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multitask hell
Tuesday, April 26 2016
It was my second day of working remote for the Organization. Because of the way the task manager works, we in the IT department tend to work simultaneously on several projects, taking one as far as it can be taken and then working on something else for awhile. Since some of these tasks can span several servers, the level of complexity can be a tax on available short-term memory. Compounding my problems was that that other people I work for in Los Angeles had scheduled a sprint release for today, and I'm always the one who pulls the trigger on such things. Going back and forth between not only tasks for one employer but also between employers made me feel a bit like I was drowning. I'm not a multitasker, and I know that when I (and probably others) multitask, it cuts deeply into my ability to do anything at all. And as the afternoon wore on, I was facing a third task: ceramics class. I'd signed up for ceramics back when I was underemployed, and even then I'd done so half-heartedly; I'd mainly done it to please Susan, who had been talking up how fun the class is and how great it would be if we all took it together. Now, though, the class trims off the last three and a half hours of my Tuesday workdays, and that meant clearing it with my grumpy new boss, who is the sort who never takes vacations and thinks of everyone but himself as a lazy, insufferable idiot. Still, I got the approval, and the only thing that could screw me up was the release of that sprint I was supposed to release. And wouldn't you know it, in my rush to get it done before I had to leave for ceramics at 5:00pm, I screwed it up royally. Somehow I got confused in the AWS console between the concept of diassociating an IP address and releasing an IP address. And so I released the IP address belonging to the live site, meaning someone else could take it and use if for their own. (I looked to see if I could claw it back, but there didn't seem to be a provision for that.) In a panic, I told my main contact Marc (the guy who'd paid for our outing at Mohawk Bend the other evening), and he was horrified and also about as angry and disappointed in me as he ever gets. But the lost IP address was now a fact on the ground, and in the end it wasn't a hard one to fix. Marc had the guy with the domain hosting information change the DNS records, and by the time I got back from ceramics class, the site was reachable again. Shit happens.
When I'd gotten that crisis corralled into a manageable state, I packed up my aprons, rags, and plastic toolbox, and prepared to drive to Woodstock. But wouldn't you know it, the Subaru's battery was dead and I couldn't remember how to jump a car from a Prius and didn't have time to fuck around in Google. So Gretchen took charge, driving me to Byrdcliffe and continuing on to her poetry class at the Woodstock bookstore. I was only a little late.
There weren't many people at class today, and the only person I really knew there aside from Rich (the instructor) was David. (Susan had to stay home and work on paintings to satisfy a looming deadline.) Rich imparted two lessons today: how to make and attach a handle and how to lathe out the bottom of a dish thrown on a wheel. He also threw a cylindrical container again to help us refine our technique there. By now I wasn't bad at centering a lump clay and, early in the class, I threw a passable bowl. But I was having trouble collaring (forcing a sprawling bowl back to being a cylinder once more. Rich gave me some pointers and helped me move past the ad hoc techniques I was using by instinct. Rich must have terrible hearing, because he always says "what?" no matter how clearly and loudly I (or anyone else) enunciate anything.
After class, David drove me home, and on the way I told him about how shitty my day had been. I also talked about my spartan accommodations in West Hollywood and the challenge of working with someone who considers everyone else to be a moron. David had had better recent travel experiences, flying into Houston to attend a convention of fat school librarians. His main task there was to do live improvisational drawing for the assembled. Unlike me, he'd been put up in a nice hotel and had had lots of downtime to spend how he liked.
Back at the house, David hung out with Gretchen and Neville for a surprisingly long time. Eventually I went upstairs and completed the botched sprint release I'd attempted earlier. It really wasn't hard once I had a clear mind and wasn't in a rush.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?160426 feedback
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