11:02 p.m. - 2004-05-05
Day 3
I'm working in the office tower that holds the daycare and it adds a lot to my morning already. Today I heard one Mom say resignedly to her 3 year old son of the strawberry red hair and blue eyes description "I don't care if the man on the bus did wish you a Merry Christmas, Santa will NOT be coming for a visit for a loooong time yet." You see it snowed - a lot - overnight last night. The day before mid 70's F/20'sC and shorts and t-shirt weather. Today - well boots and bandanas at any rate.
One poor fellow on the train was obviously an IT support person on call. His phone never stopped ringing with obviously panicked or irate clients on the other end. Piecing together all the tid-bits - his night went like this: heavy wet snow on the power lines all over caused power surges that blew out fuses and whatever (compressors?) on most of the servers/PCs in the building where he works from midnight and on. He was running around trying to keep all the units safe or repairing those already compromised. He got a call in the dead of night that a power surge in his community had caused his fridge to burst into flames. He must live near us because we had those surges and almost lost our power at one point too. He left the office to deal with the home issue but got stuck in one of the elevators in the building when the power surged through their lines yet again. His neighbour had helped his wife deal with the immediate problems but he stayed home long enough to ensure that no further fire hazards were left at home. He then turned around and was on the train with us explaining to his boss why he had "deserted" his post as well as to everyone else what the status was with respect to their computer networks. I bet he didn't get a nap all day either.
Work was fine - just working through the data until about mid-morning. I cleaned up one record and saved it. Went back to the original window to find that the new record had been saved but that also a second version of that file - only distinguishable by one id number - that hadn't been "visible" prior to the file name change showed up. It had somehow been suppressed prior to that time. All the files are supposed to have id numbers but several I had worked on the day before hadn't had so I had stopped fussing about that and got on with the work I have been assigned. With this one I went and asked my liaison to take a look so she could witness what I had found. She couldn't explain either the suppression or the issue with the id numbers. Again she made reference to "others" who had control of some parts of the database not respecting all the coding protocols. Since the whole point of managing data is to ensure it is trackable and accessible all at the same time that is a major problem. Again she looked a bit defeated.
I'm settling in to the rhythms of the office ok. The coffee is made the way they like it "back home" in Europe - good, but it could probably substitute for a heart defibrillator in a pinch. Wow. This office is different in that it is quite informal and open - people actually visit and laugh quite openly and frequently and with approval. That is not normal in the industry I work in. Laughing without permission is almost a criminal offense in some places ditto talking to the wrong/unapproved contacts in a work environment. The discussions are very loud sometimes but I love the sound of the accents in the mens' voices deep but musical at the same time. I keep my headphones on both so my attention stays focussed on the work I'm supposed to get done "ASAP" and also to ensure I don't hear too much of the internal business of the company.
Apparently that really angers one of the women who was quite pleasant the first couple of days. Today when she walked by my office, she would bang hard on the glass each time and at one point walked in to the office - my back is to the door -and started opening and closing some of the drawers. What's up with that I wonder? I know that means I'm not paying attention to her when she talks, but I'm not supposed to be talking with anyone - just working on data is my assignment. She isn't even anyone I need to interact with in terms of the information I'm processing - she shouldn't be in that database at all. Odd.
Went out walking at noon - two of the political contacts I didn't see at the meeting work in the core. I dropped off a package for one of them the first day, because they are only a couple of buildings away and I could pop in between the train stop I get off and the building where I work.Today I delivered the other package - the opposite side of downtown so I had a brisk walk both because of the distance and the cold. The plus fifteen pedestrian walkway is nice, but the route between my building and hers would have doubled the amount of walking time partly because it is a meandering connection of tunnels and partly because the lunchtime crowd was very obviously heavy. Most workers prefer not to go out in the cold and for good reason sometimes. At one corner, I was just approaching the sidewalk as I crossed the street when a huge block of ice from the top of one of the 30 story buildings came crashing down. It slammed onto the windshield of the truck waiting for me to get out of the crosswalk so it could turn. Some of that bounced off and hit the gentleman already on the curb. I commented that that was scary and he grinned and said now he could sue. He had me as a witness to the incident and he said his wife could attest to the brain damage part of the suit. Glad he kept a sense of humour about the whole thing.
Got home without incident - just a foggy, drizzly commute. Found a voicemail from one of the women I worked with back about two contracts ago. We often rode in to work together in the morning since she lives one community over from me and has the same connectors. I get the sense she saw me on the bus and wondered why I hadn't said hi or told her I was back working. I hadn't said hi because my eyes are still adjusting to having contacts lenses in them at such an unearthly hour and I really don't see much for the first half hour or so until the eyes are adjusted somewhat - I can get to the bus stop and train station on automatic pilot without seeing. I didn't tell her about being back at work because if the election had been called on Sunday I wouldn't have been on the bus. This week lunch hours are all taken up with catch up errands. I saw my chiropractor, praise be, yesterday for example. Because the election could be called on any Sunday I don't want to commit to someone I really like and then have to cancel out on them. It's hard to get people to understand that during an election I have no time for anything at all. One of my sisters called to tell me about a family picnic planned for the end of the month for example. She was quite perturbed when I explained that issue to her. What do you mean - family time is important! I agree, but I can only run on high octane fumes for so long and that is what it takes to get through an election. If it is that important that they see me they can bring some picnic to me in the office and I'll even let them vote - how's that for family togetherness?
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