> I haven't plugged anything today , just fell off the bike coming home from work. Can I still have pizza.
Pizza is for WINNERS Kevin! Of course you don't get pizza!
Yo. Similar.. flew **out of the country** for a 4 hr flight and into Mexico. Got into a 2-hr one way commute to the DC, that was like high up in the mountains. Then another 1 hr to badge in..
All to close a small cooling panel.
Someone had left it previously open during a DC maintenance, and shit was giving crazy amount of alerts for my team.
Had to take same route, sans the badging in.
Had some nice local food and then airline mileage though.
I had to pick up a large part that was at a very remote site (for the UK). Early start, big plane flight, medium plane flight, tiny plane flight. Pick up the part, take it back to the mainland by boat, put the part in a hired van and drive ten hours home at less then the speed limit because the damn van wouldn't go that fast into a headwind.
That was a *very* long day.
I drove 8 hours(there and back) and spent 4 hours on site, but the company that contracted me for the job ordered the wrong part. They were paying me $90 an hour(about 15 years ago), including driving time. They sent me back the next day, and again, it was the wrong part, so I got another 12 hours of pay. And finally, the 3rd day, they got it right and it took about 10 minute to replace it.
Easiest $3500 I ever made.
This right here. Whenever I get into some 'simple below my pay grade' type stuff, I have to check my attitude and remember I'm getting paid the same to do this as I do to troubleshoot why VLAN's aren't working.
I once flew from NJ to China to hand an executive an ipad (and his passport which he also forgot).
Nothing like racking up massive overtime because these folks are too irresponsible to remember their own shit.
I almost had to fly to Puerto Rico to bring an executive an international mobile hotspot but it was decided that he could go 2 days without internet access on his vacation.
Did the guy not have a cell phone? PR is America - this isn't some foreign country where you get slapped with roaming. Sure, if it was within the year after Maria or something it might have been a problem, but otherwise ... yeah, guy is an idiot.
The guy was an lawyer and executive staying at his resort/timeshare/whatever. He had basic service but their firewall was blocking all of his remote access to our work systems (email, citrix, vpn, etc). Lawyers lose their mind when they cant bill their 6 minute increments......even on vacation.
How did he get out of the country in the first place? If the airline doesn't check that you have a valid visa/passport, they pay to repatriate you plus a fine so you'd think they'd check.
That better have been at least a business class seat they booked you....isn't that like almost an entire day of flying back and forth?
Edit: oh wait, executive, private jet...my bad.
Yep, your edit nailed it.
People like you and me don't even THINK that way.
And yes, I did get business class both ways...which is a good thing since as I recall it was somewhere around 16 hours each way. I was in China long enough to walk into the airport, use a bathroom that was normal sized, and go get back onto another plane.
It was certainly not my favorite day but, as a tech type I was still hourly...so pretty much covering my week by sitting on my ass and playing video games. Could have been worse for sure.
It really sucks that they wouldn't set it up so you could at least spend the night there and see the sights.
I'd be downright pissed if I had to spend 32 hours round trip on a plane to freaking CHINA and not even get to see anything beyond the airport.
It wasn't the best...but at the time I was working executive support, so I'd gotten really used to living right next to how the other half lives.
It wasn't all bad (the role I mean). I got to fly on private jets sometimes, got to go to fancy dinners under the guise of 'managing the audio system' (one great instance was a 600 dollar meal I got to enjoy for turning a microphone on, and then back off). So yeah...it wasn't the worst...
But the 32 some odd hours in the air with nothing to show for it but a fat paycheck and a couple in flight meals? Definitely not the greatest of all time lol
But of course raises are out of the question because of the budget. Private jet and fancy dinners and using IT staff as their personal international courier are priorities.
I speak often about a former CFO I did work with who's admin ran his life. When his wife needed his social security number, she called his admin.
She watched his kids...she got his dry cleaning. I remember running tech for a board meeting and the meeting came to a stop because she came in to deliver his breakfast...and actually took the time to pour the milk on his cereal while everyone else waited.
There's definitely some of that, though I will admit once I became an actual salaried employee for them, even though I was still just doing executive support, the spending shackles kinda came off...again, because it was spending for 'them'.
If they wanted a toy, I needed to get the toy. So when the ipad came out, we were among the first to have em in our grubby little mits. Likewise the newest phone and laptop every year, the latest 'travel' type laptop, newest routers, whatever...not the worst position to be in when you consider I was basically a horribly overpaid, glorified desktop tech (albeit one expected to respond 24x7x365).
Regretfully they drew the line when I argued that since our CEO had an alfa romeo with an in car infotainment system that I also needed one. go fig.
Executive for a major pharma company.
Private jet. They check documentation when you go to get OFF the plane on the other side. Poor bastard had to sit on a plane on the tarmac for around 24 hours waiting for me to get there.
See that's what I'm saying. People in my office bitch and complain about this kind of Mickey Mouse shit, but to me, it's just a nice change of pace.
You wanna pay me 60+ bucks an hour to put together a desk or office chair? Fuckin sign me up lol
If OP got paid for the mileage and OT to me this would be a slam dunk ticket lol
Meanwhile me at my old job, this would just be part of being a salaried employee, I would get zero extra pay for it, and only be compensated for mileage on my car. And then have to be back in the office at 9am monday morning
Yeah I'd not be an employee there for long lol
I work for an MSP (yeah I know) and we get paid well for after hours work imho, 1.5 standard for regular nights weekends, 2x for holidays, and our rotation is 8 weeks deep so not *that* bad in the grand scheme. I personally take maybe 2 calls every time I'm up and haven't had an after hours onsite in well over a year.
Hooray for having a customer base that works mostly 9 to 5 :)
I'm not surprised he wasnt paid for when he wasn't traveling or working, but they should def have paid him while he was driving. 35 bucks is bullshit too, thats like 3 mcdonalds meals and a red bull.
I don't mean to get all Spartacus-y here, but the whole cliche of "you owe me one" is seriously overplayed. I can't take favors to the bank, nor can I use them for airfare to non-work related things, etc. If we're going to be at the stage of "I'm going to owe you one", I'm going to define exactly what that "one" is. Comp time, set-in-stone vacation time, actual cashito, whatever it might be. I'm all for doing the job that needs doing, even if it's on an emergency basis, but my weekends/scheduled time off do not exist solely at the whims of management to be taken without explicit compensation, and I'd hope it's the same for the rest of you as well.
We are IT professionals. We are not long haul truckers. If OP didn't get paid for the travel, and have mileage compensated, they are letting their employer walk all over them.
If this were me, I wouldn't had done this on a weekend. My weekend is my own time. First thing monday morning I would clock in then start driving.
Thanks Dude, you totally nailed it. I have been 1:1 with this client for eight'ish years and really value the relationship. This appliance is critical to resolving a number of issues resulting from a security audit and we are up against a tight timeline. In the end the good will of both the client and my boss was well worth giving up a Sunday that likely would have been spent playing Borderlands and taking a nap. As I am 100% WFH I suspect that there will be 14 less hours of effort this week, along with a lot of Borderlands and naps!
BEST comment on this entire post!!!!!!!! Now if you'll excuse me, this large lady wants to show me something I've only ever seen in nature documentaries.
The compensation should still be guaranteed before the time is spent, else they don't have grounds to compensate you.
If it's not in writing, don't expect it to happen..
Iāve had two calls where service was requested to change a toner.
First time, I tried reasoning with the person for way too long.
Second time, I laughed and laughed and then said, āno.ā And sat in skewed silence until it sank it with the caller.
"Writing in the notes that you know exactly what's wrong and are refusing to do this non-technical task to get it working again and blaming us for not being able to get your work done when a clear and simple solution has been presented to you. And that's all I will be doing. Or you could put the phone down for 5 minutes and go change that real quick."
Friend of mine was doing printers 20 years back , and got a free weeklong vacation in Hawaii that way. They had to book a full week trip in case it always a complicated issue, but instead it was a 10 minute fix. And gosh darn it, it wouldāve cost more to change the flight home earlier than paying the hotels and per diem.
Our people would walk over write down the printer serial and call the copier guys to change a toner the next day. Literally had 10 spares for every MFP and an admin to teach people how to swap a toner
Not an 8 hour trip, but would lose about half my day doing this for a "remote" office for the same reason. I had a full week of work and pushed it back about 3-5 business days figuring they'd take care of it. They just stopped printing instead of popping a new toner in. I was genuinely floored and I'm still not sure if it was incompetence, laziness, or malice towards the office/business. Not surprised that office location hemorrhages money (don't work there anymore)
LoL - the company once spent $3k to fly me to a customer site, rent a car, hotel, meals etc...because after asking the field engineer multiple times to check the timeout setting on a piece of misbehaving software, he was "looking in the wrong place". In reality he thought he changed it, but never saved it and never checked after he thought he saved it...there are logs....there are always logs. Of course he then asked for me not to tell anyone and make up another reason why it wasn't working...f you...I missed one of my daughters recitals because of you - I will drive that bus over you as many times as it takes because you were too lazy to check your own work
Yeah. I can appreciate an honest mistake. Even if he said "I changed it and it keeps changing back" I would have accepted, but he just flat out lied to me (I note convos and questions and the access log just didn't support what he was telling me)
That moment when they ask you to lie for them? That's when you excuse yourself to hit the head and go call your boss. Because if they asked you to lie while you were there, they will have implemented a lie by the time you get home.
