do you know anything about virtual machines?

That was what my supervisor asked me, I said, depends what the question is, so he was telling me about 2 server architectures proposed by the vendor, one is purely with physical servers, another was all VMs.

The PjM who was doing the calculations, all the technical guys were out for lunch, and they wanted to ask me for a second opinion. She was not aware of the various components required so I explained to her what a SAN is, what a database cluster is, VM host, mount point, etc, then she asked me, "so do i need a vm host if i just use physical servers?" Without a thought, I said no. She said, "Really?" I confirmed with her that the physical servers were not intending to host VMs. After that she went back to do her calculations and all, then my supervisor asked me what I thought of the diagram, I said, I don't think you need a database cluster unless you intend to build a data warehouse.

In the end they went to look at the details and realised that there was no database cluster required. It was also supposed to only have 1 application server, so I don't know why they need a hardware load balancer.

Another weird thing on the diagram was a firewall was placed between the hardware load balancer and 2 application servers, and the load balancer was placed on the web-tier. Well... I didn't want to dig too much, so I just didn't bother, maybe people really do that.

The power of double

My friend commented that I havent been posting much on fb, which is true. Over the past 1 month, my workload doubled miraculously, but the time I have stayed the same, which meant that my response time for my original work doubled.

Simple logic right?

The power of doubling my workload in one month forced me to make changes to the way I work, for better or for worse lol. The most drastic, very unlike me thing I did was to ask others to do things that I would normally have done, like asking my user to arrange meeting, asking my user to tabulate a spreadsheet for tender evaluation, and talking with people over the phone instead of meeting them face-to-face.

The next change I observed in my behaviour is that I talk and write less. For e.g, normally I will explain to you the problem until you understand, but when I dont have time, I don't even explain to you and just tell you, once resolve, you test, ok, case close. I only talk when really necessary, otherwise I just email minimally. I reply emails only if the world will stop or the train will crash if I don't reply. Normally I will also ask people what their immediate task is to understand what my team mates are doing, that also disappeared.

In terms of tasks to be completed by me in the same working hours, it is still the same, but because more issues will accumulate before I process them, resolution actions became more efficient when there are similar issues. So maybe... Economy of scale theory applies to my queue. Workload doesn't really matter, I will end up reprioritising what to do, tasks stay longer in queue, but they still get done.

Sometimes you wonder where the phlegm got choked at

This morning I had a 9-10 am meeting, so I thought, cool I have some time in the morning to do work, then my supervisor told me I have a new mission, setting up of a website for another user whom
I haven't met before and then I ended spending my 10-12 pm with them. The choking thing was the guy I had to work with only got know about it few days ago and had no idea what the requirements are, his boss was also still in the brainstorming stage, but the good thing about the meeting was this guy had the limited edition League of Legends box on his table and played World of Warcraft before all the expansions, so we started talking about games before entering the work topic, and the atmosphere was very friendly.

But after the meeting you can't help but wonder where the phlegm got choked at, but the good thing is I will not be the only plumber clearing the phlegm from the pipes. And after writing this, I realized I used phlegm instead of the normal shxt, lol, maybe cos it just isn't as bad as a shxt-clogged pipe.

What are chances your vendor bitches about someone else's code?

I met my ex-vendor on the train, he was complaining about the code developed by the atas vendor. They hardcoded a lot of values and he had to fix their bugs even though he was only contracted to enhance the program.

We worked together for another similar program, and I decided to redevelop the whole thing because the one developed by the atas vendor wasn't scalable. So he was comparing what we did good with what atas did bad. I thought it was quite odd for us to be bitching about the atas vendor's code.

P.S: atas is Singlish for "high-class"

Do you always take very long to respond?

My colleague told me she wasted 30 min listening to my user complain about a software installation because I didn't follow up. I was glad she told me that because I thought I only had to get the software installed for them.

I didn't know that I had to teach them how to use the software. The users also didnt ask me how to use when i told them that desktop team will be going around to activate the software for them.

My supervisor told me to get the paperwork done to make sure that the users get the software. He also asked me whether anybody would be doing it, so I said the desktop team, but he added that there will be additional configuration needed, so I said that since there is no one else, I will do it. I never got to the configuration step because by the time I was done coordinating the installations for 10+ users, the trial key had expired and there was still 1 user whom we couldn't catch.

So today the same bunch of users complained to her about another issue then she told me I need to follow up, I said it's an ongoing issue and we have been updating the users. Well... Escalation is free and easy, but not effective if you try it time and again and you are not feeling any difference.

She also said I owed her the steps to create a blog entry, and because of that, the users are not doing anything, implying that I am delaying the schedule.

And then towards the end of the day, she must be quite fed up with me, she asked me, you seem to be always very cool about everything, do you always take every long to respond to things?

My answer to her, yah. She must be raving mad. :p Being at the bottom of the food chain means there will always be ppl shouting at you from the back of the toilet queue that they want to shxt but you must not be distracted, else nobody will get to finish their business.