My Hello World is here

We went to lamaze class for the baby, I read a lot of information about it, I also received multiple warnings or advises from friends regarding not sleeping, the crying, etc.

But, no matter how “prepared” you are, you are not. It’s really like when you are doing consulting services, you have the knowledge but until you face the actual problem is when you know if you really “know”.

It all start as a customer calls, “we have a problem is occurring every 10 minutes” in case of your wife she says “Honey, I’m starting to feel something, is occurring every 10 minutes”.

When the computer starts  performing poorly you run and check graphs and stuff just to figure out what is going on

 

Then you start running some tests, verifying, asking questions, checking the current status of everything, when the problem starts to increase, and a resolution is required, you jump in, attack head onto the problem, and then at some point in some way, you get it, all fixed.e

As always there is stress, specially if you are in a mission critical problem, and I have had some bad server crashes, with lots of stresses, but nothing, nothing compares to what happened on my Friday.

This is the story of how my baby came to this world.

The day before I had one of those nights when something is out of whack, we had a release scheduled which was completed successfully, as with any other release some items go flawlessly, some others require a minor tweak here and there, but all was fine, nonetheless, I was unable to sleep, something was amiss.

Next day I went to work normally, with a weird feeling that I had to finish everything that day.

I finished almost everything by 4pm, where I had a status meeting with my boss, so we started the conversation, and some minutes later I got the call which I ignored since I was in a meeting.

Then the second one, and the third one then I had to pickup

“This is tech support how can I help you?”  We are having a problem, some irregular behaviors are occurring every 10 minutes and it’s increasing.

“Thanks, I’m sorry to hear you are having some trouble” Yes, we need support on site.

So, as expected I had to cut the meeting short, and proceed to where I was needed.

Traffic was bad, as it is in this area in California (not as bad as in L.A., but still), so I made it and proceed with the evaluation.

• When you started seeing the problem?
• How often is happening?
• Are you able to work?

And this is the part where it got rocky, as time progressed, it became more sensitive, it’s like when you are trying to figure out the server problem, you poke here, change a setting there and all is fine, but sometimes it just goes terribly wrong, change a setting.. BAM! blue screen, you try to recover and so you keep doing, at one time nothing I tried worked, and that is really frustrating, nothing seems to be ok. (My wife torn the house down in search for comfort)

And from there you rush to the hospital, or you call backup..

And you start monitoring other counters..

If a green bar all they way to the top meant something, ha!, a mere 60 here is more than you can imagine, every spike, every drop, every second, you wait and wait and wait…

And as when you find a setting in the server that seems to relief the problem you breathe, when some pain killers are added all goes to a relative calm.

But as with everything, you think you got it solved, BAM! and BAM!! there it goes again, and this time even harder, you can stay up all night checking all that, as I was this past Friday, but something else was also eating my energy, the stress my wife was feeling.

After a lot of effort on my wife’s end, and me struggling helping her out (I inadvertently took the place of a nurse that was there to help, NO WAY I was going anywhere)

After half an hour of more struggling, counting, coaching, the final push, and then the most beautiful thing my eyes ever saw came to life, a short but loud cry said it all, my wife was so relaxed afterwards it seemed she just woke up from a long peaceful dream.

My back, my feet, my head, all were aching, but it didn’t matter, since she was here, my small Julianna, my tiny “Hello World”  that is my world.

About Being a father

I am a developer, and I want to keep posting about that, but today, I wanted to express a little about the feeling of becoming a father, each one of us when the time comes will feel it in a different way, this small post is part of what I see and feel about it.

When we grow up, we follow rules we don’t understand why they are there, we cannot take part on any decision and we are just moving around understanding little of how the world works.

As you grow older you start seeing things with a different perspective, you see something you use to consider cool, as dangerous and foolish, we start looking back to those rules that at a time did not make sense and we see why those are important.

One of the things that happened today made me think, Am I ready? Can I really be a father?

My Father, is the best father there is (I hope you all can say the same).

By becoming a Father I have inherited a tough job, and I have a lot to do If I want to look at myself in the mirror and see my Father in me.

Hazards are everywhere, we want to protect our kids from the world so that they can be safe, but if we do that, the world will devour them when it has a chance.

So my goal is not to hide the world from my child, but to expose the world and the ugly faces to him/her, the more he/she learns early on, the more knowledge I’m able to give, the better decisions he/she will be able to make.

I have the best teammate I could possibly ask for, my wife, she is a strong woman, and I now that there is nothing we can’t do.

So my son/daughter, be assured that your life is going to be a wonderful ride, we will be able to learn together and grow together.

I hope to see you soon. (by the next new year)