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If this is posted, I made it home safe. (I may say more, but first I need to actually say that, right?)
This is sorted by day. Also! I know some people reading this are trying to avoid 9/11 musings. Since I was at the client site over the week, there are some such in here. However, I have marked them so they are easily avoidable. [9/11 WTC] will mark the start of such a section, and [end 9/11 WTC] will mark the end. I didn't mark off a single throwaway reference in bitching about the tv selection, because there's no thoughts on the matter given there, but otherwise I think I found and marked all of them.
9/8/2002 (Sunday) 10:38 am (Pacific)
At the airport, at the gate, waiting. Boarding is in about an hour, so not much to do yet. It's been an interesting start to the trip so far, and it's hardly started, but more interesting than annoying.
First, Scott drove me to the airport, and at a red light on airport way, we stopped. The Doubletree van did not. A few seconds after the light turned red, it passed us at full speed. Whee. I took down its license plate when we got up to the airport, along with the number on the van. Color me not amused; Scott and I both agreed we wouldn't stay at the Doubletree if we needed the courtesy van service. Alas, you still have to share the road with them near the airport.
So I went to check in. The lady behind the ticket counter was talking with a coworker (whom she later identified as her mom) about some chairs she was trying to get from her for her new apartment. To the point where she checked me in (putting my name down FROM MY DRIVER'S LICENSE) as Natalie Davis on a flight to Denver. I protested when I saw where my bags were going, before I found out who I was supposed to be. Heh.
She cancelled that out, re-checked me in properly, and let me see all the tags, so I know I'm okay. She was very apologetic - she felt quite bad about it. Still, you'd think of all things she should be paying attention. Jeesh. (And, yes, I told her I was leaving on the noon flight to Chicago O'Hare. The second time, I gave her the flight number. And she did have my driver's license. How out of it d'you think she was, to do that? Oh, well. I and my bags are marked for the right destination, anyway.)
Then I paused and bought the decongestant I'd wanted to get. I don't care if it was airport prices or not. I also got a little book of Portland photos that looked neat, for Jenn. I don't know if she'll like it or not, but I wanted to have something Oregon-ish and I wasn't seeing anything else that I strongly liked, that I actually could bring with me, so. Of course, it didn't occur to me as a concept (probably due to lack of time) until, oh, I was at the airport? Which is fine. I didn't have time until I was at the airport anyway, but I am glad I found something.
Got to my gate, and promptly called Doubletree. At this point, I am severely unimpressed with them. The number on their van was, of course, their nationwide reservations line (located in California). The lady was happy to tell me this, and that she couldn't take complaints about drivers; I needed to file that with the hotel involved. Problem: there are multiple Doubletrees in the Portland area and nothing on the van to show which one. She wanted to give me the number for both Doubletrees in Portland (as if the others in the vicinity such as Vancouver never send a van to PDX, for heaven's sake!) but finally forwarded me to the guest services line instead.
Which was closed, it being a Sunday. I left an irritable message complaining about the fact that there's no good venue for such complaints, and about the van itself, since I had the license plate. Good -grief-. YOU track down the damned hotel and pass it on, chickees. It's your hotel in the first place.
Now, maybe I just got the dregs (of the drivers, of the phone answering people), but that was way annoying. I'd say they lose out by alienating me but, the truth is, I don't think a Doubletree has ever been a possibly-viable option anytime I've looked at staying somewhere anyway. There are a lot around here - but I'm home here. There are not so many at most of my destinations.
I'd dealt with that and was about halfway through a (delicious!) blueberry muffin when I discovered they'd changed my gate from E2 to E5 (Which is where I'm sitting now). Since it was then over an hour until boarding, this wasn't exactly stress. Everyone in the area gathered up their hobbies, their things, their food and drink, and hustled down. WHY? It's not going to suddenly matter when you don't even have to be checked in for another half hour, folks. So I finished my muffin, wandered down, and got a perfectly nice seat right across from the gate (E5 has a very small gate seating area with the overflow out in the aisle, for it, E6,and E7 - the latter two being gates for small planes, from the look of them, as in, 'walk out and climb the plane's stairs' - they're just doors without a proper gate area even).
So far, not too much stress. I mean, yeah, the Doubletree thing irritated me, but it didn't actually affect me or have much to do with my trip, I just hate to see people do things like that, especially when they're employed transporting others. The ticket agent thing really did have the potential to be stressful, but she made it right pretty quickly, so ... whatever. I don't know how long it took her to untangle her paperwork, though; I hope the lady whose name she tried to give me doesn't have any problems because of it.
Oh! And I made it through security without setting off the walk-through thing or getting a bag searched or even swiped with one of those patches (which they seem to have stopped doing, anyway). I finally remembered to take my shoes off and put them through on the conveyer. The lady supervising the folks watching the monitors told me the shoes do have a moderately big metal shank in them, which makes it the more amazing that I ever get through without setting off the gate. They don't feel like they do, or wear like they do...weird. I guess I'll have to remember to take these off if I'm wearing them.
I wanted to wear my tennis shoes for this. They're better for walking. But I couldn't fit a pair of shoes into my carry-on and I didn't want to show up at the client site in denim-looking tennis shoes. So they're in my checked luggage (because I have the feeling I may want them in Chicago, and at least my airplane trip home can be with better footgear).
9/9/2002 (Monday) at 3:10 pm (Central)
I'm here. I made it safely and alive, but the Chicago drive was a bit much. I missed the exit I wanted for the "ideal" freeway. Fortunately, I'd been given directions for another route that I was still on, so instead of trying to turn around, I just switched to those directions. After getting stuck behind two accidents, I think maybe I should have doubled back, but turning around in unknown cities is not my favorite thing to do, so.... I was always on a useful freeway and ended up on the correct one headed toward Indiana.
The only mildly ugly moment was following the directions I had to get to the hotel from the last main freeway. No problem heading toward the right town on the highway, but I did end up having to make two unexpected left turns to get to the hotel. Fortunately, I learned about them when I stopped to get dinner at a McDonald's and I asked (since I was nervous at not having seen a sign for the street I wanted yet) - just one street light before when I needed to make the first left.
I think now that I was "expected" by Yahoo to take the next exit, but that wasn't what the directions said, and the signage suggested there were only two. Oh, well. Once again, I ended up there, and now I know where it is. I can find the hotel, several acceptable places to eat lunch and dinner (not good, necessarily, but acceptable; McDonald's is acceptable), a Target (should I need one), and the client site.
I may not need all of those, but, I at least know where they are if I do.
So far today is going okay. We brought stuff down and back up on the right hub, disabled teamed network adapters and used just one of them after we couldn't get them working in teamed mode, etc. I'm very --
5:14 pm (Central)
Very busy. Heh. I'm also very hopeful. It's looking very good now, Two of the three "big" errors (and the two worst ones) refuse thus far to reproduce. I'm looking at the third now, but it's "invisible" (and comparatively harmless) to them, just a potentially risky sign.
Cross fingers, toes, and eyes, we might be okay here.
9/9/2002 (Monday) 9:50 pm (Central)
Getting ready for bed and taking a chance to type up an entry. Still looking good; crossing my fingers. Tomorrow is the proof day, I think. If it's steady through tomorrow evening, it will be more of a sure thing. Also tomorrow, I check the logs for the 911 feed and fix it.
I'm pleased with this trip so far. The project manager has left; he has a house to close on. His stand-in is a remote project manager, available by phone but not on site. My coworker who was here this morning to transfer knowledge then drove to Chicago and flew home.
I'm on site alone, but I'm not upset. It's a lot different than the last time I was "abandoned" alone at a client site. I was new to the company then; now I know what I'm doing. I had someone here the first day, which I didn't then, not really - not someone from our company, anyway.
I've found everything I need to, and can explore to find more if I want. I had Wendy's tonight, and I know there's a Subway - we drove past it at one point on our way to lunch - but I may have to work a bit or ask questions to find it again. I hope I can, it would be better for me than the Wendy's.
We left just a bit after 7 tonight, with everything looking so good. Counting the lunch break I only worked about ten hours, which makes this feel a lot less stressful than many of the other visits.
