Between yesterday and today I must have spent at least 25% of my time waiting for things to happen with my workstation. Yesterday there was all the time wasted waiting for the damn thing to get logged in, today there was an upgrade to a dual head which of course meant a couple of reboots. It has been obvious that there is some serious problems with the performance of the PC for a couple of days, as an example both my colleagues machines were upgraded in around 15 minutes – my machine was started at 10:15 and completed at 13:20.
Still I have tomorrow to look forward to don’t I? The weekend work that was planned for the coming weekend has been postponed, the guy I usually go for breakfast with has called off, the chances of doing anything productive is quite slim, I’m still in two minds about the contract, I have the funeral of a friend to attend on Thursday, an accountants bill to pay and if there is anything I’ve overlooked I’ll have a moan about it later in the post. The 59 mile journey from the office to home would have been faster on a horse tonight, mainly due to all the complete tossers who have to slow down to have a look at the results of an accident. Other than that everything would seem to be just about perfect.
I often wonder about the people who in the vernacular “Go Postal”, but at the same time occasionally feel the need myself – I have for the most part managed to control myself although there are a few paper cups that have felt my wrath.
So here I am, a small part of a team that has to relocate a major data centre. The throughput is some 220 Million transactions a day and the equipment covers around 3000 square meters of floor space, am I intimidated not a jot – the project completion date was early in Q3 of 2012 so we have bags of time!!!!!!
Tomorrow I’ll be first in the office, I’ll do my checks and then go for breakfast at 07:30. I’ll be back at my desk well before 8:00 and all will be well with the world, then the rest of the team will start to arrive. The day will pass as do all other days and there will be sod all accomplished as usual, then people will head home – me I’ll still be reading crappy documentation and thinking of ingenious ways of breaking something so as I can actually do some bloody work!
If I accept the rest of the contract, there will be 109 potential working days left and as there are around 450 people working on this project that would seem to be around 134.29 man years (based on 365.25 days per man year) or if you were a real pragmatist then it’s 204.375 man years (based on 240 days per man year) as this is what the average person seems to work on this project. I however will have around 8 out of the next 12 weekends to work if all goes to plan – this has all been calculated into the costings so everything is probably OK. Just glad I don’t have to pay the bill!