I worked something resembling a normal day yesterday… 9 to 5, ya know. Today is different.

I arrived at 10:00am for a meeting (yes, I slept in, what’s your point?) and then put out small fires while waiting for the start of this evening’s AS/400 project: Upgrading hardware.

You see, there are four hard drives. They’re not large enough. So we ordered bigger ones. The trick to upgrading ’em is to move all the data off of one, replace it with a larger one, then move as much data as possible onto that new one. Then you repeat with another drive, and so on, and so on.

It’s 8:00pm as I write this. I don’t know how much longer this will take, since it could finish quickly or slowly depending on how quickly the machine can migrate data, and on whether any unforeseen difficulties arise. Even if all goes well I don’t expect to leave here until at least 10:00pm.

Here’s the kicker: I was at 33 working hours when I left yesterday. I’m now at 43 hours and counting, with an unfinished night’s project still to supervise and two more working days left in my week. Nevermind that I’m working another long shift this coming Sunday to match the one I pulled three days ago this past Sunday.

I need a rest. Among other things.

Here’s an example of the kind of day (and by “day” I mean “consecutive number of hours that may or may not number less than twenty-four”) I can have at work. And by “example” I mean “accounting of the last twenty-some-odd hours and the multitude of hours yet to come.”

8:00am Sunday: Arrive, greet consultant, turn him loose on project.

5:30pm Sunday: Leave consultant to own devices so as to procure foodstuffs and a few hours’ rest (and by “rest” I mean “hang out with friends, watch a movie, eat some din-din” but not “get some sleep”).

11:30pm Sunday: Return to office, send consultant home so he can get a few hours’ rest (meaning “sleep” this time) while I babysit the troublesome AS/400 backup.

3:00am Monday: Finish tape backup, go home to sleep.

10:30am Monday: Arrive, greet consultant, get marching orders for the coming evening, set auditors up with network hub and some cables, discover hacking of Windows 2000 server, repair damage, patch, patch some more, reboot some more, and start tackling all of the other small emergencies that tend to crowd up a standard Monday.

6:??pm Monday: Begin yet another tape backup of the AS/400, now expected to take four hours per session instead of the two hours forty minutes that it used to take.

?:??pm Monday: Go home, try to sleep enough to take on Tuesday…