I admit I grabbed Wendy's tonight. It's right next to the hotel and was easy to stop in and grab my dinner. Then I came back in, read for a while, and hung out. I tried to find something on the tv but the selection is limited, especially with 9/11 coverage on all the major networks, so I turned the radio on instead and read. It's probably better for me anyway. :) I was going to play Dungeon Siege but it's a bit late for that now and I wasn't strongly in the mood for it (or I would have done that first).
I did go down to the exercise room and work out for a brief while, though. I admit they only have a stair-step and a stationary bike but it's still good for me and I do want to improve my health. It's silly, but I have to admit, I feel better about doing it with no one I know or work with in the hotel to see how pathetic I may be. :)
I have my swimsuit along, too. If things stay good, I might get to enjoy the hotel pool - as much as you can enjoy a 5-foot-deep pool, which I admit is sorta sad, but such is life.
The hotel has a bunch of brochures on places in Indiana (this close to Chicago, and still no Chicago brochures, which amuses me), so I grabbed a handful to entertain myself. That was an amusement that lasted, oh, about five minutes, I think....
So far, so good. I expected to be really stressed this trip, and I was at some points. If things go wrong tomorrow, I may be again. But I'm handling it pretty well, and while the client wants to have someone on site, they seem to be pretty willing to let us be human. I don't think they cut out at 7 so much as 7:30 or 8:00 when there were real problems, but even so, that's only a 13-hour day if I skip lunch.
I'd have to be an idiot to skip lunch; I perform badly when hungry. But I do it all the time at sites where there are others with me, when I should know better. I think it's because my former supervisor, R, does it a lot. I don't understand how he survives on no breakfast, coffee all day and no lunch, and heavy dinners, and I really have to stop trapping myself into thinking I have to work the stretches he does. If nothing else, I'd rather have food than caffeine, and without either, I'm not going to make that time either!
I've finished rereading When I Say No, I Feel Guilty - I say rereading, because I knew what each chapter and part was. I've clearly read it before but, I don't remember the reading. I only remembered that once I heard some people saying it was really more than its title and was useful in lots of ways you wouldn't think from the title. Obviously I must have taken their advice at that time too. I have to agree that it is, though.
I've got Holly Lisle's Memory of Fire along. If that goes well, that or Children of the Sun will get some more reading. So will the books I brought along on TCP/IP, most likely, whether things go well or not. They're useful (if things don't go well) and potentially useful (if they do), and if I have the choice, I'd rather absorb them when I'm not trying to apply them.
So far, I'm amazed at what I do know - I haven't learned very many technical details I didn't know. What I am getting is new ways of viewing them, new syntheses of the information which help me to see potential pitfalls (which R steered the product clear of, but I didn't even see the possibility, let alone the way in which it was avoided). I'd like to put some sample code in some of the programs, back in the office, and run some tests just to make sure the behavior I think is going on, is, in a couple cases. I'm sure it is but I hate to think I understand something and then, oops, you're wrong!
I have learned about a couple new applications, but, they're only native on Unix - hardly helpful in programming for Windows, nor are they appropriate to our particular application. But they're still neat and illustrate some of what can be done, and the author showed how to write one of them for Windows or other platforms that don't normally support it, which is cool.
I'm hoping as I get deeper into the material (I'm only about halfway in to the "simpler" of the books, which is detailed conceptually but not as difficult technically - read, not as dry ;), I'll encounter more that's actually new to me in the technical arena. A lot of it won't actually apply; the more difficult book in particular has large chunks that are foundation, rather than direct tools, for what we do - or outright don't apply to what we do.
I'm looking forward to those, too, though. Understanding your foundation is pretty critical, and I think I do, but reading the detailed stuff on it will help a lot. (I'm not quite "into" it enough to want to dive into a full example implementation of a TCP/IP stack, though, so I didn't get anything like that. Maybe I'll change my mind later.) And if I only understand what we're doing now, how am I supposed to know what to do with a new and different situation/design, or evaluate the work of someone dealing with it?
I thrive on seeing things going well. I hope today was accurate and not just a still before more storming, because it's really restored my confidence. And reminded me why I do love my job. Making things right, making things work, yes, but also the technical intricacies. I learned about a new driver-set (which I do not like because they are a big fat Pain In The Ass and do annoying things, but which I do now understand and know how to hamstring until they are NOT being a Pain - and hopefully we will learn better ways to keep them in line while using many of their features, or an alternate driver for the same cards, in the future).
And yes, I can write this much about random thoughts at the end of the day; I've had enough time to relax and think to have thoughts. I didn't claim to be terse at any point, I hope? ;)
Time for me to say good night. It's 10:10 now, and the alarm will go off at 6:30. I was very restless last night, waking every hour or two through the night and seeing that it was 1, afraid it was time for me to be downstais and I'd overslept until I checked the clock. I'm thinking tonight will be much better, without as much to be anxious about, so hopefully that's the case (both the quieter night and less to be anxious about!).
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 8:03 am (Central)
And I'm in, on time (got here about 5 minutes ago and started setting up). I've started reading the Lisle book (I had extra time this morning), and boy was it hard to put down. If it lives up to that first bit that I read, it's going to be an incredible book. And it's part of a series! *bouncy*
Now, as long as today goes well...no one stopped me as I came through the dispatch center, so that's promising?
I love the differences in security at these places, too. One place I went, I had to enter past an officer who would check my right to be there, go up two floors, get buzzed into the comm center/data area (after being viewed by camera and queried), and then get a sergeant to let me into the server room.
By contrast, I parked here, walked in the back door, walked in the door to dispatch, and passed through the server room to my work area. Many of the doors are locked, but because the facility isn't complete, it's actually deliberately not secured, in part for our benefit.
Ah, well. Speaking of complete, I need to check those logs!
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 9:48 am (Central)
Best wishes, etc. I keep getting pulled from the logs by customer issues with other things. So far, so good. They reported that putting the group on an override address didn't let them enter the call. So I did it (in a test system) and it worked just fine. Requires agency in the group so we checked theirs. They all have agencies. Went to check and the dispatcher said, of course it works, I just did it with a call earlier. (It was the midnight shift that reported this - I suspect they've had the least training/play-time with the system, as is often the case, unfortunately.)
Then there's the fact that they don't like having it auto-select calls. Apparently should have been off, but wasn't; showed him how to turn it off and distribute that to the workstations.
Need a "reload options from distribution" menu item on the comdir module. Yes, yes we do! :)
Then they had a too-large font in the unit status window. Showed them how resizing the headings changed the font automatically, which they apparently weren't aware of (or, more likely, had forgotten - there is a lot of info / things to learn here and even I, having written a bunch of them and worked on it for over three years, forget some of it at times!).
So far, my opinion of their ani/ali layout is, "weird!" There appears to be an extra junk character before the actual parsing info, so no wonder we are having such trouble and the position is so oddly placed in the message. Trying to rewrite the routine to process it / send it properly, but have to figure out what "properly" is for this scenario, first. Pulled the overnight test data and am using that to repeatedly run different stuff over here with the program set up to pull from the log. Whee!
And it's almost done compiling so, back to that.
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 1:30 pm (Central)
What was that I said about meals yesterday? I'm still here. No lunch. But it was my choice, and I may go soon. I am hungry. I just want to get their 911 feed working first, if I can. Right now, they get the calls but not the info to their event form. Not sure what's up with that.
Oh, well. A little bit more and I think I'll have it good. I'm going to change only the parsing - not the sending - that way maybe I can avoid breaking the workstations, which I'd really rather NOT do, when the server upgrades....
We're getting there. They seem to be pretty stable but I'd still like to test that (well, only if it passes!) before I leave for the day today.
We'll see what I can do. I bet I can get this sorted out in just a bit here.
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 4:00 pm (Central)
Had lunch finally. Still fighting with the distribution to get the ani/ali change in, and getting progressively less amused by it. May have to do some custom "tweaking" to make it all happy.
Going to work at least until 6, maybe 7. Longer if I don't have the 911 sorted out but at worst I can patch that one program in for the night, I believe. I'd like to do it right, though.
