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Woke up this morning in a funk. Slept a bit later than I have been recently. Wandered down to my office and said good morning to the kids on the way.  Thought I had a mid-morning call which would leave me plenty of time to finish a document I had been working on. Turns out, the call was scheduled for 10 minutes after I woke up.

2 hours later, I emerged from my office. Definitely in a funk.

I’ve spent quite a number of days at home over the past few weeks. Between a local engagement and weather problems causing me to avoid Dallas last week, I’ve been enjoying being a stay-at-home dad. Waking up in the morning when the wife heads off to work to snuggle with the baby. Being home at night to give the baby her bottle while she passes out. Being able to play Wii with the 5 year old from time to time. All of the creature comforts of my office.

Today? I go back to the reality of my job. The car service picks me up in an hour. I’ll spend the afternoon and evening travelling to Austin, TX. (Which according to American Airlines wasn’t part of the U.S. this morning.) Three nights in a hotel before flying home Thursday evening. My job affords me wonderful flexibility, great opportunities to travel and the cash doesn’t hurt bad. Some days, I’d rather stay home and see my little ones learn something new.

My wife knows the following all too well. Sometimes, I get myself in a mood to tinker. Sometimes, it is with a game or toy. Sometimes, it is with a new version of the software my company produces. Sometimes, it is with some random side pursuit like teaching myself Objective-C. I get into a mode and just start to work. Last night, I meant fall asleep before midnight. I had a busy day with the customer planned and wanted to be well rested. As it turns out, at 10:30pm, I extracted my NetApp simulator (which is far less exciting than it sounds) and began to tinker with the NetApp administration interface. I haven’t had to administer an NetApp filer in years but I work with them quite often.

Having not seen the device in a while, telling the customer what to configure within their environment and how to configure it has been a bit of voodoo and smoke and mirrors. I remember how it worked 6 years ago but many things have changed since then. Fast forward 4 hours and I’d configured and reconfigured my simulator 15 times.  Build a volume here, destroy it there. Present volumes to this host or that host. Backup the volumes and restore them. Figure out why snaps are or aren’t working.

At this point, my skills which were rusty are pretty much back where they need to be. I know the interface now. Where all the widgets to configure things are. I know exactly where a customer needs to look to see the filer status and/or summary of the configuration. Fun stuff.

I enjoy tinkering with things, taking them apart, seeing how they tick and putting them back together. Now if only I were smart enough to start my tinkering earlier in the night.

What a week. I had a few moments this week I feel the desire to blog about. This will be the first of a short series.

New York is far more vertical than my memories from 10 years ago. It makes sense though. Its an island. Hit the water line and the only direction to build is up. Even parking lots (not structures) are built vertically with cars stacked in neat mechanical carousels.

On my second night in town, I had dinner at the hotel sports bar. It was an adventurous choice, I know. A tasty Caesar salad later, I headed back to my room with a slice of cheesecake in tow.

When I got to the elevator bank, I found an attractive woman who was either in her early 40s or had lived a hard 30 years. She was on her phone and I heard her ask the other person to verify their room number. She had a very distinct accent.

A few pleasantries later and the elevator arrived. I got on the elevator behind her and another man who had joined the waiting party. When I’d gotten in, I noticed my floor was selected and went to the back of the elevator.

The woman commented on my covered plate from the sports bar and asked, “you can take your dinner to your room?”

“Sure, but this is dessert,” I said as I showed my elevator mates that I had a cheesecake.

“Ooh, that looks good,” she said.

“You can order one from room service. They’d be happy to,” I said. I was trying to be helpful. She just laughed.

We arrived on my floor and she walked into the elevator lobby. As I walked out of the elevator behind her, she turned around and looked surprised.

“I’m not following you,” I reassured. “I’m on this floor.”

She smiled and we parted ways.

My room this week was directly across from the elevator bank. I heard people milling about at all hours of the night. Forty five minutes after returning to my room, I heard her voice in the hallway. Her voice pierced my hotel room. I mentioned it was distinct, right? I heard her talking to someone on the phone again.

“You’re at what address again? Yes, I can be there in 30 minutes. No, cash only. Don’t forget to tell the front desk you’re expecting a visitor. They won’t let me up, if you don’t. Yes, about half an hour.”

Then I heard the elevator chime and she was gone.