Diary of a Wolfeman

Today has been a real swinger of a ride, lemme tell you.

I spent the entire day today and most of yesterday working on a project for one of our clients who has a bad habit of waiting until the last minute before calling us in to help. The project? Build a completely new network for a new start-up subdivision of the parent company that will eventually break off on it’s own. The timeline? 3 or four weeks. When does he call us in? Two days before it i supposed to be running.

Fucker.

What’s left to do? The domain is built and the users have been created, but the Exchange server is barely functional. There’s no definite IP address in use, and we need to get additional IP’s from $ISP. We need to build a VPN, and then configure two routers for the whole thing to flow through.

Worse than anything, however, is that it all gets dumped in my lap. (The guy who normally would handle this account is conveniently busy elsewhere.) Yeah, I can muddle my way through a lot of stuff, but I don’t like working under a deadline that will get someone else in trouble for not meeting – so I’m just a wee bit stressed.

It also doesn’t help when the IP the client tells you to use is in fact the IP of his Gateway, and all of his DNS has been configured wrong to boot, so nothing will be officially usable for 48 hours from when I figured out he fucked that bit up.

That was 2:00 this afternoon.

I just about blew a few fuses, but with the help of a couple of my teammates (including Da Roomie) we got it all done.

So, I pack up my shit and run the hell away before he can call me back. When I get to Tolerant’s, I realize all over again that she is simply the Best Girlfriend Ever.

To wit:

She went shopping at lunch to pick up stuff for dinner and dessert.
She was mixing me a drink when I walked in the door.
Dinner was already cooking – beef tips in gravy over mash with corn, yum!
Some of my favorite music was playing to a happily hypnotic visualizer.

Inside of 15 minutes, I’m parked on the couch with my feet up, a drink in one hand, dinner in the other, and my sexy librarian snuggled up beside me. Dessert consisted of about 2 hours of cuddling and creampuffs with sliced bananas topped with Cool-Whip and chocolate sauce.

I am a lucky bastard.