I've got permission to take photos of the server (which has a really COOL plexiglas "hat" designed to keep water from coming down on it directly, good if the A/C pipe breaks again, bad if the server's on fire and the sprinklers are trying to put it out) and of the dispatch center. Note that this is from the guy in charge here; the dispatchers might be another matter. Most dispatchers don't mind photos of their center, fewer than average mind photos of themselves, as long as you don't do it during a majorly busy or tense moment.
I'm tired. And my eyes ache. Bah. But I'll be okay. That's just the ooo-I've-just-eaten sleepies speaking. ;)
[9/11 WTC]9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 4:40 pm (Central)
I just got an email that our CEO sent to the whole company, at once saying we want to go on and be resilient (ie, come to work) tomorrow, but also that there will be a moment of silence in each office at 0900 local (odd, to mark it then, and not when it happened, but I can also understand it), and that any employee who wants to attend a memorial service in their community may do so, and charge the time as 'bereavement' time.
That's kind of cool, and it's kind of...I don't know. I just know I'm a bit tired of the whole 9/11 thing, even though at the same time I want to stare at it again. I think actually because it draws me in to the hype is part of why it annoys me so!
[end 9/11 WTC]
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 9:45 pm (Central)
I actually left about 6:30. It was raining, the clouds had come in and it's supposed to storm tonight. It did, a little, but not how they meant; heavy rain (the first in a while; I drove carefully) and some moderate winds. There's supposed to be thunder and lightning tonight but for now the weather's a lull. I don't know if it's biding till later, or has changed its mind.
Definitely, the heat has broken. They say it's supposed to be fall-like for the rest of the week, which sounds pleasant to me. So far my allergies haven't been too unpleasant to me, and I'd love to see it stay that way.
Anyway, I was glad to leave early when I thought the storm would get worse, and there was nothing to keep me there. I had the 911 feed back for them by then, though it's currently rendering all the city codes invalid. I'll have to try to clean that up tomorrow morning. I have the right code - but I don't have the right build; there's something in the new base that's not quite right, as best I can tell. The piece I need is fine, but one of the pieces I think is the same, isn't performing right. I've got someone reviewing the last week's changes and I should have an email documenting them by now - I'll get it in the morning. From there it should be easy to clean up. I hope.
I got a tour of the facility this afternoon, actually before the last couple of notes that I wrote in. It's fairly big, but not nearly what I expected when they described it as big and said the deputies had (jokingly, I hope) asked for rollerblades to go down the central corridor. Very strange. It's funny; my coworkers said it was eerie to be shown through it, but I found it vaguely interesting and yet slightly boring in its own way.
I meant to work on a documentation project I've got - not for work - but I didn't. I'll try to do it tomorrow, and exercise again. Right now, I'm watching the news for a little bit, and then I need to be asleep so I can wake up without bitching about it tomorrow. :)
[9/11 WTC]9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 7:31 am (Central)
Of course, I turned the tv on when I got up this morning. I can't stand not to stare at it, even though it annoys me. That says a lot, I suppose. I turned it on just in time to see the officer's three-year-old daughter and her father. He talked a bit about her mother and they showed clips of the girl - Patricia - accepting medals and plaques in her mother's honor over the past year, and then, singing patriotic songs that had been sung at the ceremonies.
I'm so glad I am working today, in all honesty. I think of how many people will be watching the 15 hours (or whatever other stations are doing) of coverage, and I hate to think what that constant bombardment will do.
Fortunately, I need to go get breakfast and head over to the client site in just a little bit.
[end 9/11 WTC]
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 8:12 am (Central)
And now I'm in at the client's. I actually stood around for about ten minutes until the phone guys got here and opened the door; the never-latched door I was told to use, was latched, and the guy I was given a number for? I was given the wrong (disconnected) number. I was getting close to either walking around to the front entrance (unlikely to work, since it's to the sherriff's portion of the building and they have not moved in yet!) or calling the sherriff's number (posted on the door) in the hopes that they (still in their old building) could ring dispatch (who ought not have to open doors).
Fortunately, I'm now in and can try to do something useful.
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 12:34 pm (Central)
Wooo! Found the problem. Of course, it was stupid. Of course, it was my stupid. I had changed a value in a header file for testing, not changed it back, and failed to see this in like 4-5 diffs. AUGH. But, in a minute I'll be able to test. I'm betting that my test workstation will come up & join just fine and behave itself. From there, I can update the server, then all of their workstations, and the parsing will be good.
That leaves only a minor geo-load issue. I can fix the geo-load issue pretty easily, I think.
Which means that this is going REALLY well and I'm going to sit at the client site, answer questions (and chat with the director who likes to drop in and chit-chat), and do non-site-related work for two days, I think.
That sounds really, really sweet. Well on track for heading out Friday and having a nice weekend. And I have not had to work 13-hour days. The big bad scary problem cleared up on Monday, leaving me with the (major to minor) nuisances. I have it down to one minor nuisance (911 parsing - it's giving useful data, just putting spaces in the middle of names and street names, which looks dumb, but gets the info there and logs it, anyway), one medium nuisance (geo load - somehow a street got dropped - but it's in their live data, they just can't synchronize in the database till I fix it, and we can selectively bring in any non-street data...), and nothing else outstanding.
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Off to test now. The minor nuisance is gonna be gone in 10 minutes (maybe more, they're a bit busy for restarts from the sound of it), I can feel it, I have it...!
[Do I sound a wee bit excited? Oh, wait - I am! *g*]
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 6:51 pm (Central)
Well, wasn't that fun. The test worked fine, the 911 was basically good, and I just had the geo issue left to deal with. And then someone from the database team connected in to set up some scheduled tasks and had the server for 45 minutes right on toward quitting time. I picked it up again at 5, at 5:15 I was told the mapping guys were stopping by at 7 to do some stuff on their side, and could I be here in case they had questions?
[9/11 WTC]
Sure. I promptly left for dinner, watched a half hour of 9/11 stuff (this a rather interesting piece on ABC that just pushed together the timetables of the day for government, responses from the military, etc. - I only made it up to slightly after the Pentagon before I had to come back, but that's okay, I don't really need the whole day minute-by-minute, but the originally-confused part was kinda interesting), and then came back.
[end 9/11 WTC]
And here I am. After some work. When I first got here, the back door they've had me using was locked. Oops. And the client contact I've got was doing something (which I knew) so attempts to reach him by his office phone (the number I have) predictably failed. So I walked around to the front (of an as-yet-not-open-to-the-public building), got let in by someone who recognized me (but I didn't her - oops), and she led me back through the records section and around the corner toward the hallway I know. Then I waved to the dispatchers and got them to let me into the communications room, found that the server-room door was still unlocked (which is how the client & I had set it earlier in the day; I saw no need to change it when I left, since I'd be back, and it paid off!), and then around the corner from the server room to the meeting room that is our temporary workspace.
Wheeee! It wasn't as bad as it sounds. Nice, easy steps, and the worst that could happen is I sit outside the center till the client gets back. I can't miss meeting with the guys who are supposed to show up after me; if I can't get in, neither can they! And actually it worked about as described for such moments.
Now to get my email and find out what panics (if any) I precipitated with my last email about a procedure that didn't get set up. :)
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 11:09 pm (Central)
Okay, much less amused now. I ended up having to do the load by hand. Which is fine, except, I started it way too late for that. I didn't leave the client site until 10:30 and almost all that time was hand-entering 1 street, 140 segments, and 5 commonplaces in almost-perfect conformance with the original data.
One segment differs. It's driving me BUGNUTS. I have to find that typo, and they're good.
Almost there, though. Almost there. And NOT getting there tonight. Exhausted. :) Client has stuff to do in the morning and told me to show up late. I did not and will not argue. Exhausted.
9/12/2002 (Thursday) 8:52 am (Central)
Waiting for services to finish starting on this laptop and then back into the fray. Feeling better this morning, I got enough sleep. Not altogether happy with my late night last night, but human this morning.
9/12/2002 (Thursday) 10:26 am (Central)
Found it, fixed it, all good. Down to the mapping issues (non-critical, sent them back to someone in the office) and the designs I was originally supposed to get done this week....
Feeling hopeful. Currently planning to leave about noonish tomorrow.
