The Planet is on fire!!

From some place called the planet, where they are holding Webby's server hostage:

"This evening (May 31) at 4:55pm CDT in our H1 data center, electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding our electrical equipment room. Thankfully, no one was injured. In addition, no customer servers were damaged or lost. We have just been allowed into the building to physically inspect the damage. Early indications are that the short was in a high-volume wire conduit. We were not allowed to activate our backup generator plan based on instructions from the fire department. This is a significant outage, impacting approximately 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers. All members of our support team are in, and all vendors who supply us with data center equipment are on site. Our initial assessment, although early, points to being able to have some service restored by mid-afternoon on Sunday. Rest assured we are working around the clock. We are in the process of communicating with all affected customers. we are planning to post updates every hour via our forum and in our customer portal. Our interactive voice response system is updating customers as well.There is no impact in any of our other five data centers.I am sorry that this accident has occurred and I apologize for the impact. "

Hmph! "Around the clock" isn't good enuff!!

And last night they write:

"As you have read, we have begun receiving some of the equipment required to start repairs. While no customer servers have been damaged or lost, we have new information that damage to our H1 data center is worse than initially expected. Three walls of the electrical equipment room on the first floor blew several feet from their original position, and the underground cabling that powers the first floor of H1 was destroyed.There is some good news, however. We have found a way to get power to Phase 2 (upstairs, second floor) of the data center and to restore network connectivity. We will be powering up the air conditioning system and other necessary equipment within the next few hours. Once these systems are tested, we will begin bringing the 6,000 servers online. It will take four to five hours to get them all running.We have brought in additional support from Dallas to have more hands and eyes on site to help with any servers that may experience problems. The call center has also brought in double staff to handle the increase in tickets we're expecting. Hopefully by sunrise tomorrow Phase 2 will be well on its way to full production.Let me next address Phase 1 (first floor) of the data center and the affected 3,000 servers. The news is not as good, and we were not as lucky. The damage there was far more extensive, and we have a bigger challenge that will require a two-step process. For the first step, we have designed a temporary method that we believe will bring power back to those servers sometime tomorrow evening, but the solution will be temporary. We will use a generator to supply power through next weekend when the necessary gear will be delivered to permanently restore normal utility power and our battery backup system. During the upcoming week, we will be working with those customers to resolve issues.We know this may not be a satisfactory solution for you and your business but at this time, it is the best we can do."

Oh suuuurrre. How much you wanna bet Webby's stuff is on the first floor? :(

(It's actually quite hilarious reading the updates on the situation, because the guy's avatar is his own smiley face, and you just know they're going berserck, running around with cables and wires all tangled around them. *snort*

I'm evil, I know.

And today, after whining about working through the night, they say:

"We now have 90% of servers located on the second floor of H1 online. Support technicians are on location to manually bring the remaining 10% online. "

They say the first floor will be coming up tonight sometime.

I'm not sure we can blame the whole thing on Bill Clinton frying french fries on the stove. "Electrical gear shorted" sounds a lot like a squirrel issue. We get them squirrel issues up here a lot in Canada.

OT WITHDRAWAL!!

Just had a chat with Dabo in the bar. We both crawled in around the same time --- gasping, choking and exhausted from our long journeys trying to find a way in --- and had drinks while deciding who to blame for the shutdown.

We formed a committee which decided that Bill Clinton is responsible. Dabs voted to blame Hillary, and I voted to blame Obama, so we compromised and decided to blame Bill.

We also decided to have a meeting tomorrow in the bar if RTVW is still not up on Monday. Interestingly, Dabs and I took completely different roads to the bar, and ended up in the same place but at different addresses.

Dabs got to the bar at www.survivorblows.com/chat

And I was at "http://chat.realitytvworld.com/chat/"

Weird, eh?

So, if you're going through withdrawals, try to get in to the bar tomorrow nightish and we can drinque those symptoms away!

*headbutts*

Who's this chicque?

Lookit that pathetic thing down there. Ha!

Whining about job, job, job as if it were The Only Thing.

She should be ashamed to call herself Frisky. See, one of the side benefits of getting married is that you can divorce that which once was. Not the reason I did it, but I have noticed that it is a pretty decent by-product.

Frisky Lastname is now Frisky Newlastname. It's like being reborn!

