I just finished up my first, but not last, ads backend oncall week. It goes from Wednesday to Wednesday and today is Wednesday. Basically, I just have to make sure the ads backend doesn't die. There are tons of things setup to monitor the entire system, so when things start acting up, alerts and emails fire, and I have to take care of it. If it's something I can fix, I have to do it, but I have to determine if it s a real bad problem. if it is, I have to tell people who would know more about it. I also have to carry around a pager, for really really serious problems. If it beeps, something really bad happened and I have to fix it soon or find someone who will fix it soon. This basically forces me to learn more about other parts of this complicated system, which is pretty cool. On top of all that, I have to make sure the system build and testing does not break. This is more annoying, since it takes 20 minutes to compile and 20 minutes to run the tests, so fixing the build is not simple, since many changes could have been the problem. This is pretty constant work all day, so there really isn't much time for me to do any of my own work. I also have to check on all this at night, so when I'm home, I can't completely relax. Luckily, I'm done now!! =) I think I might have to do this once a quarter? I'm not sure... Now I can go back to doing full workouts again!! =) I've been forced to shorten my workouts, but my abs are really sore for some reason! That's the biggest positive from my oncall week, hehehe... =)
