The Phoenix trip, day two
Up bright and early, breakfast here at the hotel of scrambled eggs, bacon, salsa, orange juice and an english muffin. Hop in the Caliber and zoom off the 3 miles or so to work. Snap a picture of one of the few bumps on the horizon. It’s so bizarre seeing such an UTTERLY flat landscape with the random high peak jutting up from the desert like a broken tooth. From the air at night, these were black holes in the web of city lights. Apparently Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the States.
Got to work and found two coworkers who are sick. One of whom is integral to the project we’re doing this weekend. He ended up going home early today in an attempt to get some rest and try to spur a faster recovery. He didn’t look happy. The other guy also went home early. I’ve been washing my hands with Monk-like fastidiousness today. And, I’ve been conscious of NOT touching my face, and being generally paranoid about getting sick because of these guys.
This is the machine we’re focusing most of our work on. Both directly and indirectly. It holds a LOT of data. Unfortunately, we’re decommissioning the old server and have to copy all the data from it to the new machine. We’re talking roughly a terabyte of data. How much is a terabyte of data? According to this page, it’s “all the X-ray films in a large technological hospital OR 50,000 trees made into paper and printed.” It’s taking about an hour to copy 12 to 15 gigabytes of data. At that rate, it’ll take three and a half days. Not good. We’re hoping it’ll pick up. So my boss took the first shift. I’m taking the second shift starting around 4am, and we’ll see how things go.
John Ceceri, ultra-cycling event coordinator extraordinare, e-mailed me and gave me good news and bad news. The bad news is that the first big ride of the season, which was scheduled for this Sunday, is canceled due to the weather. The good news is that it’s rescheduled for next weekend. This ride is the first in a series of brevets, a 200km ride. The next brevet will be 300km, then 400km, then 600km. One each month. I was disappointed in missing the first ride because of work. However, you may have noticed I haven’t posted any stories about rides in a while. How very observant of you. No rides since December 31st. I’m thinking I should get back in the saddle either Wednesday or Thursday this coming week and see how the legs feel after nearly three months of running. I’m cautiously optimistic that I haven’t lost too much cycling conditioning–and that the running has maintained my cardio-vascular conditioning pretty well. We’ll see.
I heard the snows have started in earnest back home. Sorry I’m missing it guys.
Here are a handful of pictures from today.
3 Comments to The Phoenix trip, day two
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My trip to Phoenix several years ago made me want to return and explore. I LOVE the weather out there–maybe not so much in the summer, but in November it was nice.
Sorry it’s taking so long for the data to be copied. Would be nice for the work to go smoothly and not take nearly as long…..give you guys some time to enjoy NOT being in 14″ of snow :)
Oh Phoenix, a good time for you to be there what with the snow storm back east huh? Business trips can be dull or fun, depending on your state of mind. With you I bet it’s a great trip, learning alot and having a great time. Keep the blog rolling love reading all about it.
Way to go with the Monk reference. Brian and I always comment when one or the other is being Monkish.
I loved Phoenix when I was out there. We took advantage and took lots of walks into the foothills. Take water though.
Good luck at work!