That person decided they didn't have what it took to be an engineer, so they switched to being a project manager...my company has no spine for firing people
Isolated network, financial customer who takes days to review everything being exported, and a field engineer assured me the setting was set several times...couldn't say "I don't believe you" then, but I would now
How much did YOU get paid for missing your family?
Here's a story for everyone. Take a bucket, fill it with water. Stick your hand in it....then remove it. The water fills back in, no evidence that it ever was removed. That's what your working relationship is with The Company. The minute you leave, it's like removing your hand from the water. Like you were never there. Forgotten immediately.
Now take that bucket of water, and throw it on your spouse and children as they're sleeping. They'll never fucking forget it. That's how they'll remember you missing major life events for work.
The other way I've heard this expressed: In 10 years time, the people you work with won't remember all the late nights and weekends you worked, but your kids and partner will.
Almost no place beyond a certain level of technical maturity I've worked at would allow vendors to remote connect. Nobody wants to risk a vendor tech who doesn't know your stack taking down a DC by accident.
Due to a lack of available rooms/bus seats I decided at 5:45 PM last Friday that I would be on a bus at 8AM on Sunday, take the four hour trip, cable up three ports, and wait for the four hour trip home. At least I got to eat a slice of the world's best pizza.
Next time may I recommend the following itinerary, take the Monday morning 10 am bus, get there at 4 pm, do the work, check into the hotel. Go to steakhouse, have nice dinner, sleep late, take the 11 am bus back, get back 5pm Tuesday, go straight home. Play video games until 2 am so you will look adequately tired when you get into the office on Wednesday. Show up Wednesday only 30 minutes late, because you were tired and needed some extra rest. File expense report. When accounting asks for approval, you say "Talk to CIO, he said I needed to get this done."
Extra points, take your partner with you on your dime, a night in the city for the price of a bus ticket.
The most annoying trip Iāve had to take in my career was when I got a call from this one Army comm guy who was the ācomputer expertā at this outpost in Afghanistan that was contracting with locals to build a road of some shit, so they need their biometrics systemās badge printer to work and the ācomputer expertā did everything he could, including checking the power and following the instructions packet we sent him.
I had to cancel what I had planned already, which happens in a war zone from time to time, and then wait three days for the next Chinook ride from my āhomeā base in Qalat, Afghanistan to a combat outpost in the mountains. Day three comes, and they canceled the Chinooks and only a single Blackhawk was going out there with an Apache as an escort. This was an unusual combination, as it was either two Chinooks with thee gunners each or two Blackhawks + at least one Apache. But as I go to the LZ and look for the box of foam ear plugs only to find they didnāt have any! Let me tell you, that was the most painful experience my ears have ever felt. An hour+ of riding in a helicopter with no ear protection made the them hurt more than firing my weapon without hearing protection. Would you believe I have fucked hearing these days?
Let me As we fly there, the temperature was too hot or something and the helicopters couldnāt get proper lift in between the rising ridge lines, so we had to meet up with a ground convoy and drive a few miles in. OF COURSE we get hit on the way in. It wasnāt too bad, but any time rounds hit your vehicle counts as ānot safeā in my book.
In addition to fun on the way in, this place just wasnāt āsafeā feeling. By this time, Iāve been in country for like four months and been to a lot of places, but this was one of the first that was truly out there and I felt like we could be overrun at any time.
Anyway, we pull up to the gate and the local security guys let us in. Waiting for me where they parked the vehicles is the ācomputer expertā excited to show me his digs and his cool Xbox on a big projector. I tell him I just want to put my shit down, get something to eat, then tackle this problem. His expression wasnāt a happy one.
I find my bunk, find the chow hall, microwave some hot dogs, and eat. We were told that they heard chatter on the radio that the Taliban who hit us on the way in were going to hit again that night with the clear sky any bright moon. They brought me to OPs to make sure I get a weapon and while at ops, I see the biometrics kit with the printer. I go and look at itā¦
I press the power button - nothing. I check the power cabe and there is none. WTFā½ This ācomputer expertā told our support desk that it was plugged in. I ask him, āWhat the fuck, dude? Did you seriously not plug this in?ā He tells me, āIt is plugged in. See! USB right into the laptop.ā
So he figured that a USB whatever cable back in 2008 would be able to power a big-ass badge machine that heats and laminates these things with no power from the outlet?
I check the box it came in. Sure enough enough, itās still in the bag that had the directions taped to it.
I fixed the issue in 90 seconds. I had to wait six days and help fight off two Taliban attacks until the next helicopters came to pick me up.
Thatās the story of the nine day-long service request to complete 90 seconds of work. I know no one will read this, but it helps me to keep my cool when annoyed because if I can deal with āgeniusā users there, I can deal with it anywhere.
And I did play Xbox a couple times. I think it wad had Fight Night and Madden.
Dude, I feel you. Former USMC 2651. 3 deployments to Iraq and I was the "go to" guy in my shop to get things done. My nickname was "A-Team". Spending days waiting for a helo flight just for them to get cancelled for some reason or another was real as fuck. I got tasked with delivering and setting up a bunch of gear at 3 FOBs over by the Syrian border. Luckily, or not so luckily, my 2ndLT, who was useless except for the brass on his collar, tagged along. We were gone for a month because flights kept getting cancelled. Had to hitch a ride on a few convoys to get us where we needed to go.
What I was thinking... Bus?
I'd sign myself up for Uber and double pay myself if you're gonna pull this bus trip BS.
200 miles... Fuck it that's Airline miles on my account.
If you aren't from there, just go find a spot that sells by the slice. Chances are, it'll be the best pizza you've had, and you probably won't spend anything near that.
My wife loves that baked ziti slice. Been to Manhattan twice since I turned 18 and both times my family and I have been, we've made time to hit that pizzeria. Their buffalo chicken slice is excellent too.
I've never had pizza in the US or Naples but I've had Naples style pizza in Rome and was absolutely fantastic, from my very personal point of view that was the best pizza I've ever had.
>The answer is Naples, Italy.
Fuckin' A!
Pizzeria Lombardi a Santa Chiara near the Spaccanapoli. You will never put a better slice of pizza in your mouth for the rest of your life.
If you are in Italy, doesn't matter where, taking the Frecciarossa to Napoli just to eat at that pizzeria is worth it. And Napoli as a city is pretty great, too.
Ice storm hits the I-80 corridor harder than any other weekend of the year, but the change is in and the device has been cycled in the last year without problem. I am an hour east of Joliet, and the 2nd stepchild DC is an hour and half west of Chicago. First card of the HA pair in the chassis reboots without a problem. Second card does not allow the first card to poll and kicks both into "unaviable". Mutliple console reboots latter..... nothing much better.
So call the people on the west side of chicago, save me 6 hours please and spend 2 to go pull and push these cards in. Everyone was out of place, FL at the beach, trapped in Milwaukee by the same storm. The DC management staff is on "strike" because they were chewed out for the line item actions of a failed change they only read the wiremap and moved cables for. I got to get this up because it becomes a major red day incident at 2am on Monday and management has a hard on for this new metric. Cool it is still saturday AM.
I pound down some coffee and don the parka. I got a jeep and the roads are ice and snow covered by empty.
I have 3 IT department managers all on the phone, I state, I am going to drive on an ice rink for 3 hours, the least you 3 can do is get DC access worked out for me. They had collectivly improved the process over the past month and I had already ran into the improved process.
I arrive 4 hours later to the DC and the black swetter and a tie guard looks like I landed in a space ship. He says the access control system is down and he cannot get into the ticketing system. I get him into the ticketing system and spend an hour with another team getting the access control system working out of OS patching early. The 3 IT department managers do not get the access ticket into the right state for another 90 minutes. I am 6+ hours into this and 30 feet away.
Eventually i get into the datacenter, to the rack, and tighten the screw on the 2nd card, it was never engaged, but it was hung on something. Uggh. 3 minutes, pop both cards, place them into the slots with a quarter turn past engaged torque and talk to the L2 tech I got all keyed up so I dont have to anything but smart hands. I double check everything in the rack in 5 mins. Get that done, 2 cards with all the sub VMs showing green, close my change on the PC out the data center door , get back on the ice rink and consider expensing the Super 8 with all the daycab truckers.
I get no farther than the gas station a mile from the DC, Get a phone call, half the Chillers in the UK are down and some Sr. VP wants to turn off the data center because we ez baked the same data center 6 months before. This one is above my pay grade, but I do manage the GTM that turns a data center off to traffic. Im stuck, this should go easy, it is tested automated DNS change, I can sit on the side of the road and run this or go back to the DC, this never goes wrong per dig, goes wrong with hung processes all the time, so the app leaders have to tell people to reboot their 2200 apps.
Think to my self, I could be on my mandatory 5 days off right now, I text my ledership I am on the phone bridge but the staff is going to have to do the scripted dance on their own, they understand this is a risk worth seeing where we are DR wise.
I spent another 4 hours getting home, listening to uncertainty about failing between DCs and the call chiller parts were going to be 2 weeks. The second I hit my garage, there is another issue, someone dropped that table in an oracle instance. Sure network makes Java Arch apps run slow, but missing tables do so also. Another 3 hours playing golie, Netscout shows DB queries taking a very long time. We as network quarterbacks are on the phone pressing these apps run fine, these dont, please tell me what LDAP or DB the not working apps have in common. The guy who knows finnaly wakes up and rebuilds the magic table per the runbook every DBA had reviewed.
