We knew that the IT guys were coming in from Hyperion corporate to rearrange our network over the weekend and that today might be a little rough. What we *didn't* know was that they would look at our Source Control Server, shrug, and leave it turned off and unconfigured for the new network. We also didn't know that they had decided to partition the space so that Development's test servers would be on one side of a firewall and everyone else would be on the other side, which isn't what we would consider a good configuration for testing. Mind you, *they* didn't realize that we only had one network wire going into each office. Nor had they asked, apparently. This was causing Doug Price, the guy who runs our development group, to tear his hair out today and meant that *no one* was going to get any significant work done on our side of the house.
Since we were cut off from Source Control, I suggested that this might be a good time to have a design meeting with one of the product managers, the programmer who was coding the feature whose design was giving me problems, Doug, and me. That killed around 2 hours. Progress was made, but it felt like two really *killed* hours.
I left the meeting, went back to my office, picked up my voice mail from the new system that they'd *also* installed over the weekend and discovered that Urban Tapestry's new CD, "Sushi and High Tea", which I had been promised would ship out to me overnight on Friday hadn't actually shipped at all. However, they would be happy to freight it directly to the conference. This would be a good idea if it didn't involve sending the package across an international boundary and into the tender -- and expensive! -- mercy of the Customs brokers.
So, I called Steve Macdonald to see if I could have the package sent to him, since we're staying with him tomorrow night. I got his voice mail. Then I called Clif and Carol Flynt to see if they could receive the package, but they were leaving for Toronto at 2 PM on Tuesday. Carol suggested I call Steve Simmons, but he was leaving at noon on Tuesday. (We're going in the wrong direction here...) Steve suggested calling Roxanne King who had recently moved to Dexter, Michigan. Mercifully, Roxanne *will* be home tomorrow afternoon and is willing to receive the package. Mind you, her street still can't be found on MapQuest -- but with luck FedEx will locate them. If not, they have Roxanne's phone number.
I called Shannan at my CD duplicator and we had a nice -- and friendly, actually! -- chat about the situation. I think that next time we send something there, we'll go back to bulk duplication and do the assembly ourselves. It wouldn't have helped this time (since the backup was in their own pressing plant), but normally it's a simpler and cheaper way to go.
When I got home, I found a letter from the company that insures my late father's home. His widow, Connie, has a life estate in the house and was supposed to -- with help from her lawyer -- be submitting an insurance claim for water damage caused by a frozen pipe that occurred while she was away from the house. I sent all the documentation I had gotten from the adjuster to her lawyer when he volunteered to submit the claim since I was having no luck dealing with Connie.
When they submitted the claim, they omitted any form of documentation. Naturally, the insurance company would like to have some of this. (The papers I'd forwarded had asked for it, so I don't know why they didn't send it.) I shouted a bit and then called my lawyer.
I'll fax him the letter in the morning before we leave for Torcon. He'll talk to Connie's lawyer. *sigh*