Rough Day

 We all have good days, and sometimes we have bad days. Sometimes we have both. On Saturday I had both in the same day. The good stuff, I will write about later, but I'm going to start with the bad part, and you'll figure out why as you read. It's basically a cautionary tale.

Saturday was National Quilting Day and I spent the morning having fun at the Night Owl Quilting Studio. That was ALL GOOD.

My car was parked a block away, and down a side street. I waited for an SUV with a storage container attached to the roof drive past before I attempted to cross the street at a crosswalk. Now, it's March in New England. The ground is thawing and this causes the pavement to buckle and break. We call them frost heaves. They create potholes, and uneven pavement.

You can see where this is going.

Alas, I did not.

I tripped and fell face first into the (very fortunately rarely traveled) side street. I watched as the pavement got closer. I fell with both my palms flat on the street, but that did not stop my head from hitting the pavement. Somehow I also fell against my side.

I was startled, to say the least. I rolled over onto my back and tried to get my bearings. I looked over and realized I was in the street. I sat up. The young woman driving the SUV had turned around, parked and came toward me. "Are you OK? Are you hurt?"

I had a lump on my head just above my eyebrow.

My left side hurt like hell. I had abrasions on both palms and the ball of my right palm was bruised. My glasses were scratched.

I looked up at the young woman. "I think I'm OK. Can you help me get up?" She took my hands and pulled. That was when I realized my feet were twisted underneath me. We paused, I shifted and then I was upright. I collected my purse and shopping bag. (Or maybe she did.)

"Are you OK," she asked again. I nodded. "Are you sure?" Yeah. I nodded. She wasn't convinced. In retrospect, I should have rested a bit, but I was in shock (I think) so I gathered my stuff and headed toward my car.

At home, I got my lunch ready, and took two Advil, then called my DIL to wish her a Happy Birthday. After the greetings were exchanged, I told her (and my son and DGD, they were on speakerphone) about my tumble. I knew I had to tell somebody. Obviously they were very concerned.

I reviewed my injuries. I didn't have a headache, I hadn't lost consciousness. I could take a deep breath without excruciating pain (meaning no cracked or broken ribs). All my fingers wiggled just fine without pain, and aside from being sore I was OK. We talked some more and they signed off. I went into the studio to work on the purple quilt.

A few hours later my son sent a text. I balked. So I called my friend, and after a brief discussion, I decided to head to Urgent Care. By this time I five hours had passed.

At Urgent Care, a nurse called me over. The short story was they didn't see any point in seeing me. "After the age of 65, any fall with a head injury; the standard procedure is to get a head scan. We can't do that here, so you should go to the ER. Even if we do see you, he's going to recommend you go to the ER and get a head scan." I hesitated. Saturday night at a the busiest ER in the state. Yuk. The nurse sensed my hesitation. "At your age, with your injury, they won't keep you waiting long." (Remember I'm 70.)

OK. I left and started to drive to the hospital, then decided to call my mother to tell her. She suggested I drive to her house and go to the ER with Mike (her boyfriend.)

I got to the ER about 7:30. By 8:15 I had been checked in. At 9:00 I was brought into Intermediate Care. About forty minutes later I saw a doctor. We reviewed my injuries. He wanted to make sure I didn't have any glass in my eye. (I didn't.) 

Did my back hurt? No

Did it hurt if I moved my head side to side? No

Was I nauseous? No

Did I have or had I had a headache? No

He asked me some other questions. All my answers were negative.

"I don't think you cracked or broke a rib (yes, he checked). I don't think you need a head scan.

"BUT! If you wake up in the middle of the night in pain and dizzy and nauseous, you have to come back here and get a head scan." (Translation: you shouldn't be alone overnight.) He had to go get something and he'd let me think. I called my mom. "Oh, no, no, no. Get the head scan. Know for sure. Then if you are OK, you can go home and sleep in your own bed." (We had already decided that if I was to go home that Mike was driving me and I could collect my car the next day.)

The CAT scan took 5 minutes. I'd have to wait 45 to get the results.

The results were negative. My head was fine.

