quinn222

I've been working later hours to cover for someone for the last two weeks. Today I went back to my early hours. The only problem is that the person I was covering for called out sick. So I worked early and late.



Sounds like a country western song doesn't it? It's not though. It's just insane rambling after a long long day.

Everyone in my dapartment has constant communication with the network via blackberry. We also use them to communicate with each other. I'm going to put this is fairly general terms, but every point on the network lets us know what is happening to it at any given time.So, if the entire network goes down I am notified in a series of alarms, thus:

First I get a single alarm telling me "The network is down" (this isn't actually what it says but it's what it means)

Then I get an alarm from each section of the network telling me that it is down.

Then I get an alarm from each section of that section.

Finally I get an alarm from each node on the network.

This doesn't actually happen all that often but it does happen. We're talking about thousands of alarms at this point. They arrive very nearly instantly in my inbox. Because I saw the first alarm I know what these are and don't have to pay attention to each and every one of them. I do have to screen them though for any actual messages that may have come in at the same time though. Once the problem passes (which is often within seconds) I get all those same alarms in reverse, only twice. Once telling me, "Hey, I'm back up!" and then again telling me, "And I'm working!" The problem arises in the fact that we must be in 24 hour contact, so those same alarms go to our blackberrry's. They are set on vibrate so we don't annoy the hell out of the people around us, but even on vibrate they make noise. Also, it may take over an hour for all those thousamds of messages to arrive in my blackberry. And it vibrates with each and every one.

It happened today. I was ready to toss the thing under a bus. My co-workers were going crazy and finally ordered me to bury it somewhere. Which I did. Deep in my handbag. Where it continued to buzz away in a really pathetic way. I almost felt sorry for it. I might be going insane but I'm not sure. I know I need a nap.