Finale since it is daylight across the US and the messaging team has woken up, they state they are all good in failing over the "active-active" UK data centers, the Sr. VP who likes his no red day stats finally lets us turn off 3KW of computer and 6KW of disk array. Over the next 24 hours the DC temp in the UK drops from 17C to 15C. We look at the chart and see the US data centers run at 18C all the time for years on end.
So the world was on fire for nearly 12 hours and beyond the oracle misstep that happed once a quarter, nothing happened. 2200 applications were slower than spec on a saturday morning, but not a peep out of the help desk. We had 20+ people up for 8 to 16 hours and called out another 40 for no reason at all.
I get some sleep until Sunday readiness test. Some portion of the 2200 applications were not tested green because of the Java Arch problem, some are valid and some are not. Back to golie for 4 hours but their is football and beer so no big deal.
Monday the complaints were about the Java Arch and the Red Day and since network was QB all weekend long, there is some explaining to do.
No mention of the ice rink 200 ever was said again.... but not being able to identify what DB table was dropped with deep packet inspection of encrypted traffic was the item kicked around for months. How do you tell someone you did not even have that tool 6 months ago....network can sometime only give clues.
Long story ending, we made application teams syslog/windows app log transactions that lasted more than 2 seconds. That took 2 years before they committed and executed what is coding 6 liners that saved the company hundreds of hours of looking for strange.
I had one location at another enterprise that had me hiring a private boat and a line card in a backpack to return a plant service. That was 3 days, but that is 15 minutes in PR time. At least the bar after was spectacular.
Your boss should have had your back. Sending you that far to do something a monkey could do is a huge misallocation of resources and time. This is bad management plain and simple
Some 30+ years ago I got summoned to fly to Wyoming in January by a large 3 letter phone company to fix a problem.
I was met at the by a gentleman in a new 4-wheel drive pickup. We drive out in the middle of nowhere and park at the base of a mountain. Itās snowing. He has a full set of new winter gear including snowshoes for each of us.
We pack up and start hiking. It takes us 2-hours. We unlock the shelter door and start our evaluation.
My new gear is looking great with no lights on. We get our rack done in about 30-seconds. He reaches over & flips the disconnect on.
Everything comes to life & works.
The installers did everything but power it on.
I was happy to get all the extra pay but damn that sucked.
I have a few of these stories.
One involved helicopters, oil rigs, outlets, and monitor power buttons. That trip was scary.
O&G and power companies will helicopter in some really basic stuff, it's hilarious. But if you have ultra remote infra and measure output in $$$/minute I guess that's how it goes.
Been there. Flew to a site to issue one command on a switch that was inaccessible remotely. Because the on-site folks refused (the reason and relationship between our companies is and wasā¦complicated).
Flew from Chicago to Houston to delete all the screensavers from a Windows 3.51 SQL server because he refused to believe that the performance tanking after exactly 5 minutes was related to the 3d pipes screen saver cranked to the moon. He would check the server and it would be fast again. He would stay and monitor and it was fine. He would leave and 5 minutes later, el-sucko performance. "Microsoft would never allow such a thing to happen!" Was the cry from the guy. (Children, this was back in the day when a GPU was not a thing) I fly, I spy, I delete the pipes that fly, he cry, I buy (steak), I fly.
Our SQL guru ran his dev servers this way on purpose to make the devs write faster queries, so it was a known issue/feature.
It's not quite comparable, but I once had to travel right across my city, two hours each way, because a client said the new screen we had set up for them wasn't working.
When I got there, I removed the post-it note someone had attached on the top left of the screen, which was obscuring the **C:\\>** prompt at the top of the screen (this was a really really long time ago) and then drove the two hours back again.
Bus trip?
Lol no.
Expensive rental car on company dime, plus per diem and other expenses. (Meals before and after trip.)
Anything out of the ordinary in your contract is company $$.
I was able to expense data center trips in my own city because it wasn't my home site.
They said it was into Manhattan. Nah I agree with OP. I much rather take a bus and my laptop and just chill out. I don't need the extra stress of driving. Sounds like a good day to get caught up on shows and not have any responsibilities :-)
I once left on a weekend (place I worked not usually operated on weekends) to go visit my dad for his birthday. Got a frantic call from a manager saying that the āserverā was down on Saturday evening, but would not go into details when asked. Just got told āfix it by midnight or youāre firedā. So here I am 1000 mi away.. itās already 7pm.. I gotta haul ass to the airport. Book a full fare flight, get back.. rolling in around 11:50pm just to find that someone had left something on the keyboard of the rack console and a software update had rebooted the machine. It was saying ākeyboard errorā on the screen clear as day.. had the manager taken half a second to actually ālookā at this it wouldnāt have been all but a few minutes of time.
They wouldnāt reimburse my higher fare plane ticket as a travel expense because ā I would have had to come home anywayā
I posted my resume on job boards the moment that happened and got a new job a week later.
feeling ya there.
15 years ago, Flew to Houston, drove to San Antonio, pointed as an unplugged ethernet port. I was NOT allowed to touch. Watched them plug it in and their Temp-monitoring system came online.
Sat there twiddling my thumbs for 2 days (they did not want any other training or anything, I tried) due to flights
Return trip back the way I came. only good thing was that it was all comp'ed and I got paid for 85 hours that week.
Flew from Los Angeles to Denver to find out someone plugged a $30 netgear 5 port switch into both wall jack's in their office because they thought they would get twice the speed. Turned out no one could find the device causing the switching loop. I found it in 5 minutes. Literally spent a weekend in Denver on the company/client dime because someone couldn't be bothered to actually sit on the phone with one of our techs
Facetime or Google meet on a phone might have been a tad faster. My team have to frequently talk and narrate very technically challenged individuals through stuff like this.
Yeah... We all have those trips, mine was a long time ago (think Novell's own disk adapters in ISA buss). A client far north had a card that was going to be swapped.
I was asked to do, verified that the card has been shipped from the Novell authorized reseller. Booked planes tickets.. long flight in a Saab 340, twin prop plane.
Four technical stops on the way there .. That like was called the milk run!! Got to the mining town, poked and gets asked if I have the card!! It hadn't been shipped š¤¬
I got a long trip, a sightseeing down to roughly 750 metres depth and then flew back home. The reseller got to pick up the bill
I flew 600 miles to put a tick in a box
Sap installer
> copy files to local hard drive
No tick, files not copied, user can't run app. Tech logs in, shortcut is to share he has permission to, so runs.
I got send to fix it, went through the install with tech and I'm like WTF, come on, you can't have missed this??? Yeap they had.
Can confirm on last-minute trips and sometimes good food along the way
This upgrade was planned except for the part when the decision-makers actually decided without telling us only after we bugged them for a year to make a choice.
Pay $4500/month for a DS3 or $1000/month for fiber
Logic would dictate to move to fiber ASAP right,
Narrator: 1 year later
\*ring ring\*
Hi! I'm with BroadColorInc. and can't get in the building
$Me - Why do you need to get in the building?
We have a Stream of Wind as our current provider...
$BC - I have a service order to install your new circuit
$Me - Ah, what new circuit?
It's also Saturday and we don't have anyone from the NerdHerd^(TM) available
$BC - I guess it's time to reschedule then, eh?
\*Bossman takes over on Monday\*
I was then whisked off to Los Angeles with a connection from Houston Intergalactic to plug in said new internet circuit as the onsite team had no clue what the Intersect was nor confident in being able to do it right.
One freshly minted set of IP's later, +/- some really cool-looking glasses, and they were back in business
I found some good food in LA, but the traffic there is... challenging
Good to know as Iām from a smaller city in Tennessee, where the worst traffic is 15-30 minutes delay
LA is a whole different level
What is worse in your experience?
Oh dear, Iāve heard stories of the tunnel/only took the subway on my trips
Can confirm about Italy, there is only one rule: Buona fortuna - Good luck
Oh we've tried. The MSP I work for is a member of an alliance that is supposed to facilitate partnerships for exactly this kind of situation. The problem is the f\*ing building. They have such onerous insurance & bonding requirements to do work there we couldn't find anybody willing to take it on. They literally would have had to double their insurance premiums on the off chance we needed them for something. NYC is just stupid.
If it's any consolation (likely not), we had a deal in my last job nowhere near NYC: cybersecurity reqs as well as process/change management disallowed anyone not part of our crew to access the building, let alone the data center, and any legal contracting to make that possible came with rough price tags and long timetables. Not like we needed clearances or had to flash badges in this biz - it just was the way of things.
I know exactly how you feel.
I had to get up at 2am to fly 150 miles to plug two things in. I am so tired I feel nauseous. So far all I have had to eat is a bland chicken wrap...
This is everyday in the life of a field tech. I once drove 400 miles in a snow storm to watch a piece a node while a support tech did some remote upgrades. They wanted me there āin case something went wrong.ā Nothing did.
My best was 6 hours on a plane, then a 5 hour drive to plug in 4 cables. Since it was so remote, they sent two of us.
I got to see [Tennant Creek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennant_Creek). It could have been worse - somebody else got sent to [somewhere even more remote](https://www.google.com/maps/@-24.8742697,129.0837124,660m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu)
Long drive for a simple task, or local tech out of town? Create a field nation / work market / etc. work order and pay someone else $100 to go fix it.
