A Semi-Perfect Day

I suppose it is revealing about the state of a person to ask them of their idea of the “Perfect Day,” which is sure to be a dynamic and fluid idea depending on their current situation, their mood, or the daily circumstances that make up their lives at any given time.

For me, today was as close to a perfect day, although we have to add “semi” because here I sit in a noisy data center at 3:54 AM babysitting a sick server and watching mysql updates scroll across the screen while struggling to keep my eyes open.  Not an auspicious ending, that’s for sure, but the day a decent beginning.  It went like this:

6:35 – the kids are on school break, so I’m absolved of the drop-off at 8AM, and so I head out early for a four-hour server installation in La Habra at 8:30.  I figure I’ll find a SBUX in Brea or so, and do some work, instead of sitting in traffic.

6:50 – in Brea already, banging out some mail processing for GEMM, getting a head start on the day.

8:30 – Server installation goes well, which is a fine end to a horrible engagement, where the first guy I send out to upgrade a simple Windows 2000 server spends nine hours and ends up with a broken POS that I drag back to the office and build from scratch.  But the engagement ends well, with the customer happy because of my inherent generosity besides being a veritable wellspring of knowledge that advice, which they are short on in all respects technical.

12:30 – Swing by a client to fix two small items and pick up a laptop.  Will work on it at the office during the leisure hours (right ….)

1:15 – Manage to have lunch with my wife at “The Counter”, a distinctly California concept where you build your own gourmet hamburger, in my case in a bowl without the bun.  The food is delicious.

2:30 – We both go back to the house and pick up the kids and take them to a neighborhood pool.  The water is cold, but the Jacuzzi is warm, and the kids have a blast.  Back at the house they have triple decker peanut-butter jelly sandwiches.

5:00 – I attempt to curl up in bed with a laptop and catch up on some of the work of the day, but it isn’t going to happen.  I feed the kids, and spend some time with them.  Maybe it’s this part of the day that is “perfect” or as close as it gets.

7:30 – Server crashes, and I need to speed down to the data center for hours and hours of wrestling with operating systems, log files, data, data, and more data …

2:30 AM — full circle.  Thus ends the semi-perfect day …