Oddly Formal Dreams
I dreamed I saw at some big party-dinner of some sort, dressed up in a nice white shirt and black pants. There was scrambling to get prepared for this function, and a lot of last-minute changes and directions. Among other things, there was the announcement that people had to be in full tuxedos. Somehow, I got a bit of a "pass" for not having vest and jacket because I was in some special position of being honored, but I felt a bit underdressed at that point. And then I was assigned to play host as people arrived, taking notes on their party and seating them. But I wasn't immediately told what all I had to mark down on the tickets. That list expanded each time - name, number in party, whether they have prepaid for the dinner with coupons or are paying cash...
Odd. But I can tell where most of the feelings behind all that came from.
Over the weekend, we finally went live with a system update that was suggested to us back toward the beginning of the year. We looked at the requirements at the time and realized our current servers were not up to the task, so there was a delay in getting hardware and getting it set up. Then there was a big learning curve because the servers had Windows Server 2012, which is similar to Windows 8 (and pretty much sucks for remote desktop interface where you not only don't have a touch screen, but also have trouble transmitting key commands and getting to the charms bar) Then our testers didn't accomplish enough to meet the first proposed deadline, and we pushed things back a couple weeks. Then our software vendors hosed one of the servers - not as bad as we first thought, but it had us in a panic the night before our go-live date at the time. Then they couldn't get a component to work (again, at the last minute) a couple times.
We finally did go live over the weekend, with them doing most of the server-side work Saturday. I went in Sunday to get a feel for things and only then found out what was involved in setting up the workstations to connect to the system, in spite of having required procedures months ago. It was more than I expected. I spent about three and a half hours working Sunday and... had mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it sorta fouled up my doing anything else that day. On the other hand, if I hadn't hit those stumbling blocks then, we would have been screwed Monday morning. And so I went in Monday morning to help get things set up, and worked straight until four in the afternoon. Most of the dust had settled by two or so, with there being what I consider a more "normal" bunch of bugs yet to figure out.
But so much of that could have been avoided if there were better communication. And while I somehow ended up as an unofficial project lead on our end, I feel most of the failing is with the software vendor support team. Maybe I should have pressed more, but my questions should have been answered without me having to harp on people. "Can we get some instructions on workstation setup?" should have led to instructions on workstation setup. "Is everything ready?" probably should have been enough to get the people who should know there product to look around and realize major pieces were missing.
So I can get the feelings of changing goals and unpreparedness from the dream, definitely.
Odd. But I can tell where most of the feelings behind all that came from.
Over the weekend, we finally went live with a system update that was suggested to us back toward the beginning of the year. We looked at the requirements at the time and realized our current servers were not up to the task, so there was a delay in getting hardware and getting it set up. Then there was a big learning curve because the servers had Windows Server 2012, which is similar to Windows 8 (and pretty much sucks for remote desktop interface where you not only don't have a touch screen, but also have trouble transmitting key commands and getting to the charms bar) Then our testers didn't accomplish enough to meet the first proposed deadline, and we pushed things back a couple weeks. Then our software vendors hosed one of the servers - not as bad as we first thought, but it had us in a panic the night before our go-live date at the time. Then they couldn't get a component to work (again, at the last minute) a couple times.
We finally did go live over the weekend, with them doing most of the server-side work Saturday. I went in Sunday to get a feel for things and only then found out what was involved in setting up the workstations to connect to the system, in spite of having required procedures months ago. It was more than I expected. I spent about three and a half hours working Sunday and... had mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it sorta fouled up my doing anything else that day. On the other hand, if I hadn't hit those stumbling blocks then, we would have been screwed Monday morning. And so I went in Monday morning to help get things set up, and worked straight until four in the afternoon. Most of the dust had settled by two or so, with there being what I consider a more "normal" bunch of bugs yet to figure out.
But so much of that could have been avoided if there were better communication. And while I somehow ended up as an unofficial project lead on our end, I feel most of the failing is with the software vendor support team. Maybe I should have pressed more, but my questions should have been answered without me having to harp on people. "Can we get some instructions on workstation setup?" should have led to instructions on workstation setup. "Is everything ready?" probably should have been enough to get the people who should know there product to look around and realize major pieces were missing.
So I can get the feelings of changing goals and unpreparedness from the dream, definitely.
Comments
Post a Comment