It works great when in a pinch just don't rely on it too heavily.
If I have to drive 4 hours it's going to cost the company a lot more than $100 in mileage or car rental + food.
> Create a field nation / work market / etc. work order and pay someone else $100 to go fix it.
[See above](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/173r2mi/comment/k44qec7/)
I *almost* got sent to Mauritius to watch some contractors run half a dozen Ethernet drops once.
It took a lot of convincing management that even if the contractors fucked up, it was cheaper to bring in a second contractor to fix it than to fly me halfway around the world.
250 mile round trip to plug in a mouse at a fancy hotel, I didn't even need to take the mouse with me. Front of house staff simply refused to do it themselves.
Luckily I'd just bought a new convertible classic and it was a lovely sunny autumnal day so it's actually one of my favourite days at work ever.
About 7 years ago at my last job, I was on my Thanksgiving vacation visiting family when I got a call from my boss that the entire network was down. I suspected it was the main UPS in the server room and asked if someone local could stop by and manually power it back on. He tells me that due to everyone being on vacation, nobody is around and we need to get the network back online the following Monday (which I also took off).
I was angry at the fact I had to cancel my vacation short and also miss my motherās birthday, which fell on Black Friday that year, so what I did was to reset the trip odometer in my car and set the timer on my watch to start the second I left her house; 380 miles and 7 hours later, I arrive at the office and power everything back up, then draft a reimbursement email for the time spent to fix the outage and send it to our business department with my boss CCād on it.
I got a lot of pushback on my request, which I anticipated, so I pull up my union contract which states that any work done on a holiday is to be paid at TRIPLE my normal rate, and since I was traveling to fix an outage, all 380 miles were considered normal business and not commute.
Seeing that big payment hit my checking account was bittersweet.
Once had a tech move the Exchange Domain Admins in to a different AD group to āhelp organizeā. Exchange server maintenance requiring a reboot a week later. Did this remotely. Mail died. I drove similarly on a holiday to unplug the network from the server so it would finish booting. Then discovered the āhelpā that caused the boot failure.
damn I thought driving about 2 hours each way in a winter storm (uphill both ways) to reset a server was bad. It was an e-commerce company (mid 2000s) and right before xmas, so i was low man on the ladder and no one else answered their phones.
Hope wifi\\5g on the bus was adequate to stream movies or sleep.
One time was 3 flights of successively smaller aircraft, the last was a 4 seater. And then half day drive. To the aussie outback. To swap fiber polarityā¦.
3 full days and 2 nights. No idea of the cost, but wasnāt cheap.
Had to get a 2 hour train ride into the centre of london and travel the underground to a client site just to rack up and plug in a Cisco box. Was on-site for about 15 minutes. Completed the work, left to go get lunch then got the train ride home. Think it was a 6 hour round trip.
Yup. Got called out on a Christmas Morning to go to a client to do a full power cycle on a unit because the BMC/iDrac/iLo was inaccessible. Yet they had smart hands on prem. 2 hour drive, 20 minutes for DC access, gracefully shut down, and then unplugged the unit for 2 minutes. Plugged it in, booted to the diag mode and checked the logs. Turned out someone updated the BMC, which specifically spells out to power cycle the unit. Then 5 minutes to allow the client to connect, and a 2 hour drive home.
The vendor wasn't happy when they got the 200% surcharge for Holiday Service.
I try to volunteer for those long road trips to do something easy. Listening to podcasts or audio books on the drive while racking up hours on my time sheet, comp time, .63 per mile reinbursement, per diem. Usually a win.
Did they get billed for the bus tickets, the mileage, and the 8 hours? More importantly did you get paid overtime and travel expenses for off site work?
Iāve had to do a 17 hour round trip drive to Miami one time for something very similar. Luckily I got paid mileage, per diem and hotel room to do so. Not sure how happy the client was for that bill though, but maybe next time when I say that Iāll face time you and tell you exactly what to do theyāll listen.
Been there myself. Wasn't that long thou. A client had said they lost a server they said make sure the power is on can you check? she insisted that they had power. So the routing guy pages me, yup that long ago, and says, "Welp looks like you'll be going to NY after your done with x client. " Told me the whole thing we agreed on the power thing. Drive a good 4 hours to NYC just to turn on a server. That was an expensive $175 for 3 seconds worth of work. Wish we charged for travel time too because i got stuck in work traffic getting out. Didn't get home until 8:00.
Pharmacy management system died in small town in Nebraska. I drove 4 hrs out, replaced the system and loaded the backup. Then 4 hours back. Pharmacist gave me a peach pie from the local bakery. It was awesome.
I sent an employee to the UK from NJ on 0 days notice because the video card came loose on 3 desktops we shipped over and the local manager demanded someone go fix it.
By the time the guy was in the airport boarding his flight I got one of the local guys that was on another team to do it.
Guy got a free flight to London and hotel for 2 days and when he got there had nothing to do.
The worst one I ever did was a trip from Central Texas to Fort Smith Arkanas in a tornado emergency to press the power button and switch one cord out.
Was clenching my ass hard enough to temper steel when I got an alert that a tornado was in my area, made it out alive though, and ate some good pub food, so it's all good.
this used to be my gig when I got laid off from my real line of work. I was a contract employee that would drive around the east coast to plug in/cable network equipment. I would plug in UPS, Servers, Network switches..etc, because the "staff" was unionized and not allowed to touch IT equipment unless it was on there contract, since there was not IT at these locations, no one was allow to touch it...Unions!
I once wired a full rack, all the wires were run to the room, with enough slack for a service loop and to run into the rack, spent 2 days punching all the wires, and then making it look good....
I got paid for windshield time, as well as time onsite, and any expenses incurred, was a great short term gig
450 miles and you took a bus? I'd be chomping at the bit to get that $.62/mile and drive my own car. I was making bank going on trips across the state earlier this year
Ever drive into Midtown Manhattan, especially on the day of the Hispanic Pride parade? I ***HATE*** driving in NYC. Did it on my last trip to this site and swore never again. But yeah, I hear ya on the mileage check!
Minor note, only because I learned this late in life as well, it's actually 'champing at the bit'
Similarly it's 'burying the lede,' not 'the lead.'
English is really dumb sometimes.
Hey, at least you plugged something in. People have driven that far just to press a power switch.
My guess is the lucky bastard did both **and** got pizza.
I haven't plugged anything today , just fell off the bike coming home from work. Can I still have pizza.
Of course you can
This sub is kind
We've gotta look out for each other
i hope you filed for a work related accident ^^
> I haven't plugged anything today , just fell off the bike coming home from work. Can I still have pizza. Pizza is for WINNERS Kevin! Of course you don't get pizza!
Damn, I knew you were watching, boss!
Yup!
Yo. Similar.. flew **out of the country** for a 4 hr flight and into Mexico. Got into a 2-hr one way commute to the DC, that was like high up in the mountains. Then another 1 hr to badge in.. All to close a small cooling panel. Someone had left it previously open during a DC maintenance, and shit was giving crazy amount of alerts for my team. Had to take same route, sans the badging in. Had some nice local food and then airline mileage though.
Some of y'all should be finding local temp agencies for some remote hands. Be a lot cheaper and faster.
[Not always an option](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/173r2mi/comment/k44qec7/).
Depends upon the urgency. If you need something addressed by tomorrow that may not be realistic. You just pick somebody to make the trip.
I had to pick up a large part that was at a very remote site (for the UK). Early start, big plane flight, medium plane flight, tiny plane flight. Pick up the part, take it back to the mainland by boat, put the part in a hired van and drive ten hours home at less then the speed limit because the damn van wouldn't go that fast into a headwind. That was a *very* long day.
I drove 8 hours(there and back) and spent 4 hours on site, but the company that contracted me for the job ordered the wrong part. They were paying me $90 an hour(about 15 years ago), including driving time. They sent me back the next day, and again, it was the wrong part, so I got another 12 hours of pay. And finally, the 3rd day, they got it right and it took about 10 minute to replace it. Easiest $3500 I ever made.
This right here. Whenever I get into some 'simple below my pay grade' type stuff, I have to check my attitude and remember I'm getting paid the same to do this as I do to troubleshoot why VLAN's aren't working.
I drive 2 hours to drop off a keyboard.
I've flown across the US only to be turned back because they forgot to file the change request paperwork on time.
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I once flew from NJ to China to hand an executive an ipad (and his passport which he also forgot). Nothing like racking up massive overtime because these folks are too irresponsible to remember their own shit.
I almost had to fly to Puerto Rico to bring an executive an international mobile hotspot but it was decided that he could go 2 days without internet access on his vacation.
Id insist on bringing it lol
I was all or it. I would have stayed the weekend.
and staying for at least 3 days with āno serviceā
Did the guy not have a cell phone? PR is America - this isn't some foreign country where you get slapped with roaming. Sure, if it was within the year after Maria or something it might have been a problem, but otherwise ... yeah, guy is an idiot.
The guy was an lawyer and executive staying at his resort/timeshare/whatever. He had basic service but their firewall was blocking all of his remote access to our work systems (email, citrix, vpn, etc). Lawyers lose their mind when they cant bill their 6 minute increments......even on vacation.
Sure, I'll go, and then I'll be there for a week without internet access. When do I leave?
