I got an IM from someone with the screen name sitandspinonmytongue. Ha! Again with the oral pleasures. How do they know? (See? This is why I didn't check the hide box. This stuff can be entertaining.)

Today I got an IM from someone that just said, "hi sex". What do you think they're trying to say?

Sicko.

I got a call at 2am yesterday morning. After an hour of trying to decifer the gibberish-like outputs from the abended job (a year end job - eek!!!), I called my backup. He couldn't figure it out, either. He in turn called the guy whose name is on the job (last edited, but in '98). He couldn't figure it out, either. At least that's some consolation. It's just that on 9 calls out of 10, I have to call someone for help. I feel absolutely useless. I'm not sure if it's that I just get these bizarre and rare errors, or if I'm a dolt. Everyone assures me that the latter is not the case. I just feel so unprepared for these calls, even though I've been working here for 5 years. And I don't know what to do about it. I'm going to talk to my boss about it.

OK, I found out that the problem involved a VSAM file that ran out of space and had not been re-allocated in 10 years. So, it was beyond my control. Next issue, why am I on call in both January and July (which my boss admitted yesterday were the two suckiest months to be in call)?

Now, if I hadn't gotten a call last night at 11:00pm for a job that had no successors and an acceptable return code (that should probably not even be on the call list), I'd feel much better this morning.