9/12/2002 (Thursday) 8:38 pm (Central)
Didn't get to see the building I wanted to; I didn't leave until about 6:30, got back to the hotel around 7:00 with my dinner. The sun was already setting; I'll have a look tomorrow, if I can get a parking spot somewhere that will let me. Have to try for at least some shots, right?
It's still going decently. The mapping is winning in my war to make it not display what I don't want it to display, and I'm getting progressively more annoyed. Everything is set right. It's going to come down to debugging, but it requires proprietary software and a dongle to ensure licensing is met.
I have those. Back. At the. Office. I can hardly steal both from a client workstation, and I can't put my developer's tools on one either. The person who is supposed to be testing it for me sent me a solution that not only didn't work, it COULD NOT have worked and I perceived this within a minute of receiving it. My solution which looks tight to me? Did not work.
Color.
Me.
Annoyed.
...Oh, SHIT. Just realized why it's not working, why it can't work. I'm intercepting the CALLS. But it's not the call - it's the UNIT.... Dammit. Dammit. Ahhhh! I can fix this. Sorta. Kinda. Yeah.
Ew.
Okay, now to do it.
There. Fix applied.
Anyway, finished reading Holly Lisle's Memory of Fire. It was on the "new releases" shelf when I got it - within the past month, I think. It is EXCELLENT.
I. Want. A sequel, NOW. Nownownownow. I do not care about logic. I want the next part of this story. She is MEAN. In the way that I can admire. I want the next part of the story. I want. The sequel.
It's a trilogy. GIVE ME THE NEXT BOOK. Give it now. And then. Write more series. In this world.
I want to roleplay in this setting. This world. Is SO COOL. I don't think you could make it work as a game, honestly - maybe I'm wrong - but oh my gosh this setting is glorious....
Ripped a pair of pants, too. Fortunately at the hotel, in my room, sitting down to dinner. *sighs* Oh, well, time to go shopping again. I really hate buying pants. I am not normally fond of wearing skirts, though. Bah.
9/13/02 (Friday) 8:14 am (Central)
Have a compile running now, once that's done I can build the distribution. This should take care of 90% of the map stuff! I have an idea on why the 911 parser is not presenting well and can also look at that in a bit but I want to get this map thing licked first.
So far, looking almost on-schedule for a noon departure. I got in 10 minutes late so I might leave at noon and might leave slightly after (but I've put in almost 40 hours this week on tasks for this client, not counting administrative/email/queries from other projects/design docs/base bugs - which I have ALSO dealt with. "Almost" as in "Two hours from now I will have" (provided I work steadily on their issues; hoping there won't be that many). So, not much guilt factor over 10 minutes. Counting travel time, I'm going to get above 55 hours this week (not counting the return trip, which is actually in next week - we bill Saturday-Friday).
All checked out of the hotel; found my flight info (so I wouldn't panic about not having it, mainly), road/directions info so I can return the car, confirmed my recollection about where I was meeting Jenn, and checked the room about sixty times to make sure I wasn't leaving anything behind that I didn't mean to.
My packing job is really funny, since it's not the final job. I made sure my other shoes (that I will switch to on leaving the client site) were easily accessible by dumping them in my backpack, along with the clean clothes I'm planning to wear tomorrow and Sunday. Whee! I'm planning to dump my laptop case in the suitcase when I leave today as well. It will be a lot easier to haul around that way and, with the weekend's clothes in my backpack, there's actually room. (The original packing job was a bit loose.) Obviously it won't be that way Sunday but, for navigating public transportation, I suspect it's my best bet.
Oh, and I have to buy another bottle of water while I'm here. (The client's vending machines are cheaper than getting the same items, in the same size, as Target. I'm lazy and would probably have gotten it here anyway, but it's cheaper besides. Heh. I love public safety, this building has junk food - and some non-junk-food - vending machines all over. Though the ones I actually have access to are just chips/candy/water/soda.)
Ah, well. Build time!
9/13/02 (Friday) 11:24 am (Central)
Just a bit spacy. Starting to relax. I'm going to take off in a half hour, and I'm not doing anything new to the client site (there's nothing that "needs" to be done, no disasters outstanding, etc.), except to pull a backup before I go - which I'm going to do once I finish typing this.
The client is much happier; I had a dispatcher tell me how much she really likes this system, and the client-side project manager (the 911 director) says he is feeling much more secure/confident about the setup than a week ago, since we've resolved what worried him.
YES.
Right now, there's a little bit of backup work ahead of me, some goodbyes, and some driving. Oh, and a stop in Valpo to take pictures of that church (if I can find somewhere that's good to park), and also a stop for lunch. I'll call Jenn after I eat lunch, since I'm going to get it here, and then she'll have a good idea of when I "really" left.
Yesyesyes. This week has really actually managed to go well. I've had a good time. And now I get to have a whole weekend visit. Yay!
9/15/2002 (Sunday) 3:31 pm (Central)
I've had net access, so I've been posting directly, but now I'm at the airport. Not so much detail to put here since a lot of it I've already posted, but it's been a great visit. I really enjoyed seeing Jenn again and meeting John and Eloise. We played Apples to Apples twice and if the two sets of words I wrote down weren't in my checked luggage, I'd add them here. They're not all the good lines; I didn't think of note-taking till late in the first game, and I wasn't consistent about it either.
Just for the record, the neighborhood is really cool and I did get some photos of the area - and I want the Italian restaurant on the corner. It can just come back with me. Nummy. (The Mexican place downstairs from their apartment can also come with, but is not quite on the same level as the Italian place, since they don't have the desserts selection.... Sugar shock. And bliss.)
I think I already said that we went to see the glass in the garden exhibit at the conservatory, but if I forgot - we did, and it's cool. VERY cool. Many photographs, which I'll have to sort out and decide what to share. Really, really cool. A bitch to capture; those darned reflections. Some of the pics really worked, though.
Jenn and I also did the photographing of each other game so that we have more things to try for user pics. If you were wondering why I said "militant cute!" on the last post...that's why. See, I was wearing the blue-and-white skirt I got recently (the one I debated, then went back and got another day), and a hot pink t-shirt. (Not really the best shirt but I don't have a good shirt for it yet). So, already over-cute. We did several poses, and then Jenn braided my hair - two braids, down the front.
Folks, when you do this to me, at least in my opinion, I start to look underage.... She got pictures of me that way, and then Eloise loaned me a cat mask she has and we got a photo of that.
And then I decided to pose, hands on hips, in braids, in this outfit, in the cat mask. And Jenn took the shot. And there is no description for it except for militant cute.
I'll probably upload and share it here one of these days. I'm trying to get a userpic out of it, but it doesn't work too well since you really need the full-body shot and, shrunk, you lose a lot of the nuances of it.
Still. Militant cute!
Jenn gave me a really, really cool little cat figure. I have photos of that too, but mostly I have it, which is veryvery cool. Is a cute little clay calico, very sweet.
And we loaned books. She's given me Jim Butcher's Storm Front (which I'll be starting on the plane, where I won't be using this laptop). I handed her Holly Lisle's Memory of Fire and she has it with her to read on her way back from the airport. I may have just interfered with her getting things done today, if she enjoys that book as much as I did.... I gave it to her for two reasons. One is that it rocks and I want to share the joy and I really really REALLY want to be able to babble at her about it - and doing that in any detail is rude before it's been read. And the other reason is that, quite simply, if she has the book I don't. Maybe I'll do things other than reread it if I do that. :)
She has the niftiest thing. I knew about it, had even gotten a link to the company's web site and seen it, but it's still cool. It's a sort of slim-line backpack that holds two liters of water and has a drinking tube from the bottom up to your mouth so that you can have water as you walk without having to stop or juggle bottles. REALLY cool and if I take up walking/hiking more seriously, or mean to, I may have to get one. They're not that expensive, either.
And I got to meet Eloise and John, which is very very cool. They're nice, they have neat music and silly conversations, and they're fun. Also? John looks way too much like a guy named Ethan, whom I knew in college. (Ethan-now, not Ethan-then.) If they come out, I have pictures to prove it.... Though I won't post those unless he says it's okay. There are only a couple people reading this who would get the comment, and one of them is Jenn, who already knows and hardly needs pictures to see the resemblance.
