Breakage

Twofer today...I guess the wire post brought it up.

I lost a friend. And I pretty much deserved to I guess. I have not really "lost" other friends over the years, but more or less misplaced them. Mostly, once we moved, the two-way street of communication just didn't continue and I lost touch with them. They are still very important to me. There is not a single day I don't think about them and there is not a single one that if they called today and needed me I would not be there for them. No matter what. Mike, Joey, Chuck, Ron, Jim and Steve, you all know who I'm talking about here.

There have been a few times in my life, where to be quite frank I have just lost my ever-lovin' mind. I mean really. That something inside my head just snapped and the aftermath of those times are very hazy to me.

I had always wondered about the "snapped" analogy and when I actually dwell on the subject and the time, I can actually feel that something (not sure what) in my head just gave way. That the pressure build up was so terrible and once that snap happened all that pressure and all the stress just melted away. It seemed that those happened when I was least in control of my life, I guess. That in some way I was trapped and the only way out was just to walk away. And walk away I did. And it cost me.

Tony was a friend from back home. We started working together and became great friends. He was one of the few guys that I really got along with, we were unix guys, and computer guys, and in the early days of the I-bahn we were always on the bleeding edge. When he moved to CO, I wasn't too far behind in finding a job out here too. And we stayed in close touch and spent a great deal of our off time drinking and partying.

Tony moved on again to WA to work for Boeing, and found he could start his own consulting business. He was not much for working for someone else and had the drive to run his own show. Then he fell into a contract in NY working for Xerox. He needed help and the money was pretty good, so he called me.

The task was monumental. Xerox had no centralized datacenter for processing. If a group needed hardware or software, they would request it and run the system from underneath someone's desk. Our just was to bring it all in-house into a central datacenter and keep it running. The team of Unix guys grew to enormous proportions, but in the end there were only 3 of us: myself, Tony and BradG, that tackled the problems or did the oncall rotation.

My contract was for 6 months, by the end of month 2 I had worked nearly 4 months of my time. I had not been paid as yet and the pressure was relatively high. We had just gone through a series of meetings with Sun Microsystems, where to be honest it degenerated into who has the biggest tech dick in the room. Tony and I won that one. And finally to twist them enough to get them to do what we wanted, Kate the Xerox VP, showed them the amount of on-site staff supplied by Sun that we didn't have for the 12 e10k's we had. Tony, Brad and I were doing that work also.

OK, no readers digest version there. So it turned out one week, I was oncall, Brad and Tony were out of pocket and by that I mean, not even a cell phone or pager contact. We had problems with the E10k's and some systems, that I had in my 2 months not even touched. The days dragged on and the nights too since i was not getting much sleep at all. I needed to get a hold of one of those guys but couldn't. And then SHE was there. The hell-bitch that was our nemesis in all things.

I can't remember HB's name, but I could paint a picture if I had too. I don't even remember the interaction I had with her or the multitple time we had it out over those days. For once in my life, I felt incompetent and I really just could not handle that. It all built up and one day, I got a call from and old friend offering me a job. So, I quit, that day.

In my brain, it was so simple. In a way, it was like Bill Murray in 'Stripes' trying to escape from boot camp. Pack up, check out of the hotel, get in the car and go. And that is what I did. I walked off the job. I called and left messages with Tony and Brad, I packed my shit and left. I was pissed at them, basically they were out of contact so fuck'em, I will quit by leaving a voicemail. In the end, it was not the cool thing to do. Tony called and tried to get me back there to fix it all. I had hurt his reputation. And that is how it ended. I really didn't remember much until I was trying to replay it all in my head. I guess it doesn't matter.

What matters is I miss Tony. I have tried to contact him and mend it all but it has fallen on deaf ears. I don't blame him really, I would probably be in the camp. It is a lesson I learned and that I carry with me.

Oh the Wire thing. Tony used to say that all the time...So writing the wire post just brought it all back to me and I just felt like I needed to get it down somewhere.

Kol

Wire! WIRE! WIRE!!!

The title should be said in your best Beavis voice.:) For those of you too young, google 'Beavis and Butthead' or I optionally 'MTV lawsuit'...



So, work today consisted of removal of said wire and cabling from underneath our datacenter floors. Fun as that may sound, it helps if you are working with someone you actually like and not some ass-clown that you would rather just clock with a hammer and leave under the floor.

I used to like working in the datacenter. The sound of fans and coolers wooshing was I guess for me like the womb would have sounded. It was nice and comforting and very few others like it, so you pretty much get to work alone which I like. Hell, even crawling around and working under the floor was cool. Now its just a drag. It used to be being a cable monkey for a few hours a week was therapeutic, like soldering something. Times change I guess and getting older seems to make me want to do more of the "in case of emergency break glass" or architectural type work.

The nice thing about computers is they don't talk back to you that much nor are they idiotic (I guess unless you are working with Windoze). Being a Unix guy, my life has been spent with the command line and working with machines that actually run without intervention. Once you get them set up and all your system management stuff out of the way, the servers only really complain when they have a problem. And my servers only ever really call me to let me know how they are doing.

Again, I am never sure why I post this stuff, but maybe I will just start posting things about what I have learned doing Unix Shit for like *works the abbacus* 20+ years now. It seems that the system administration skills that used to be so important are becoming like the main framers were to us 10 or 15 years ago. We thought of them as dinosaurs. Now all the stuff you really need system admins for are slowly being taken over by software and HOWTO's and google. But really I say 'fuck that' because google hasn't been around the block like I have. And really, when its crunch time, its the guy that has seen the problem or situation before and his gut that will fix the problem...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

(thanks Mr. Bowie)

I am not who I am supposed to be. I know this in the very core of my being. When I ask myself who I am, I get a distinct answer that I know is right.

How does one change their life? Who they are? Know you are someone who you are not today, but don't know how to get there?

Those are a lot of the questions I have been dwelling on lately. I seem to have been at a crossroads looking this way and that trying to figure out which way I am supposed to go, or not rather which way, but actually setting foot on it. Starting the journey. It is decidingly frustrating for me, as I am usually good a deciding a course of action and executing.

When I was younger, people used to remark on my patience and tenacity. I seem to have misplaced those somewhere along the way. I can't seem to summon either up now to help me change. There are temporary respites when I can manage to focus on what is important but those never last for more than a few days at most. A couple of days on average. It is as if I know where I am supposed to go, but I can't bring myself to go there. Perhaps it is fear.

A wise man once told me that all people suffer from at least 1 of 12 fears. I can't remember them all now but I am sure that I suffer from more than 1. Most of the important decisions I make, I make either out of fear or based on fear. He also told me that my greatest challenge in life is that I am not only my own worst enemy, but also my own worse critic. Lately, I have been trying to assure that fear has no hold on me, or that I go into something with an open mind. I also am conscious of being to hard on myself, or actually feeling like a failure. It goes a long way to making things better, but even this is not making me make any forward motion.

How does one break the cycle of living enough to change? Its not like I don't have the time to make the changes, but it is like I lack the drive. I would rather do anything else than work at changing. Does that mean I am not meant to? Or that I am just too lazy to make it happen? Or that I don't want it enough? I dunno. I don't even know why I am writing this other than I guess I needed to get it out.

Kol