The day started off pretty well. Much pomp and circumstance when the first appointment of the day went well. I was Shrub, standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a Mission Accomplished sign hanging behind me. I hopped into the Davemobile and headed off to appointment number two all smiles, singing to “These Eyes” courtesy of k-rock.

Night falls upon the glorius vessel that I named November 8th and I coast through dark waters, running about 3 different upgrades at once. Parralelism is great to save time, but it sucks when something fails and leaves you in the lurch.

And we get scuttled by a motherfucking iceberg. There’s ice on the deck and we’re taking on water. A large chunk of data just dissapeared into the ether, and now my confidence is shot for the day. I need to get this back, I need to make this better. There is a gaping hole in the side of my boat and I need to make it better.

Breath.

We snag the machine and set up an interim solution. A small chunk of my boat snaps off but the piece I’m on levels out. We run the fuck away and try and get on with the day. Nothing we can do till we get to the dry dock. Third appointment is short and sweet, surgical even. And then onwards to the 4th. While sweating bullets here, we realise the boat is lifting again. The boss called. Another machine. Another client. Smells like hard drive failure. My little piece of boat is almost completely vertical. I’m standing on top of if trying to figure out when to jump, and from what side. I need to get off early enough to not be sucked down, but not so early I die on impact. I need an exit strategy, I need to jump off the right side of the ship so I don’t hit the propeller on the way down.

I update the print drivers on this workstation so I can setup remote printing from the Terminal Server. Run a test page, it all looks good. I install the same set on the server. Run a test page. The print spooler on the workstation shits a brick. I’ve hit the propller.

But I’ve only clipped my ankle. My fall is completely uncontrolled and I’m flipping around.  Ripping keys out of the registry left and right, getting this god forsaken driver out so I can rescue the print spooler.  I grab the bottom of my coat and spread it like a flying squirrel suit. I managed to right myself and splash down feet first into the ocean.  With a bit of a hack reminiscent of the flying squirrel suit, I manage to get it to print remotely. I start swimming away from the day… er … boat. I have no lifeboats.  I have two machines to recover data from.

I can’t see the shore.

Looks like I’m swimming all night.