… I will be finding a new Gastroenterologist. One who has a decent computer system or at least doesn’t bitch me to me about the one he currently has.
Then I show up at my government job where I get told by my boss in not so many words that I need to slow down because I am going to finish my project way too far ahead of schedule. Ahhh…. The old bring it down to the lowest common denominator. Well, I now know my plan for the next couple weeks. I will have to bury myself in outside learning. I guess I will get a lot of reading done and I will work on my Chinese.
Speaking of reading… I am reading two very good books right now. Both are on recommend from Kane. “Against the Gods” is my reading book and “The World is Flat” is my audio book. The latter is insightful and has the added bonus of making laugh hard out loud several times. I also had a funny observation about the first one. While sitting in the test room, a few of the other people had books and were reading them. I noticed that all of the books were about their respective gods they apparently worship. The book I was reading was entitled, “Against the Gods.” I wonder if they understood that it was a book about the concept and history of risk? Or did they just think I was reading a book that was “against” their book? It was the one humorous experience from the whole test hell.
Back to work…. The last thing we did yesterday was shut down and move the EMC Symmetrix DMX1000 Storage System. It is loaded with live data and fully populated. It was sitting in our old data center which we shut down at 5PM yesterday. At that moment we had the EMC tech bring the system down and we unplugged it. We then rolled it out the door of the data center and up the sidewalk to the box truck. Being that the box is about 2000pounds, 8 feet tall and about 4 feet deep, we could not fit it into the door on our box truck. So, about 10 of us got it rolled up the steep lip of the lift gate and balanced on the lift gate. We then slowly raised the lift gate to the back of the truck. Then we had a guy in the back of the box truck with come-along straps. He hooked them to the support beams in the box truck and we wrapped them around the DMX and ratcheted it as tight as we could to the back of the truck. We then took this quarter million dollar piece of equipment about a half mile down a steep mountain road with a couple sharp switch backs. We walked behind and along the truck blocking the road off from traffic while we made the 30 minute move. When we got to the new data center we went to lower the lift gate and at this moment found that the unit was way over the limit for the lift gate. So, when we tried to lower the gate if wouldn’t lower gradually and softly. It would drop hard with each push of the button. So, we had to push the button real fast many times to “bang, bang, bang” the unit down to sidewalk level. We then had the 10 of us roll the unit off the lift gates and onto the sidewalk. The rest was pretty easy and we got it into place on the data center floor. Today will be the real test… we will try to fire it back up. I have to say that I am about 20% nervous about the outcome.
Ok. I think that is enough bitching and complaining for today. I need to go back to work and continue loading this new data center. I really wish I could post a picture for this blog entry, but, alas our government is a pretty paranoid bunch… so, this blog will have no pictures of the DMX hanging off the back of the truck. *sigh*
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