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Stardate: 20190209.11h04
Location: SBUX
Input Device: Gemini PDA + Fellowes Folding Stowaway USB
Keyboard
Software: nano
Audio: SBUX Muzak
Visual: Shared Community Table
Energy: 75% +10% coffee boost
Mental: 80% +10% coffee boost
Emotional state: Comfortable, no worries.
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NOTE: This entry is an expression of my need to be
right...without burning bridges or causing collateral damage.
<work rant>
Many times I feel like I am ignored intentionally from the
people that I help out and by upper management. Sometimes no
thank yous or feedback whatsoever. They'll only give kudos
to their own "team" even though we are all on the same team.
I notice it. Does it bother me? Sometimes.
Some of the troubleshooting I do sometimes goes beyond the
scope of what we typically do on my team and I provide the
resolution to the problem right away. The problem
eventually gets resolved, but only after my solution is
quickly dismissed, time is wasted on troubleshooting and
we revisit my original solution. Afterwards,
the whole thing is ignored...not so much ignored, rather, the
fix is not talked about, especially since the fix is outside
of my responsibilities and my assumed skill set. My job title
is basically application support. My skill set encompasses
much more.
I encountered this again for the nth time and it seems to
keep happening. For example, before I left for training at
the end of last month, the Oracle database test server for
one of our critical applications was not responsive.
The affected department reached out to me, I confirmed the
issue, and I reached out to our DBA Team who checked it and
said that there was something wrong with the server. The
server team checked as well and decided to do a reboot.
When the system came back up, the file system was mounted and
the database was connected. When the users tried to
connect with the application, they received an error stating
that the database was on the wrong version. We had
upgraded the application a few months previously. Shortly
after, another related department called up stating that they
were receiving a similar error from another test application
that ran on the same Oracle server. When I heard this, I had
a suspicion that they mounted the wrong database. The DBA
Team was adamant that there was only 1 database. The Linux
guy said that there were no other volumes to mount. At this
point, the day was pretty much done. That was on a Thursday.
On Friday, I had a comp day. In the morning, I sent an email
to my team (application support) informing them of the issue
and had them open up a ticket with the vendor, especially
since they outsourced support over to India (ugh) and it
would take some time to get the ball rolling.
They finally got the right resources on board to troubleshoot
the following week. I was away at training and did not get
involved. I was back in the office that Friday and the issue
was still outstanding. They were at the point of cutting the
test environment over to the new Oracle cluster, which had
the lastest application versions, but was a copy from a few
months ago. I talked to the DBA and he was on the defensive.
I basically had to put my foot down and told him to hear me
out and that I was not expecting him to fix this. I told him
that I have a feeling that the wrong volume was mounted and
that we should revisit this. I had him check timestamps on
the file system for the database server. He did and found a
big discrepancy. The date in the log files jumped from April
of last year to February of this year. He saw that this was
definitely the wrong file system. He contacted the Server
Team and we did a screen sharing session to correct the
problem.
I had a feeling that the mount points got mixed up with all
of the storage migration work they had been doing. Also, when
the server was rebooted, it seems as if the running config
prior to reboot was not saved in fstab. I have run across
similar situations previously with Ciscos and *NIX. I had
mentioned this to the Linux guy, but he could not seem to
grasp the concept and kept referring to the existing fstab.
After all was said and done, the Server Team did not want to
acknowledge the error or even say thank you. That team is
always like that. It used to bother me quite a bit...these
days, I still notice it, but try not to be affected or put
much energy into it. Maybe it bugs me because I am like that
to some extent. I do know how to say thank you and admit
that I am wrong these days. Not so much before...back when
the ego dominated my modus operandi. I guess that people do
not like to be challenged in that way. I know I didn't...and
don't to some degree these days. Maybe they think it makes
them feel stupid and their insecurities show. I used to be
that way quite a bit...and it takes a lot of internal work to
get past those insecurities...maybe to the point of even a
paradigm shift. Sometimes you can't or don't have the right
tools to move forward and you get stuck. If you are able to
learn how to deal with those insecurities, I think that they
don't ever totally go away, rather, you work past them, you
heal, and are left with scars to remember how things were.
And you take that experience and try to be a little more kind
and have a little more compassion and understanding for
those people struggling who are just like you. They are you.
They are me.
Here is a fragment of expression of what I just wrote in song.
I call this "UMOUNT01." [1]
</work rant>
(SND) [1] UMOUNT01
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