Saturday, October 18, 2008

Weekend Work

I'm sitting here watching the USC/LSU game and thinking about the work I have to do in the morning (Sunday morning).
When I started working at Southeastern I was a programmer, learning the ropes, handling easy tasks. During that time I was strictly 8:00-5:00.
As time went on I started working on more critical systems, some of which were used primarily late at night. Anytime there were major changes it would lead to late night calls for me to act as the support specialist. As great as it is to feel needed, 2:00-4:00 AM is not the time to experience that feeling.
Luckily a few years ago, I found my way out of supporting those systems and into our Client/Server group. While in that group I did web development for 8 hours a day, but did not have to do any support on nights or weekends. On occasion I'd get a call about those old systems (when the new support guy was unavailable), but for the most part there were no overtime or "extra" hours.
Well for those that dont know, back in May I made another move; this time to Database administrator. I'm very excited about my new line of work. It still crosses over into the old stuff a little, but for the most part my work is stand alone. I enjoy the work and it is a challenge. Back to the point of this post; as of tomorrow morning I'm back having to put in extra hours. I have some database changes to put into our production database. The only problem is that I have to do it at a time when I am the only one accessing it. Sunday mornings are best, since hardly anyone is working at that time. Even though 'WE' aren't working, the website is up and the website accesses the database, so... while I do my updates, I have to not only block our people from accessing the database, but also shutdown our web-servers so no customers are accessing either. Because of that, Sunday morning is the best choice.
Tomorrow I'm going in at 8:00. If all goes well, I hope I'm out of there in an hour or so, but I'm prepared to spend the entire morning if need be. I dont mind the extra hours; I'm just glad it's not at 4:00 AM this time!

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