Almost 11am again. Raising desk, powering up fan. And trying to find a language that matches the crowd to call in anytime soon. Meandering between a technologists and an end users point of view, constantly stunned how different worlds could probably be.
2pm and on. Making sense, too: That moment of elation after noticing there haven't been any visible results for a while not because something's broken but because eyes were on a wrong system all the time. (Blame it to the heat. Mind's slower in this current state.)
9am. On and on. Common approaches: Collect huge amounts of data and looking for unusual events and similarities. Falling for ones own past-self deficiencies. Tracking back results to root causes. And failing to reproduce behaviour. A constant motion of running in circles, with only diameter changing then and now.
Close to 9am, slowly on. Impediments and complaints, and finding oneself both on the sending and on the receiving end of things. Services misbehave, explanations are scarce. The thoroughly concerning perception of people having accepted things aren't likely to fix, things won't probably be fixed by a vendor too big too fail and all that can possibly be done is waiting, working around any pitfalls and hoping for the best. (Briefly looking outside, these clouds seem more soothing and calm right now.)
4pm and on. Collecting weird misbehaviours of systems again. Still to figure out whether technical issues, design flaws or badly documented features. And then, as always: Drilling holes through components, once learnt that actual errors are swallowed somewhere in layers of abstractions. The glory of accumulated complexity.
Closing in on 4pm again. The challenge of having too many calls lined up too tightly so to run late just by fetching some more coffee. Too: Pondering cloud services, custom dedicated infrastructure, skill set and time frames. Standing on the shoulder of giants? Or rather playing in some strictly walled garden? Market choices, advantages, drawbacks and an increasingly difficult gut feeling. Not sure how far to trust that, though.
Mittag und immer noch blasse Sonne. Wasser, Knäckebrot, Ankämpfen gegen alte und neue Müdigkeit, während Bälle landen und Parallelität von Themen langsam zusammenfließt. Hausmeister diskutiert mit dem Postboten, tiefer in der Straße, unhörbar und doch beide sichtlich erregt. Gegenüber wird am Küchenfenster geraucht, an der Haltestelle wartet eine Gruppe von Ferienkindern auf den Bus, die lauten Arbeiten der Umgebung ruhen für ein paar Minuten. Auch: Tauchen in die Untiefen eigener Ablagen. Gefunden werden alte Technik, alte Daten, alte Gedanken. (Man durchmustert alles, dreht und wendet Dinge, schwankt in einem unsicheren Drang, auszusortieren, und legt dann doch alles wieder dorthin, wo man es schon lang liegen weiß. Meist stört es dort ja nicht. Dann knacken Lautsprecher, man betritt den nächsten blauen Block, und der Takt treibt einen weiter.)
Humility (noun): The strategy of being careful not to blame people for technical issues observed unless absolutely, totally, full sure not to be responsible by oneself for whatever problem arose. Lack of knowledge and procedure included.