Saturday And Ulcers, no blood whoring |12:59 AM|
I'd stayed out a little late the previous evening, and though I was awake in time, I didn't go and sell blood plasma like I intended. I didn't feel like falling down dead later in the day when I'd be pushing myself. I also knew if I was on my game later, I'd earn a lot more with an independent contracting gig I had scheduled. Losing a shit load of my body water mass to the Vampires would not be great for my cognitive powers.
As a side note, Wonderlust says that when I get tired or depressed or really driven, my message style changes distinctly. Each sentence has one subject. The next sentence has another subject. I express few ideas. I become focused on a single project. I become like a telegram. I hadn't noticed. When I went back and read old email exchanges, the difference was easy to see.
2pm rolled around, I went to the client's house, and found no way to get in. I didn't want to jump his fence (thought that'd be rude, and I'd land about 8 feet down in mud. Great.), he wasn't picking up his cellphone.
I managed to get in touch with him later, and came back. The fence that I couldn't jump, and was locked, was defeated if you reached through the bars. Great work, learned helplessness through courtesy! This is the second time in a week and a half that courtesy has handcuffed me. Next time I have a situation like that, I'm breaking more rules.
The gig seemed pretty straightforward. Update a couple of blackberries, update a server for DST 2007, fix a few things around the office. More and more IT issues sprung up as I was there, and I defeated them all. The first blackberry was updated without a problem, the server was updated with only a little hiccup. (I did my reading, did the homework, researched the problem, applied the patch, bounced the server....and it stopped responding to remote desktop. I projected confidence. "No problem!" I squeezed myself in behind the rack, hooked up a borrowed monitor, keyboard, etc, and found a single error state. Cleared it, the whole system came back up. My heart resumed beating. Relief should have been sublime)
I fixed the printer, tracked down some passwords, verified the importing of precious contacts into Outlook, and even changed the default address book list.
When I fixed the calender issues, my client declared I'd just proven myself, and there was an odd/awkward high five. I was riding high. We'd already tested the Blackberry fix, I'd patched now 5 of the things, now it was time for the primary one. The one upon which his business hinged, the one task I had been specifically brought out to fix.
Of course, the patch failed on this one. Of course.
I'll save most of the details, but it took 2 and a half more hours of research, fighting the system, reading forums, downloading patches, and finally a harrowing 25 minute install process, but I fixed it. FIXED IT.
When that little SOB Blackberry popped up properly, I was on cloud goddamn nine.
Looks like I picked up a regular client, and he wants my help once a weekend or once every other weekend. Screw blood plasma, this is my supplementary income.
Once again, I ride out as a independent IT contractor. This time it shouldn't ruin me.Labels: IT Magic
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The feeling of IT |10:30 PM|
This is some naval gazing, probably offering some tiny insight into what drives me, but you can skip it.
There's this (too be expected) wonderful relief when some kind of massive problem solving I'm doing goes well. This is especially true if something during the process has gone horribly awry, I'm in over my head, and there's a deadline. Recent instances of this have been fixing Chris's computer (not as much "over my head" just complete confusion as to what the fuck the problem is, and having to use illogical problem solving to fix it, deductive leaps, what have you) fixing those blackberry servers, the lightbar incident, and the 74-134 test.
With Chris's computer I had to fight the computer to the point that it was giving me an error I even recognized (NTLDR not found) that took an hour. The rest of the time was pretty standard until it stopped booting, with a can't-be-possible error message. I ended up making some completely bizarre changes to the BIOS, (Because that was all that was left, configuration wise) and it worked. The relief was so great at the repair that to be comfortable, I had to lie down, and stare a ceiling fan for a bit. This is not usually an option in a professional support enviroment.
With the lightbar, I got money, praise, the joy of a movie going well, blah blah.
The blackberries I covered in that other post.
The relief is a mixture of "aw shucks" humility, since I didn't call upon training or any other "real" qualification. I jumped in, broke some stuff, figured out what worked, and stumbled around, did some research, projected confidence I didn't have, and came up with an answer. It's a lot like the time I got stuck under a windsurfer. I knew not to panic, that I had plenty of air, go any direction but up, and I'll live.
That's why the relief can't be compared to some kind of Freudian concept that may be occuring to some people. It's more like the relief of not dying, of getting back to a normal mood.
Editing time stamp to indicate when this occurred to me.Labels: IT Magic
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