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September 21, 2006
Priorities
Doug had a notebook on the production floor that was used as a diagnostic tool for one of our products. The notebook was mostly brand new.
He came to me one day and asked that I do some kind of backup on it -- just in case something happened. I made a mental note to address it.
A week or so later he reminded me again. I made another note and formulated a plan that required a second notebook drive and software.
I was pretty sure I'd get to it the upcoming Friday after 2:30, when the notebook was shutdown for the weekend.
Something came up and I didn't get to it.
Then we started ripping cubicles down for new carpet. A new workstation was ordered for engineering (it will celebrate 30-days of sitting in my floor at the end of this week), a new PC came in for production (it was finally turned on yesterday), new PCs came in for sales and I made a trip offsite to set up a home office. Cubicles were rebuilt. More were torn down. An I've never seen a printer issue like this before problem came up (A network printer failed, then another and finally a third. One used an HP print server which printed via a queue on the server, the other two used Intel print servers that did not queue to the Netware server. Two printers -- one the HP/Queued printer -- failed shortly after I'd get them going again. After the office was rebuilt I eventually deleted the Netware printer object and recreated it and the queue. I also replaced the HP print server -- but only because the power supply was mislaid during the moves ... I expect to find it this week. I have not had a printer issue -- past people bitching about not having the super fastest printer right next to them -- since the cubes went back up.) Etc.
The point is, the list of things to do kept expanding and priorities kept shifting. The notebook that needed backed up -- well, it was mostly new. What could possibly (likely) go wrong? We had all the install software on hand to reinstall if something happened ... it would just take more time to get it going doing things that way.
Saturday I spent some time VPNed in doing some work on our Oracle database. The same Sunday. Monday night too.
Tuesday morning the mostly new hard drive in the mostly new notebook died. This immediately moved the notebook to a position in which it shared the #1 spot with respect to priority. I rebuilt it while data moved into our Oracle test environment.
Dammit.
So close ... and yet so far.
The Dune Buggy has nothing to do with this post. I just think entries look cheerier with graphics. This photo was taken at the American Legion Cruise In that was just up the street from me in late August.
Posted by delmer at September 21, 2006 7:46 AM
Comments
Dune buggies and notebooks? Hmm.
You crack me up.
Posted by: Tish at September 21, 2006 5:10 PM
Cue Christopher Walken: What we need is more dune buggy.
Posted by: Rob at September 21, 2006 6:27 PM
It must be a week for printer going on the blink. We've had a hp printer problem for two days at work, meanwhile the A2 maps are piling up waiting to be printed, and I spent my whole lunch-hour sorting out a printer problem for a friend, which is still not working.
One hell of a week with printers.
Posted by: Toni at September 22, 2006 4:33 AM
I spent one most of one summer tooling around in my Uncle's dune buggy. It didn't have an alternator so it had to be charged every night and, as the battery couldn't be trusted to crank the starter, it had to be parked on a hill.
Naturally, it had to be home before dark.
It was still a treat.
Posted by: delmer at September 22, 2006 6:44 AM