| Spanish Inquisition |
Sorry, between getting ready for camping and the goings on at work the last little bit, I have been finding it hard to find time to visit let alone post. So without further ado I bring you...
This morning was when the Spanish Inquisition happened. We all showed up in a mid sized conference room and got started. First a few pointed questions and than finger pointing started. My plan was to keep my mouth shut and not even bring forward the information I had. That lasted like that for about 10 minutes before things started to head my way.
I grabbed my sword and trusty shield and headed off into battle. Luckily everything was glancing blows as they determined I was waiting for the attack. After circling for a little while they went in for the kill. But the other brave knight in the room would have none of that as he fought back in hand to hand combat. After a while my boss stepped in and kind of straightened things out and got us heading in some other direction so the brave knight could free himself.
Unfortunately the wench who was primarily responsible for heading us down the road less traveled yesterday did not say a lot today. Somehow she was escaping fairly unscathed.
The end result I think we are more prepared should some of what happened yesterday ever happen again. But when it comes down to it this was a case of user error that happened in combination with a few other things at the worst possible time. In truth, short of those people that were in charge sharing more with the underlings, there is little that could be done to prevent this from happening again. As it is we already work together as a fairly well oiled machine. Mistakes happen all the time but we do what we can to fix those mistakes we see before they are noticed regardless who is responsible and give each other heads up when appropriate and possible.
So I survived the Spanish Inquisition today… what fun things did you do today?
Man that was so much fun yesterday. Things went wrong, nothing major but they did cascade. If you were planning for something to go wrong you almost could not have done better if you tried. I can see it now … (wavey dream sequence like in Waynes World begins here) Wow, that really messed things up. What else can we do? I know, let's put a banana peal right in front of him and see if he slips on it… hahahaha got him.
Well things did not go well and shortly after the event was over we got the call. We were to appear in the principal's office. Actually bosses boss but principal brings up a much better mental picture, don't you think? This was to take place the following morning. Oh joy!
Well last night I decided to stay after work and dig into logs to see if I could document what really happened to make sure no one pointed a finger in our direction. I have been there to often. Actually that is why one of the logs I consulted was created in the first place. I put together a simple table with dates, times and events and another thing that simply said, in technical English more or less what happened. After sending that to my boss and my partner in crime I called it a night.
Well things did not go well and shortly after the event was over we got the call. We were to appear in the principal's office. Actually bosses boss but principal brings up a much better mental picture, don't you think? This was to take place the following morning. Oh joy!
Well last night I decided to stay after work and dig into logs to see if I could document what really happened to make sure no one pointed a finger in our direction. I have been there to often. Actually that is why one of the logs I consulted was created in the first place. I put together a simple table with dates, times and events and another thing that simply said, in technical English more or less what happened. After sending that to my boss and my partner in crime I called it a night.
This morning was when the Spanish Inquisition happened. We all showed up in a mid sized conference room and got started. First a few pointed questions and than finger pointing started. My plan was to keep my mouth shut and not even bring forward the information I had. That lasted like that for about 10 minutes before things started to head my way.
I grabbed my sword and trusty shield and headed off into battle. Luckily everything was glancing blows as they determined I was waiting for the attack. After circling for a little while they went in for the kill. But the other brave knight in the room would have none of that as he fought back in hand to hand combat. After a while my boss stepped in and kind of straightened things out and got us heading in some other direction so the brave knight could free himself.
Unfortunately the wench who was primarily responsible for heading us down the road less traveled yesterday did not say a lot today. Somehow she was escaping fairly unscathed.
The end result I think we are more prepared should some of what happened yesterday ever happen again. But when it comes down to it this was a case of user error that happened in combination with a few other things at the worst possible time. In truth, short of those people that were in charge sharing more with the underlings, there is little that could be done to prevent this from happening again. As it is we already work together as a fairly well oiled machine. Mistakes happen all the time but we do what we can to fix those mistakes we see before they are noticed regardless who is responsible and give each other heads up when appropriate and possible.
So I survived the Spanish Inquisition today… what fun things did you do today?
Posted by barman at 12:13 PM::
don't hate me, my day was much less stressful since it was the second day of school... aaaaah blissful silence!
I will get there some day too Lime. In the mean time I can just dream of a quiet day. Actually most of the time it is not to bad, just that day was exciting and tomorrow may be exciting too.
If something can go wrong it will go wrong—and at the worst possible moment. Therefore, the Boy Scout Motto.
Bryan welcome back, I missed you!
I am so happy to be my own boss now, I can't even tell you!
It always pissed me off when I was out there working for the man, and sh## always rolled downhill!
Nick that certainly came in handy. We would have been a lot worse off if we were not fairly ready. Now if only I could graduate from cub scout to boy scout.
