Ten years ago this week, the shit jumped off. \u00a0I got paged an hour before my usual start time on a Monday morning asking for all hands to come in because of a problem with the domain. \u00a0Turns out the infrastructure group had killed the primary domain controller, with no backup – meaning 1400 workstations would need individual visits to reconnect them. \u00a0We did it in three days, largely through the efforts of my own group, who would still be there at 7 or 8 PM at night when the actual domain admins – who created the situation – rolled out at 5 PM mumbling something about catching a train. \u00a0Not us, though – we gutted it out, we fought off ridiculous suggestions from uninvolved managers, we engaged in a floor-by-floor clean sweep, and we prevailed. \u00a0Within two weeks, we also had a massive viral outbreak – and again, floor-by-floor, hand-to-hand combat to clean it up. \u00a0And before the summer was over, we were at it again, upgrading Lotus Notes in the same fashion: floor by floor and hand-to-hand.<\/p>\n
Memory is the great palliative. I remembered those times with a lot more fondness during the nightmarish run at work this spring. \u00a0I missed having my crew, I missed my gang, I missed shoulder-to-shoulder with the people who got things done, with lunch and the 4Ps and the Mudd House as our rallying points. \u00a0We were the greatest. \u00a0In my mind, the summer of 2003 is one big whirl of music from the newly-opened iTunes Music Store and cigars from Courtney’s place and mad dashes to airports and the swagger and confidence of knowing I was damned good at what I did and that any technical conundrum thrown at me could be thwarted.<\/p>\n
But looking back and reading the blog posts and email and such, I was plenty miserable enough – enough, in fact, that I was talking about hoping this was my last awful DC summer even before the shit jumped off. \u00a0I was exasperated with technical limitations, with idiotic upper management, with clueless and obnoxious and antagonistic users, with rival technology units undermining us\u2026basically everything that would happen again ten years later. \u00a0Technical swag was no match for the unholy trinity of money, politics and bullshit, then or now.<\/p>\n
I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it really has been worse this time out, because I don’t have my old gang around me for support and because my physical health and well-being have had ten years to deteriorate. But everything else echoes perfectly. \u00a0Even my relatives were a problem back then – not to the same extent as in more recent years, but enough to have a deleterious effect on my quality of life. \u00a0And back then, I always had an escape plan – California. \u00a0I didn’t know exactly when or how, but I knew that someday soon I would punch out, eject, and my girlfriend and I would escape to Silicon Valley. \u00a0The West is the best. Get here, we’ll do the rest.<\/p>\n
To hear others tell it, I’m apparently worse now than I was then, which isn’t surprising. I’m older, I’m frustrated that the same problem has come around again in exactly the same fashion, I’m feeling my age and thinking about my future, and the Grim Reaper’s always doing pushups in the corner and is, hello, undefeated. \u00a0I don’t see a long-term future for the job I do now, I don’t know that I want to stick around this employer much longer (not least because the questionable management is going nowhere fast), and I don’t want to have to work until I’m 70. \u00a0Then again, that’s how long the mortgage runs.<\/p>\n
My incredible good luck continued – nine<\/em> years ago this week, we arrived in California for good. \u00a0Within a month, we had a place of our own and I had a contract job that would turn into permanent employment within a year. I started to build a new life for myself, and successfully at that. \u00a0On aggregate, I’ve had a pretty good run on the left coast these past nine years. \u00a0But when it’s gone shit-shaped, it’s gone all the way.<\/p>\n It’s called life. \u00a0Best just to get on with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ten years ago this week, the shit jumped off. \u00a0I got paged an hour before my usual start time on a Monday morning asking for all hands to come in because of a problem with the domain. \u00a0Turns out the infrastructure group had killed the primary domain controller, with no backup – meaning 1400 workstations … <\/p>\n