Week of the "Cold"

Part I:
Well, today it hit. I've been nursing a cold all along since my granddaughter went back home last Friday. DayQuill and Coracedran worked for the first couple of days to get me thru work, but this afternoon my head started spinning like I was doing a Stevie Wonder impression.

Other than that, things are looking up on the computing / video / phone service end of things. We've been putting up with very poor picture quality for several months from Time Warner, but I got an antenna booster and it was at least bearable for the most part. Then last week we started getting dropouts where the Internet and phone connections were dead, and the TV signal was nothing but snow. Called and got the tech out here (after two days) and all he did was 'sorta' fixed it locally (for a very short time), and said they'd have to send a cable crew out to work on it. Something about a weak line input that he couldn't fix. So, I call back today (after the phone and Internet died again and wasn't coming back up) and they say there's a crew scheduled for next Saturday to check it out.

I didn't like that, but what are you gonna do? Anyway, they transfered me to Billing to get me some credit for the time we've been down and the lady there says they can only give me credit from Friday to today. Can't pre-register credit in the future. So, I mentioned (very casually) that we've been investigating other resources like AT&T UVerse or Verizon FIOS because they're guaranteeing uptime and service response. I also mentioned that I wasn't happy that they required me to pay for my services in advance, yet they couldn't give me credit for those same services when they had already told me nobody could be here until Saturday to work on it. The prospect of coming home to the spouse when she doesn't have any Internet, home phone, or TV worth looking at all day long is not something I'd wish on anyone, much less myself.

So, the lady at Time Warner agrees to post-date the outage back to the 23rd thru today. Lo & behold, if Becky doesn't give me a call in about 2 hours - seems the crew was able to come out today and replaced a core something or another up the street. Voila - blazing fast Internet (I'm getting almost 6MB/sec download on the speed tests), phone works like a champ, and the TV picture is better on every channel than it's been in the 7 years we've been here. Guess I shoulda complained sooner.

Part II:
Work is the usual depressing self. This time of year we have to get ready for the biggest medical show of the year - RSNA - which always takes place the week after Thanksgiving. I'm in charge of setting up all the medical imaging computers, servers, networks, demos, etc. and then integrating it all together and making sure it works here in Dallas. After everyone comes in for training, we have to pack it all back up, send it to Chicago, and do it again for the week of the show. This will be my 3rd year to manage it, and I'm tired of not having a Thanksgiving holiday with the family. I've got to be there in Chicago on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to set everything up there. Next year they gotta find someone else.

In the meantime, we're busy coordinating 31 workstations (with multiple monitors each), 15 different servers in 3 languages, thousands of images and studies that have to be integrated and checked individually, and also manage the order and receipt (or vendor loan) of all this equipment. And even that doesn't stop the regular work that I have to on a daily basis. Still taking calls, helping customers and sales folks, attending meetings (can't anything ever get decided without having to get a whole bunch of people together on the phone and talking it out?), teaching others to do what I know, and orgainizing the location, set up, and training classes that are coming. And you wonder why I don't like 14 - 18 hour days, 7 days a week, right up till the stuff ships towards the end of November. The only good part is this cold - so I had to come home early (6:00 pm) because I felt like I was gonna fall down otherwise.

Which brings me full circle from where I started, so I guess that's enough for today.