| Wednesday, February 21, 2007 |
| A series of unfortunate abends |
Note: Most of the terms that I'll be using here are what most of the mainframe programmers can relate to so I apologize for the article below.
As what every mainframe programmer need to go through, I was put on production support from last week until the Chinese new year. Unlike in my previous job where the system is really stable that we don't get that much tickets in our queue, the current system that I'm supporting has a lot of loopholes, so every night I receive a page.
In my old job, the batch schedule follows the US time zone which means that the system I'm supporting would run at their night time which is around afternoon in Manila. So if there are any problems encountered, we can support it during office hours. In my current job, the system follows the Malaysia time zone which means that our jobs would run during our night time - in case our system is down, then we have to work on it during night time. Since our current system is not stable, the trend is for the production night support to get at least one ticket - one wake up call for each ticket.
Well, probably I was "lucky" on my first turn as a support because the connection from my laptop is not working. The helpdesk people were "fast" enough because they only responded on the ticket for this 3 days after it was opened! It was found out that the connection does not match the laptop's operating system and the only way to fix it is to replace the laptop. It was already Friday when it was decided to replace the laptop so during the long weekend, I don't have a laptop with me.
And as expected, I received a wake up call every night - at 1 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM.. and after each call, it would take me 1 hour to fall asleep again. On my first 2 nights as production support, I had to stay in the office because I don't have a connection. On the 3rd night, I slept at Minnie's house which is nearer so that I can go to the office when I got paged (and I did, twice). On the succeeding nights, I have arranged with my secondary support - Niru (who has been very helpful and kind) to take the page for me. As of this writing, I haven't got enough night sleep.
You may think being on support is bad, but a lot of good things happened also. On my first night as support, Niru (an Indian) and I had to stay in the office all night to ensure that we can address any issues that come up. So while waiting for any beeps, we talked about anything under the sun - our interests, his marriage, having a date, palmistry, etc. On my second night, I talked to my colleague Handy (an Indonesian) and we talked about his family and his experiences in Malaysia. On the next day, I didn't bother to think that I am dateless on Valentines day (mwehehehe) because I was preoccupied with myself being on support. See? It's not a bad thing at all.
Anyway, even though I hate being on support, it's a part of my job and that I have to accept it. I still consider myself lucky that I only get to do this once a month and not every night. You see, I just need to look at the good side of things for me to keep my sanity. Hehehe.. |
posted by subhuman @ 1:08 AM  |
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