Cough hack hack, WHAT?!?
So I took off yesterday from work to ride out the cold I've had the last few days. The first SICK day I've taken in the 3 years I've been at this job. I've taken a mental health day or two here but I've never been home sick.
I was feeling mostly better and I was about to start making dinner since Janine is working twelve hour days for the next month or so when my blackberry starts ringing and it's work.
My boss in on the phone, internet is down, code repository is down, email is down, nobody can print etc... Either we've lost power or there's something WRONG in the server room. I have him go check and it's 105 degrees in the server room causing 95% of the equipment in there to shut itself off to avoid harm. He lets me know that the building had people in to clear the snow and ice off the roof and he bets that's the problem.
So I get my shit together and drive to work and get there at 6:20pm. My boss has called APC and we're waiting for the on-call person to call us back to let us know he's on his way.
My Boss and I go up on the roof. Exactly the thing I want to do in this weather when I'm still trying to get well. The intake fans have been SNOWBLOWN on and is covered and filled with ice. The APC guy gets to our office and goes up on the roof and takes apart the intake unit and clears all the ice/snow from ontop and within while wearing a head mounted flash light.
Thankfully the system came up and stayed up and I was able to turn everything back on and get home before midnight. My boss was still there preparing for a Very Important Presentation and the CEO was able to send all the emails and Powerpoints to the client/potential client that they are all meeting with today. The outage could not have been more inconvienient for the company.
So my Boss sends out this email...
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All,
As many of you know, we had a cooling system failure yesterday afternoon. We are back online now (with a few potential exceptions with isolated dev/test systems that will be brought online today). See Al’s note below for an explanation of the failure.
I want you all to know that Al went above and beyond in this case. As you may or may not know, he was home sick yesterday with a bad head cold. He immediately came in when I called, effectively worked the problem with the cooling technician, and quickly brought services back on line. His efforts certainly minimized downtime for us (unfortunately he has had some practice with cooling system failuresJ).
Thank you Al! I hope you are feeling better soon.
Jon
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I also get this email from my boss as well....
I just talked to Peter. He is very grateful for your efforts in spite of being sick.
He wants you to take your wife out to a nice dinner, and bring him the bill.
Enjoy.
Jon
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Not bad for a sick day.