50Micron.com

Yes, I’m bitter. Just to get that off my chest in advance. I’m angry.

I’m at the point where I’m not sure what I could have done differently. I gave up my life for this job. I’ve accumulated over 150,000 Mariott rewards points, I know the people at the White Marsh, MD Mariott better than I know my family at this point.

And I did it without question or complaint.

But in order to improve the bottom-line I get cut loose. Right before Christmas, without notice, left in a position where I have to scramble to find something so that my kids’ Christmas won’t be ruined.

And at the same time, when I call for support, I get India. Now I don’t have a problem with foreign workers, though I think this is a really bad time for American companies to be outsourcing jobs, especially to people who couldn’t find the floor with a flashlight and the assistance of gravity.

In one day I’m unemployed. In one day the disclaimer comes down. In one day I’m no longer affiliated with anyone.

Then again, in one day I’m not bound to be anyone’s cheerleader. Maybe for that I should be thankful.

Well - Monday went well - except when it didn’t.

I had another interview today. My first second interview, but it ended well I think. So provided nothing really stunningly bad happens I should be OK going forward. I have other potentials as well, so I’m not too worried.

I’m developing a close, personal relationship with a Symm. If I have to open one more case on it I think I shall go insane. One today, one re-opened. This is getting tiring.

Tomorrow is another day.

I’m headed to Baltimore tomorrow.  My contract got extended until Wednesday of next week to finish out a troublesome customer.

Seems that a Wipe/VTOC of an 8830 went horribly wrong, and the decision was made to power-cycle the box.

Anyone who has worked with ANY major frame-based storage vendor knows that powering an array down that’s been running for 3+ years continuously is a bad idea.

So after parts were replaced we find ourselves back on track, but now with almost no chance of being done before the Wednesday deadline.

And 3 days from unemployment I find myself faced with an experience I’ve not felt since 2001.  I’m at the end of an engagement without a replacement.  I should have seen it coming, though with good reason I thought I was safe from this one.  You see I went into this well aware that EMC has a bad habit of purging right before the holidays, but had a contract that was supposed to carry me through April so I thought I was safe.  I guess you’re never really safe and no contract is really worth the paper it’s printed on if the person you have the contract with is a major corporation with it’s own legal team.  So contract broken, I find myself staring down the business end of a lull.  Thankfully the customer I’m at is none-too-happy about this and arranged to have me kept on for a couple of extra weeks.

Oh there are possibilities.  A few EMC residencies around and about (a couple of them asked for me by name, a singular honor), a few unaffiliated EMC jobs, datacenter moves, consolidations, and the like.  But those are not what’s caught my attention.

One interview i’ve been on involves the opportunity to learn something new.  HP-EVA, Hitachi, NetApp type new.  Things I’ve heard of but never really gotten any stick-time with.  A real chance to broaden my horizons.  This is a good place for me to be I think.  I think I’ve gotten myself way too pidgeon-holed with EMC andit has severly limited my options.  This new opportunity is also much more sales than service, which I think my EMC experience will add up to a big edge.  I also think that I never again want to find myself with one company/client holding all of the cards.  I will dive head-long into this if the opportunity presents itself.  I’m nothing if not predictable.  Give me something new to learn and I won’t sleep until I know it.

But for these last few days I’m still an EMC person.  I will continue to give the usual 110%, and will probably be at the customer site until late on wednesday trying to make sure I’ve gotten as much done as I can.

Because this is who I am.  I always give my all, and put everything I am into a project.  I think I can count maybe one month in the last 12 that I wasn’t 100%+ billable.  This is why customers like me, this is why they request me by name.

I’m sorry EMC has chosen again to play the part of Scrooge this Christmas season.  They lose a lot of GOOD people during the purges, because these are the ones that get hired away.  When January comes around and they realize they don’t have enough hourlies to fill the onslaught of end-of-year orders, they have to hire them back.  They end up getting back the ones who couldn’t find a gig right before the holidays.  In short they end up hiring back the ones who were passed over by other vendors, consulting firms, and the like.

It’s reverse-darwinian selection at work.

