Can we BE any more confused?

Confusion reigned Monday at work. Here's the situation, trying to get a customer site up in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. By "up" I mean on the wide-area network or WAN. Here's the legend to the conversation : C1=Customer One (the people in Ft. Lauderdale), C2=Customer 2 (corporate HQ person), T=Data line provider or phone company, M=Me, E=Engineer (the one I dispatched to the site)

T tells C2 and M that the circuit in Ft. Lauderdale will be ready as of last Friday. M arranges to have E on-site noon today. E gets there a few hours early and moves equipment from old office to new (the whole purpose of this exercise) killing the OLD network connection and connecting it to the NEW. As noon approaches, I call T to check on the status of the data line. I find out that something fell through the cracks with T and it's not ready. I break the news to C2 who freaks out because C1 has been on him to make this happen. T is not sure when the circuit will be ready but C2 wants me to commit to getting E back on-site on Tuesday. I tell C2 that if we don't get confirmation from T by 2:00 PM my time that the data line will be ready on Tuesday, I'll schedule E for Wednesday. 2:00 goes by and I set up E for Wednesday as his Tuesday is already full. C2 gets a message (at 3:45) from T that the circuit will be ready on Tuesday but gets confused and thinks it's ready now. C2 calls M to see if I can get E back on-site today. "At 15 minutes till 5:00 local time? No way." I try to help and talk C1 through cycling the power on the network gear just in case I can get them running since E already hooked things up earlier in the day. No luck. I call T to see what might be wrong. That's when I found out that C2 misunderstood and that the line wouldn't be ready till sometime Tuesday. I call C1 and explain the situation completely. She's very appreciative but you can tell she's mentally exhausted because it's the end of their month and payroll stuff is due, etc. I tell her that we're ready for Wednesday but there's a chance that we can try what I attempted this evening sometime tomorrow and could possible get them going before the Wednesday appointment but no guarantees. She understood.

Left the office and met up with the Guad Squad. Had a great time with everyone. I even split an order of fajitas with Stacey. As it turns out, Stacey eats *ONE* fajita then starts whining about being full. I end up bring 5 lbs. of food home "for later". Next stop was Dillard's where we raided the clearance racks again. $5.99 ea. for some really nice stuff! I picked up 3 more items. Next we headed down to EBGames where I picked up a new racing title, TOCA. I haven't tried it yet because I haven't had the time or motivation to find my PC steering wheel. I'll get to it eventually. Sears was next on the agenda. Saw Tania and the incredibly unreliable John. Kev & Stacey got hung up buying a canister vac and the rest of the crowd, including me headed home.

Hit the ground running Tuesday morning. Called up T to see what the deal was with Ft. Lauderdale. The circuit was failing testing. GREAT. T calls C2 and he freaks out. I check with E to make sure we're still good for Wednesday. We are. Later in the morning, I discover (on my own) that the data line is working. I login remotely to their router and take a peek around. Everything's looking good. I call C1 and have her try some things. Her network connection WORKS and now she tells me she loves me and that she's single. I'll need to see a picture first before I go down that road. Anyway, I call T and let her know I got the site up on the network but not to tell C2 yet. I call C2 and leave him a voicemail to tell him I have bad news. C2 promptly returns my call. I tell him that it looks as though the circuit turn up won't be happening on Wednesday. Silence. I wait to see if he breathes and he doesn't. Then I tell him "because I already did it this morning". He freaks out of course but is very thankful. I even got an email as proof. That was funny. Gonna be expensive for them for sure though because I'm not makin all these calls for free you know.

I spent the rest of the day on other complex issues although not quite as far out as the one I've been talking about. Kudos to you if you were able to follow all that dialog.

After work, my folks and I headed over to the Burn's for a crab dinner.Dave and Dana showed up briefly to say hello then we got to eating. Got stuffed. Kevin played a little keyboard and a little guitar. Mom tried unsuccessfully to get Stacey to sing. Kailyn warmed up to mom by the end of the night. After dessert, headed home. Now it's late and I need to go to bed. What a full day.