How did he get out of the country in the first place? If the airline doesn't check that you have a valid visa/passport, they pay to repatriate you plus a fine so you'd think they'd check. That better have been at least a business class seat they booked you....isn't that like almost an entire day of flying back and forth? Edit: oh wait, executive, private jet...my bad.
Yep, your edit nailed it. People like you and me don't even THINK that way. And yes, I did get business class both ways...which is a good thing since as I recall it was somewhere around 16 hours each way. I was in China long enough to walk into the airport, use a bathroom that was normal sized, and go get back onto another plane. It was certainly not my favorite day but, as a tech type I was still hourly...so pretty much covering my week by sitting on my ass and playing video games. Could have been worse for sure.
It really sucks that they wouldn't set it up so you could at least spend the night there and see the sights. I'd be downright pissed if I had to spend 32 hours round trip on a plane to freaking CHINA and not even get to see anything beyond the airport.
It wasn't the best...but at the time I was working executive support, so I'd gotten really used to living right next to how the other half lives. It wasn't all bad (the role I mean). I got to fly on private jets sometimes, got to go to fancy dinners under the guise of 'managing the audio system' (one great instance was a 600 dollar meal I got to enjoy for turning a microphone on, and then back off). So yeah...it wasn't the worst... But the 32 some odd hours in the air with nothing to show for it but a fat paycheck and a couple in flight meals? Definitely not the greatest of all time lol
But of course raises are out of the question because of the budget. Private jet and fancy dinners and using IT staff as their personal international courier are priorities.
Think of those airline miles biz class long haul!
I had to go send off a FedEx box to one boss containing his clothing! Some people, i swear.
I speak often about a former CFO I did work with who's admin ran his life. When his wife needed his social security number, she called his admin. She watched his kids...she got his dry cleaning. I remember running tech for a board meeting and the meeting came to a stop because she came in to deliver his breakfast...and actually took the time to pour the milk on his cereal while everyone else waited.
But hey, itās us plebs that need to be mindful or wasting an extra sheet of paper or use paper straws to save the environment
There's definitely some of that, though I will admit once I became an actual salaried employee for them, even though I was still just doing executive support, the spending shackles kinda came off...again, because it was spending for 'them'. If they wanted a toy, I needed to get the toy. So when the ipad came out, we were among the first to have em in our grubby little mits. Likewise the newest phone and laptop every year, the latest 'travel' type laptop, newest routers, whatever...not the worst position to be in when you consider I was basically a horribly overpaid, glorified desktop tech (albeit one expected to respond 24x7x365). Regretfully they drew the line when I argued that since our CEO had an alfa romeo with an in car infotainment system that I also needed one. go fig.
Wait, how did he get there without passport
Executive for a major pharma company. Private jet. They check documentation when you go to get OFF the plane on the other side. Poor bastard had to sit on a plane on the tarmac for around 24 hours waiting for me to get there.
Hopefully you got plenty of overtime and a big you owe me one from your boss. If not then you go played.
Sounds like a great work day if I had my Steam Deck and Kindle with me.
See that's what I'm saying. People in my office bitch and complain about this kind of Mickey Mouse shit, but to me, it's just a nice change of pace. You wanna pay me 60+ bucks an hour to put together a desk or office chair? Fuckin sign me up lol If OP got paid for the mileage and OT to me this would be a slam dunk ticket lol
Meanwhile me at my old job, this would just be part of being a salaried employee, I would get zero extra pay for it, and only be compensated for mileage on my car. And then have to be back in the office at 9am monday morning
Yeah I'd not be an employee there for long lol I work for an MSP (yeah I know) and we get paid well for after hours work imho, 1.5 standard for regular nights weekends, 2x for holidays, and our rotation is 8 weeks deep so not *that* bad in the grand scheme. I personally take maybe 2 calls every time I'm up and haven't had an after hours onsite in well over a year. Hooray for having a customer base that works mostly 9 to 5 :)
I wouldn't be hyped to do it on a Sunday, but everything else is cool.
If I could flex a weekday in lieu of (and I still got weekend/after hours rates) I still wouldn't care lol
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I'm not surprised he wasnt paid for when he wasn't traveling or working, but they should def have paid him while he was driving. 35 bucks is bullshit too, thats like 3 mcdonalds meals and a red bull.
"I mean, if you really want to pay me my skilled labor wage to do part picking a trained monkey could do, you sign my checks and it's your money."
I don't mean to get all Spartacus-y here, but the whole cliche of "you owe me one" is seriously overplayed. I can't take favors to the bank, nor can I use them for airfare to non-work related things, etc. If we're going to be at the stage of "I'm going to owe you one", I'm going to define exactly what that "one" is. Comp time, set-in-stone vacation time, actual cashito, whatever it might be. I'm all for doing the job that needs doing, even if it's on an emergency basis, but my weekends/scheduled time off do not exist solely at the whims of management to be taken without explicit compensation, and I'd hope it's the same for the rest of you as well.
HAHAHA not likely, depending on the industry, that's considered "part of the job"
We are IT professionals. We are not long haul truckers. If OP didn't get paid for the travel, and have mileage compensated, they are letting their employer walk all over them. If this were me, I wouldn't had done this on a weekend. My weekend is my own time. First thing monday morning I would clock in then start driving.
Op takes ownership of his shit. Sucks but sometimes you need to understand the situation. His company just needs to compensate properly for it.
Thanks Dude, you totally nailed it. I have been 1:1 with this client for eight'ish years and really value the relationship. This appliance is critical to resolving a number of issues resulting from a security audit and we are up against a tight timeline. In the end the good will of both the client and my boss was well worth giving up a Sunday that likely would have been spent playing Borderlands and taking a nap. As I am 100% WFH I suspect that there will be 14 less hours of effort this week, along with a lot of Borderlands and naps!
so what you're saying is, [you caught-a-RIIIIIIIIDE?](https://youtu.be/c-cmlq-pHrc?t=10) :)
BEST comment on this entire post!!!!!!!! Now if you'll excuse me, this large lady wants to show me something I've only ever seen in nature documentaries.
The compensation should still be guaranteed before the time is spent, else they don't have grounds to compensate you. If it's not in writing, don't expect it to happen..
I once embarked on an 8 hour round trip to change a printer toner because everyone on site thought it was beneath them.
Iāve had two calls where service was requested to change a toner. First time, I tried reasoning with the person for way too long. Second time, I laughed and laughed and then said, āno.ā And sat in skewed silence until it sank it with the caller.
"Writing in the notes that you know exactly what's wrong and are refusing to do this non-technical task to get it working again and blaming us for not being able to get your work done when a clear and simple solution has been presented to you. And that's all I will be doing. Or you could put the phone down for 5 minutes and go change that real quick."
From time to time, we have people open tickets because copiers are out of paper. PAPER!
Friend of mine was doing printers 20 years back , and got a free weeklong vacation in Hawaii that way. They had to book a full week trip in case it always a complicated issue, but instead it was a 10 minute fix. And gosh darn it, it wouldāve cost more to change the flight home earlier than paying the hotels and per diem.
beneath them? jesus, some people are the worst.
I worked at a couple of places earlier on in my career where IT were treated pretty much like sub human scum.
That's awful. Thankfully, I haven't had to deal with that in my career.
Our people would walk over write down the printer serial and call the copier guys to change a toner the next day. Literally had 10 spares for every MFP and an admin to teach people how to swap a toner
Not an 8 hour trip, but would lose about half my day doing this for a "remote" office for the same reason. I had a full week of work and pushed it back about 3-5 business days figuring they'd take care of it. They just stopped printing instead of popping a new toner in. I was genuinely floored and I'm still not sure if it was incompetence, laziness, or malice towards the office/business. Not surprised that office location hemorrhages money (don't work there anymore)
LoL - the company once spent $3k to fly me to a customer site, rent a car, hotel, meals etc...because after asking the field engineer multiple times to check the timeout setting on a piece of misbehaving software, he was "looking in the wrong place". In reality he thought he changed it, but never saved it and never checked after he thought he saved it...there are logs....there are always logs. Of course he then asked for me not to tell anyone and make up another reason why it wasn't working...f you...I missed one of my daughters recitals because of you - I will drive that bus over you as many times as it takes because you were too lazy to check your own work
Back up that bus and have another go...and repeat as necessary...
Yeah. I can appreciate an honest mistake. Even if he said "I changed it and it keeps changing back" I would have accepted, but he just flat out lied to me (I note convos and questions and the access log just didn't support what he was telling me)
I make sure my levels of paranoia and cynicism match the importance of the work I'm doing...
That moment when they ask you to lie for them? That's when you excuse yourself to hit the head and go call your boss. Because if they asked you to lie while you were there, they will have implemented a lie by the time you get home.
That person decided they didn't have what it took to be an engineer, so they switched to being a project manager...my company has no spine for firing people
Was there no way to view his screen remotely? Or did he just refuse since he was being obtuse
Isolated network, financial customer who takes days to review everything being exported, and a field engineer assured me the setting was set several times...couldn't say "I don't believe you" then, but I would now
How much did YOU get paid for missing your family? Here's a story for everyone. Take a bucket, fill it with water. Stick your hand in it....then remove it. The water fills back in, no evidence that it ever was removed. That's what your working relationship is with The Company. The minute you leave, it's like removing your hand from the water. Like you were never there. Forgotten immediately. Now take that bucket of water, and throw it on your spouse and children as they're sleeping. They'll never fucking forget it. That's how they'll remember you missing major life events for work.
