10am and on. Multiple factors, single results. Building temporary tooling to shape vast loads of input, considering needles and haystacks again. And falling for the temptation to dig into technology all too deep, losing track of time and priorities that way. Focus as an ever-present, unmatched challenge.
9am and on. That unsettling moment after installing crucial updates, watching and waiting for the system to restart and report back online again. (Also: That unsettling moment of wondering whether someone else committed changes and left them undocumented in the meantime. Real-world operations. The thrill of the chase.)
10am and on: Guided tours through foreign systems. Still unsure who's guiding who. Evaluating workarounds and trying to unsee things that aren't meant for ones own eyes. Cryptic names, weird connections, and the ever-amazed insight that things still work.
Schon wieder hinter dem Tageszenit. Auf dem Betondach sitzen zwei verschieden grau getönte Tauben eng beieinander, ansonsten ruhen Innenhof und Besprechungszimmer unter ungewohntem Schlaf. Entlang der großen Straße werden in kurzen Abständen Plakate an die Laternenpfähle gebunden, große Fahrzeuge parken halb zwischen Fahrbahn und Bordstein, der träge Mittagsverkehr fährt im Slalom stadteinwärts. (Konfetti auf der Tastatur, jede Menge seltsamer Fehler auf dem Bildschirm, Herumschleichen um den großen Berg von Phänomenen, ohne einen richtigen Angriffspunkt zu finden. Kariertes Papier bekritzeln, mit jeder Menge Fragezeichen. Gelegentlich ist es gut, Themen vorübergehend wechseln zu können, auch wenn sich die Notwendigkeit zur Lösung damit nur verschiebt.)
7am and on. Writing up on an outage, still digging for needles in stacks of everything but hay. Also: There's goodness in the insight of having learnt something down the road. And there's a difficult gut feeling understanding that some of these things should have been known in advance. Talking limits to agility in operating infrastructure.
Beyond 9am again. Common challenges: Looking for the actual code running on a particular system, knowing the observed behaviour doesn't seem to fit what's written in the relevant files. Also, discussing different levels of reliability and availability of systems in light of minor outages. (Wondering whether there's a tendency to prefer small fails simply because they're easier to ignore even in a long-term timeframe.)
9pm. Stop/go. Still listening to inbox events, still trying to filter signal from noise. There still is signal at this time of day, there always is. Only response times will delay, sooner or later. (Of all problems one can technically resolve, those related to performance are the most grateful ones.)
Close to 10am. Still wondering whether this mornings dust needs to settle before moving on. Hanging up dialing in hanging up again, cycling through participants and topics to sync everything for the new week. (Project penalties caused by communication overhead. And by random solution complexity overhead, too.)