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weaktwosI started this entry 1am Friday morning. I'm just now completing it. The events occured on Thursday afternoon.
It is one in the morning and I am still up, reflecting on yesterday's events. In the end, I will say it was a good day. It was not lacking its surprises.
The morning progressed mildly enough. The victory of the morning was tickets for the Shins procured. I'm quite excited. I carried out various tasks for work, continuously interrupted by other issues. This bothered me only mildly, as I felt confident that the afternoon would be uneventful. Also, I explained away some of my irritation as related to certain monthly events that make women prone to irritability and discomfort.
Lunch came and went. The cafe staff was celebrating Elvis. Is it his birthday? Was this when he died? I don't know. And I don't care enough to find out. But one employee known for his drag performances outside fo work sported a snug fat vegas elvis costume that seemed to convey enough information to allude to his religios affiliation. I never did get into Elvis or his songs.
Not long after lunch, I was perched upon the throne my preferred ladies' bathroom attending to some urgent business. My task was nearly completed when the lights ceased to shine. There are no windows in this bathroom. Sure, being in the dark is kind of fun at home. However, there's less comfort when you're on a public toilet with your pants around your ankles.
Darkness. Near pantless. In a semi-public bathroom.
Thankfully, fear did not stay my hand. I used the faint glow of my Crackberry to navigate to the sink to wash my hands and take advantage of the remains of the water pressure, since the faucets use motion detection to operate.
Once out of the bathroom, my concerns were confirmed. The power did indeed go out. I return to my desk, grab my tools and my flashlight. On my way out of the department and to our computer room to check the servers, some managers from the fourth floor pull me aside.
EM: Is there any insider information you can give us?
Me: Aside from the fact that I was in the ladies room when this started, no.
Managers: *laughter*
Me: As soon as I find anything out, I will let you know.
Down to the computer room. I realize there are no emergency lights. And it's quiet, except for some manly and stressed voices from the electrical room. All our servers are down. This means the UPS is down. Normally the UPS stays up, our servers stay up. Our power outage ceased to be a little fandango of non-productivity and entered into cluster fuuuuuuuuuuuudge of major proportions. The facilities engineers have no information as to what happened, yet.
My manger and teammates confer. I suggest that we need to prepare a plan for power up. Once commercial power resumes, we'll need time to bring the servers back up before folks can log in, as well as validate server health. We'll need the help of security to make announcements to the whole building.
The next few hours involve lots of walking around, talking on conference calls with network experts, server experts, and our command center while talking with management and customers to get them operational.
Now the day is technically near an end. A debrief is scheduled for management. We are told the reason why the UPS Failed.
Que Flashback sequence:
M from Facilities races to the electrical room to check the UPS (backup power). It is dark due to some maintenance being performed on the emergency lights, they will not be coming on. The UPS alarm is sounding as per normal during power outages. M fumbles in the darkness to hit the alarm disable button. Because it's dark, because he didn't bring a flashlight, and because M is one stupid mofo for not bringing a flashlight when he himself knew there were no emergency lights, M accidentally pressed the UPS shut down button. This action also killed the UPS.
after all was said and done, we went to the Electrical room and looked at the UPS shutdown button. It was big. It was red. And you had to lift a protective lever to activate it. No alarm silence button in our office has a protective cover.
Now I know M probably feels terrible about this. But man, he's supposed to be experienced in facilities management. Still, I'm quite chagrinned.
Of course, this means we'll be making jokes about big red buttons and M for quite a while.
Later, I forwarded the daily list of outages to my teammates. We see all the outages across the company for that day. I sent an email to the team making a note of the following:
Guys,
See P54345341. That's our outage! We're famous!
With special thanks to:
Do you know who the gentleman in the picture is?
Do ya?
Go ahead, take your time.
Did you recognize him?
Well, he's none other than the actor Red Buttons.
Well, at least I found it amusing.
In the end, all worked out. And various executives who saw me in action were quite pleased and impressed with my response. That's what I like to hear.
After work, I acquired a well-deserved beer, dinner, and a delightful viewing of Parker Posey's latest movie, "Broken English". She truly is the queen of facial expressions. Zoe Cassavetes directed the film, Justin Theroux had a part in it as well. But Parker carried this film.
After the movie, it was home to dial into work and finish the tasks that did not get completed during the lost afternoon.
While working, I watched Live from Abbey Road and saw a performance by The Kooks. They look 13, but their sound is a little more polished and advanced. Definitely a fun sound. I recommend their songs Naive and Matchbox.
