ehowton ◾ How to be a Super Hero (Reply)

I usually do magnificent work because I stay ahead of the curve. When I discover I'm going to be performing a task, I ensure everything I'll need is in place, put in place if its not, verify the steps I'll be running through, write a script or two, move them into place, open my tabs, track down my consoles, verify my logins, setup my environment and wait for go-time.

When the starting gun fires, I'm well on my way to a quick and efficient conclusion. Praise, often undeservedly so, is heaped upon my head. But I merely stand on the shoulders of giants. That is, those who can do these things off-the-cuff.

I'm not as smart as everyone else, so I work twice as hard. I've not the training others have, so I write everything down. I've not been doing this as long as some, so I do it during my spare time as well. All these tips and tricks help me survive in my environment.

But today, I wasn't given a heads-up. I was simply expected to perform - and the results, while not disastrous, caused much cursing and gnashing of teeth. Patch four systems. Easy enough. But all those same rules still apply, and this was in-between my other numerous tasks for the week.

My login had expired on two boxes, and the root password was several revs back to fix once I got the right console combination - Tracking down which virtual partition is on which frame requires multiple logins onto other boxes and grep'ing through frame serial numbers. Then the patches wouldn't load from the primary repository...The four boxes were split in pairs to two discrete storage nodes which act as secondary, firewalled patch repositories, and the depots on the primary was unbundled. The patches required numerous dependencies (something like 5500 individual files) so I had to scp entire directories to the different storage nodes and register them separately. I don't know how to install multiple patch-sets non-interactively from the command line on HP/UX, so I had to launch the ncurses gui.

I completed my task, but not easily.

I started my day at 0600 from an alert sent to my cell phone, and left at 2100, only to work the three hours I was home, and go back into the office at midnight because a frame had shat one half of its npars. Yes, production.

A 24-hour day today.

And I have more work to do tomorrow.

And Sunday.

True character is rarely revealed when things are easy.

So I don't bitch. I just work. And dream of sleep.

Little light shining,
Little light will guide them to me.
My face is all lit up,
My face is all lit up.
If they find me racing white horses,
They'll not take me for a buoy.

Let me be weak,
Let me sleep
And dream of sheep.