Working all night? Rarg!

[Yegolev]

Sometimes my job really sucks dog balls.  Not in a good way, either.  And having a god-damned queue on fucking Crushridge in WoW is asinine.  Pigfucking Blizzard.  All I wanted to do was finish off the damn emergency DB restore and several other easy-as-shit things, go mine some fucking asteroids in EVE (you know, since Blizz won't let me into WoW... aw, hell EVE is a better game) and I get whiny bastards from Manilla wanting me to check CPU utilization on some server, when the REAL problem is something that has been pissing me off since 1500 today... HOW ABOUT PESTERING THE ON-CALL PERSON, ASSLICKER!!!!

I don't know how this company accomplishes anything.  Good night.

[angry.bob]

Is the on-call list up to date and distributed to the people who actually need to use it? We used to have this problem all the time because only the shift managers in operations would get the list via e-mail and half the time delete it, then they'd have to try and guess who was oncall, and hope to get a hold of someone. Then we tried putting it on the intranet and that was a total failure for no reason we could figure out. We finally made the company spring for an extra cell phone to be the "oncall" phone. No problems at all since then, The oncall number never changes, though if it's your turn to have it and you don't answer it, you better be unconscious in a hospital.

And WOW queues are teh ghey.

[Yegolev]

Is the on-call list up to date and distributed to the people who actually need to use it? ... Then we tried putting it on the intranet and that was a total failure for no reason we could figure out.

This is the situation we are in.  We have a well-defined structure designed to keep people from actually contacting me, but I happened to be carrying on a conversation via the corp IM about the thing that has been keeping me from working, and of course that means my buddies in Manilla can bring me shitty grunt work.  Apparently I am a shitty grunt who has nothing but free time to see if the CPUs are "busy".  Any fuckwit can run vmstat... well, maybe not just any fuckwit.  I gave them the name of the on-call person, since a cut-n-paste of the link would end up being wasted effort.

As I type this, we have a conference call with the on-call, me, and a guy who actually knows what he is doing.  Ostensibly, I am working... I am in fact surfing f13.net, which is strangely poetic.

And WOW queues are teh ghey.

Lots of gheyity tonight.  No debug mode for nfsd.  AIX 4.3.3 out of support, and we didn't pay extra for the maintenance.  My brrestore puked (but I fixed it, the piece of shit).  Super ghey.

[HaemishM]

Problems with offshoring in Manilla that are far and above the cost savings to the company? Perish the thought!

[WayAbvPar]

Is the on-call list up to date and distributed to the people who actually need to use it? We used to have this problem all the time because only the shift managers in operations would get the list via e-mail and half the time delete it, then they'd have to try and guess who was oncall, and hope to get a hold of someone. Then we tried putting it on the intranet and that was a total failure for no reason we could figure out. We finally made the company spring for an extra cell phone to be the "oncall" phone. No problems at all since then, The oncall number never changes, though if it's your turn to have it and you don't answer it, you better be unconscious in a hospital.

And WOW queues are teh ghey.

Yeah, that is how we do it. What really sucks is having a automated text message come in at 2 AM to wake me up, even though I know that 99% of the time it is some bullshit Internet traffic that caused the ping to time out. Then I have to wait 10 minutes for the "Server Ok" text to come in to make sure it wasn't a real problem. I could actually get out of bed and check it out, but that would wake me up even further.

Being on call sucks a great deal of ass. At least my position is hourly (by state law), so I get juicy overtime if the goddamned phone goes off. 2 hours minimum...

[Yegolev]

Problems with offshoring in Manilla that are far and above the cost savings to the company? Perish the thought!

OK, here is the entertaining part.  These are employees.  Not contractors.  We are a global corp, you know, not sure why they didn't think of this earlier.  We tried offshoring for "real" work and found it to really blow.  Anyway, this means the noose is very real and these guys have to be careful.