It is one in the morning and I am still up, reflecting on yesterday's events. In the end, I will say it was a good day. It was not lacking its surprises.
The morning progressed mildly enough. The victory of the morning was tickets for the Shins procured. I'm quite excited. I carried out various tasks for work, continuously interrupted by other issues. This bothered me only mildly, as I felt confident that the afternoon would be uneventful. Also, I explained away some of my irritation as related to certain monthly events that make women prone to irritability and discomfort.
Lunch came and went. The cafe staff was celebrating Elvis. Is it his birthday? Was this when he died? I don't know. And I don't care enough to find out. But one employee known for his drag performances outside fo work sported a snug fat vegas elvis costume that seemed to convey enough information to allude to his religios affiliation. I never did get into Elvis or his songs.
Not long after lunch, I was perched upon the throne my preferred ladies' bathroom attending to some urgent business. My task was nearly completed when the lights ceased to shine. There are no windows in this bathroom. Sure, being in the dark is kind of fun at home. However, there's less comfort when you're on a public toilet with your pants around your ankles.
Darkness. Near pantless. In a semi-public bathroom.
Thankfully, fear did not stay my hand. I used the faint glow of my Crackberry to navigate to the sink to wash my hands and take advantage of the remains of the water pressure, since the faucets use motion detection to operate.
Once out of the bathroom, my concerns were confirmed. The power did indeed go out. I return to my desk, grab my tools and my flashlight. On my way out of the department and to our computer room to check the servers, some managers from the fourth floor pull me aside.
EM: Is there any insider information you can give us?
Me: Aside from the fact that I was in the ladies room when this started, no.
Managers: *laughter*
Me: As soon as I find anything out, I will let you know.
Down to the computer room. I realize there are no emergency lights. And it's quiet, except for some manly and stressed voices from the electrical room. All our servers are down. This means the UPS is down. Normally the UPS stays up, our servers stay up. Our power outage ceased to be a little fandango of non-productivity and entered into cluster fuuuuuuuuuuuudge of major proportions. The facilities engineers have no information as to what happened, yet.
My manger and teammates confer. I suggest that we need to prepare a plan for power up. Once commercial power resumes, we'll need time to bring the servers back up before folks can log in, as well as validate server health. We'll need the help of security to make announcements to the whole building.
The next few hours involve lots of walking around, talking on conference calls with network experts, server experts, and our command center while talking with management and customers to get them operational.
Now the day is technically near an end. A debrief is scheduled for management. We are told the reason why the UPS Failed.
Que Flashback sequence:
M from Facilities races to the electrical room to check the UPS (backup power). It is dark due to some maintenance being performed on the emergency lights, they will not be coming on. The UPS alarm is sounding as per normal during power outages. M fumbles in the darkness to hit the alarm disable button. Because it's dark, because he didn't bring a flashlight, and because M is one stupid mofo for not bringing a flashlight when he himself knew there were no emergency lights, M accidentally pressed the UPS shut down button. This action also killed the UPS.
after all was said and done, we went to the Electrical room and looked at the UPS shutdown button. It was big. It was red. And you had to lift a protective lever to activate it. No alarm silence button in our office has a protective cover.
Now I know M probably feels terrible about this. But man, he's supposed to be experienced in facilities management. Still, I'm quite chagrinned.
Of course, this means we'll be making jokes about big red buttons and M for quite a while.
Later, I forwarded the daily list of outages to my teammates. We see all the outages across the company for that day. I sent an email to the team making a note of the following:
Guys,
See P54345341. That's our outage! We're famous!
With special thanks to:
Do you know who the gentleman in the picture is?
Do ya?
Go ahead, take your time.
Did you recognize him?
Well, he's none other than the actor Red Buttons.
Well, at least I found it amusing.
In the end, all worked out. And various executives who saw me in action were quite pleased and impressed with my response. That's what I like to hear.
After work, I acquired a well-deserved beer, dinner, and a delightful viewing of Parker Posey's latest movie, "Broken English". She truly is the queen of facial expressions. Zoe Cassavetes directed the film, Justin Theroux had a part in it as well. But Parker carried this film.
After the movie, it was home to dial into work and finish the tasks that did not get completed during the lost afternoon.
While working, I watched Live from Abbey Road and saw a performance by The Kooks. They look 13, but their sound is a little more polished and advanced. Definitely a fun sound. I recommend their songs Naive and Matchbox.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-18 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 04:08 am (UTC)What are shins?