This is sorted by day. Also! I know some people reading this are trying to avoid 9/11 musings. Since I was at the client site over the week, there are some such in here. However, I have marked them so they are easily avoidable. [9/11 WTC] will mark the start of such a section, and [end 9/11 WTC] will mark the end. I didn't mark off a single throwaway reference in bitching about the tv selection, because there's no thoughts on the matter given there, but otherwise I think I found and marked all of them.
9/8/2002 (Sunday) 10:38 am (Pacific)
At the airport, at the gate, waiting. Boarding is in about an hour, so not much to do yet. It's been an interesting start to the trip so far, and it's hardly started, but more interesting than annoying.
First, Scott drove me to the airport, and at a red light on airport way, we stopped. The Doubletree van did not. A few seconds after the light turned red, it passed us at full speed. Whee. I took down its license plate when we got up to the airport, along with the number on the van. Color me not amused; Scott and I both agreed we wouldn't stay at the Doubletree if we needed the courtesy van service. Alas, you still have to share the road with them near the airport.
So I went to check in. The lady behind the ticket counter was talking with a coworker (whom she later identified as her mom) about some chairs she was trying to get from her for her new apartment. To the point where she checked me in (putting my name down FROM MY DRIVER'S LICENSE) as Natalie Davis on a flight to Denver. I protested when I saw where my bags were going, before I found out who I was supposed to be. Heh.
She cancelled that out, re-checked me in properly, and let me see all the tags, so I know I'm okay. She was very apologetic - she felt quite bad about it. Still, you'd think of all things she should be paying attention. Jeesh. (And, yes, I told her I was leaving on the noon flight to Chicago O'Hare. The second time, I gave her the flight number. And she did have my driver's license. How out of it d'you think she was, to do that? Oh, well. I and my bags are marked for the right destination, anyway.)
Then I paused and bought the decongestant I'd wanted to get. I don't care if it was airport prices or not. I also got a little book of Portland photos that looked neat, for Jenn. I don't know if she'll like it or not, but I wanted to have something Oregon-ish and I wasn't seeing anything else that I strongly liked, that I actually could bring with me, so. Of course, it didn't occur to me as a concept (probably due to lack of time) until, oh, I was at the airport? Which is fine. I didn't have time until I was at the airport anyway, but I am glad I found something.
Got to my gate, and promptly called Doubletree. At this point, I am severely unimpressed with them. The number on their van was, of course, their nationwide reservations line (located in California). The lady was happy to tell me this, and that she couldn't take complaints about drivers; I needed to file that with the hotel involved. Problem: there are multiple Doubletrees in the Portland area and nothing on the van to show which one. She wanted to give me the number for both Doubletrees in Portland (as if the others in the vicinity such as Vancouver never send a van to PDX, for heaven's sake!) but finally forwarded me to the guest services line instead.
Which was closed, it being a Sunday. I left an irritable message complaining about the fact that there's no good venue for such complaints, and about the van itself, since I had the license plate. Good -grief-. YOU track down the damned hotel and pass it on, chickees. It's your hotel in the first place.
Now, maybe I just got the dregs (of the drivers, of the phone answering people), but that was way annoying. I'd say they lose out by alienating me but, the truth is, I don't think a Doubletree has ever been a possibly-viable option anytime I've looked at staying somewhere anyway. There are a lot around here - but I'm home here. There are not so many at most of my destinations.
I'd dealt with that and was about halfway through a (delicious!) blueberry muffin when I discovered they'd changed my gate from E2 to E5 (Which is where I'm sitting now). Since it was then over an hour until boarding, this wasn't exactly stress. Everyone in the area gathered up their hobbies, their things, their food and drink, and hustled down. WHY? It's not going to suddenly matter when you don't even have to be checked in for another half hour, folks. So I finished my muffin, wandered down, and got a perfectly nice seat right across from the gate (E5 has a very small gate seating area with the overflow out in the aisle, for it, E6,and E7 - the latter two being gates for small planes, from the look of them, as in, 'walk out and climb the plane's stairs' - they're just doors without a proper gate area even).
So far, not too much stress. I mean, yeah, the Doubletree thing irritated me, but it didn't actually affect me or have much to do with my trip, I just hate to see people do things like that, especially when they're employed transporting others. The ticket agent thing really did have the potential to be stressful, but she made it right pretty quickly, so ... whatever. I don't know how long it took her to untangle her paperwork, though; I hope the lady whose name she tried to give me doesn't have any problems because of it.
Oh! And I made it through security without setting off the walk-through thing or getting a bag searched or even swiped with one of those patches (which they seem to have stopped doing, anyway). I finally remembered to take my shoes off and put them through on the conveyer. The lady supervising the folks watching the monitors told me the shoes do have a moderately big metal shank in them, which makes it the more amazing that I ever get through without setting off the gate. They don't feel like they do, or wear like they do...weird. I guess I'll have to remember to take these off if I'm wearing them.
I wanted to wear my tennis shoes for this. They're better for walking. But I couldn't fit a pair of shoes into my carry-on and I didn't want to show up at the client site in denim-looking tennis shoes. So they're in my checked luggage (because I have the feeling I may want them in Chicago, and at least my airplane trip home can be with better footgear).
9/9/2002 (Monday) at 3:10 pm (Central)
I'm here. I made it safely and alive, but the Chicago drive was a bit much. I missed the exit I wanted for the "ideal" freeway. Fortunately, I'd been given directions for another route that I was still on, so instead of trying to turn around, I just switched to those directions. After getting stuck behind two accidents, I think maybe I should have doubled back, but turning around in unknown cities is not my favorite thing to do, so.... I was always on a useful freeway and ended up on the correct one headed toward Indiana.
The only mildly ugly moment was following the directions I had to get to the hotel from the last main freeway. No problem heading toward the right town on the highway, but I did end up having to make two unexpected left turns to get to the hotel. Fortunately, I learned about them when I stopped to get dinner at a McDonald's and I asked (since I was nervous at not having seen a sign for the street I wanted yet) - just one street light before when I needed to make the first left.
I think now that I was "expected" by Yahoo to take the next exit, but that wasn't what the directions said, and the signage suggested there were only two. Oh, well. Once again, I ended up there, and now I know where it is. I can find the hotel, several acceptable places to eat lunch and dinner (not good, necessarily, but acceptable; McDonald's is acceptable), a Target (should I need one), and the client site.
I may not need all of those, but, I at least know where they are if I do.
So far today is going okay. We brought stuff down and back up on the right hub, disabled teamed network adapters and used just one of them after we couldn't get them working in teamed mode, etc. I'm very --
5:14 pm (Central)
Very busy. Heh. I'm also very hopeful. It's looking very good now, Two of the three "big" errors (and the two worst ones) refuse thus far to reproduce. I'm looking at the third now, but it's "invisible" (and comparatively harmless) to them, just a potentially risky sign.
Cross fingers, toes, and eyes, we might be okay here.
9/9/2002 (Monday) 9:50 pm (Central)
Getting ready for bed and taking a chance to type up an entry. Still looking good; crossing my fingers. Tomorrow is the proof day, I think. If it's steady through tomorrow evening, it will be more of a sure thing. Also tomorrow, I check the logs for the 911 feed and fix it.
I'm pleased with this trip so far. The project manager has left; he has a house to close on. His stand-in is a remote project manager, available by phone but not on site. My coworker who was here this morning to transfer knowledge then drove to Chicago and flew home.
I'm on site alone, but I'm not upset. It's a lot different than the last time I was "abandoned" alone at a client site. I was new to the company then; now I know what I'm doing. I had someone here the first day, which I didn't then, not really - not someone from our company, anyway.
I've found everything I need to, and can explore to find more if I want. I had Wendy's tonight, and I know there's a Subway - we drove past it at one point on our way to lunch - but I may have to work a bit or ask questions to find it again. I hope I can, it would be better for me than the Wendy's.
We left just a bit after 7 tonight, with everything looking so good. Counting the lunch break I only worked about ten hours, which makes this feel a lot less stressful than many of the other visits.
