(Incidentally, HP5 was Netflix’ed but I technically didn’t watch it in 2010 so it doesn’t count towards the resolutions of my previous post. On the other hand, later in the weekend we watched a few episodes of Metalocalypse, my Little Bro having gifted me with the Season One box set for my birthday, and that definitely makes a dent in resolution number 9. I also went to the used book store (resolution number 2), traded in a box of unwanted books and snagged one old, fun-looking paperback on Saturday, which was kind of idiotic because I brought my boy with me out in a winter weather advisory windchill warning on basically the coldest, gustiest day of the winter and it’s fairly amazing his tiny little fingers did not get frostbite just traversing the parking lot. Don’t worry, I won’t be numerically referencing the pop resolutions every time I post, I just wanted to acknowledge that, four days in, things are well underway.)
So how about that legendary Northern Virginia traffic, huh? After moving in a blizzard which shut down the government two days after the fact, and then segueing directly into the holidays, I knew that I wasn’t really getting a true sense of the commute logistics for my new routes. Today the picture became a bit clearer. It took me half an hour to drive to the Metro station after leaving the house at 6 a.m., which is about the earliest I can ever expect. There weren’t any accidents or major police activity, no construction-related lane closures, and the weather was fine (driving-wise, since cars don’t generally care how bitterly freaking cold it is). The brakelights were carpeting all four lanes ahead of me as far as I could see, though, and I was moving the whole time but there were some significant merge-based slowdowns here and there. If there had been a single fender-bender or disabled vehicle, or if it had been raining (and all of those are safe bets as “when, not if” items) I can imagine it taking a lot longer. Somewhat disheartening, although I’m still going to give it a little longer to determine whether or not VRE is an inherently saner option.
I did make it to work, highway volume notwithstanding, and am somewhat amazed to find myself actually able to see the finish line for my big server-transition project. The optimism I was feeling just before Christmas was quickly eroded the week before New Year’s, as progress was utterly halted by recalcitrant I.T. people. My main contact in I.T. assured me repeatedly that despite the fact that she would be out Monday the 28th and Tuesday the 29th, my project would still move forward because the I.T. involvement required was NOT COMPLICATED and ANYONE COULD DO IT. Not to mention my contact would HAVE HER CELL PHONE ON AT ALL TIMES. Let me cut to the punchline because you’ve probably heard this one before: the I.T. person who ended up on duty those days had no clue how to help me, my contact proved very hard to locate via phone, and even once my contact and the duty dullard had connected, no telephonic walking-through proved possible. So Monday and Tuesday were basically a loss, but thankfully my contact returned on Wednesday and got things back on track, which meant I got to spend a full day at the office New Year’s Eve taking care of the one thin sliver of the project that was mine to do. (A full day by normal business standards, mind you, at a government office the day before a holiday, which did in fact mean that they were turning off lights and locking doors around me as I raced to get everything done by 3:30 p.m. or so.) I still have a couple of glitches to chase away, and a few loose ends from the downtime to restore to the new environment, but the guts of the transition is done and the rest should be done in the next couple of days. Of course it remains to be seen what exactly I’ll do to fill up my timesheet after this project is laid to rest, but I am long past ready for that to be my happy, happy problem.
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