not quite the weekend i was hoping for

 the past few days haven't been all bad. but they haven't been particular good, either.

tuesday and wednesday were a continuation of the deep dive into unhandled promise rejections in aws lambdas, which was not fun but did produce some interesting learnings.

tuesday and wednesday i worked from home after i found myself having a coughing fit five minutes before entering the office, i seem to have picked up from mr smear. who has subsequently gone on to become really sick with something else - he's been spiking a high fever since yesterday and we're keeping a close eye on him.

gd reported that the two of them got their bloodwork analyzed recently and the results were excellent, so that's encouraging. vegan ftw.

unfortunately, by the time i was ready to head back into the office on thursday my team lead was off sick. i'm being reminded of "optics", because he's never around to see the successes but i have to report to him whenever i have trouble. this is not boding well. especially because i was feeling much more confident by thursday and getting all sorts of little things squared away. i'm sure he was or will be around for my recorded knowledge share which i'd been too overwhelmed to prepare for, and i feel like i made an ass of myself.

...

by the time dinner arrived (at the office) yesterday i was utterly *done*. but i really wanted to go support my teammate at his improv competition. i'd ordered a meal from four one six, and was thoroughly impressed by their vegan shwarma, but their portions are so big i had to stash the remains (about half of it, even after significantly overeating) in the fridge. then we left.

we hadn't made it to the bus stop across the road before our support team got hold of me, asking me about something i was unfamiliar with. fortunately one of the coworkers with me could help, so i passed on a suggestion from him, and from that point until we walked out of the improv competition things were calm. i got to have a drink, and a beer, and enjoy the entire show without being paged, and the show was brilliant - most of it, anyway, there was one team i found a bit tiring - but we generally had an excellent time. our coworker's team won the evening, and our coworker definitely stole the show - he was quick, and he was hilarious!

after congratulating the team, i opened my phone to find that the support agent hadn't quite understood the instructions. so i clarified - but having no experience, i worried that i might simply be giving bad advice. so when i got home, after a quick shower, i sat down and began tinkering. if i got home around 11pm, and i went to bed around 1.30am, i can say that most of that time was spent diving deep into lambda logging.

finally satisfied that i knew what i was talking about and had tested all the possibilities, i squished into the bed next to a furnace - mr smear has been too uncomfortable to sleep in his own bed, apparently - and because he was overheating we were sleeping with the aircon on.

conditions were less than ideal.

...

and then woke up to the pager alarm at 4.40am. i spent the next hour and a half bleary-eyed, trying desperately to figure out where the fire was and unable to reach any of the team leads nor our department head. this is not the first time. and i felt especially guilty trying to contact these guys at stupid o'clock in the morning when one was sick and the other having just had beer with me before continuing on for more drinks with the other.

and then, all of a sudden, the metric returned to normal.

it had been a false alarm the entire time.

stunned, i climbed back into bed.

stunned, i woke up fifteen minutes later to another page.

a different one. after an hour and a half unable to find the fire, it also auto-resolved.

it had been another false alarm.

i crawled back into bed.

...

and woke up about three hours later to urgent messages from our support team asking me to investigate and then join a call with a super-important client.

being on-call for my employer is awful. it's ugly. and it makes me feel things like "i hate my life". i'm building resentment at every incident. i don't want this, and i don't think i'm being paid enough for this.

another coworker came to the rescue, fortunately, and a little while later i was ready to take a bus to the office to rescue my dinner leftovers.

...

which had been turfed by the cleaning staff.

...

the rest of the day has been recovery, and a fair amount of silent prayer that the rest of the weekend will be quieter. and i posted a haiku i was inspired to write yesterday. you're welcome. i don't know where i'm going to find the energy to upgrade the mobile app for my side-project, which has been neglected so long that it's no longer supported :/

...

we've been making great progress on the sonnet comics front. so that's good.

pray for me.