Best meme I've seen in awhile.

Stop in the road and turn

Adminisk8or

05/07/2023

After spending several days on vacation the week prior, I got to play catch up this last week... and I'm further behind than I started. Gotta love the month of May.

Much went on in the life, including throwing scrap metal, planting trees, celebrating my wife's birthday, etc. But EASILY, the most entertaining story this week came in a very interesting way. To make a long story short, I thought I was on call this week, and soon discovered I wasn't- but that's irrelevant. Earlier this week, at night, I noticed one of our client's servers was offline, after a power blip occurred earlier this day. I logged onto their system, and noticed the virtual server was showing up corrupted. That didn't worry me, though, since I figured I could restore from a backup... until I realized they didn't elect to put in a backups option for their onsite equipment... So I had to rebuild their DHCP/Print server at 9 PM that night, and finished at about 1 AM.

Once I finished, in my correspondence update to them (CC'ing our operations manager), I warmly but strongly suggested that they at least put in a battery backups solution so that they don't have this issue again as easily. To my amazement and gratification, after our manager sent them a quote for a battery backup, they INSTANTLY said yes, please and ASAP. The boxed UPS was left by my office door; I dropped by to pick it up and made the drive out onsite to get it setup. I arrived, feeling like a hero bringing provisions to a starving colony. Then, I pulled out my knife, opened the box, ...sighed... threw my knife down into the box, turned to talk to the guy in charge at the office, and said, "My apologies... I don't think a box full of broken ethernet cables is going to quite cut it for a battery backup solution." Talk about awkward but funny moments.

I also replaced a dying server this week at a school of ours. That was a story of "Work smarter, not harder"- because, after I had shut down the old one and replaced the new one, there were a few virtual machines it couldn't find, because it couldn't re-find how to get to the SAN (if you don't know what that is, don't worry, it's a deep rabbit hole of learning). Anyways, I spent almost an hour, probably, trying to figure out why it wasn't working and how to get it working- and then it occurred to me- work SMART, not HARD. I remembered that, as opposed to the other story, this client actually did have backups in place. And what's more, I realized I could simply bypass the SAN and put everything in one, neat little place. And lo and behold, it worked! Did it take a little longer? Yes... a bit more than I had planned on by a good deal, but not only did it solve the problem, but it simplified the solution, and made future work with it that much easier!

That's a lesson that comes to me a little less easy than others. Whether it's the combination of my stubborn Norwegian, German, Scottish and Irish genes, or just my own stubbornness, I sometimes keep whacking and whacking at the branch in my way, because of that loud voice in my head that keeps saying, "if you hit it enough times, it'll eventually work!" And of course, that's true enough, in a lot of cases- persistence has often paid off in many situations; and sometimes, it's a hard and rewarding path to take, because it's the right one. But then, sometimes, the even harder thing to do is to stop what you're doing and consider whether there's a better way. I find the occasions where this is true are unfortunately those in which I find myself in the most stubborn of moods. Maybe I'm digging a hole, and trying to clear the rocks out with a pickaxe; maybe I'm trying to un-stuck a stripped screw; maybe I'm trying the same thing over and over, pretending I don't know the definition of insanity. Whatever the case, when I'm at my most stubborn attitude (AKA when it's hardest to stop and think), those are the most important moments to stop and think.

Come to think of it, it actually relates to a favorite story of mine from scripture- that of the prodigal son. I re-read it, this week, and while reading, it occurred to me I hadn't seen certain things from the eyes of the prodigal son as well as I should. For example, we know he takes his share of inheritance and goes off and spends it on the party life, only to find himself quickly down on his luck, and in the lowest of lows. In case any aren't familiar or have forgotten, this son finds himself eating and sleeping with the swine- and if you think that's bad in our culture, ask yourself what Jews think of swine in their culture. Yeah- it's pretty bad. But here he is, still living this way, with famine in the land, and between it all, there's no doubt he's occasionally thought about going back home. But time and time again, the answer he gives himself is that his father would surely reject his return, and it would have been better that he stayed where he was.

I love the beauty of the phrasing "he came to himself"- it shows that he's gone back and forth on this a LONG time. But he finally decides, even if he's a slave with the rest of his father's servants, at least that'll be better than living it up with the pigs. Not only somewhat literally, but metaphorically, he has stopped on the road, and turned around. And homeward bound he goes, ready for the worst. There's honestly almost no more beautiful allegorical moment, than when his father, seeing him still a far ways off, runs up to meet him, embraces him with great love, and clothes him in his finest robes, weeping with joy at his return. I hope we can all remember such a moment when we "come to ourselves", and stop in the road and turn. There comes a point when we must be homeward bound, again.

But there's my thoughts this week. I hope all who read this may find a moment this week- however brief- and take a quick moment to ponder- whether it's a question of how you're solving a problem at work or if it's a major dilemma on your life's choices that you've been trying to ignore- take a moment, think, and come to yourself. Until next time, see ya!