Saturday, December 10, 2005
The last couple of weeks
The department Xmas party was held offsite after work last Friday. I couldn't find the place right away but I still got there early. I intro'd myself to one woman and talked to her about an application I expect to support. I hung out with the voice people (they've been friendly) until one of my teammates showed. I had a couple of beers. Finally, my boss arrived. I chatted with the Change Manager at the upper management table for a while.
I sat with my boss at dinner (food was good), along with an account manager and an ex-CLAer. We played hot potato for the centrepiece (a bit juvenile). There were a couple of karaoke performances and door prizes. My boss won the centrepiece and a Roots gym bag. The music started in earnest. My boss and I met with the server team leader to talk about my position, and how our two teams would work together. He said something about "why bother" and how his guys were certified. This is out of context so it sounds worse than he intended, but I think there is a kernel of truth here, and he is getting some pushback from his team. By the time we finished, I had had enough of the company for one day (I'd gotten up early to drive in) so I left. My boss thought that I went to the washroom. The whole party was like a throwback to a different era.
I took Tuesday off to do Xmas shopping, and all hell broke loose. My boss paged me even though I'm not oncall yet. A queue had filled up and was writing messages to the MQ dead letter queue. The main MQ guy was also off. I wasn't much help over the phone. It turned out that some syslog server had stopped functioning causing a filesystem (probably root) to fill on the MQ server. The server team didn't know the root password for this syslog server at the time.
This past Friday, we got another whack of snow. I had an all-day session with IBM so I had to go in; otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered. They are setting up a performance and capacity testbed for the company's premier web application. They are also making recommendations for changes to the app itself. Apparently, this is costing the company $500,000. My secret agenda was to ensure that we get our money's worth, but my actual piece of the action is very small. Aside from the odd outburst, the IBM people have been pretty good which has been a pleasant surprise. The same cannot be said for my company's people, some of whom seem to running their own agenda. At least two of them were obstructionists or not listening prolonging the session.
D.
I sat with my boss at dinner (food was good), along with an account manager and an ex-CLAer. We played hot potato for the centrepiece (a bit juvenile). There were a couple of karaoke performances and door prizes. My boss won the centrepiece and a Roots gym bag. The music started in earnest. My boss and I met with the server team leader to talk about my position, and how our two teams would work together. He said something about "why bother" and how his guys were certified. This is out of context so it sounds worse than he intended, but I think there is a kernel of truth here, and he is getting some pushback from his team. By the time we finished, I had had enough of the company for one day (I'd gotten up early to drive in) so I left. My boss thought that I went to the washroom. The whole party was like a throwback to a different era.
I took Tuesday off to do Xmas shopping, and all hell broke loose. My boss paged me even though I'm not oncall yet. A queue had filled up and was writing messages to the MQ dead letter queue. The main MQ guy was also off. I wasn't much help over the phone. It turned out that some syslog server had stopped functioning causing a filesystem (probably root) to fill on the MQ server. The server team didn't know the root password for this syslog server at the time.
This past Friday, we got another whack of snow. I had an all-day session with IBM so I had to go in; otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered. They are setting up a performance and capacity testbed for the company's premier web application. They are also making recommendations for changes to the app itself. Apparently, this is costing the company $500,000. My secret agenda was to ensure that we get our money's worth, but my actual piece of the action is very small. Aside from the odd outburst, the IBM people have been pretty good which has been a pleasant surprise. The same cannot be said for my company's people, some of whom seem to running their own agenda. At least two of them were obstructionists or not listening prolonging the session.
D.
