ML Starkey's Weblog: Service with a smile!
Providing Technical Support to Sun's customers and other topics

I love music, any kind of music. I can sit around making music all day long. As long as I'm making my music, ain't gonna do nobody no harm.

OK, enough old lyrics, that's not the point. But I do have one.

And it's this. Sun has a ton of musicians in it's ranks. Obviously, none of them professional full time or they wouldn't be here at all, but all the same, many singers and instrumentalists of all kinds. As a matter of fact, one sits right next to me (Hi Tim!). Yesterday, he whips out some drum sticks and drills out a beat on the books on his desk. Turns out my cube neighbor plays in this band. Cool! Occasionally, we are treated to live performances from employees at the Burlington site. Alas, I've never been able to catch one of these due to work schedules, but if I recall correctly, there's been a classical piano concert and a small jazz ensemble. There is a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano in the main lobby. Walk down the hall outside of the main reception area and you can't miss it. I would love to swap the 35 year old Baldwin Acrosonic spinet piano that I learned on for one of these fine digital instruments. Then I could have a grand piano in a fraction of the space (not to mention a fraction of the weight!). And it's so much more 1.) Never needs tuning. 2.) Can produce different voices. 3.) Can be setup to play on it's own. 4.) Can plug in some headphones and play whenever you want. 5.) And it has all 88 keys! That last one is a dig at the portable Yamaha PSR-220 I now own, which is otherwise a fun keyboard to play with.

But there's a downside or two with the Disklavier. Price is a big one. I haven't actually gone into a piano dealer and inquired, but I've done some Internet searches. The American dealers don't list their prices on the web and Yamaha doesn't list MSRP. But the European keyboard dealers do and with the help of an online currency exchange rate site, I figured it would cost me something in the neighborhood of $15,000 to $20,000 for my dream instrument. I could maybe get $800 to $1,000 for the Baldwin if I sold it. I don't know if a piano dealer would take my 30+ year old set of ivories in trade. That's pretty steep so I think I'll just keep the old Baldwin and keep plinking on the PSR-220 and admire the Disklavier in the Sun lobby when I walk by.

It's no accident that a technology company like Sun would have a fair sprinkling of musicians in it's employ. According to this article from the Wall Street Journal (link goes to sfgate.com), nearly 75% of the entrants in the Siemens Westinghouse Science and Math Competition were "gifted musicians". Mathematics = numbers and music = numbers, makes perfect sense to me. That close link didn't actually hit me until I took a Music Theory course my senior year of high school. I did very well in Music Theory that year. Music Theory clicked right into place after the 9+ years of piano lessons. But I always needed alot of help with my Math classes!

So hats off to the Sun musicians. Doesn't matter if you are just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band, or the Guitar Man, or the Piano Man, or the Jazz Man, or an American Band, you are just all right with me!

Working holidays was something I never had to do until I came to Sun Services. During the time I spent as a system and network admin before coming to Sun, I was the "junior" on the totem pole and there was always a "senior" admin above me who did any holidays, night/weekends, etc. There was one notable exception in 1997 where the entire IT staff and hired consultants of my previous employer did a network hardware upgrade (3Com to Cisco) over the Halloween weekend. Other than that, I was lucky; a few late nights, but no weekends or holidays.

Sun's technical support is not as leisurely, no sir. Twenty-four seven, three sixty five, no exceptions. Excepting the regular after-hours folks, we are left with about 10 to 11 holidays that have to be covered. The good news is that not everyone has to come in. Only certain level contracts and T&M customers can get live support, so a skeleton crew is maintained. The bad news is that there are enough days that no one can escape doing at least one holiday a year. Most of us do several. I usually end up with Martin Luther King Day, President's Day, Labor Day and a good chunk of the Sun shutdown/holiday weeks.

Most Americans think of Labor Day as either the end of Summer/return to school or a last chance Summertime long weekend. Here in the Northeast, where pools will be closing and the leaves will start falling in the not too distant future, one last warm holiday is not something to squander. But I don't mind. I think in a way, it is fitting to work on Labor Day. After all, it is the day that "is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country."

May it always be so.