The End of an Era in My Life
I sit now in next to Gate 26 in the Sky Harbor airport. It is the end of a long couple of weeks.
It is also the end of an era for me.
For fourteeen years I have worked for the same company, in the same IT department.
I and the people I have worked with have built and maintained the Madison data center for this past decade and a half. Things have changed so, so much in that time. By now of course, people around the globe, across the US, Europe, and Asia, depend on those applications and servers to get their jobs done.
Now the end has come. Over the past two weeks we have planned and toiled towards delivering the entirety of the Madison data center to a new home. We did it with a scant day and half of downtime, as those servers, coccooned in expanding foam packaging, flew across the country in a chartered jet.
We kicked ass… just as we kicked ass in everything. As with all the tasks given to us, we treated it as just another job to do.
But it wasn’t, really, just another job to do. It was a job with a goal to make the Madison office obsolete. Now, in June, we can shut the doors and turn off the lights, and the services that we built will still keep humming along.
The only people that will care that Madison is dark is those of us who lived there. I have given my entire professional life to that place, and now that is done.
Last week, I officially rejected relocation to the Arizona office. There are many good reasons for this, professionally and personally.
The end result, though, is the servers and applications that I have built and cared for for so long will soon be someone else’s responsibility. It is both a relief and a sadness.
Since the announcement about the Madison close, I’ve been so busy trying to make this thing happen that I’ve not had time to take proper stock of what it means to me. Of course I’m sad. I’m angry at the people and reasons this decision was made. I’m relieved I’m not going to get a 3am call that a server is down. I’m frightened about looking for a job in this economy. I’m excited at the prospects of finding something new.
At any rate, it is the end of a long journey. I will miss the people I have worked with. I have a lot of respect for a lot of people I have known through the years, and although it really stinks we’re in this situation, I think most of us will be okay. I certainly hope so.
So, if you know of a good IT position in the Madison area, please let me know. My resume is up at MadisonComputerGeek.com. It may sound arrogant, but I’m really good. I don’t know it all, but I know a lot about a really wide range of technologies (one of the advantages of being the Head Nerd for so long). I’d be lucky to find a place where I get to do half of the things I’ve gotten to do with Heurikon/Artesyn/Emerson over the years.
Good-bye Emerson, and good-bye Phoenix. Take good care of my babies.
Wow, congratulations from a fellow XS1100 enthusiast!
I was just poking around lamenting my current lack of a bike and I came across your blog. I live in Evanston, IL and it was cool to see familiar places in the pics from your trip. How long ago was your trip? Do you still ride? How will the baby effect your biking?
Best Wishes,
Ian
(ianwarsenault@gmail.com)
Fuckin’ A, brother!
Looking for some comic relief, I typed in JohnStewart.com and expected to find a few Daily Show videos to laugh along with.
Instead, I find your blog.
First, let me congratulate you for turning down all of those lucrative offers for your domain name. Obviously a man of principal – or just holding out for more?
Secondly, I appreciate a well written commentary on such an important topic, your well chosen quote and an excellent diety disclaimer.
If only the rest of the blogesphere were as well educated.
Keep up the good work, John Stewart
Congratulations to you both! Jane alerted me to the news. This is very exciting.
Everyone around me is having babies!! There must be something in the water.
Send my best wishes to Susanna as well!
Eiher the guy above me was being sarcastic or he really doesn’t know you…I kid yer pretty smart. I wonder if they let you out of GitMo early if you convert to Chris
+T
haha, thats funny cause I recieved an Obama ad in my ancient yahoo account, musta bought some pretty old list. Can’t figure it out though cause I’ve never voted for a democrat, and there’s no way in hell I’ll vote for this one. Not that I want McCain either.
Hahaha, he spoke at Sturgis and they played a clip on the radio. Is it just me or does he sound like Little Nicky(adam sandlers movie)?
Red and irritated, eh? You sure it’s not just the game?
Found via Google blog search; thanks for the call-out.
Let me put it this way: this is why you care. While Washington negotiated, we lost yet another bank yesterday, Washington Mutual. There are only two levels of safeguard left that prevented everybody with their checking and savings accounts in WaMu from losing everything yesterday, and we used up one of them. WaMu was put into a forced buy-out by JP Morgan Chase, a clear violation of anti-monopoly law we wouldn’t put up with if we weren’t desperate. How desperate were we? Had WaMu simply gone under, as it would have done today without this, 2/3rds of the entire reserve of the FDIC would have been gone. So if we lose two more banks that size, the American people lose their checking accounts and savings accounts. OK, more likely, the taxpayers end up on the hook for it, but we are at serious risk of a cascading bank failure.
Also, your employer depends on those banks being at least minimally healthy and able to operate. So does everybody’s employer. The last time we had anything resembling a wave of bank failures, unemployment roughly doubled. So take the number of friends and family you know are out of work? Roughly that many more of them will be out of work.
Yeah, it maters.
Congratulations John and Susanna! We’re extremely happy for you both!
Great looking boy. Glad everybody is okay and now the fun begins. lu
That kid’s head is like Sputnik!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRmLGYSc0XQ&feature=related
I was wondering what was holding everything up. 33 hours!!! And then a c-section? Herregud!
Congrats!
Hey congratulations guys! Can’t wait to see you all.
Lor & Kell
Congratulations!! We will miss you at our game(s), but you are definitely needed elsewhere! Wow, sounds like a very healthy (future-frisbee playin’) boy!
Congratulations!
Congrats Guys, August looks very cute!