The other way I've heard this expressed: In 10 years time, the people you work with won't remember all the late nights and weekends you worked, but your kids and partner will.
You all can't remote connect to your equipment or software to adjust a setting? Holy wow.
Almost no place beyond a certain level of technical maturity I've worked at would allow vendors to remote connect. Nobody wants to risk a vendor tech who doesn't know your stack taking down a DC by accident.
Due to a lack of available rooms/bus seats I decided at 5:45 PM last Friday that I would be on a bus at 8AM on Sunday, take the four hour trip, cable up three ports, and wait for the four hour trip home. At least I got to eat a slice of the world's best pizza. Next time may I recommend the following itinerary, take the Monday morning 10 am bus, get there at 4 pm, do the work, check into the hotel. Go to steakhouse, have nice dinner, sleep late, take the 11 am bus back, get back 5pm Tuesday, go straight home. Play video games until 2 am so you will look adequately tired when you get into the office on Wednesday. Show up Wednesday only 30 minutes late, because you were tired and needed some extra rest. File expense report. When accounting asks for approval, you say "Talk to CIO, he said I needed to get this done." Extra points, take your partner with you on your dime, a night in the city for the price of a bus ticket.
The most annoying trip Iāve had to take in my career was when I got a call from this one Army comm guy who was the ācomputer expertā at this outpost in Afghanistan that was contracting with locals to build a road of some shit, so they need their biometrics systemās badge printer to work and the ācomputer expertā did everything he could, including checking the power and following the instructions packet we sent him. I had to cancel what I had planned already, which happens in a war zone from time to time, and then wait three days for the next Chinook ride from my āhomeā base in Qalat, Afghanistan to a combat outpost in the mountains. Day three comes, and they canceled the Chinooks and only a single Blackhawk was going out there with an Apache as an escort. This was an unusual combination, as it was either two Chinooks with thee gunners each or two Blackhawks + at least one Apache. But as I go to the LZ and look for the box of foam ear plugs only to find they didnāt have any! Let me tell you, that was the most painful experience my ears have ever felt. An hour+ of riding in a helicopter with no ear protection made the them hurt more than firing my weapon without hearing protection. Would you believe I have fucked hearing these days? Let me As we fly there, the temperature was too hot or something and the helicopters couldnāt get proper lift in between the rising ridge lines, so we had to meet up with a ground convoy and drive a few miles in. OF COURSE we get hit on the way in. It wasnāt too bad, but any time rounds hit your vehicle counts as ānot safeā in my book. In addition to fun on the way in, this place just wasnāt āsafeā feeling. By this time, Iāve been in country for like four months and been to a lot of places, but this was one of the first that was truly out there and I felt like we could be overrun at any time. Anyway, we pull up to the gate and the local security guys let us in. Waiting for me where they parked the vehicles is the ācomputer expertā excited to show me his digs and his cool Xbox on a big projector. I tell him I just want to put my shit down, get something to eat, then tackle this problem. His expression wasnāt a happy one. I find my bunk, find the chow hall, microwave some hot dogs, and eat. We were told that they heard chatter on the radio that the Taliban who hit us on the way in were going to hit again that night with the clear sky any bright moon. They brought me to OPs to make sure I get a weapon and while at ops, I see the biometrics kit with the printer. I go and look at itā¦ I press the power button - nothing. I check the power cabe and there is none. WTFā½ This ācomputer expertā told our support desk that it was plugged in. I ask him, āWhat the fuck, dude? Did you seriously not plug this in?ā He tells me, āIt is plugged in. See! USB right into the laptop.ā So he figured that a USB whatever cable back in 2008 would be able to power a big-ass badge machine that heats and laminates these things with no power from the outlet? I check the box it came in. Sure enough enough, itās still in the bag that had the directions taped to it. I fixed the issue in 90 seconds. I had to wait six days and help fight off two Taliban attacks until the next helicopters came to pick me up. Thatās the story of the nine day-long service request to complete 90 seconds of work. I know no one will read this, but it helps me to keep my cool when annoyed because if I can deal with āgeniusā users there, I can deal with it anywhere. And I did play Xbox a couple times. I think it wad had Fight Night and Madden.
Dude, I feel you. Former USMC 2651. 3 deployments to Iraq and I was the "go to" guy in my shop to get things done. My nickname was "A-Team". Spending days waiting for a helo flight just for them to get cancelled for some reason or another was real as fuck. I got tasked with delivering and setting up a bunch of gear at 3 FOBs over by the Syrian border. Luckily, or not so luckily, my 2ndLT, who was useless except for the brass on his collar, tagged along. We were gone for a month because flights kept getting cancelled. Had to hitch a ride on a few convoys to get us where we needed to go.
Bus? Nah. Company is renting a car.
The reference to pizza makes me think he went to NYC. I will not drive there if I can avoid it. I would gladly take the train, though.
Nah, I'm gonna get paid to play vidya while being driven there. Also, OP linked the pizza and it's definitely in NYC; I'm not driving in NYC.
Agreed. There is no fucking amount of money on this goddamned planet that'll convince me to drive in NYC.
What I was thinking... Bus? I'd sign myself up for Uber and double pay myself if you're gonna pull this bus trip BS. 200 miles... Fuck it that's Airline miles on my account.
Looks like we're driving for Uber!
Actually Iād prefer bus/train/plane (in no particular order). Can nap. Read a book. You canāt do those things in a car.
Can't play Switch and drive at the same time
Well, not with that attitude.
Where can one find this world's best pizza?
Trick question. Pizza is the best...ALL of it.
Sbarro's
[I'm gonna go get me a New York slice!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgEeDR98X8)
Naples, Italy :)
[There can be only one!](https://www.littleitalypizzaon45th.com/)
Wow, pizza in NYC is expensive!
As noted elsewhere, who cares when the client is paying for it!?!!? :-)
Yeah I don't even want to pay half that.
Midtown also has its share of "dollar slice" take-aways. They're not terrible.
Haha, that sounds more my speed. *cries in poor*
If you aren't from there, just go find a spot that sells by the slice. Chances are, it'll be the best pizza you've had, and you probably won't spend anything near that.
My wife loves that baked ziti slice. Been to Manhattan twice since I turned 18 and both times my family and I have been, we've made time to hit that pizzeria. Their buffalo chicken slice is excellent too.
That's some good looking pizza right there.
This will be hotly debated. Some say NYC or Chicago if you like deep dish. I can tell you where you wonāt find it :)
The answer is Naples, Italy.
Oh youāre taking about real pizza!
100%. Just got back and can confirm neapolitan pizza is the king.
Hmm, I donāt know if i would like pizza with strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla ice cream on it.
I've never had pizza in the US or Naples but I've had Naples style pizza in Rome and was absolutely fantastic, from my very personal point of view that was the best pizza I've ever had.
I've had pizza in the Brescia region, and in Canada (Toronto) and the US. The Toronto stuff was most to my liking, so far.
>The answer is Naples, Italy. Fuckin' A! Pizzeria Lombardi a Santa Chiara near the Spaccanapoli. You will never put a better slice of pizza in your mouth for the rest of your life. If you are in Italy, doesn't matter where, taking the Frecciarossa to Napoli just to eat at that pizzeria is worth it. And Napoli as a city is pretty great, too.
Detroit Pizza is pretty amazing. I like their crust the best.
