Please don't get blood on the equipment.

I've been at a customer site for 3 days trying my best to sane. It isn't
working.

It is now the afternoon before we're due to go live and we're running
around chasing down a cabling problem. Of course we've been doing this
for the last 3 hours. What was supposed to be a simple "lets just run
down to the server room and install the devices before lunch" has become
an ordeal. It is not helped by the fact that none of us have eaten and
our blood sugar is so low we're probably not thinking clearly.

We actually moved the stuff around 3 times before we were actually able to
make it fit and I was in such a rush to get the crap in place that I cut
my hand in 2 places and can now only type with about 3 fingers.

People who think that this whole 'geeks and sodas' think is just some weird
cultural throwback haven't had to endure this kind of life.

So I know that we will be here all night and there is no way we're getting
out of here by Beer O'Clock.

Luckily, last night, we anticipated such a debacle and planned
accordingly. Being stuck in a hotel in the 'Burbs was just too much to
endure for another night so we piled into my car and headed downtown in
search of food, booze and gross denial.

Switching into our usual 'lost and a long way from home' mode, we stumbled
into the first place that had a decent menu to discover that it was
actually a live band venue. We spent the bulk of the meal fighting off
the waitress who kept asking if we wanted to pay to see the show. Only
around desert were we were finally able to explain that we had no clue who
the acts were and we really wanted a sample before we committed to
anything as solid as actually paying for our entertainment.

She didn't help the sales pitch by saying that the second act was was a girl
who did acoustic numbers, was very popular with the locals, and "wasn't to
whiney". Yeah right.

In the end we just paid her off and got special dispensation to stay for
the evening. We had a job to do the next day and we need to pretend that
we had a social life for at least a few hours.

Well, the bands didn't actually suck, the girl wasn't too whiney and she
was popular with what I think was the entire lesbian community of the
town.

Carpe diem.