Wow, 33 hours! I certainly hope Amy doesn’t try to beat that record
-N8 and Amy and ???
Congratulations!! August is adorable!
Wow, I’ve been wondering how that all turned, then ding! check his site! Congrats on the cute kid! And hats off to wifey, thirty-three hours?! Man,i can relate to the towels in my butt but not for that long. Looks like a scholar to me!
Congrats! Very cute baby. Way to go guys!
drew
LoL!
Welcome to the world of parenting!
Grats, by the way, you 3! He is *adoreable* !!! I stalk your pictures now
~Crystal
In the case of Obama, the term African-American is neither imprecise nor inaccurate. In fact it’s one of the most precise applications of the term that I can think of…
Why is he African-American? Because his father was born in Kenya? Barack himself was born in Hawaii. That makes him an American-American, or just plain American.
His mother is from English descent. That makes him as much an English-American as African-American.
Yet why do you use this term to refer to him? BECAUSE OF SKIN COLOR.
So let’s use the right term. We’re talking about skin color; let’s call him black. I’m white. I may also be a Scottish-American, but it doesn’t say anything about the point at hand, which is a discussion of my skin color… THIS is why it is imprecise.
What about white people from South Africa? I saw an episode of Top Chef where a white woman, who had a parent from South Africa, describe herself (half-jokingly) that she was a very pale African-American. People GASPED as if this was some huge racist comment. It’s not and shouldn’t be perceived as such. We should stop giving reverence to a term which isn’t useful and was invented to dance around people’s perceived sentitivities.
Furthermore, on more general terms, “African-American” is in most cases an INACCURATE term (admittedly, it’s only half-inaccurate in Obama’s case).
In fact, I recall reading recently (can’t find it right now, so obviously this is not gospel) that genetic testing shows that a high percentage of those who self-identify as African-American actually have no African ancestry!
Should we call black people with no African blood African-American? How about we just use the more precise and more accurate term for what we REALLY mean… black! It’s not an epithet!
Not all Africans are black and not all black people are from African descent! Also, not all black people in America are actually American citizens.
Drilling further, if we want to get into the roots of human ancestry, we’re ALL descended from homo sapiens originating in the horn of Africa. Therefore, we’re all African-American in this country.
Does that make it a useless enough term?
Whoa, apparently I touched a nerve. I was just trying to be snarky.
But I stand by my point, that he is correctly called an African-American, in the sense that he’s a hybrid between an African and an American. I do agree that the term is all but meaningless in everyday use, and is just a polysyllabic way of saying black. Like my high school English teacher said, never use a 50 cent word when a nickel word will do.
Also, I’m not sure the term was “invented to dance around people’s perceived sensitivities.” I think it was adopted by black people as a way of describing themselves, in the 60s and 70s, presumably because the term black was becoming an epithet.
You’re right, Malcolm X first popularly used the term in the early 1960s, and it became more popular through the 1970s over the term Afro-American. Jesse Jackson further pushed for its adoption in the 1980s:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/African-American%23African-American-population
This about surveys of the black population on the term:
http://volokh.com/posts/1204569019.shtml
However, this from a black man on the subject:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_latimes-why_im_black.htm
It’s time to move on.
Great write up, I came over for your election thoughts, but this brought a tear to my eye. I think the birthing process is something you really can’t fully comprehend or appreciate until you’ve been through it. Congratulations.
Now, more importantly, when are you going to introduce him to the MSOP.
robert
awwww, now that is sweet! Is he sleeping or just being cute?
either that or u better start calling me Irish-american…and my ancestors were slaves too so I want my reperations from the British
Fuck yeah, that’s in Tulsa, baby! Those gold skyscrapers visible in the background at around 1:40 are part of Oral Roberts University. I could tell you exactly what coffee shop she stormed out of if I knew south Tulsa a little better (haven’t lived there in about 6 years).
ORU is pretty much Crazy Christian Central.
I have always insisted on calling white people of undetermined/mixed ancestry (including and especially myself) Euro-Americans. No matter how hard my relatives look for a darker, more ancient American ancestry and despite the fact that my people arrived in the early 1600’s, we still have an identity based from Colonial European culture, and anyway — why are mine the only people who are deprived of a hyphen?! The only (blank)-Americans are the tribes, and even they migrated from somewhere, but at least they did it first.
That said, “black” is more inaccurate than any geo-political designator. Most people are some shade of brown. But the WORST is calling people “non-whites”! If you’re going to be on a mission about language, blast any media source that uses that repulsive term. Hopefully soon, any mention of skin color will comply with the Crayola Appearance Descriptor System.
Hi
As a fresh johnstewart.com user i just want to say hi to everyone else who uses this forum
Aloha guys!
You have a very interesting forum.
So i’d like to know if someone of you or your frineds was fired because of a financial crisis?
LOL – Jeff felt exactly the same way until Marin was at least 9 months old. You’ll have to swap fatherhood stories when we get together. (Suz … shh … we’ll keep the fact that we’re right about the “going out” clothes between us.)
dude. you actually have a cute kid. who woulda thought!
Nice work.
You totally stole my name though.
I enjoy reading your posts on fatherhood. you funny guy.
You must get alot of trafic being the first google result for John Stewart!
First off, his name is Jon Stewart, not John Stewart.
Secondly, I’m nowhere near the first result for “John Stewart”. I’m curious what search strings you used to find this place.
Every time that dude does something (now, Cramer, previously, Crossfire), I get some response like this. I wonder how you find me!
You lucky bastard. Your boy is a gem.
you can try
john stewart is a badd ass name a name they only give to gods