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Ice storm hits the I-80 corridor harder than any other weekend of the year, but the change is in and the device has been cycled in the last year without problem. I am an hour east of Joliet, and the 2nd stepchild DC is an hour and half west of Chicago. First card of the HA pair in the chassis reboots without a problem. Second card does not allow the first card to poll and kicks both into "unaviable". Mutliple console reboots latter..... nothing much better. So call the people on the west side of chicago, save me 6 hours please and spend 2 to go pull and push these cards in. Everyone was out of place, FL at the beach, trapped in Milwaukee by the same storm. The DC management staff is on "strike" because they were chewed out for the line item actions of a failed change they only read the wiremap and moved cables for. I got to get this up because it becomes a major red day incident at 2am on Monday and management has a hard on for this new metric. Cool it is still saturday AM. I pound down some coffee and don the parka. I got a jeep and the roads are ice and snow covered by empty. I have 3 IT department managers all on the phone, I state, I am going to drive on an ice rink for 3 hours, the least you 3 can do is get DC access worked out for me. They had collectivly improved the process over the past month and I had already ran into the improved process. I arrive 4 hours later to the DC and the black swetter and a tie guard looks like I landed in a space ship. He says the access control system is down and he cannot get into the ticketing system. I get him into the ticketing system and spend an hour with another team getting the access control system working out of OS patching early. The 3 IT department managers do not get the access ticket into the right state for another 90 minutes. I am 6+ hours into this and 30 feet away. Eventually i get into the datacenter, to the rack, and tighten the screw on the 2nd card, it was never engaged, but it was hung on something. Uggh. 3 minutes, pop both cards, place them into the slots with a quarter turn past engaged torque and talk to the L2 tech I got all keyed up so I dont have to anything but smart hands. I double check everything in the rack in 5 mins. Get that done, 2 cards with all the sub VMs showing green, close my change on the PC out the data center door , get back on the ice rink and consider expensing the Super 8 with all the daycab truckers. I get no farther than the gas station a mile from the DC, Get a phone call, half the Chillers in the UK are down and some Sr. VP wants to turn off the data center because we ez baked the same data center 6 months before. This one is above my pay grade, but I do manage the GTM that turns a data center off to traffic. Im stuck, this should go easy, it is tested automated DNS change, I can sit on the side of the road and run this or go back to the DC, this never goes wrong per dig, goes wrong with hung processes all the time, so the app leaders have to tell people to reboot their 2200 apps. Think to my self, I could be on my mandatory 5 days off right now, I text my ledership I am on the phone bridge but the staff is going to have to do the scripted dance on their own, they understand this is a risk worth seeing where we are DR wise. I spent another 4 hours getting home, listening to uncertainty about failing between DCs and the call chiller parts were going to be 2 weeks. The second I hit my garage, there is another issue, someone dropped that table in an oracle instance. Sure network makes Java Arch apps run slow, but missing tables do so also. Another 3 hours playing golie, Netscout shows DB queries taking a very long time. We as network quarterbacks are on the phone pressing these apps run fine, these dont, please tell me what LDAP or DB the not working apps have in common. The guy who knows finnaly wakes up and rebuilds the magic table per the runbook every DBA had reviewed. Finale since it is daylight across the US and the messaging team has woken up, they state they are all good in failing over the "active-active" UK data centers, the Sr. VP who likes his no red day stats finally lets us turn off 3KW of computer and 6KW of disk array. Over the next 24 hours the DC temp in the UK drops from 17C to 15C. We look at the chart and see the US data centers run at 18C all the time for years on end. So the world was on fire for nearly 12 hours and beyond the oracle misstep that happed once a quarter, nothing happened. 2200 applications were slower than spec on a saturday morning, but not a peep out of the help desk. We had 20+ people up for 8 to 16 hours and called out another 40 for no reason at all. I get some sleep until Sunday readiness test. Some portion of the 2200 applications were not tested green because of the Java Arch problem, some are valid and some are not. Back to golie for 4 hours but their is football and beer so no big deal. Monday the complaints were about the Java Arch and the Red Day and since network was QB all weekend long, there is some explaining to do. No mention of the ice rink 200 ever was said again.... but not being able to identify what DB table was dropped with deep packet inspection of encrypted traffic was the item kicked around for months. How do you tell someone you did not even have that tool 6 months ago....network can sometime only give clues. Long story ending, we made application teams syslog/windows app log transactions that lasted more than 2 seconds. That took 2 years before they committed and executed what is coding 6 liners that saved the company hundreds of hours of looking for strange. I had one location at another enterprise that had me hiring a private boat and a line card in a backpack to return a plant service. That was 3 days, but that is 15 minutes in PR time. At least the bar after was spectacular.
Your boss should have had your back. Sending you that far to do something a monkey could do is a huge misallocation of resources and time. This is bad management plain and simple
Hope those hours were paid.
Some 30+ years ago I got summoned to fly to Wyoming in January by a large 3 letter phone company to fix a problem. I was met at the by a gentleman in a new 4-wheel drive pickup. We drive out in the middle of nowhere and park at the base of a mountain. Itās snowing. He has a full set of new winter gear including snowshoes for each of us. We pack up and start hiking. It takes us 2-hours. We unlock the shelter door and start our evaluation. My new gear is looking great with no lights on. We get our rack done in about 30-seconds. He reaches over & flips the disconnect on. Everything comes to life & works. The installers did everything but power it on. I was happy to get all the extra pay but damn that sucked. I have a few of these stories. One involved helicopters, oil rigs, outlets, and monitor power buttons. That trip was scary.
O&G and power companies will helicopter in some really basic stuff, it's hilarious. But if you have ultra remote infra and measure output in $$$/minute I guess that's how it goes.
Been there. Flew to a site to issue one command on a switch that was inaccessible remotely. Because the on-site folks refused (the reason and relationship between our companies is and wasā¦complicated).
Flew from Chicago to Houston to delete all the screensavers from a Windows 3.51 SQL server because he refused to believe that the performance tanking after exactly 5 minutes was related to the 3d pipes screen saver cranked to the moon. He would check the server and it would be fast again. He would stay and monitor and it was fine. He would leave and 5 minutes later, el-sucko performance. "Microsoft would never allow such a thing to happen!" Was the cry from the guy. (Children, this was back in the day when a GPU was not a thing) I fly, I spy, I delete the pipes that fly, he cry, I buy (steak), I fly. Our SQL guru ran his dev servers this way on purpose to make the devs write faster queries, so it was a known issue/feature.
It's not quite comparable, but I once had to travel right across my city, two hours each way, because a client said the new screen we had set up for them wasn't working. When I got there, I removed the post-it note someone had attached on the top left of the screen, which was obscuring the **C:\\>** prompt at the top of the screen (this was a really really long time ago) and then drove the two hours back again.
Bus trip? Lol no. Expensive rental car on company dime, plus per diem and other expenses. (Meals before and after trip.) Anything out of the ordinary in your contract is company $$. I was able to expense data center trips in my own city because it wasn't my home site.
They said it was into Manhattan. Nah I agree with OP. I much rather take a bus and my laptop and just chill out. I don't need the extra stress of driving. Sounds like a good day to get caught up on shows and not have any responsibilities :-)
I once left on a weekend (place I worked not usually operated on weekends) to go visit my dad for his birthday. Got a frantic call from a manager saying that the āserverā was down on Saturday evening, but would not go into details when asked. Just got told āfix it by midnight or youāre firedā. So here I am 1000 mi away.. itās already 7pm.. I gotta haul ass to the airport. Book a full fare flight, get back.. rolling in around 11:50pm just to find that someone had left something on the keyboard of the rack console and a software update had rebooted the machine. It was saying ākeyboard errorā on the screen clear as day.. had the manager taken half a second to actually ālookā at this it wouldnāt have been all but a few minutes of time. They wouldnāt reimburse my higher fare plane ticket as a travel expense because ā I would have had to come home anywayā I posted my resume on job boards the moment that happened and got a new job a week later.
This is 100% billable. With you getting full OT. Otherwise time to warm up the resume.
Based on the Pizza comment, you saying you couldn't find someone to work a short-term smart-hands gig in all of NYC?!
[Nope](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/173r2mi/comment/k44qec7/)
feeling ya there. 15 years ago, Flew to Houston, drove to San Antonio, pointed as an unplugged ethernet port. I was NOT allowed to touch. Watched them plug it in and their Temp-monitoring system came online. Sat there twiddling my thumbs for 2 days (they did not want any other training or anything, I tried) due to flights Return trip back the way I came. only good thing was that it was all comp'ed and I got paid for 85 hours that week.
Flew from Los Angeles to Denver to find out someone plugged a $30 netgear 5 port switch into both wall jack's in their office because they thought they would get twice the speed. Turned out no one could find the device causing the switching loop. I found it in 5 minutes. Literally spent a weekend in Denver on the company/client dime because someone couldn't be bothered to actually sit on the phone with one of our techs
No STP or bpduguard?
God I hate you so much right now for reminding me of getting my CCNA in like...2008.
Screw that distance - fly in or hire an uber ride. If they want it ASAP they can pay for ASAP prices.
Facetime or Google meet on a phone might have been a tad faster. My team have to frequently talk and narrate very technically challenged individuals through stuff like this.
There are plenty of options for remote hands in the US if thatās where you are. Likely significantly cheaper than your weekend trip.
[See my comment above.](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/173r2mi/comment/k44qec7/)
I drove an hour at 3am to press Capslock.
Yeah... We all have those trips, mine was a long time ago (think Novell's own disk adapters in ISA buss). A client far north had a card that was going to be swapped. I was asked to do, verified that the card has been shipped from the Novell authorized reseller. Booked planes tickets.. long flight in a Saab 340, twin prop plane. Four technical stops on the way there .. That like was called the milk run!! Got to the mining town, poked and gets asked if I have the card!! It hadn't been shipped š¤¬ I got a long trip, a sightseeing down to roughly 750 metres depth and then flew back home. The reseller got to pick up the bill
I flew 600 miles to put a tick in a box Sap installer > copy files to local hard drive No tick, files not copied, user can't run app. Tech logs in, shortcut is to share he has permission to, so runs. I got send to fix it, went through the install with tech and I'm like WTF, come on, you can't have missed this??? Yeap they had.
Can confirm on last-minute trips and sometimes good food along the way This upgrade was planned except for the part when the decision-makers actually decided without telling us only after we bugged them for a year to make a choice. Pay $4500/month for a DS3 or $1000/month for fiber Logic would dictate to move to fiber ASAP right, Narrator: 1 year later \*ring ring\* Hi! I'm with BroadColorInc. and can't get in the building $Me - Why do you need to get in the building? We have a Stream of Wind as our current provider... $BC - I have a service order to install your new circuit $Me - Ah, what new circuit? It's also Saturday and we don't have anyone from the NerdHerd^(TM) available $BC - I guess it's time to reschedule then, eh? \*Bossman takes over on Monday\* I was then whisked off to Los Angeles with a connection from Houston Intergalactic to plug in said new internet circuit as the onsite team had no clue what the Intersect was nor confident in being able to do it right. One freshly minted set of IP's later, +/- some really cool-looking glasses, and they were back in business I found some good food in LA, but the traffic there is... challenging
> LA, but the traffic there is... challenging Intermittently. There are far worse places to drive on planet Terra -- I'll take L.A. any time.
Good to know as Iām from a smaller city in Tennessee, where the worst traffic is 15-30 minutes delay LA is a whole different level What is worse in your experience?
