Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be IT Managers

I never blog about what I actually do for living because I am convinced that nobody believe me. And even when I do give you all a glimpse of what I do, the line of people lining up to kick me in the balls and punch me when I’m down wraps around the block. So, if you pardon me, I am about to let you into the world of Vlad Mazek. Watch out, its pretty vulgar.

The Hills

It’s 9 PM and I’m done coding for the day. I just submitted my changes, assigned a test and figured the day was offer. My mind is still going at full pace and I’m laying back in the bed waiting for The Hills to start – if you need to kill your brain there is nothing like the mindshare between Lauren and Audrina. MTV is doing some sort of a pre-The Hills-premiere and for some reason the TV is not muted. I get to hear Lauren talk about her new clothes line. Brain out! Time of death, 9:25.

Catalina, Catalina

Something, somewhere, in the depth of my awesome code is leaking memory. To a really spectacular degree. To sum it up, my catalina.out blew up on my personal server and filled a 500GB partition in the space of about 40 minutes. Server down. Shockey Monkey Alert. SMS. Latin Conga ringtone at a level loud enough to bring Jesus back.

Of course my German Shepherd dog is trained to jump on me when he hears the RAZR beep. Trying to grab the phone and the laptop with a 100lb dog sitting on top of you requires certain skills.

Oh good, nothing important. Ooo, a new w00t is out.

Prometheus came down to Los Angeles

It’s roughy 11:50, I am still up trying to figure this code out. Temperature alarm in Los Angeles goes off, temperature went from 60 to 70 degrees in the span of 30 minutes. That is not one of those normal things. Emails start to fly around, what do we do, should we go into the protected mode (shut down equipment, throttle down ExchangeDefender nodes, etc). Vlad, What should we do?

I don’t care. Call me if the fucking place burns to the ground.

We’re defending, trust us

Brought in to do a SQL audit, roughly 1:30 AM. Apparently, some tables in the reports database went corrupt when we added the extra replication slaves. Did you run myisamchk? No? Ok, let me try.

Ok, so here is how SQL works kids… Two hours later… FMR.

Ask and ye shall receive

We’re shutting down LA DC 1, temperature is at 80.

Minute after that IM came through the alerts went up – three out of four cooling towers went down in the data center and they were shutting down the fourth and cutting power to the entire floor to prevent damage. Vaaaaaagtastic.

Few minutes later, facilities is working on it, A/C guy will be on site within an hour or so.

I write an email to the new hire that was supposed to start today, tell him that I will be spending the day apologizing to the SharePoint and Virtual Server customers in UK and Australia and cutting SLA refund checks.

Within the hour, the power to their network room comes back, connectivity is back up and our systems still had plenty of juice so none of the stuff (aside from a few hundred ExchangeDefender nodes went down). Two minutes later, all ExchangeDefender nodes are up. We’re back boss!

Ok, I’m done, it’s 5:40 and I am going to sleep damnit!

Make me money, ho

Katie’s alarm rings promptly, 20 minutes later. Dazed and confused, I roll out of bed, mute it for 20 minutes. Katie wakes up, complains about not sleeping. I put my slickest lines in, convince her that we should go to sleep for 2 more hours. Fourty minutes later, I get smacked on the ass and told to go out there and make her some money. Darnit.

Feelin’ Orange

At about nine or so, I make it to work. I look at my list of tasks, and people just start piling on.

Two requests to confirm employment, one for a car lease, other for an apartment. Paperwork city, all sent on a Fax from 1980’s, you know, one dot per inch. Try to make out if they are asking for a zip code or a year since employed, either way, if I fuck up someone becomes homeless or has to walk to work. Focus Vlad.

Send that livestock

Spent an hour on the phone with UPS. I filled out 3,000 forms to send servers to UK and Australia. While their computers were down. And when the UPS guy came, he didn’t have International Claim paperwork seethrough evenlope. Fun.

If an RBL dies two years ago, and you still use it, what happens?

Mail stops. ORDB died 2 years ago!!! And people are STILL using it. Phone floods.

It’s about 7PM and I can’t wait to faint.

The best part of my day!

When I get tired, I get inappropriate. Far more so than usual. This guy made my day. Let me explain. Guy calls in (ORDB problem) and starts to introduce himself, where he is calling from, etc. The name sounds familiar.

Vlad: Netsys? Oh, so you work with Raymond?

Guy: Yes, he is right behind me.

Vlad: Wow. I hope you’re getting paid extra for that!!!!

It took the dude about two minutes to compose himself and get back to why he was calling. 🙂 I also floored my buddy Rich who called in the middle of me trying to hack some IKEA furniture… Long story short: “Hold on Rich, I can’t talk to you with my shirt on.“

Just another day in the office….  How would you like to be me for a day? 🙁

Aw damn

The day ends by watching the space shuttle depart ISS with the naked eye. Amazing.

Then, while watching American Idol… and I said it would be vulgar, so I am going to let you bail now:

Vlad: Wow, Michael Jackson would flip over in his grave over this one.

Katie: And right onto the little kid?

Vlad: Whoaaaaa

Who would marry me? 🙂 Well, there you go. 10:30 PM, bedtime. Life in a day of Vlad.