I admit I grabbed Wendy's tonight. It's right next to the hotel and was easy to stop in and grab my dinner. Then I came back in, read for a while, and hung out. I tried to find something on the tv but the selection is limited, especially with 9/11 coverage on all the major networks, so I turned the radio on instead and read. It's probably better for me anyway. :) I was going to play Dungeon Siege but it's a bit late for that now and I wasn't strongly in the mood for it (or I would have done that first).
I did go down to the exercise room and work out for a brief while, though. I admit they only have a stair-step and a stationary bike but it's still good for me and I do want to improve my health. It's silly, but I have to admit, I feel better about doing it with no one I know or work with in the hotel to see how pathetic I may be. :)
I have my swimsuit along, too. If things stay good, I might get to enjoy the hotel pool - as much as you can enjoy a 5-foot-deep pool, which I admit is sorta sad, but such is life.
The hotel has a bunch of brochures on places in Indiana (this close to Chicago, and still no Chicago brochures, which amuses me), so I grabbed a handful to entertain myself. That was an amusement that lasted, oh, about five minutes, I think....
So far, so good. I expected to be really stressed this trip, and I was at some points. If things go wrong tomorrow, I may be again. But I'm handling it pretty well, and while the client wants to have someone on site, they seem to be pretty willing to let us be human. I don't think they cut out at 7 so much as 7:30 or 8:00 when there were real problems, but even so, that's only a 13-hour day if I skip lunch.
I'd have to be an idiot to skip lunch; I perform badly when hungry. But I do it all the time at sites where there are others with me, when I should know better. I think it's because my former supervisor, R, does it a lot. I don't understand how he survives on no breakfast, coffee all day and no lunch, and heavy dinners, and I really have to stop trapping myself into thinking I have to work the stretches he does. If nothing else, I'd rather have food than caffeine, and without either, I'm not going to make that time either!
I've finished rereading When I Say No, I Feel Guilty - I say rereading, because I knew what each chapter and part was. I've clearly read it before but, I don't remember the reading. I only remembered that once I heard some people saying it was really more than its title and was useful in lots of ways you wouldn't think from the title. Obviously I must have taken their advice at that time too. I have to agree that it is, though.
I've got Holly Lisle's Memory of Fire along. If that goes well, that or Children of the Sun will get some more reading. So will the books I brought along on TCP/IP, most likely, whether things go well or not. They're useful (if things don't go well) and potentially useful (if they do), and if I have the choice, I'd rather absorb them when I'm not trying to apply them.
So far, I'm amazed at what I do know - I haven't learned very many technical details I didn't know. What I am getting is new ways of viewing them, new syntheses of the information which help me to see potential pitfalls (which R steered the product clear of, but I didn't even see the possibility, let alone the way in which it was avoided). I'd like to put some sample code in some of the programs, back in the office, and run some tests just to make sure the behavior I think is going on, is, in a couple cases. I'm sure it is but I hate to think I understand something and then, oops, you're wrong!
I have learned about a couple new applications, but, they're only native on Unix - hardly helpful in programming for Windows, nor are they appropriate to our particular application. But they're still neat and illustrate some of what can be done, and the author showed how to write one of them for Windows or other platforms that don't normally support it, which is cool.
I'm hoping as I get deeper into the material (I'm only about halfway in to the "simpler" of the books, which is detailed conceptually but not as difficult technically - read, not as dry ;), I'll encounter more that's actually new to me in the technical arena. A lot of it won't actually apply; the more difficult book in particular has large chunks that are foundation, rather than direct tools, for what we do - or outright don't apply to what we do.
I'm looking forward to those, too, though. Understanding your foundation is pretty critical, and I think I do, but reading the detailed stuff on it will help a lot. (I'm not quite "into" it enough to want to dive into a full example implementation of a TCP/IP stack, though, so I didn't get anything like that. Maybe I'll change my mind later.) And if I only understand what we're doing now, how am I supposed to know what to do with a new and different situation/design, or evaluate the work of someone dealing with it?
I thrive on seeing things going well. I hope today was accurate and not just a still before more storming, because it's really restored my confidence. And reminded me why I do love my job. Making things right, making things work, yes, but also the technical intricacies. I learned about a new driver-set (which I do not like because they are a big fat Pain In The Ass and do annoying things, but which I do now understand and know how to hamstring until they are NOT being a Pain - and hopefully we will learn better ways to keep them in line while using many of their features, or an alternate driver for the same cards, in the future).
And yes, I can write this much about random thoughts at the end of the day; I've had enough time to relax and think to have thoughts. I didn't claim to be terse at any point, I hope? ;)
Time for me to say good night. It's 10:10 now, and the alarm will go off at 6:30. I was very restless last night, waking every hour or two through the night and seeing that it was 1, afraid it was time for me to be downstais and I'd overslept until I checked the clock. I'm thinking tonight will be much better, without as much to be anxious about, so hopefully that's the case (both the quieter night and less to be anxious about!).
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 8:03 am (Central)
And I'm in, on time (got here about 5 minutes ago and started setting up). I've started reading the Lisle book (I had extra time this morning), and boy was it hard to put down. If it lives up to that first bit that I read, it's going to be an incredible book. And it's part of a series! *bouncy*
Now, as long as today goes well...no one stopped me as I came through the dispatch center, so that's promising?
I love the differences in security at these places, too. One place I went, I had to enter past an officer who would check my right to be there, go up two floors, get buzzed into the comm center/data area (after being viewed by camera and queried), and then get a sergeant to let me into the server room.
By contrast, I parked here, walked in the back door, walked in the door to dispatch, and passed through the server room to my work area. Many of the doors are locked, but because the facility isn't complete, it's actually deliberately not secured, in part for our benefit.
Ah, well. Speaking of complete, I need to check those logs!
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 9:48 am (Central)
Best wishes, etc. I keep getting pulled from the logs by customer issues with other things. So far, so good. They reported that putting the group on an override address didn't let them enter the call. So I did it (in a test system) and it worked just fine. Requires agency in the group so we checked theirs. They all have agencies. Went to check and the dispatcher said, of course it works, I just did it with a call earlier. (It was the midnight shift that reported this - I suspect they've had the least training/play-time with the system, as is often the case, unfortunately.)
Then there's the fact that they don't like having it auto-select calls. Apparently should have been off, but wasn't; showed him how to turn it off and distribute that to the workstations.
Need a "reload options from distribution" menu item on the comdir module. Yes, yes we do! :)
Then they had a too-large font in the unit status window. Showed them how resizing the headings changed the font automatically, which they apparently weren't aware of (or, more likely, had forgotten - there is a lot of info / things to learn here and even I, having written a bunch of them and worked on it for over three years, forget some of it at times!).
So far, my opinion of their ani/ali layout is, "weird!" There appears to be an extra junk character before the actual parsing info, so no wonder we are having such trouble and the position is so oddly placed in the message. Trying to rewrite the routine to process it / send it properly, but have to figure out what "properly" is for this scenario, first. Pulled the overnight test data and am using that to repeatedly run different stuff over here with the program set up to pull from the log. Whee!
And it's almost done compiling so, back to that.
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 1:30 pm (Central)
What was that I said about meals yesterday? I'm still here. No lunch. But it was my choice, and I may go soon. I am hungry. I just want to get their 911 feed working first, if I can. Right now, they get the calls but not the info to their event form. Not sure what's up with that.
Oh, well. A little bit more and I think I'll have it good. I'm going to change only the parsing - not the sending - that way maybe I can avoid breaking the workstations, which I'd really rather NOT do, when the server upgrades....
We're getting there. They seem to be pretty stable but I'd still like to test that (well, only if it passes!) before I leave for the day today.
We'll see what I can do. I bet I can get this sorted out in just a bit here.
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 4:00 pm (Central)
Had lunch finally. Still fighting with the distribution to get the ani/ali change in, and getting progressively less amused by it. May have to do some custom "tweaking" to make it all happy.
Going to work at least until 6, maybe 7. Longer if I don't have the 911 sorted out but at worst I can patch that one program in for the night, I believe. I'd like to do it right, though.
