Saturday, December 23, 2006

We are empowered again, not to mention eminternetted. It was a long, strange week, though.

Starting on Christmas cards tonight. Err... yeah. Anyways... :-)

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Still no power. Haven't sent Christmas cards as a result because I can't get at my address book. Nor have I been able to read personal e-mail in that time.

Worse, there's another storm coming up today. From what I understand we will be pushed back to the bottom of the priority list for power restoration. This is contrary to the claims being made by PSE that they'll restore power to those without it longest; the reality is they have no way of tracking how long you've been without power since their systems automatically reset you to "power restored" after 48 hours.

I'm close to just giving up and heading back to Pittsburgh. At least I have heat there, and basic utility outages are treated seriously.

I'm also getting in trouble at work because I haven't been checking up on things from home. Folks assume that, since they have power, you should, too.

Friday, December 15, 2006

ELECTRIC SERVICE DOWN STOP PLEASE SEND REPAIR CREW STOP CURRENT ETA TO RESTORATION ONE WEEK STOP HOUSES COLD AND REFRIGERATORS WARM STOP TYPING THIS FROM WORK STOP FIRST TIME I HAVE USED CAPSLOCK IN A LONG TIME STOP

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Today was the busiest day of the year at work. We also came frighteningly close to a large (though not total) meltdown. My role in this was mostly canary ("Uh, guys, these systems don't look good..."), a bit of Chicken Little ("No, really, the sky is falling, and we need this team in the war room now."), a dash of resolver ("Well, the problem isn't here, and it's not there, so let's look thataways."), with a topping of reassurance ("Yes, the graphs look good now, we really can stop panicking now, thanks, now let me step out of the way while you manager types affix blame.").

Alas, I ended up spending the entire day in the war room and got no work done. Bleh. I also like to talk in italics. So sue me.


Speaking of suing, the SeaTac Christmas holiday tree fiasco amazes me. Basic gist: Rabbi wants a menorah included in holiday decorations at the airport, is met with typical bureaucratic "I'm going to answer in the way that involves the least amount of work for me" responses ("Your request is important to us, please stand by"). He gets fed up, threatens a federal lawsuit if they don't comply within 48 hours. Bureaucrats panic, consult lawyer, lawyer says you'd better take them down or prepare to include symbols of every possible faith including demonic worship, etc. So the trees come down.

Is anyone surprised by this? Apparently, Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, who had threatened the lawsuit, was.

Either the parties involved are truly nefarious and disingenuous, or they're idiots. I find both plausible. Taking DAC's law into account ("Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity"), I'll say they're idiots all around.

Sunday, December 3, 2006

I have a cold. Nothing terribly bad, but it's kinda gross to be around me right now and I'm likely contagious.

Alas, I cannot stay home from work tomorrow. I'm on-call from noon Monday until noon Wednesday. Normally, an on-call shift is the ideal time to stay home (you're not going to get much work done anywhere you are). During December, however, my team is required to have our on-call present in the "war room" during peak traffic hours -- a crowded place with a bunch of graphs projected on the walls. I don't expect this to be pleasant for myself or anyone around me.

Fortunately, I've found a mask which will filter out most of the germs. It looks a bit silly, though -- more like I'm about to do some carpentry rather than the surgical-style mask I was looking for.

Friday, December 1, 2006