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The highs and lows of business travel
Oct. 19th, 2010 01:07 amI've been in Colorado since Friday, at a big disaster recovery facility just outside of Boulder. Jho knows precisely what this was like, but for the uninitiated, here's what I do for living. I'm the guy who backs up a company's servers to tape. More to disk lately, but that's beside the point. Well, all that data, it's got to serve a greater purpose than just replacing files deleted by clueless executives. Formally, it's called business continuity and resiliency.
That's a great word, isn't it? Resilllliency. Rolls right off the tongue.
Continuing my story, disaster recovery testing. That's why I'm in Boulder. It's pretty boring, mundane work. I mean, it's a challenge in the sense of hard work but it's sucky just the same. I sit my big penguin butt in an uncomfortable desk chair and run data restores to servers that are being rebuilt to prove we can rebuild them. Sounds pretty easy, right? For me, it really is easy. But sweet cheesus, it's repetitive tasks that are pretty much the same thing every time. Every problem looks like every other problem. The know-it-all server admin tells me to run a restore job, in a particular order, from a particular time, to a particular place. Bleh. Can you see where it's boring as all hell? To make things worse, this is all taking place in a really beautiful town. The leaves are changing here and the inner mountain ranges are dusted with snow. The roads, they call to me, saying "Penguin! Penguin! Come drive these winding switchbacks deep into the hills, up into the mountains, where the majestic peaks reach to the heavens and the air is sweet like high fructose corn syrup!" No, not really. They don't say anything about peaks.
All that adventure waiting for me and I'm locked inside a room with no windows, no 3G reception and too many eagle-eyed executives for me to kill time playing Angry Birds. Yeah, that's on Android now, and I really dig it. I digress. I'm all up in the stuffy command center, fielding the questions of the clueless, outshining my coworkers in such a grand manner that they cover their hideous faces, fearing the world will discover their shameful souls. Hey, that's kind of poetic sounding, isn't it? Meh. Anyway, me, in a room, hating what I'm doing, even though I excel at it and the customers simply love me. Such is the conundrum of the Penguin.
Topping all of this drivel? I've lost 6 days of my life to a pain-in-the-ass assignment. Those are 6 days in which I missed my daughter's soccer game and my dad's 66th birthday, time I could be building my new back porch and landscaping a new backyard. Say what you want about our digital age shrinking the world around us, but the electric ether cannot replace my tactile life. Wages and recognition don't make up for it.
I know. I'm bitching again.
Anyway, the work is done. I fly home tomorrow. Waking early though, for a special reason, as fate may have handed me a small compensation for my suffering. NatGeo's King Tut exhibit is in town. Perhaps I get to have a little awesomeness after all.
That's a great word, isn't it? Resilllliency. Rolls right off the tongue.
Continuing my story, disaster recovery testing. That's why I'm in Boulder. It's pretty boring, mundane work. I mean, it's a challenge in the sense of hard work but it's sucky just the same. I sit my big penguin butt in an uncomfortable desk chair and run data restores to servers that are being rebuilt to prove we can rebuild them. Sounds pretty easy, right? For me, it really is easy. But sweet cheesus, it's repetitive tasks that are pretty much the same thing every time. Every problem looks like every other problem. The know-it-all server admin tells me to run a restore job, in a particular order, from a particular time, to a particular place. Bleh. Can you see where it's boring as all hell? To make things worse, this is all taking place in a really beautiful town. The leaves are changing here and the inner mountain ranges are dusted with snow. The roads, they call to me, saying "Penguin! Penguin! Come drive these winding switchbacks deep into the hills, up into the mountains, where the majestic peaks reach to the heavens and the air is sweet like high fructose corn syrup!" No, not really. They don't say anything about peaks.
All that adventure waiting for me and I'm locked inside a room with no windows, no 3G reception and too many eagle-eyed executives for me to kill time playing Angry Birds. Yeah, that's on Android now, and I really dig it. I digress. I'm all up in the stuffy command center, fielding the questions of the clueless, outshining my coworkers in such a grand manner that they cover their hideous faces, fearing the world will discover their shameful souls. Hey, that's kind of poetic sounding, isn't it? Meh. Anyway, me, in a room, hating what I'm doing, even though I excel at it and the customers simply love me. Such is the conundrum of the Penguin.
Topping all of this drivel? I've lost 6 days of my life to a pain-in-the-ass assignment. Those are 6 days in which I missed my daughter's soccer game and my dad's 66th birthday, time I could be building my new back porch and landscaping a new backyard. Say what you want about our digital age shrinking the world around us, but the electric ether cannot replace my tactile life. Wages and recognition don't make up for it.
I know. I'm bitching again.
Anyway, the work is done. I fly home tomorrow. Waking early though, for a special reason, as fate may have handed me a small compensation for my suffering. NatGeo's King Tut exhibit is in town. Perhaps I get to have a little awesomeness after all.