I've got permission to take photos of the server (which has a really COOL plexiglas "hat" designed to keep water from coming down on it directly, good if the A/C pipe breaks again, bad if the server's on fire and the sprinklers are trying to put it out) and of the dispatch center. Note that this is from the guy in charge here; the dispatchers might be another matter. Most dispatchers don't mind photos of their center, fewer than average mind photos of themselves, as long as you don't do it during a majorly busy or tense moment.
I'm tired. And my eyes ache. Bah. But I'll be okay. That's just the ooo-I've-just-eaten sleepies speaking. ;)
[9/11 WTC]9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 4:40 pm (Central)
I just got an email that our CEO sent to the whole company, at once saying we want to go on and be resilient (ie, come to work) tomorrow, but also that there will be a moment of silence in each office at 0900 local (odd, to mark it then, and not when it happened, but I can also understand it), and that any employee who wants to attend a memorial service in their community may do so, and charge the time as 'bereavement' time.
That's kind of cool, and it's kind of...I don't know. I just know I'm a bit tired of the whole 9/11 thing, even though at the same time I want to stare at it again. I think actually because it draws me in to the hype is part of why it annoys me so!
[end 9/11 WTC]
9/10/2002 (Tuesday) 9:45 pm (Central)
I actually left about 6:30. It was raining, the clouds had come in and it's supposed to storm tonight. It did, a little, but not how they meant; heavy rain (the first in a while; I drove carefully) and some moderate winds. There's supposed to be thunder and lightning tonight but for now the weather's a lull. I don't know if it's biding till later, or has changed its mind.
Definitely, the heat has broken. They say it's supposed to be fall-like for the rest of the week, which sounds pleasant to me. So far my allergies haven't been too unpleasant to me, and I'd love to see it stay that way.
Anyway, I was glad to leave early when I thought the storm would get worse, and there was nothing to keep me there. I had the 911 feed back for them by then, though it's currently rendering all the city codes invalid. I'll have to try to clean that up tomorrow morning. I have the right code - but I don't have the right build; there's something in the new base that's not quite right, as best I can tell. The piece I need is fine, but one of the pieces I think is the same, isn't performing right. I've got someone reviewing the last week's changes and I should have an email documenting them by now - I'll get it in the morning. From there it should be easy to clean up. I hope.
I got a tour of the facility this afternoon, actually before the last couple of notes that I wrote in. It's fairly big, but not nearly what I expected when they described it as big and said the deputies had (jokingly, I hope) asked for rollerblades to go down the central corridor. Very strange. It's funny; my coworkers said it was eerie to be shown through it, but I found it vaguely interesting and yet slightly boring in its own way.
I meant to work on a documentation project I've got - not for work - but I didn't. I'll try to do it tomorrow, and exercise again. Right now, I'm watching the news for a little bit, and then I need to be asleep so I can wake up without bitching about it tomorrow. :)
[9/11 WTC]9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 7:31 am (Central)
Of course, I turned the tv on when I got up this morning. I can't stand not to stare at it, even though it annoys me. That says a lot, I suppose. I turned it on just in time to see the officer's three-year-old daughter and her father. He talked a bit about her mother and they showed clips of the girl - Patricia - accepting medals and plaques in her mother's honor over the past year, and then, singing patriotic songs that had been sung at the ceremonies.
I'm so glad I am working today, in all honesty. I think of how many people will be watching the 15 hours (or whatever other stations are doing) of coverage, and I hate to think what that constant bombardment will do.
Fortunately, I need to go get breakfast and head over to the client site in just a little bit.
[end 9/11 WTC]
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 8:12 am (Central)
And now I'm in at the client's. I actually stood around for about ten minutes until the phone guys got here and opened the door; the never-latched door I was told to use, was latched, and the guy I was given a number for? I was given the wrong (disconnected) number. I was getting close to either walking around to the front entrance (unlikely to work, since it's to the sherriff's portion of the building and they have not moved in yet!) or calling the sherriff's number (posted on the door) in the hopes that they (still in their old building) could ring dispatch (who ought not have to open doors).
Fortunately, I'm now in and can try to do something useful.
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 12:34 pm (Central)
Wooo! Found the problem. Of course, it was stupid. Of course, it was my stupid. I had changed a value in a header file for testing, not changed it back, and failed to see this in like 4-5 diffs. AUGH. But, in a minute I'll be able to test. I'm betting that my test workstation will come up & join just fine and behave itself. From there, I can update the server, then all of their workstations, and the parsing will be good.
That leaves only a minor geo-load issue. I can fix the geo-load issue pretty easily, I think.
Which means that this is going REALLY well and I'm going to sit at the client site, answer questions (and chat with the director who likes to drop in and chit-chat), and do non-site-related work for two days, I think.
That sounds really, really sweet. Well on track for heading out Friday and having a nice weekend. And I have not had to work 13-hour days. The big bad scary problem cleared up on Monday, leaving me with the (major to minor) nuisances. I have it down to one minor nuisance (911 parsing - it's giving useful data, just putting spaces in the middle of names and street names, which looks dumb, but gets the info there and logs it, anyway), one medium nuisance (geo load - somehow a street got dropped - but it's in their live data, they just can't synchronize in the database till I fix it, and we can selectively bring in any non-street data...), and nothing else outstanding.
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Off to test now. The minor nuisance is gonna be gone in 10 minutes (maybe more, they're a bit busy for restarts from the sound of it), I can feel it, I have it...!
[Do I sound a wee bit excited? Oh, wait - I am! *g*]
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 6:51 pm (Central)
Well, wasn't that fun. The test worked fine, the 911 was basically good, and I just had the geo issue left to deal with. And then someone from the database team connected in to set up some scheduled tasks and had the server for 45 minutes right on toward quitting time. I picked it up again at 5, at 5:15 I was told the mapping guys were stopping by at 7 to do some stuff on their side, and could I be here in case they had questions?
[9/11 WTC]
Sure. I promptly left for dinner, watched a half hour of 9/11 stuff (this a rather interesting piece on ABC that just pushed together the timetables of the day for government, responses from the military, etc. - I only made it up to slightly after the Pentagon before I had to come back, but that's okay, I don't really need the whole day minute-by-minute, but the originally-confused part was kinda interesting), and then came back.
[end 9/11 WTC]
And here I am. After some work. When I first got here, the back door they've had me using was locked. Oops. And the client contact I've got was doing something (which I knew) so attempts to reach him by his office phone (the number I have) predictably failed. So I walked around to the front (of an as-yet-not-open-to-the-public building), got let in by someone who recognized me (but I didn't her - oops), and she led me back through the records section and around the corner toward the hallway I know. Then I waved to the dispatchers and got them to let me into the communications room, found that the server-room door was still unlocked (which is how the client & I had set it earlier in the day; I saw no need to change it when I left, since I'd be back, and it paid off!), and then around the corner from the server room to the meeting room that is our temporary workspace.
Wheeee! It wasn't as bad as it sounds. Nice, easy steps, and the worst that could happen is I sit outside the center till the client gets back. I can't miss meeting with the guys who are supposed to show up after me; if I can't get in, neither can they! And actually it worked about as described for such moments.
Now to get my email and find out what panics (if any) I precipitated with my last email about a procedure that didn't get set up. :)
9/11/2002 (Wednesday) 11:09 pm (Central)
Okay, much less amused now. I ended up having to do the load by hand. Which is fine, except, I started it way too late for that. I didn't leave the client site until 10:30 and almost all that time was hand-entering 1 street, 140 segments, and 5 commonplaces in almost-perfect conformance with the original data.
One segment differs. It's driving me BUGNUTS. I have to find that typo, and they're good.
Almost there, though. Almost there. And NOT getting there tonight. Exhausted. :) Client has stuff to do in the morning and told me to show up late. I did not and will not argue. Exhausted.
9/12/2002 (Thursday) 8:52 am (Central)
Waiting for services to finish starting on this laptop and then back into the fray. Feeling better this morning, I got enough sleep. Not altogether happy with my late night last night, but human this morning.
9/12/2002 (Thursday) 10:26 am (Central)
Found it, fixed it, all good. Down to the mapping issues (non-critical, sent them back to someone in the office) and the designs I was originally supposed to get done this week....
Feeling hopeful. Currently planning to leave about noonish tomorrow.
