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June 12, 2006
Back into the fire
Monday morning and I'm making some good progress on the to-do list I made last night at 3am. I finally tracked down the friend of Richard's that was spamming on our IPs. The guy had been on vacation in the Caribbean all last week when I was trying to get him to shut down the customer of his that was sending the spam. He then had the audacity to whine to me today that his girlfriend was not happy that he was dealing with business while on vacation. To which I responded "well, if you'd have taken care of this on Friday before you left for vacation... "
The truth is I'm envious of anyone who has their own business and thinks they can take a vacation. Richard and I haven't had a real vacation or even more than 24 hours when we were both together and not checking on the business since 2002. A truly crazy person emailed me last week and said what an inspiration we were and how someday she hoped she and her boyfriend could work from home running a "mom and pop ISP". While it might seem that I'm the luckiest girl in the world -- what with the whole not getting up til noon some days, not getting showered or dressed until afternoon, etc -- I can assure you that each of those "perks" comes with a price. I sleep until noon some days because I'm up until 5am dealing with a network issue. Not showered or dressed until afternoon? Well that's because as soon as I woke up at 7am, there were 10 issues that needed to be dealt with ASAP and I couldn't even take a 15 minute break to tend to basic needs like a shower and clean clothes. But I am SO lucky I get to work from home! With no set office hours, that means there's no start or end to my day. There's also no start or end to my week. Let that sink in for a moment, and then tell me again how lucky I am :)
Posted by jodikins at June 12, 2006 12:27 PM
Comments
I completely agree with you. So many people think that we have it made. I have no schedule and its nice because I get to do things when I want... or do I? I hear it alot... "Wow, that must be nice" ... and the other thing I hear is "I wish I knew half as much about computers as you did" ... the only response I can really give to that is "Be careful what you wish for" ... These people dont see what its like. They dont see that once you know alot about computers that everyone automatically expects you to do it all for them.... and even worse, many of them dont even try themselves first.... and staying up till 5am... its not always a luxury... they dont see the days we go on 4 hours of sleep because a server crashed or because we just dont have enough time in the day so we have to cut into our sleep time. But its ok because we like what we do, right? I wish I could let these people be me for a day... and then see how long they want to be me.
Ok, I'll get off my soap box now :)
Posted by: Bob K Mertz at June 14, 2006 12:13 AM