On Monday I will make my way to the bank to make the official change there. Then I have to call the phone company, hydro, utilities, cable and satellite companies. Then the schools and the library, and the Ministry of Transportation. By the end of the week, I'll be a new person! (It's a good thing I'm out of work...that's a lotta phone callin.)

I'm excited because next week I also get to do my best friend. She's on holidays from that awful place. There have been others fired since me, and now they're trying to get the union in. Too late for me, but I'm really worried about my friend, so this could be good for her. I've never been a union person, but it would have saved me, so obviously I have to say that they're not so bad after all.

Sooo, what else? Oh! I'm getting old. Have to go bifocal. Which sucks for my contacts, but the glasses I wear part-time have to be updated.

Being a woman of leisure makes me want more leisure. How I dread getting back in the workforce after the summer (that is, if I can). I bought a new swing for my deck, and I made sure I got one that folds out into bed. I may just move out there. :)

Having been married before, nothing is really different for me, but I have to laugh at DH who keeps looking at his ring. It's kind of cute.

That's it. I'm boring when I'm happy. :)

May their consciouseseses guide them...

Here I am, with egg on my face.

Waiting for the lawyer to call with the latest news on my severance package (or should I say "hush money").

I read my entire blog this afternoon, after coming home from having lunch with my friend who is still working in hell.

The warning signs were all there, weren't they? What a fool I was. My friend told me, gently, how my staff double-crossed me and have been bad-mouthing me for many months. I kind of suspected, because they acted weird around me when they were in groups. A lot of it was just typical boss stuff. The problem is, they had the ear of the new guy.

So I'm sitting here at home, out of work, waiting for my hush money, and they are still there with nobody to complain to or about. They bugged me constantly; the biggest mistake I made in that job was not closing my door. But apparently when I did close my door, they complained because I wasn't available to them.

They hounded me. I helped them. I answered their questions and listened to their gripes. They turned on me, and they've gotten what they wanted, but we know what kind of people we're dealing with here, and my friend and I were musing about who they are bitching to now, and who are they bitching about now, because that's just what they do.

I should have been a mean boss. I should have told the new guy about how J spends her days talking on the phone and shopping on the internet. I should have told the new guy about how A is a gossipy time-waster and takes credit for everyone else's work.

Why did I protect these people? They threw me to the wolves.

Saving the world with cinnamon buns

Oh so warm and drippy and sweet.

Get your mind out of the gutter. Today I'm writing an ode to cinnamon buns.

I found this great recipe for dinner rolls on allrecipes.com. Yes, their recipes are often waaaay overrated, in my opinion. This one, though, deserves it's five stars. I've been making these rolls for a few years, and they are regularly requested at family dinners.

A while back I followed other allrecipes people into the realm of cinnamon bunhood using the dinner roll recipe. I decided today that morale is sofa king low at work, and I am feeling so weary and tired and like a very, very bad leader, that a little offering might be in order.

So, tonight I made them again. It's been a long time.

I've missed that soft stickiness. It's been so long since that sweet earthy cinnamon aroma and yeasty yeastiness became one with my senses. It envelopes me, and I envelope it. I curl my body around that pan of puffy, pillowy curls of swirly sweetness, hugging it like the bread hugs it's sweet surprise of brown sugar and butter and cinnamon. Oh! What's that? Oooooo that's right, I made that drizzly frosting -- molten icing sugar, really -- to drizzle drizzily on the warm rolls.

I've eaten three, because they're the end pieces and I would never subject my staff to the end pieces. Really, when you're going through reorganization and it's getting stretched out longer and longer than so much raw dough, people already feel like end pieces. It's the least I could do.

I hate to put the foil over the pan, to be sacrificed tomorrow morning. How I would love to keep them home, adopt them, give them names, nuture them, pick them up lovingly and cradle them before scarfing them down.

But, it's what I have to do. Will it be worth it? Time will tell. Tomorrow, if I can sit at my desk and send out that email and then hear the pitter-patter of feet racing to the kitchen, joking and giggling about who gets there first, and hear the mmming and the licking of fingers and the heavy sighs that come with comfort food, and they have this one moment of feeling hugged and cuddled and nurtured before they go back to become end pieces, it will be worth it.

Make Up Your Mind

They swarm me
In my coat, coffee in hand
Question? Question? Question?
Decision! Decision! Decision!
I barely open my eyes
Sit at my desk
Hug the coffee
And decide.

They go away,
And the invisible ones start
Emails and phone calls
What do you think?
What should I do?
I'm still back there
With the last discussion
But I take a sip
And decide.