I started this blog in September, 2006. I was working as a storage administrator for a small start-up student loan company in Sterling, Virginia. (Check my resume if you really want to know who) It was an amazing challenge. We built an enterprise environment from the ground up in amazing time. Overcoming odds, battling beasts, etc. It was great fun.

It’s a pity that the pilot of that particular airliner didn’t see the mounting looming and smacked straight into it. I could have been happy there. (I’ve been rather quiet about the fact that I tried to quit twice…)

The blog was a great place to vent, to talk about the discoveries and problems in running a day-to-day environment. (Something I had only done once before, in 1997 when I was just starting in the industry)

I received a tremendous amount of help from all of you, and I’m hoping the information contained within these “pages” was/is helpful.

As I’ve posted, effective Saturday, November 22nd I’m unemployed. I have options, things on the horizon that I’m hoping will pan out and turn into a new future.

Of the options I have, the most promising is also the scariest. It takes me away from my comfort zone, away from EMC, and away from the implementation side of the house. I’m looking at doing Pre-Sales work in a more general area (read: not tremendously storage related, though I will see the occasional XP or Hitachi float through.)

Long story short, I think this blog has outlived it’s usefulness, at least as a day-to-day diary, both to me and everyone around me. It’s been difficult for me of late because I don’t feel it’s fair to blog about my current clients. They haven’t consented to such public favor (or ridicule, as the case sometimes is.) and it’s probably not politic of me to comment.

you can email me if you need anything - even articles you’d like submitted if you’d like.

jg (at) 50micron.com

a 11:59 call from the governor (or in this case a 4:59 call from a PDM) extended me for another week.

I’m not sure what’s worse, being “executed” or having to go through it twice.

…I become unemployed. Without enough notice to secure something new I’m really not in a good place.

The calls are coming in, a handful of W2-perm positions right along with some new contract positions. Maybe I should just take a couple of weeks off. Lord knows I haven’t had a real vacation in 10 years.

I think that’s what gets me more than anything. I busted my tail for this contract, 100% travel for the past 4 months, without a single complaint, to get cut lose without notice shows a serious lack of appreciation for my hard work.

Maybe I’m just tired and stressed… but here lies Jesse, and he’s bloody annoyed.

Shall we talk about how it’s usually a good idea to change error messages so as to not give away too much about our internal server structure?

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

A known PHP bug with Apache 2.0.47. Oi.

When bad things happen to people who do bad things, it’s called karma.

The customer I’m working with has it’s ups and downs.  They are insane but flexibile is the best way to put it.

The storage admin and I have a good working relationship.  He says he likes when I’m around because no matter how much he’s learned he learns more.  (The famous quote is “Can you send me … in an email?”)

This means that we’re open to some fun once in a while.

Tonight we fixed the blade oversubscription problem we’ve been dealing with.  I’d like to say there was some clever workaround we discovered, but in the end, we solved the problem by spending $$$ on two new 24-port blades.

Here’s the kicker.  As usual, the blades automatically sync up and load whatever firmware is running on the supervisors.  While this is happening the “Status” light is red.

I plugged it in, and, knowing it was going to do this, muttered the famous “Uh oh” loud enough to be heard.

Customer ran around the rack to the console we had the Cisco device manager running on and, lo and behold, the java gods were on my side for this one.

The switch display had gone completely blank.

Customer just about had kittens.  Started hyperventiliating and everything.

I couldn’t let him suffer for long - I reached over and refreshed the display and all was good.

When he saw that there was nothing wrong, all he could say was “You’re an ass.”

It’s nice to be loved.  Maybe they’ll hire me.  It would save them a mint in Professional Services.

Yes, checked the regs, it is tax deductible.

Ok, riddle me this.  A standard non-compete keeps you from working for a customer you consulted with as a part of an assignment.

I wonder if said non-compete would prohibit doing volunteer work?  Current customer is a non-profit and if I’m officially off the clock I’m thinking about volunteering to help them finish (off the clock and without pay) at least until I find something new.

Yes, I’m *THAT* nice.

You know - the two week notice clause in the contract is there for a reason people.

Live it, learn it, love it.

Any suggestions?