Thank you LW. I missed you too. Yep, it is great and not so great being your own boss. Just think, now all your employees work for "the woman". :)
It's the life of Jill...what can go wrong WILL go wrong ;o)
WHATEVER
HITS
theFAN
Will NOT
be evenly
distributed...........
Jillie, isn't that the truth? Oh well, I have worked there forever so I am kind of ready for just about anything. As to what life throws me, I have gotten good at making lemonade when possible.
Queenie, I see things do not change no matter where you are from.
Wow what a rough start to come back to after a nice long weekend.
Glad you got things straightened and you survived the Inquistion.lol
Funny pic by the way.:)
tc
TC, I love Monty Python and the last picture was just so perfect. There are still rumblings going on from that but oh well, it is basically over. I need to make way see what you have been up to before Friday comics gets here...
I like your fun writing style.
That was a most creative post, Bryan! I like the way it was written.
Hope things have gotten better since then.
I never could understand why when something goes wrong the first thing people feel the need to do is find someone specific to blame. Often times it's a result of more than one blunder.
Good thing you went in prepared.
Good story. And good use of Monty Python references...
Thank you Jessica, that was kind of fun and thank you so much for visiting. I love your pictures over on your blog. I need to catch up a little with you.
Thanks Sign. Things are crazy again today as I will probably work to 9 o'clock, midnight or even later. That and we have had two hickups already. I want my blanket!
Crabby this was the result of a lot of little errors including the first one that happened way back the end of June. I had a bad feeling that I better cover my butt (well actually the collective butts of the group I work in) just to be safe. Pheh!
Thank you David and welcome. I love Monty Python. See I have a special connection. One of the movies they did was the Life of Brian. My name happens to be Bryan. I addopted that movie as my very own. "Always look on the bright side of life (whistling that I have no idea how to show in comments)"
A man with both sword and shield is good.
Came to see your 55, is it the time between the lake, am I to early or am I late????
That doesn't sound very fun. You used much self-restraint, brave knight, when you used the word "wench," in place of many other words I'm sure you could have used. Chivalry lives on!
I've had many days like that. I have grown very thick skin and have the Sword of Griffindor to protect me. Lately I've been fortunate that it hasn't been too bad. I'm running a project at work that has great potential to run off the rails. I'm sure I'll be on the defensive for its duration.
I've worked for organizations over 1000 employees and under 10. The BS is usually proportional.
I am a computer souvenir collector, I have 3350s, FEPs, MF parts. We had an old mainframe that was being junked and some friends and I stripped it. We wanted a TCM, but the CE went nuts and said those had to go to the factory. So a new system was in and the old one was waiting for a scrap dealer. Well a performance problem reoccurred on the new system. You probably know that when you install a new system and dramatically change the resources, you may need to fine tune it.
So the director hears of the performance problem and calls the ops manager and says get tech support in for a hardware rollback. Well the ops manager knew the machine was scavenged and would never run again, but he calls me at home anyway to tell me this plan.
I laughed my ass off and told him he had better tell the director that the machine had been prepared for the scrap dealer and would never function again. He was crapping himself.
So I dragged my ass in and had to calmly explain that doing a hardware rollback would only guarantee problems and that I had every confidence in my performance projections and that a period of fine tuning would be needed until we reached a steady state.
Wouldn't it be a dream just to do the work without goofy managers suggesting even dumber things?
Wouldn't that be something John? I once had a small mainframe that I was more or less responsible for being the systems programmer. My new boss told me that, even though we did not have working air conditioning for the computer room, we were going to keep the mainframe up. OK, I knew the business much better than her. I knew we could take the mainframe down and bring it up later when the phone rooms were ready to call in. I also knew that the room would get very warm and we would fry something for no good reason what so ever.
I refused to keep the computer up. We went back and forth and argued about it for probably 30 minutes. In that time the room had climbed at least 15 degrees. She agreed to turn the mainframe off.
The bad part, her boss told me I did wrong and should have left it up. I said but then it would fry the mainframe and we may spend weeks finding what part of the mainframe had a failure so it could be replaced. She said yep and then I could have called someone. Unbelievable. Of course now I know how the game is played and I make sure when ever something stupid is done I put in writing that I said we should or should not do something so no one can come back on me.
I hate games!
Ironically the closest I came to that was working in a small company as a contractor to a huge company (nearly 100,000 people worldwide). Well these people had a super efficient contract management process, and as long as things were going smoothly they stayed out of your way, it was great.
Yeah I love that "we can call someone" when someone at least as qualified is standing right in front of them.
I do remember the days when you could feel the temperature rise when the air went off, but now the ironic thing is two full racks of PCs generate more heat and consume more electricity then today's zSeries Mainframe. Remember the water cooled Mainframes, now they are all air cooled and advanced PCs do water cooling.
Post a Comment
<< Home