Drummer's Corner of the World

I have a gigantic project on my plate at work for this fiscal year. It's an interesting project, so this in itself isn't a problem.

It was designed with a long timeline that stretches out into mid April, with plenty of development and testing stages along the way. We were hoping to cutover early, but we had plenty of pad built in, just in case.

Today, that deadline changed to "We need to cutover within the next 4-5 weeks. Sooner would be better." I understand why. I even agree with why. (The current hardware is failing at an absolutely terrifying speed.) But still... losing three months out of the project plan is going to make things a bit, um, intense.

Cutover in 4-5 weeks is January 18-25ish. Hmm. I'm out for a week. The lead tech on the IT side is going to be out the first week I'm back. We've done the basic software/hardware installs, but there's 40+ terabytes of data to move and reorganize and a shitload of configuration and testing to do, not to mention actually prepping the users for the fact that the World As They Know It is about to change. I'd hoped to not have to do this in quite such a hurry.

On the plus side, I've always worked better in firefighter mode, and long detailed gantt charted projects just make me sleepy. This certainly solves that problem.

This definitely means that I won't be going to any cons in January (and I'm glad I'd already cancelled my plans for MacWorld Expo, as that would be iffy too). We should be cut over in plenty of time for things to stabilize (and me to train a backup on managing the new hardware/software) before I leave for Capricon on Feb. 11.

I may be spending a lot of nights and weekends at the office. A lot of this could be done remotely if I had something better than crappy Verizon DSL and a 15" laptop screen. At the office, I can spread all my virtual machine windows out across two 22" widescreen monitors, which makes the work go a lot faster (and makes my eyes not quite so tired at the end of the day). I'm unlikely to be on LJ much after I get back from Christmas, as quick posts to Twitter and Facebook may be all I have time for once I'm swimming for my life to finish this project!

<whimper>

Apparently I'm now living in the proverbial "interesting times." Thank all the gods for housemates, so at least my dogs will be cared for while I live at the office!

nycgadgetgirl and T (sister and niece) didn't make it to Indy for the holidays this year (unfortunately, real life intervened and made the trip impossible), but my parents were in town from Saturday through Wednesday and we had a lovely time. Probably the most concentrated time that I've spent with them in several years, and it was good to get the chance to really catch up. We also rode around and looked at houses, which brings an interesting bit of continuity to my house search, since Daddy looked at the house in Alexandria with me when they were here for the holidays two years ago. Hopefully this won't still be going on in another two years! (More on the house search in a later post...)

We had barbecue and all the trimmings for Christmas dinner, along with a peanut-butter-cup cheesecake which was quite yummy. I didn't have to cook any of it... which was probably a good thing since all my at-home time was spent taking care of the sick dog.

I had to work this week, since half the managers are out, and our first day back (yesterday) started with the excitement of a power outage. Apparently there was a big wreck that took out power to about 200 businesses. Naturally, just as we sent the staff out for an hour-long lunch, with orders to report back at 12:30 to see if we had power again, the lights came back on. :-) We were already running right down to the wire to get this week's books out to the printer, and losing a couple of hours didn't help. We survived, though... all the important systems were on backup power, so there were no surprises in the data center.

We have Monday and Tuesday off, so I'm really looking forward to the four-day weekend... I'm going to spend a day of it doing nothing but laundry and house-cleaning, then spend the rest of it enjoying my clean house and getting some actual rest!

Wow... did the world end while I was asleep?

Once upon a time, the rule of thumb for my work was that if the county didn't call a Snow Emergency, the office wouldn't close.

Well, the county hasn't (yet) declared an emergency but I just called our emergency line at work and the office is closed. Just heard the Hamilton County Sheriff on TV, though, and he's anticipating that a snow emergency will be declared as the morning continues. Snow's actually not bad out yet, but it's wet and slick and we're expecting it to continue pretty much all day. The line for the blizzard warning is just barely north of my house, and the snow's starting to drift already. I'm extremely glad that this waited 'til we were safely home from Chicago before starting.

Woohoo! Last night I stocked up on smoked turkey and cheese so I've got sandwich fixiings. There's dogfood, catfood, and I bought extra cat litter ('cause being stuck at home with the cats and no way to clean the boxes would be _bad_). I'm going back to bed now...

I get to escape from work early today. Sally's African Musics class at Butler is drumming in class today, which gives me an excuse to go be an extra "person with clue" for an hour or so, with the added benefit of being able to take a couple of extra drums along for some of the kids to use.

I really really wanted to audit this class this semester, but it's just conflicting with too many standing meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So instead of going all the time, I'm going to sneak away for occasional classes when it's a really fascinating topic or when there's drumming during class.

FREEEEEEEDOM!!!!!!

*ahem*

(Yes, I'm tired of my office already. And yes, I know it's only Tuesday.)