2nd Day back at work...

[Guest guest]

So here's what happened for my second day back at work......

Hadda get up at 0530 to be at work at 0700 hrs. (Remember, I'm not a

" morning person " - that was giving me an hour to wake up before I hit the

road.) At 0230, I still wasn't asleep. <grimace> I got out of bed for a

quick, desperate cup of camomile tea and an aspirin, then got back into

bed, jostling my sleeping companion animals. Ambient light in the bedroom

seemed pretty bright when I opened my eyes a bit later. Oh crap - it was

0700! I called immediately to say I'd just woken up and would be there

ASAP; sorry for the extra time the graveyard dispatcher had to hold over.

I was at my radio console, showered, dressed and with wet hair at 0747 hrs.

We worked short; just the two radios and one call-taker until 1500 hrs. At

various times throughout the day, my CAD terminal acted a little strange.

An error message I'd never seen before flashed across the screen a few

times, but cleared after a few anxious seconds, so.... okay.... It

didn't happen at the other two consoles. Well, heck, it was Christmas Eve

Eve and a Sunday.... it still worked.

As the next two dispatchers came on duty (and one went home) at 1500, my

CAD terminal froze. And it didn't reboot. So we signed on a service desk

position as a CAD radio console and I fiddled with the down terminal.

Call-taker consoles only have one monitor, not two, so it was fairly

cumbersome for the dispatcher working that radio position.....

Now there were still 3 people working consoles, plus me under a console

fiddling with things and swearing. At 1500... when it's far too busy for

only 1 call-taker. Emergency call to Sacramento - I don't care what you

do, please page the Big Boss to have somebody drive a replacement CAD PC

with a dual-VGA card in it down here! Somebody who can swap out network

cards and BigMouth modems, too. Yes, on Sunday, Christmas Eve Eve.

Our dispatcher who works as our CAD Coordinator has been on vacation while

his wife approached and passed her due date with their first child. I

crossed my fingers and called him; they were back from a brisk walk around

the neighborhood and he said he could come in and swap out a service desk

CAD and change those things out for us - that way we could just wait for a

replacement SERVICE DESK CAD PC, not a RADIO CAD PC. (We haven't been able

to staff that fourth call-taker position lately, anyway....)

He accomplished that task within 2 hrs, with only a couple of stupid

glitches.

Another dispatcher came on duty (early) at 1800 and one left at 1900.

However, at 1840 hrs, half of our phones died. One radio console, two

service desks AND the phone on my desk in my office (not that I was in

there....) plus many of the phones in the Area Office. I used the vacant

phone on my former partner Comm Sup's desk to call our phone vendor Network

Ops Center. They gave me a 4 hour ETA for a tech to drive down from

Pacifica..... on Sunday, Christmas Eve Eve.

The tech called first, after an unsuccessful attempt to clear " the problem "

through remote dial-up into the switch. Could I please go back and look at

the monitor to see if it was displaying the same message he was getting on

his remote diagnostics? And see if maybe something had fallen on the

keyboard???

Nothing pressing against the keyboard in the phone vault, but yes, the

monitor was scrolling the same icky error message he didn't understand.

Okay, was I willing to take the phone system down with a reset? " It only

takes about 30 seconds.... Do you have a lot of phone traffic right now? "

He described which button I should push and I found it.

Well, over five minutes later, without a single phone working, I used my

personal cell phone to call the tech at the number we'd been using to

coordinate this project. It was busy - with a rapid busy signal, which ..

we know that's not good. And just then, we started getting 9-1-1 calls

again... but we couldn't call OUT right away; thankfully, that cleared up

within a very long few seconds! He called ME back and said he'd been

running diagnostics and it " looked okay now " - but now was I willing to go

check every phone to make sure they were all working? (All fifty of them

in the Area Office building, adjacent to the Comm Center.)

I wasn't. The Comm Center phones worked again. THEY were the critical

ones. He was saved a long drive on Sunday, Christmas Eve Eve, but since

the Area Office didn't need to use all the phones until 0800 on Monday, he

darned well better have his work ticket indicate the need for a tech to

show up during business hours and physically check that phone switch

equipment on premises.

Phone calls tapered off around 2030 and I exited stage left at 2045 -

another dispatcher was due in at 2100.

I'm pooped. But I get to rest up until I go back in around 1800 or 2100

hrs on Monday night - depending on how busy it is and if somebody else

radio-trained can cover that odd 3 hrs. It will be Santa-tracking time, by

then. ;-)

Happy to be here, proud to serve.

Olmstead

Communications Supervisor

~on the Central California coastline~

" Not presumed to be an official statement of my employing agency. "

Home E-mail: mailto:gryeyes@...

http://www.gryeyes.com/

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However

a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.