It's amazing what a decent night's sleep does for both mind and body... even if your "night" goes until noon, or sometimes even later.

Yesterday was a challenge from start to finish; it may have been the busiest day I've had in two years — the first half physically, the second half mentally.

From the moment I rolled out of the rack, it was go-go-go. Shower, dress, feed the cats. Because of an upcoming change in my employment situation (more about that later) I had to dash out to get some paperwork notarized. Then a run to the pet store for a load of kitty litter. That stuff is heavy; good thing I have a full-size pickup truck.

I'd seen my regular doctor on Thursday, and he finally decided that my peripheral neuropathy was worthy of being treated, so he wrote a scrip for Neurontin. So, a stop at the pharmacy, to drop off the new prescription.

But I wasn't done running around yet. Next was physical therapy. I was still sore from Wednesday's labors, but along with the usual strength-building exercises, I managed a sans-cane walk of 900 feet, at a speed of .91 miles/hour.

Someone please inform the media.

My walking is getting better, but it isn't really getting to be good. Small objects are big obstacles, and while what I do could be, in the broadest sense, considered "walking," it often bears more than a passing resemblance to waddling. As significant to me as the distance and speed is my increasing ability to avoid disaster with what might be termed "fancy footwork" — I'm getting better at recovering from nearly falling over, though as I get a bit bolder with my walking, the tendency to tip over is a bit more frequent.

I must remember the rule.

Thoroughly exhausted after an hour of abuse at the hands of the therapist, I headed... not home, but to run more errands. First to the vet; more about that later. Then it was back to the pharmacy to pick up my new prescription. Only then did I get to go home.

I got home, crawled up the stairs, took my new meds, and logged on just in time to begin my shift at work... and that's when my day really began.

When you do tech support for an installed base of 30,000+ routers, there are going to be bad days, and mine began immediately — a routing problem landed on my desk precisely 21 seconds after the start of my shift. I don't really mind routing problems, but some are annoying rather than interesting to investigate. And I can count myself fortunate that there are not usually problems stacked up waiting for my arrival.

I've never said and I probably never will say for whom I work, other than the obvious "big telecommunications & networking company," but I will say this: my teammates really are among the best engineers in the networking business. We generally try to take care of each other and not drop junk on the next shift to come online.

The first annoyance of the day was quickly dealt with, and I was readying myself for the next broken router to drop on my desk when I was pinged by my manager. It seems one of our largest customers — I won't (and will never) say who, but I guarantee you know who they are — is doing a migration from one service we offer to a new service, and they're doing it at hundreds of their retail locations. New routers, new T1 and ATM lines, new voice-over-IP setups... egads. So, I got to spend my evening watching for dead routers and making sure that any incidents were properly followed-up upon. There were dozens. I lost count.

Oh, and another customer had a funky T1 problem that had gone on for so long that they were seeing red and needed their hand held all night long by senior engineering staff (i.e., my teammates and I) particularly as our senior management was watching the progress of the issue.

I should also note that my new meds can cause drowsiness. Staying alert would have been a challenge, but between my regular workload, the "high touch customer" hand-holding, and the migrations, I was researching, thinking hard, typing and/or talking every minute of the night, often on more than one issue simultaneously. I barely had time for bathroom and cat-feeding breaks.

By the end of my shift at midnight, I was toast. Burnt toast. I fed the cats and went to bed.

It was, all in all, a very productive day, and I slept like a log. Kismet woke me up this morning with his usual "I'm grooming daddy's head!" behaviour. There are worse ways to wake up.

Posted by Russ at 03:37 PM, August 9, 2008 in Geekery & Health