Uh Oh!!!

Today has been one of those high stress days. I was on a routine call with some techs from Charlotte, North Carolina and one of them got a page. The tech said "uh oh". As a computer analyst who has been in the business for many, many years, that's a sound that you DON'T want to hear. Darn it, Wow, or would you look at that - make you want to say WHAT? But when a tech says "uh oh", I know from experience that you don't really want to know what happened.
Today was a good example.
Before I could hang up from my conference call, my pager was vibrating off my belt, my cell phone was ringing and my call waiting feature was on overdrive.
By the time I walked upstairs, there was a flurry of activity, crisis conference bridges, emails, pages, and people jabbering. The clicking of keyboards sounded like a heard of horses running on asphalt. When major computer systems have problems a lot of people in our building get really excited.
After an hour or so, things were back to normal but there will be thousands of man hours spent during the coming days trying to figure out exactly what happened. Plans will be made to ensure that it doesn't happen again. It's an interesting world.
I'm working on another problem this evening but the level of intensity is much lower. If things go according to plan perhaps I'll be in bed by midnight. If not, I'll be a grumpy gus tomorrow.