That time when we all reflect on what we accomplished (or didn’t) this past year. That time when we scramble to spend the last of the budget, or plan out which vendors will get the projects for 2024 and which we’ll try to start winding services down without them noticing so we don’t cause panic and awkward virtual meetings. That time when accounting is pressing us (emails, Teams messages, beacons in the sky, a shady guy showing up at your house…) to get our invoices coded before the office shuts down. I may be exaggerating just a little :).
Maybe it’s that time of the year where the ground starts freezing and that telco circuit we’ve been trying to bring in for that site out in BFE is now completely postponed until spring, and we’re forced to figure out which 5G provider has the best coverage in the area. It could also be that time of the year where we need to stand up a new VPN tunnel with a vendor we haven’t spoken to in 2 years, and they’ve possibly outsourced their IT team who is now on their own holiday and won’t get around to responding until the middle of January.
It could also be that time of the year where we finally have enough of a maintenance window to take down that Nexus and upgrade the firmware. Of course, we could be spending time with our family like the rest of the company, but instead we get to spend some quality time with a case of red bull and the work from home office we setup during the height of the pandemic that’s become an extension of our personal space. If we’ve been good this year, the network gods will allow to upgrade to complete without issue and we’ll fall asleep in that Aeron chair we picked up from that sketchy guy on Craigslist who had an entire garage full of them. Who are we kidding though, the upgrade will stall halfway through, and our anxiety will take over. We’ll start the drive into the office with our spouses angerly cursing us out the door only to get a Zabbix email notification that the switch is now online as we pull into the parking lot.
Whatever time of year it is for you, I hope that you are able to spend some time with the people you love most, and not the constant hum from 3 racks of network gear.
Image generated using Microsoft Copilot.