That’s how much work I logged last week alone. If you do the math, there are 168 hours in a week which means 57.7% of my time was spent on working. The remaining 42.3% would be for sleeping, eating, and driving to and from the office. This isn’t even counting the work I’m doing while stuck in traffic as I have my laptop with me on the passenger seat. This doesn’t even include the 3 additional hours I did last Sunday AFTER I passed my time charges at 7pm.
I wasn’t alone though as my entire technical architecture team – Jeff, James and Fred were all part of this. I told my team at the beginning that this particular week would have a reality show aura and I was dead right.
This is Jeff showing off his shirt. I took this picture when I took over the day shift on Sunday.
The whole experience (including the previous 2 weeks) brought out the best and the worst out of us. I saw emotion from people I’ve never seen before. I never saw people acted like this before and I guess stress has that effect on people.
What kind of work did we actually do? Well, we were moving our servers from Little Rock, Arkansas to Chicago, Illinois. Believe me, it's not as simple as it sounds. Even though we already drew up plans for these things, half the time we were scrambling for alternative solutions. We had to be creative enough to make MacGyver proud. The last two days – the actual deployment weekend were the worst days of the activity simply because none of us had any gas in our tanks left.
This was our team picture when the day shift team (me and Fred), relieved the night shift team (Jeff and James). Yes, I wore shorts to the office since they turned off the air conditioner and there weren't any fans around. To complete this outfit, I even wore my blue Crocs.
The good part about this? The project sponsored our food. I ordered this Yellow Cab pasta for lunch.
Sunday mid afternoon, I had a massive headache and I officially declared myself a zombie. I couldn't think anymore as all I could do was sleep on my desk. I also had a tummy ache and my back and my legs were all sore. I was in such a sour mood... until an angel dropped by to visit. Yep, Jaye dropped by to visit me and bring me drinks. I was so happy! My body aches were gone. Too bad she had to leave a few minutes later but her short visit made the difference that afternoon as that enabled me to finish the day strong.
Sunday midnight and we were done. We passed over the tasks to Chicago who will be finishing up the rest. We were all so beat up and stressed. Fred was bored while Jeffrey and James were stopping by the condo unit to rest up. I was walking to Jaye’s but then we decided to stay a couple of hours more in the condo unit to talk about what happened and to relax. Past experiences have told me never to sleep with too much on my mind and so I thought this was a good idea, I could spare an hour anyway. We picked up a couple of beers and hanged out.
We didn’t have any bottle openers though so each of us had to think of a way to open up the bottle.
Fred tried to open his with a spoon. (He did but got a gash on his finger).
James tried to open his with a knife.
And Jeff tried to open his with the side of a spoon. (He did and ALSO got a gash on his finger)
Me? The lead that I am, whoever opened his bottle used the same technique to open mine. What a great leader :P
My team (Jeff, me, Fred and James)
2 comments:
good job! - jude
nice unit arn - she
Jude kasi e... kung andun ka palang sa Chicago nilipat mo na yung servers natin di na namin ginawa ito :P
Hindi sa amin yung unit :P It was rented just for the cutover
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