Wednesday, July 12, 2006



The Joy of Working On-Call

Well ... it's late here in Calgary, and I'm up waiting for a call-back from a team of programmers in Montreal. Funny. At least ... it is at this time of the night.

One relief - there exists a kind of kinship between all of us that must work on-call, and specifically, between those of us that have had to wake up to deal with a problem. Nobody wants to be woken up to have to think our way around a problem, and knowing that we're sharing the misery definitely seems to help. People are more casual, and friendly, speaking to each other as we would with our best friends - the unspoken bond reaches out between phone lines.

The best part about dealing with a vendor from Montreal is that sometimes error messages come up in French ... makes me realize how long it has been since my high school foray into that language. Far too long for me to admit exactly how long in such a public space (shut up - I will NOT tell you how old I am). I had to e-mail the technician team, and got a generic response back in my in-box entirely in french.

The good news - I do get the gist of what it is saying. The bad news - do NOT ask me to read it out loud. It would be far too embarrassing - my English accent would get in the way (inside joke for anyone that shared my grade 10 french as a second language teacher - I was actually DOCKED MARKS for having my english accent interfere in my french - ridiculous, I know ... luckily I fought for my right to a fair grade).

Right now I'm so jealous of my Husband, upstairs sleeping. Sigh.

OMG - I just saw a commercial for the VW Rabbit - they're bringing it BACK! How awesome. I had a VW Fox for 4 or 5 years, and I loved it so much. In fact, I kind of miss it.

Just found an article about the rabbit coming back. Looks like they're replacing the Golf in North America with the rabbit name and a revamp to the car. Hmmm ... still not as hot as the Mini Cooper that will be mine when I finish law school.

Ahhh ... Mini Cooper. Can I order it in pink?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My brother is a compsci guy, I'm an almost-lawyer. Throughout law school, I met maybe ONE person who is like that weird law student in your last post. Far more people were just interested in drinking. Well, maybe it depends on your school :)

Lisa Hutch said...

I think you're right - I'm sure that he's more the exception to the rule - but I just always thought that only compsci students were the wierdos - just goes to show that there's a lot more wierdness out there than you encounter in your day to day life! LOL.