One would think that being a short work week (we only had to work 3 days), things would be fairly laid back and easy. After all half the people were out.
Boy, were we in for a big surprise. Monday was a "normal" work day. Pretty much uneventful. Same crap from the customers, same crap that had to be taken care of.
Tuesday morning I logged on early since we had to see why a client didn't get their file and yup it fell into my lap. While checking that out my boss calls me before 6:30 a.m.
Now, my boss and I never talk before 7:30 a.m. He tells me we have problems. I proceed to let him know that I'm looking into this file. He says we need to check that out but we have bigger problems. That nothing ran Monday night, there were Mainframe problems and he was on conference calls with the other managers and the tech guys. They had decided that they were not going to run the batch for Monday night and double up for Tuesday. That works nicely for most of the systems but not for the billing system. We have never doubled up on the billing system before.
We talked when everyone got in because some of the jobs ran before the system decided to take a hit and then some of the jobs ran in the morning after they got the system to limp along.
Our plan was to try to get them to let us run day time, complete Monday's cycle and be on track for Tuesday night. HA! Everyone said no. The system was up and running but they didn't have it completely up and running and they couldn't allow us to chew up all the CPU cycles.
Shift gears, who can work that night to babysit the Billing System and the 2 other systems that we own. It turns out that anyone not on vacation, ended up working that night. There were 1 or 2 people not involved in the recovery so there were a few people in during the day as those of us who stayed all night slowly left and went home to sleep.
I only slept a couple of hours, did a couple of errands and logged back on to relieve the person who was staying to someone else came back. Of course there were a number of jobs that had failed because data was available to send to outside clients or the connections weren't working right. So, I kept getting hit with those errors. We were lucky because the Tech guy we were working with, was very flexible and picked up a lot of the slack on this for us. He didn't have to.
In between trouble shooting, we have our customers asking us to do things they can do themselves (nothing new), trying to figure out how to run Tuesday nights processing which would actually be Tues/Wed processing.
People working Wednesday night started to float in around 5 p.m. I stayed on for awhile on Wednesday but there wasn't much I could do except watch and check out a few jobs. I told them if they needed me to call, wake me if they had to. I just can't work those hours like I used to!
When I woke up on Turkey day - they were still working, trying to get some critical pieces of the processing done. They eventually called someone who had retired to help them out so they could get through the processing.
I logged off yesterday around 11 and they were still on. I checked around 12:30 and thankfully they were all logged off. One of the guys gets on last night and sends me an IM to see if I know about some outside Client. Now he is one of the guys that worked both Tuesday and Wednesday night. Luckily the problem turned out not to be ours and the other area figured out what they needed to do but I had already logged onto work. I also switch the on call list and put myself on call a couple of days early.
I just need a ton of prayers right now that everything will run smoothly next week. I don't know if I can handle being up all night most nights next week.
That was our short holiday week. That week that should be fairly easy and quiet at work. There is some clean up and followup to do and I know I'm going to try and get my stuff at least started today or tomorrow.
Life in the FAST lane!
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Friday, November 10, 2006
More on Doctors
I had 2 doctors appointments this week. How does one person get so lucky.
My first appt was with my new pdoc or actually the PA that works in the office. He is very nice and knows my PA that is my PCP. Of course they were running behind but after he picked up my chart, it was about a 1/2 hour before he came out to get me. The receptionist told me he had my chart and she didn't know what was taking so long. It turns out that he was reading all the medical information that I provided (I have very detailed information) and he was trying to figure out what he needed to ask.
He told me I was a pretty complicated case - though I am stable in the psych area at this time. He didn't rush through anything and didn't try to just push me out the door. I like the fact that he is going to take his cues from me as to what needs to be done with my psych meds. I go back to see him in 6 weeks more so to get to know each other better than anything else. He also wants me to meet the psychiatrist in case there is ever a need that I need to see him, I won't be dealing with a stranger.
I also saw Melissa (PA - PCP) and she reviewed my lab results with me. Oh what fun that was - NOT!
Here's the deal with this: I am now taking meds for high blood pressure and for high cholesterol. I am scheduled for a Glucose Tolerance Test on 12/21 and she'll do a physcial on the same day since I'll be there for so long. They'll also repeat some of the labs, I believe. And she added Fish Oil Capsules also. I'm going to have to get bigger med containers at this rate.
Melissa is almost postive that I have Diabetes but the GTT will tell her that and depending on the results I'll be put on another med.
Of course, it is time to change what I eat and I need to get some exercise in. At some point, I need to quit smoking again but she isn't pushing that yet - she said she knows how hard it is to quit. I'm just happy she isn't making me eat fish!
Now I need to get a GYN and Melissa has given me the name of a place to call. If I didn't have abnormal Paps - she would do them but I wouldn't be normal if I wasn't abnormal.
Then the final doctor to get - the dentist. I'm due for a cleaning in Jan so it's almost time to get busy with that one so they will be able to get my records before my appt.
For now, I'm still using my therapist in CT and I"m in no rush to change that. At some point Pam and I will decide if continuing with phone sessions is good enough, stopping therapy for a while might be okay or getting a new therapist here would be a good idea. For now, it works so we don't try to fix it.
My first appt was with my new pdoc or actually the PA that works in the office. He is very nice and knows my PA that is my PCP. Of course they were running behind but after he picked up my chart, it was about a 1/2 hour before he came out to get me. The receptionist told me he had my chart and she didn't know what was taking so long. It turns out that he was reading all the medical information that I provided (I have very detailed information) and he was trying to figure out what he needed to ask.
He told me I was a pretty complicated case - though I am stable in the psych area at this time. He didn't rush through anything and didn't try to just push me out the door. I like the fact that he is going to take his cues from me as to what needs to be done with my psych meds. I go back to see him in 6 weeks more so to get to know each other better than anything else. He also wants me to meet the psychiatrist in case there is ever a need that I need to see him, I won't be dealing with a stranger.
I also saw Melissa (PA - PCP) and she reviewed my lab results with me. Oh what fun that was - NOT!
Here's the deal with this: I am now taking meds for high blood pressure and for high cholesterol. I am scheduled for a Glucose Tolerance Test on 12/21 and she'll do a physcial on the same day since I'll be there for so long. They'll also repeat some of the labs, I believe. And she added Fish Oil Capsules also. I'm going to have to get bigger med containers at this rate.
Melissa is almost postive that I have Diabetes but the GTT will tell her that and depending on the results I'll be put on another med.
Of course, it is time to change what I eat and I need to get some exercise in. At some point, I need to quit smoking again but she isn't pushing that yet - she said she knows how hard it is to quit. I'm just happy she isn't making me eat fish!
Now I need to get a GYN and Melissa has given me the name of a place to call. If I didn't have abnormal Paps - she would do them but I wouldn't be normal if I wasn't abnormal.
Then the final doctor to get - the dentist. I'm due for a cleaning in Jan so it's almost time to get busy with that one so they will be able to get my records before my appt.
For now, I'm still using my therapist in CT and I"m in no rush to change that. At some point Pam and I will decide if continuing with phone sessions is good enough, stopping therapy for a while might be okay or getting a new therapist here would be a good idea. For now, it works so we don't try to fix it.
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