The lunch bell rings,
But it doesn't stop.
Lettuce? Tomato? Fries?
Decide! Decide! Decide!
I can barely think
Because I'm still back there
But I reach into my wallet
And decide.

They swarm me
In my coat, Diet Coke in hand
Question?
Decision?
Again and again.
Some are interesting
Most are lame.
Think for yourself, people!
But why should they
When I'm here
To decide.

Swarmed again.
I can't remember the last one.
What did I say? Yeah, that.
I can't remember. So confused.
Look at my notes,
Blank paper, no time for notes.
The bell rings, they leave.
It's finally time.
I'm done.

I pack my bag,
Grab sunglasses, purse
The traffic is nuts, damn construction!
Which way should I go?
Decide! Decide!
I follow the lakeshore
Should I drive straight in?
Another day, another decision.
The same decision.
I'm still here.

They swarm me
In my coat, detached and listless
I fall to the couch, and curl up.
Question? Question? Question?
Decide! Decide! Decide!
I can't fire them either
(And wouldn't, of course)
But thinking is futile
I cannot decide.
Get your own damn supper.

Comfortably numb :)

So high on cough syrup.

Not even my beloved nyquil. It's a prescription codeine-based concoction, fruity with a menthol undertone and lovely rose colour. :)

I am flying higher than a kite.

If we could all take this cough syrup every day forever and ever, the world would be a much happier place. We wouldn't be able to drive or operate heavy machinery, but who gives? We wouldn't.

This is why I miss smoking. The peace, the calm, the relaxness. Is relaxness a word? Probably not, but who the hell cares.

I'm drowsy, but I don't want to go to bed and miss the rest of the high.

The cough? Still there, and so is the accompanying pain in my back muscles, but i just don't care.

Drugs are a wonderful thing. Or things. :)

The people who...

I'm thinking of a quote.

It doesn't have to be a quote that already exists -- it could be a new quote. Something profound that someone else hasn't thought of yet.

I'm thinking it should start with "The people who..."

But then I can't think of the rest.

The gist of it is "the people who are there for you when times are rough for you will still fuck you over if the time comes when they have to cover their own asses."

But that just doesn't sound very profound.

I've been begging the Ass Dean to tell me why the two big honchos have been noncommunicado since that ugly report came out. Finally, today, he told me. Well, sort of. He told me that what is happening now (reorganization, with me involved, at the helm, and making reorganization decisions and advising him) is not what was supposed to happen after the report was released.

He basically told me, without actually speaking the words, that the knee-jerk decision by these two trusted pseudo-allies was for me to be canned.

New Ass Dean said no way, we have to use the strengths we have. We can't just blow the whole place up and start over. Let's build on what we have. And this is supposedly what brings us up to where we are now.

I'm sure one of the other reasons they pulled the punch is that they were probably told that if a lawyer got wind of the whole thing, they'd be toast.

It takes me back to the conversations I've had with these two over the past year -- "oh don't worry, Frisky, you won't be held responsible for the mess that was left" and "thanks for coming back and trying to clean things up" and "don't put too much pressure on yourself -- it could take a couple of years to clean up this mess" and my personal favourite -- "There'll be a big reward for you when this is all said and done!"

So, the people who reassure you that you won't be left holding the bag are full of shit.

Nope, still doesn't have the panache I'm looking for here.

So, now I know they were actually going to respond to the Finance guy's behaviour by firing me, before the new Ass Dean came to my rescue.

Or did he? Maybe it would have been better if they'd done it? Maybe I'd be, like, the Norma Rae of the 21st century by now? Surely, they would know by now how much I had actually accomplished. Most definitely, I'd be moving through legal channels by now, on my way to a big freakin' payoff!

Aw, I can't be hard on him. He really is a sweetheart and pretty much saved my ass. He told me today because he knew I was worried and he was gentle and compassionate. He reassured me that we were going to work together to make this better, and that he is the only one who truly understands what I've been through because he is going through the same thing. I should focus on the future and all the good that we'll be able to do together. He knows I'm not in a position to complain about things that need to be done, but he is, and he'll do it for both of us.

The people who tell you they're on your side either are or they are just saying they are.

Oh, fuck it. I'm just not good at this. How about "Shit rolls downhill" or "Trust no one" or "Live til you die."

You know what I really need? Six numbers between 1 and 49.