March 13, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I was once forced to marry Kimberly Tripp to get a job with SQLskills.com... 🙂
Paul Randal
CEO, SQLskills.com: Check out SQLskills online training!
Blog:www.SQLskills.com/blogs/paul Twitter: @PaulRandal
SQL MVP, Microsoft RD, Contributing Editor of TechNet Magazine
Author of DBCC CHECKDB/repair (and other Storage Engine) code of SQL Server 2005
March 13, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Well - there goes the "clean and professional" part....:w00t:
I can't say I can top that by any stretch of the imagination. I do have some strange ones:
- I did spend several hours hanging from the ceiling of a fire house while reconfiguring a PIX router (laptop was of course up there with me, perched on top of the AC ducts.
- Ran a bunch of cat-5 through the ceiling of a hospital morgue.
- Got snowed in to work (for 3 days), manning a 24-hour help desk. There were 3 of us - so we actually managed to keep it manned the entire time....
The one that stuck in my mind was getting paged by a customer of mine at 4AM on Christmas morning. They ran all of the soup kitchens in the area, and their inventory system (which I wrote) had crashed, so they had no ability to pull the pick sheets for all of the charities serving christmas dinner that day. It wasn't a great start to the day, but that one turned out pretty cool when we got it done (around 2pm.)
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
March 14, 2008 at 12:06 am
Heh... a friend of mine gave me a lapel button that says "I've survived damned near everything!" If your under 40, it's your turn and I'll be happy to supervise from a safe distance. 😛
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 14, 2008 at 12:38 am
Communication technology prevents almost all the emergency travel I once had to do. There was a time when I had an overnight bag packed at my desk in case of a zero notice plane trip. Not counting travel stories there are a couple that stick out in my mind.
I once had to help troubleshoot a problem over the phone while I was at a funeral (from the lobby). That was a bit odd.
Then there was the Christmas Eve spent taking an emergency SQL backup from a server at one site and getting it copied to a remote site because the roof had collapsed (due to snow) right outside the server room. There were concerns that melting snow would short out the power.
March 14, 2008 at 3:29 am
Lost count of the number of times I've slept overnight on the floor under my desk, being woken up by the cleaners waving a vacuum in my direction, following an overnight callout. Which was generally fixed in 30 minutes. We couldn't generally dial in in those days. And were required to live within one hour radius via public transport (which didn't run at night). Flats near work costed about half a million (sterling) so that was not an option...
Had a nightmare night when I was applying os patches after 19:00 and an sp for sql and sql wouldn't start ( of course I'd tested on spare server and documented the procedure)- had to go into single user mode got it fixed at 02:00, ran validation till 04:00, crashed for two hours in the very smelly smoking room, there were sofas, up at six (cleaners), coffee from the machine, explained situation to managers ( having texted and briefed them throughout the night). Did I mention I started at 07:00...
And they wanted me to stay through the day! And didn't pay the overtime for the night, arguing that it was covered by my callout agreement - which they had unilaterally reduced by 400%... Moral - Don't work for BigConsulting..
No more, I've found a friendly company - and I happily volunteer to do more than they require...
Dedicated? Moi? No longer - learnt my lesson.
It's a Culture thing. Mind how you go...
March 14, 2008 at 3:41 am
Got called by work on my honeymoon - Billing run failed due to a HD crash (Company did not implement RAID to save Money). Spent a few hours being stared at by slightly miffed new wife while talking non-technical user through restore process. 😛
March 14, 2008 at 4:05 am
And, on the first day I'd got out after hospital for severe reconstructive surgery - still very ill (with undiagnosed infections) - on crutches, learning to walk again, on industrial strenth pain suppressants (blissed out on morphine), my team lead insisted I came in because he didn't understand simple DOS commands. Despite me leaving full instructions that a 13 yr old could follow.
My wife called back, I couldn't, and "expressed her dissatisfaction" - guess I should sue them 🙂
And we turned the phone off..
Later, I bumped into my ex team lead, who asked me if I knew of any vacancies.. Nuff said.
And don't get me started on Easter callouts. Never took a bank holiday for them...
Spleen partially vented... Aaargh!
March 14, 2008 at 4:07 am
(Almost 19 years ago) Due to a severely out-of-balance month-end run, I was called at the hospital while my wife was being induced for the birth of our eldest. (It was VERY early in the process, so this wasn’t quite the intrusion it might seem at first.) I ended up going back to work the day after we brought him home rather than taking the week off as planned.
At the time I’d been in charge of the financial systems for all of six weeks, and the previous “owners” had left the company and so were not available.
We finally figured out that another programmer had deleted two financial transactions (worth about $150,000) without creating the proper audit trails.
March 14, 2008 at 5:16 am
I have a couple...One day after having neck surgery (bone fusion) I was back to work programming strapped into my favorite recliner, neck brace, and laptop.
The other example I have is being called out onto the production floor each year and manage one of the production lines for 3 weeks during our busy season.
March 14, 2008 at 5:52 am
Short of out-right illegal behavior (and that doesn't count stealing tools & supplies from the shipyard) I've done just about anything I had to for or at work. Between retail, the Navy, telemarketing, janitorial work, loading docks, newspapers, the film industry, and IT jobs at dot coms, banks, insurance companies, consulting firms, health care... You do things that, if you went back in time and told your 16 year old self, you would have committed suicide. All to keep a roof over your head and food in your mouth.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
March 14, 2008 at 6:02 am
I have done some projects that lasted months of long hours both on-site and at home. I have sacrificed time with my wife, my kids and my friends. I have traveled to different countries that I would not normally travel to if I were considering my own safety and I have asked my peers to do the same. Looking back on it, there have been times that I endured that which I would not have done now, but in the youth of my career I didn't even given it s second thought. Getting the job done is still a good work ethic and I live by it, but I would advise the younger members of our field to remember that there are more important things like children and spouses and our religions. Balance should be considered no matter how dedicated you might be.
March 14, 2008 at 6:12 am
During my military days once I had to work (with 2 others) replacing an antenna for a satellite receiver, the antenna was outside on the mast of the ship. We had to solder the antenna and cable together outside in the snow with a 25watt butane solder iron. It didn't go well and I was frozen afterwards. It was one of many silly things I did for my country.
March 14, 2008 at 6:15 am
I have to agree with Jerry, getting the job done is very important to me and should be to anyone who has any pride. I have my own stories about long nights, holiday work, being called during a special event, etc. but never considered them that onerous. When you take a job you make a commitment to do the job. If the work becomes too taxing, or the demands seem too much then quit and get a new job. Otherwise, accept these outliers as inevitable and be glad you have an interesting story to tell.
March 14, 2008 at 6:23 am
As a hardware repairman for 32 years before switching to software, I did sleep on the job waiting for the hardware to fail more that once.
I also worked a few 72 hour days, without sleep, to get the hardware problem solved. Support people were flown in about the time I would get the problem solved.
Loren
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