Eastern Standard Blog

Ten years ago today, my younger brother Chris took his own life. He was 18 years old.

I love him dearly. This is a poem he wrote in High School.

Years And Years

standing in front of the sun

you were a million miles away

calling to me

i rose and walked forever

never reaching you

but still walking

standing on the banks of the nile

wading in the cool water

you were calling me

leaving me

i never understood

but on i walked

in rome, in london

you were calling

my mind was blind

finally i understood

but it was too late

now standing over your grave

i have many regrets

but i still have my love for you

oh god

i wish you would come back

goodbye

So, the point of this whole disaster recovery exercise was to go to this location where we pay lots of money to have similar data center equipment ready for us to use. This is both interesting and stupid. It assumes, basically, some kind of scenario where our main data center is rendered non-operational, but magically all of us are healthy and available to travel to Philly to start picking up the pieces. Interesting. Stupid. Before we left I was trying to find out the address of the place so I could look it up on google maps and see where it was relative to the hotel, etc, etc. I was politely informed on their website that ‘Note: No address information listed for security reasons.’ Wow, hardcore. So when we get there, it’s a whole closed parking garage with CCTV and the works. You have to show ID and sign in and get a badge, which has been preprogrammed for the rooms your company has access too. The facility itself was really interesting to me, there were rooms and rooms and rooms of similar ‘command centers’ and little mini-datacenters. Access to the ones which had been prepared for your company based on your contract and your identified needs. Oh, and there was one room that was nothing but row after row after row of large batteries. I guess as part of a loss of electrical power strategy. Nerd boner! Anyway the place was creepy cool, and actually reminded me a lot of working in Cheyenne Mountain AFB in Colorado Springs. However, after the first 14+ hour shift we pulled, it started to make me think more of the Shinning than anything else. Then on Thursday night a few of us were done for the day (about 1 am) but everyone else with a car had already left for the day. We could have called someone back to pick is up, but everyone had been working very hard and were probably getting some well deserved sleep. So we decided to call a cab, we could expense it anyway so game on. We went to the front desk and talked to the operator there, he gave us the number of a local cab company and we called for a pickup. When we were telling them where to come and pick us up at, the operator picks up a business card off the edge of the desk and hands it to me, because it had the street address printed right on it! I still have the card of course, and plan to sell the address on the internets! (insert evil laughter here) So we go down stairs to wait for our cab pickup, but after about 20 minutes we decided to walk because the hotel is only like a half mile away anyway. The other two guys I’m with were a little apprehensive at first, but I didn’t really understand why. I mean sure we were downtown in a big city at 1 AM, but I didn’t see anything else at any point that made me apprehensive or fearful of walking a few blocks along semi-busy (and well lit) streets. Obviously, we made it back to the hotel without getting robbed, beaten or anally raped.

Right across the street from the hotel is the most excellent Reading Terminal Market. It’s a massive indoor market selling tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as cheeses and tons and tons of ethnic foods. My first visit I had some Thai food (red curry veggies and rice), at a little place that had about 10-14 people waiting in line to order, so I figured it would be ok. Yummy, yummy. Oh, they also had free wi-fi, which is much better than giving the hotel $10 a day for a wired connection when I can walk across the street and get a fantastic breakfast for a few bucks and my internets for free. Much to my surprise when I asked a few of the guys I was traveling with if they had been here before, they all said ‘No.’ I would have thought since we are going to do this 2 times a year, and some of these guys have done 4-8 of these, that SOMEONE would have walked across the street to check this place out. So wrong. I couldn’t believe out of 5 people I asked directly, none of them had ever been inside the market. What a crime. But when we return in January I suspect that more than a few of them will be joining me.

We stayed at the Marriott in downtown Philly, and the place is quite the little hub of activity. It’s right next to the big convention center, and they seem to host their own meetings and conventions as well. Last week there was some kind of Rural Water board convention, a bunch of US Army as well as a few Air Force and Navy, and some kind of school teacher or nurse convention. It’s a pretty nice hotel, as 23 story downtown locations go I suppose. But I’ve never really been impressed with fancy hotels. I believe that the hotel is the quite place to crash after a busy, busy day in the outside world. The shower should be hot, the bed comfy and there should be easy access to good food. Doesn’t have to come from the hotel, but at least nearby. While traveling to Philly one of my coworkers was telling me that he’s part of some rewards program of the hotel because he stays there a lot (both for work and personal) so he can earn points for free nights while the company picks up the cost. But another nice feature was that you’d get free internet. So when we were checking in, he wanted to make sure they had is reward card number and asked about the internet. The woman who was checking him in said that she was sorry, but they didn’t do that at this location. He was stunned and a little upset to learn this. I mean, it’s not like we couldn’t expense it back to the company anyway, but the point was rightly asked, ‘So what does this rewards thing do for me here then?’ And in an epic display of customer service, the woman responded with, ‘Honestly? Here? Not much.’ We both just kind of looked at each other slightly taken aback, then back at her. Then she said, ‘I mean, this is the 5^th largest Marriott in the world.’ As if that explained it all.

Subsequent investigation of their rewards program, however, does not seem to list that as a benefit at any level of participation, so maybe he was just smoking crack. Much to my amusement though, nonsensically interjecting 5th largest into something has found it’s way into our lexicon.

“How can that be? This is the world’s 5th largest tape backup environment!”

Last week I had to travel to Philadelphia for work. We perform a disaster recovery exercise twice a year, so I’ll be heading back to Philly in late January or the beginning of February. On the whole, it was very interesting. I’ve worked at companies before who talked about disaster recovery, planned for recovery and all that, but never one that actually took the next step to practice. The ultimate outcome was lots of long hours of hard work, sprinkled with some sleep. This left everyone who went pretty much wiped out by the end, but it was also a very strange social bonding experience. This has been a very touchy subject for me, as my last job I really felt isolated and had nothing really in common with the people I worked with and around. I sat for 8 hours a day with my iPod on. I mean, I love my iPod. I must purchase one of these new nanos very soon, but a man cannot survive on the iPod alone! Consequently I’m trying to be more aware of social opportunities when they present themselves. This one was right up there on the Richter Scale too. Sitting around in data center command rooms for hours on end without adult supervision degenerates pretty quickly when there are 15-20 men in the group and 0 woman. I do believe that shared suffering makes the group stronger, and I do feel stronger bonds with my coworkers because of this experience. More specific impressions from the trip will be forthcoming.