[Yegolev]

Yeah, that is how we do it. What really sucks is having a automated text message come in at 2 AM to wake me up, even though I know that 99% of the time it is some bullshit Internet traffic that caused the ping to time out. Then I have to wait 10 minutes for the "Server Ok" text to come in to make sure it wasn't a real problem. I could actually get out of bed and check it out, but that would wake me up even further.

Most of our alerts are generated by monitoring programs.  There just isn't any way a human could handle all that text paging.  We also have onsite staff to handle the easy stuff first, so I make a quick judgement based on the alarm as to whether I need to slide down the batpole or roll over.  The onsite guys are usually a good filter, but there is a knowledge gap.  I don't mind being hit by robotic pages, it's when a real person decides they need to submit an under-the-table request for something dumb that angers the raging beast within.

Being on call sucks a great deal of ass. At least my position is hourly (by state law), so I get juicy overtime if the goddamned phone goes off. 2 hours minimum...

If they paid me hourly, they would blow the department budget some weeks... even without me being on call.  I am not on call this week and I worked almost straight through to 0400 this morning.  When I am on-call, I am not required to show up at the office all week, which really helps.  Easier to hide.  Saves gas.  Whatnot.

[HaemishM]

When I worked at our local newspaper, I once had to answer a phone call from someone that worked in our IS department about how to save files (a text file) to a disk at 2:30 AM, you know, in the fucking morning. Our IS DEPARTMENT. I was, by the way, one of only 2 people in the WEB DESIGN department at the time.

I was fucking livid.

[Fabricated]

I dread gainful employment at this point. I'm still a legal intern and I want to die every second of the 8+ hours I sit there in a workday reordering and scanning divorce files.

[WayAbvPar]

When I worked at our local newspaper, I once had to answer a phone call from someone that worked in our IS department about how to save files (a text file) to a disk at 2:30 AM, you know, in the fucking morning. Our IS DEPARTMENT. I was, by the way, one of only 2 people in the WEB DESIGN department at the time.

I was fucking livid.

I would have discussed it with him the next day using small words and a large stick.

[Viin]

If you want a fun night time job you should work for a automobile repossession company. I hear it's just like being a bounty hunter ... for CARS.

[Furiously]

If you want a fun night time job you should work for a automobile repossession company. I hear it's just like being a bounty hunter ... for CARS.

Why am I thinking of Emileo Estievz suddenly.....

[schild]

If you want a fun night time job you should work for a automobile repossession company. I hear it's just like being a bounty hunter ... for CARS.

Why am I thinking of Emileo Estievz suddenly.....

Repoman might be the worst job evar.

[Yegolev]

When I worked at our local newspaper, I once had to answer a phone call from someone that worked in our IS department about how to save files (a text file) to a disk at 2:30 AM, you know, in the fucking morning. Our IS DEPARTMENT. I was, by the way, one of only 2 people in the WEB DESIGN department at the time.

I was fucking livid.

You got an actual LOL with that.  Congratulations.  I am glad that I don't have to talk to end-users too often.  My clients are IT staff and generally with-it as far as baseline junk.  I can also whip out the "Well, if it's not UNIX I can't help you." or for people who are not in IT: "Did you call the help desk?"

[Sky]

Two words: zinc whiskers.

Just before you posted this thread the folks one level up from us, system-wise, had their entire server room go down. And it's down until cleanup can be completed and insurance claims filed. Fun.

[Yegolev]

Cleanup?  That will be an interesting tale, if it is leaked.

[HaemishM]

When I worked at our local newspaper, I once had to answer a phone call from someone that worked in our IS department about how to save files (a text file) to a disk at 2:30 AM, you know, in the fucking morning. Our IS DEPARTMENT. I was, by the way, one of only 2 people in the WEB DESIGN department at the time.

I was fucking livid.

You got an actual LOL with that.  Congratulations.  I am glad that I don't have to talk to end-users too often.  My clients are IT staff and generally with-it as far as baseline junk.  I can also whip out the "Well, if it's not UNIX I can't help you." or for people who are not in IT: "Did you call the help desk?"

This WAS an IT staff person, not an end user.