9/12/2002 (Thursday) 8:38 pm (Central)
Didn't get to see the building I wanted to; I didn't leave until about 6:30, got back to the hotel around 7:00 with my dinner. The sun was already setting; I'll have a look tomorrow, if I can get a parking spot somewhere that will let me. Have to try for at least some shots, right?
It's still going decently. The mapping is winning in my war to make it not display what I don't want it to display, and I'm getting progressively more annoyed. Everything is set right. It's going to come down to debugging, but it requires proprietary software and a dongle to ensure licensing is met.
I have those. Back. At the. Office. I can hardly steal both from a client workstation, and I can't put my developer's tools on one either. The person who is supposed to be testing it for me sent me a solution that not only didn't work, it COULD NOT have worked and I perceived this within a minute of receiving it. My solution which looks tight to me? Did not work.
Color.
Me.
Annoyed.
...Oh, SHIT. Just realized why it's not working, why it can't work. I'm intercepting the CALLS. But it's not the call - it's the UNIT.... Dammit. Dammit. Ahhhh! I can fix this. Sorta. Kinda. Yeah.
Ew.
Okay, now to do it.
There. Fix applied.
Anyway, finished reading Holly Lisle's Memory of Fire. It was on the "new releases" shelf when I got it - within the past month, I think. It is EXCELLENT.
I. Want. A sequel, NOW. Nownownownow. I do not care about logic. I want the next part of this story. She is MEAN. In the way that I can admire. I want the next part of the story. I want. The sequel.
It's a trilogy. GIVE ME THE NEXT BOOK. Give it now. And then. Write more series. In this world.
I want to roleplay in this setting. This world. Is SO COOL. I don't think you could make it work as a game, honestly - maybe I'm wrong - but oh my gosh this setting is glorious....
Ripped a pair of pants, too. Fortunately at the hotel, in my room, sitting down to dinner. *sighs* Oh, well, time to go shopping again. I really hate buying pants. I am not normally fond of wearing skirts, though. Bah.
9/13/02 (Friday) 8:14 am (Central)
Have a compile running now, once that's done I can build the distribution. This should take care of 90% of the map stuff! I have an idea on why the 911 parser is not presenting well and can also look at that in a bit but I want to get this map thing licked first.
So far, looking almost on-schedule for a noon departure. I got in 10 minutes late so I might leave at noon and might leave slightly after (but I've put in almost 40 hours this week on tasks for this client, not counting administrative/email/queries from other projects/design docs/base bugs - which I have ALSO dealt with. "Almost" as in "Two hours from now I will have" (provided I work steadily on their issues; hoping there won't be that many). So, not much guilt factor over 10 minutes. Counting travel time, I'm going to get above 55 hours this week (not counting the return trip, which is actually in next week - we bill Saturday-Friday).
All checked out of the hotel; found my flight info (so I wouldn't panic about not having it, mainly), road/directions info so I can return the car, confirmed my recollection about where I was meeting Jenn, and checked the room about sixty times to make sure I wasn't leaving anything behind that I didn't mean to.
My packing job is really funny, since it's not the final job. I made sure my other shoes (that I will switch to on leaving the client site) were easily accessible by dumping them in my backpack, along with the clean clothes I'm planning to wear tomorrow and Sunday. Whee! I'm planning to dump my laptop case in the suitcase when I leave today as well. It will be a lot easier to haul around that way and, with the weekend's clothes in my backpack, there's actually room. (The original packing job was a bit loose.) Obviously it won't be that way Sunday but, for navigating public transportation, I suspect it's my best bet.
Oh, and I have to buy another bottle of water while I'm here. (The client's vending machines are cheaper than getting the same items, in the same size, as Target. I'm lazy and would probably have gotten it here anyway, but it's cheaper besides. Heh. I love public safety, this building has junk food - and some non-junk-food - vending machines all over. Though the ones I actually have access to are just chips/candy/water/soda.)
Ah, well. Build time!
9/13/02 (Friday) 11:24 am (Central)
Just a bit spacy. Starting to relax. I'm going to take off in a half hour, and I'm not doing anything new to the client site (there's nothing that "needs" to be done, no disasters outstanding, etc.), except to pull a backup before I go - which I'm going to do once I finish typing this.
The client is much happier; I had a dispatcher tell me how much she really likes this system, and the client-side project manager (the 911 director) says he is feeling much more secure/confident about the setup than a week ago, since we've resolved what worried him.
YES.
Right now, there's a little bit of backup work ahead of me, some goodbyes, and some driving. Oh, and a stop in Valpo to take pictures of that church (if I can find somewhere that's good to park), and also a stop for lunch. I'll call Jenn after I eat lunch, since I'm going to get it here, and then she'll have a good idea of when I "really" left.
Yesyesyes. This week has really actually managed to go well. I've had a good time. And now I get to have a whole weekend visit. Yay!
9/15/2002 (Sunday) 3:31 pm (Central)
I've had net access, so I've been posting directly, but now I'm at the airport. Not so much detail to put here since a lot of it I've already posted, but it's been a great visit. I really enjoyed seeing Jenn again and meeting John and Eloise. We played Apples to Apples twice and if the two sets of words I wrote down weren't in my checked luggage, I'd add them here. They're not all the good lines; I didn't think of note-taking till late in the first game, and I wasn't consistent about it either.
Just for the record, the neighborhood is really cool and I did get some photos of the area - and I want the Italian restaurant on the corner. It can just come back with me. Nummy. (The Mexican place downstairs from their apartment can also come with, but is not quite on the same level as the Italian place, since they don't have the desserts selection.... Sugar shock. And bliss.)
I think I already said that we went to see the glass in the garden exhibit at the conservatory, but if I forgot - we did, and it's cool. VERY cool. Many photographs, which I'll have to sort out and decide what to share. Really, really cool. A bitch to capture; those darned reflections. Some of the pics really worked, though.
Jenn and I also did the photographing of each other game so that we have more things to try for user pics. If you were wondering why I said "militant cute!" on the last post...that's why. See, I was wearing the blue-and-white skirt I got recently (the one I debated, then went back and got another day), and a hot pink t-shirt. (Not really the best shirt but I don't have a good shirt for it yet). So, already over-cute. We did several poses, and then Jenn braided my hair - two braids, down the front.
Folks, when you do this to me, at least in my opinion, I start to look underage.... She got pictures of me that way, and then Eloise loaned me a cat mask she has and we got a photo of that.
And then I decided to pose, hands on hips, in braids, in this outfit, in the cat mask. And Jenn took the shot. And there is no description for it except for militant cute.
I'll probably upload and share it here one of these days. I'm trying to get a userpic out of it, but it doesn't work too well since you really need the full-body shot and, shrunk, you lose a lot of the nuances of it.
Still. Militant cute!
Jenn gave me a really, really cool little cat figure. I have photos of that too, but mostly I have it, which is veryvery cool. Is a cute little clay calico, very sweet.
And we loaned books. She's given me Jim Butcher's Storm Front (which I'll be starting on the plane, where I won't be using this laptop). I handed her Holly Lisle's Memory of Fire and she has it with her to read on her way back from the airport. I may have just interfered with her getting things done today, if she enjoys that book as much as I did.... I gave it to her for two reasons. One is that it rocks and I want to share the joy and I really really REALLY want to be able to babble at her about it - and doing that in any detail is rude before it's been read. And the other reason is that, quite simply, if she has the book I don't. Maybe I'll do things other than reread it if I do that. :)
She has the niftiest thing. I knew about it, had even gotten a link to the company's web site and seen it, but it's still cool. It's a sort of slim-line backpack that holds two liters of water and has a drinking tube from the bottom up to your mouth so that you can have water as you walk without having to stop or juggle bottles. REALLY cool and if I take up walking/hiking more seriously, or mean to, I may have to get one. They're not that expensive, either.
And I got to meet Eloise and John, which is very very cool. They're nice, they have neat music and silly conversations, and they're fun. Also? John looks way too much like a guy named Ethan, whom I knew in college. (Ethan-now, not Ethan-then.) If they come out, I have pictures to prove it.... Though I won't post those unless he says it's okay. There are only a couple people reading this who would get the comment, and one of them is Jenn, who already knows and hardly needs pictures to see the resemblance.
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