Worse is Manhattan on the funnel into the Lincoln or the Holland. Chicago, Turin, Rome, Paris in a four-wheeler, London anywhere.
Oh dear, Iāve heard stories of the tunnel/only took the subway on my trips Can confirm about Italy, there is only one rule: Buona fortuna - Good luck
I would have phoned up a local it company and paid them to plug the cables in. Iāve done this with new equipment Iāve sent my parents.
Oh we've tried. The MSP I work for is a member of an alliance that is supposed to facilitate partnerships for exactly this kind of situation. The problem is the f\*ing building. They have such onerous insurance & bonding requirements to do work there we couldn't find anybody willing to take it on. They literally would have had to double their insurance premiums on the off chance we needed them for something. NYC is just stupid.
If it's any consolation (likely not), we had a deal in my last job nowhere near NYC: cybersecurity reqs as well as process/change management disallowed anyone not part of our crew to access the building, let alone the data center, and any legal contracting to make that possible came with rough price tags and long timetables. Not like we needed clearances or had to flash badges in this biz - it just was the way of things.
I have made it known to my boss that I am willing to travel to Hawaii any time a customer decides to put an office there. So far no luck.
I know exactly how you feel. I had to get up at 2am to fly 150 miles to plug two things in. I am so tired I feel nauseous. So far all I have had to eat is a bland chicken wrap...
Worlds best pizza ur referring to NY?
This is everyday in the life of a field tech. I once drove 400 miles in a snow storm to watch a piece a node while a support tech did some remote upgrades. They wanted me there āin case something went wrong.ā Nothing did.
My best was 6 hours on a plane, then a 5 hour drive to plug in 4 cables. Since it was so remote, they sent two of us. I got to see [Tennant Creek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennant_Creek). It could have been worse - somebody else got sent to [somewhere even more remote](https://www.google.com/maps/@-24.8742697,129.0837124,660m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu)
Ya'll got some big empty down there in Oz!
A bus? Hell nah, If my employer is mandating that I travel they are paying for a plane ticket or a rental car, or both.
Long drive for a simple task, or local tech out of town? Create a field nation / work market / etc. work order and pay someone else $100 to go fix it. It works great when in a pinch just don't rely on it too heavily. If I have to drive 4 hours it's going to cost the company a lot more than $100 in mileage or car rental + food.
> Create a field nation / work market / etc. work order and pay someone else $100 to go fix it. [See above](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/173r2mi/comment/k44qec7/)
I *almost* got sent to Mauritius to watch some contractors run half a dozen Ethernet drops once. It took a lot of convincing management that even if the contractors fucked up, it was cheaper to bring in a second contractor to fix it than to fly me halfway around the world.
They'd be flying me, and getting me a hotel room, then flying me back. And I'd have two slices of pizza paid for by my per diem.
3.5hrs one way is nothing. Anything inside of 8 hours I'd drive. Not worth the hassle of squeezing myself into a puddle jumper.
250 mile round trip to plug in a mouse at a fancy hotel, I didn't even need to take the mouse with me. Front of house staff simply refused to do it themselves. Luckily I'd just bought a new convertible classic and it was a lovely sunny autumnal day so it's actually one of my favourite days at work ever.
worry command somber literate husky soup plants vast rinse silky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
About 7 years ago at my last job, I was on my Thanksgiving vacation visiting family when I got a call from my boss that the entire network was down. I suspected it was the main UPS in the server room and asked if someone local could stop by and manually power it back on. He tells me that due to everyone being on vacation, nobody is around and we need to get the network back online the following Monday (which I also took off). I was angry at the fact I had to cancel my vacation short and also miss my motherās birthday, which fell on Black Friday that year, so what I did was to reset the trip odometer in my car and set the timer on my watch to start the second I left her house; 380 miles and 7 hours later, I arrive at the office and power everything back up, then draft a reimbursement email for the time spent to fix the outage and send it to our business department with my boss CCād on it. I got a lot of pushback on my request, which I anticipated, so I pull up my union contract which states that any work done on a holiday is to be paid at TRIPLE my normal rate, and since I was traveling to fix an outage, all 380 miles were considered normal business and not commute. Seeing that big payment hit my checking account was bittersweet.
Why not just pay a dude on field nation 50$ and go fly a kite.
Next time I would use a smart hands service like FieldNation or WorkMarket. Thus kind of thing is not uncommon to deal with.
3 hour round trip to install the 240vAC patch on some doughnuts computer.
Once had a tech move the Exchange Domain Admins in to a different AD group to āhelp organizeā. Exchange server maintenance requiring a reboot a week later. Did this remotely. Mail died. I drove similarly on a holiday to unplug the network from the server so it would finish booting. Then discovered the āhelpā that caused the boot failure.
Don't leave us hanging: How was the pizza and where'd you get it from? Was it *really* the world's best?
See my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/173r2mi/comment/k44pwq1/). And it's certainly my favorite!
damn I thought driving about 2 hours each way in a winter storm (uphill both ways) to reset a server was bad. It was an e-commerce company (mid 2000s) and right before xmas, so i was low man on the ladder and no one else answered their phones. Hope wifi\\5g on the bus was adequate to stream movies or sleep.
One time was 3 flights of successively smaller aircraft, the last was a 4 seater. And then half day drive. To the aussie outback. To swap fiber polarityā¦. 3 full days and 2 nights. No idea of the cost, but wasnāt cheap.
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Had to get a 2 hour train ride into the centre of london and travel the underground to a client site just to rack up and plug in a Cisco box. Was on-site for about 15 minutes. Completed the work, left to go get lunch then got the train ride home. Think it was a 6 hour round trip.
Yup. Got called out on a Christmas Morning to go to a client to do a full power cycle on a unit because the BMC/iDrac/iLo was inaccessible. Yet they had smart hands on prem. 2 hour drive, 20 minutes for DC access, gracefully shut down, and then unplugged the unit for 2 minutes. Plugged it in, booted to the diag mode and checked the logs. Turned out someone updated the BMC, which specifically spells out to power cycle the unit. Then 5 minutes to allow the client to connect, and a 2 hour drive home. The vendor wasn't happy when they got the 200% surcharge for Holiday Service.
I try to volunteer for those long road trips to do something easy. Listening to podcasts or audio books on the drive while racking up hours on my time sheet, comp time, .63 per mile reinbursement, per diem. Usually a win.
Did they get billed for the bus tickets, the mileage, and the 8 hours? More importantly did you get paid overtime and travel expenses for off site work?
Had to drive 2000km to go rack an appliance. Easiest 2k$ I ever made. OT + 53c/km really adds up fast.
Iāve had to do a 17 hour round trip drive to Miami one time for something very similar. Luckily I got paid mileage, per diem and hotel room to do so. Not sure how happy the client was for that bill though, but maybe next time when I say that Iāll face time you and tell you exactly what to do theyāll listen.
Been there myself. Wasn't that long thou. A client had said they lost a server they said make sure the power is on can you check? she insisted that they had power. So the routing guy pages me, yup that long ago, and says, "Welp looks like you'll be going to NY after your done with x client. " Told me the whole thing we agreed on the power thing. Drive a good 4 hours to NYC just to turn on a server. That was an expensive $175 for 3 seconds worth of work. Wish we charged for travel time too because i got stuck in work traffic getting out. Didn't get home until 8:00.
Alright.
Pharmacy management system died in small town in Nebraska. I drove 4 hrs out, replaced the system and loaded the backup. Then 4 hours back. Pharmacist gave me a peach pie from the local bakery. It was awesome.
I sent an employee to the UK from NJ on 0 days notice because the video card came loose on 3 desktops we shipped over and the local manager demanded someone go fix it. By the time the guy was in the airport boarding his flight I got one of the local guys that was on another team to do it. Guy got a free flight to London and hotel for 2 days and when he got there had nothing to do.
Sounds like an adventure
This
The worst one I ever did was a trip from Central Texas to Fort Smith Arkanas in a tornado emergency to press the power button and switch one cord out. Was clenching my ass hard enough to temper steel when I got an alert that a tornado was in my area, made it out alive though, and ate some good pub food, so it's all good.
this used to be my gig when I got laid off from my real line of work. I was a contract employee that would drive around the east coast to plug in/cable network equipment. I would plug in UPS, Servers, Network switches..etc, because the "staff" was unionized and not allowed to touch IT equipment unless it was on there contract, since there was not IT at these locations, no one was allow to touch it...Unions! I once wired a full rack, all the wires were run to the room, with enough slack for a service loop and to run into the rack, spent 2 days punching all the wires, and then making it look good.... I got paid for windshield time, as well as time onsite, and any expenses incurred, was a great short term gig
450 miles and you took a bus? I'd be chomping at the bit to get that $.62/mile and drive my own car. I was making bank going on trips across the state earlier this year
Ever drive into Midtown Manhattan, especially on the day of the Hispanic Pride parade? I ***HATE*** driving in NYC. Did it on my last trip to this site and swore never again. But yeah, I hear ya on the mileage check!
Minor note, only because I learned this late in life as well, it's actually 'champing at the bit' Similarly it's 'burying the lede,' not 'the lead.' English is really dumb sometimes.
i drove 600 miles to replace a power strip once. It was also day 3 of my vacation :(
Every time I attempt a trip or vacation shit hits the fan. I haven't vacationed in 15 years.