Finally . . .a GO-LIVE . . . nearly a month after we started the process . .

A rough and bumpy ride this has been. Last night wasn't any better as we faced another "last minute" problem . . . one of the processes I wrote died an ugly death night when they were trying to run the nightly schedule of processes for the first time. With 4 of us on the phone trying to figure out what went wrong, a more serious problem was discovered with the data . . . and all the questions immediately started about "what didn't you do??", "what did you do??", "didn't you check blah blah??" . . . I got so upset that I almost hung up the phone after I said "guess I don't know what I am doing so why don't you guys figure it out". Turns out the the problem data coming in wasn't from my process at all . . . a bug in another process was sending the same type of invalid transactions that my process picked up last week!!! Anyway, someone else has to look into that one now. But the stress has been getting to everyone and they are sounding mean to me!!! It is sad, because I have worked with a couple of these guys for a long time and haven't seen this before . . . this project has been getting to everyone . . . of course, it doesn't help that they are in Detroit this week and sitting on the front lines . . . glad I am not there , but still wish they would think before they speak. AND not go to the bar to drink the night before go-live . . . hate to say that one, but it bothered me because I think the alcohol makes it harder for them to handle the stress . . . not easier..

Nothing like a 5am meeting to get you started off on the wrong foot . .

and then there was the 5:30am meeting followed by the 6:00am meeting . . . all with the same people on different conference calls . . . supposedly on different topics (status, defects, problems, issues) but always sounds about the same. The process that I am responsible for is in the spotlight because of the problems were are having with the bad files. Fixed the data yesterday and moved in a code change to eject these unexpected records. But why they insist on talking about it over and over and over.

Well, more meetings later and then I get the supreme pleasure of starting up the reprocessing the files for good data and a lot of new files that have piled up. It is going to be a busy evening and weekend . . . hopefully, I can finish off what I need to do within 24 hours so I can get some sleep over the remaining part of the weekend. I feel bludgeoned by these ppl.

On another note . . a better one . . . the NB shoes I ordered on-line have arrived and they fit! the right length (5 1/2) and wideness in the toebox so my toes have plenty of wiggle room. So the next test is to see if they perform properly . . . that only way to do that is to wear them. This is the part that i don't like . . . and where you get stuck with bads shoes . . . you can't tell till you have worn them a few times whether or not they will do the job for you. In my case, they need to support my arches and my knees properly. The NeW Balance (NB) pair that I had before did that well, but I wanted to get the wider shoes . . . and they do have wide sizes but the stores dont carry them except by special order . . . so on-line ordering works ok for me . . . free returns/exchanges makes it easier to decide to do this.

oh, gawd, there goes my phone again . . . back to work . . . and barely 7am!!