So at 10:40 I was waiting for Mike to come pick me up. I hadn't had dinner, so I asked him to bring me to McDonald's where I grabbed a filet-of-fish and some fries. I was home by midnight and slept in my own bed.

The next morning I got up and made breakfast. Mike called at 9, picked me up, and we went to his house where I collected my car and drove home.

Turns out the head scan isn't 100% proof I was OK. I would be 100% OK when 24 hours had passed after my fall and I had none of the scary symptoms. 

24 hours later I was fine, and in fact, headed to bed for a nap and to rest my aging, stiff, sore body. I slept three and a half hours.

SO: Moral of the story is....

We're getting old, ladies. Watch your step, particularly out of doors where the pavement might be uneven and tripping hazards are plentiful. In many ways, I was very lucky.

Because I wanted to end with something happy, here is a photo of my granddaughter flying a kite I sent her. That's my son checking it out. The kite cost me eight bucks on Amazon, so for very short money they got to have a good time, and I got to see.

Reality Bites

The big device with all the cables plugged into it is a 48 port switch.  All computers on a network "talk" to the server through a switch like this. This switch connects 48 computers or other network devices (like printers or scanners) to the server. Actually it's more complicated than that, but that's enough for now.

At 5:50 on Tuesday morning my cell phone rang. It was "the guys" who remotely support and manage the network at the company where I work. I was lying in bed, awake, but my alarm had not yet rung.

"Hi Lynne, how are you today?"

I laughed, "If you guys are calling me at not-quite-six in the morning, my day has just gone to hell, and I'm not even out of bed yet!"

Turns out several users out in the factory had no network connection. Problem was, SOME of them did, and SOME of them didn't. There's nothing harder to troubleshoot than something that is intermittent.

The folks at the far end of the factory connect to the network through two smaller switches hung up in the rafters of the building. It was clear that one of them wasn't working.  Except when I rode up the lift truck to look at them (about twenty feet above the factory floor) they were lit up and seemed to be working.

I went back out to the front office and since it was barely 8:30 AM, I went to the front to turn on the lights and was stopped by the VP of Manufacturing. "I can't get on the network" he told me.

WELL! That meant my problem was not one of the small switches out in the factory, but hey, the users who complained were all out there when I arrived at 7 AM, so I had to start there.

As soon as I opened the door to the server room, I could see one switch that didn't have any lights blinking. Obviously that was the source of the trouble. I called "the guys" and while I was talking I unplugged the switch and plugged it back in, hoping to jump start it. Nope. So I unplugged it again and tried another UPS (uninterruptible power supply) because sometimes outlets die, and we had had a ton of rain the day before that leaked into the first aid room next door. The switch came to life, lighting up like a Christmas tree, and then running through a series of tests where the lights blinked on every port.

AND THEN I HEARD A BIG BANG AND SMELLED ELECTRICAL BURNING.  OH CRAP!

I yanked out the cord and made sure nothing was on fire.

By the time I reached the phone to tell "the guy" at the other end of the line that the switch was well and truly dead and we needed a replacement ASAP two of my colleagues were standing at the door asking if I was OK. Apparently I either squeaked or screamed. I was certainly shaking.

So that was how my day started. A little while later one of "the guys" showed up in person and we painstakingly identified connections that weren't working and moved those cables to other switches, thus bringing everything important back on line. We knew we'd miss some (like the 3-D printer, but we fixed that the next day) but by and large everybody was working, the UPS computer was up so we could ship product, the computer that connected the two CNC machines was working so that computer could transmit jobs to the CNC machines (thus keeping production going. Being "dead in the water" is a real risk, an EXTREMELY big deal, and should be avoided at all costs), and the guys in the stockroom could pull raw materials to fill shop orders, and receive orders into the system, bar code labels could be printed and the big laser printer out there could print.

Later as a colleague and I reviewed the quotes for a new switch, and as we debated getting one or two (since we'd had planned to replace the one that died and one other eventually, but not quite yet) he mentioned that the other big switch was almost 10 years old and the estimated life cycle of a switch is 10 years. "Then we should replace both of them" I said, "because if the other one goes, then everything in the front office goes down with it - sales, engineering, purchasing, accounting, HR and payroll."

He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening.

"OK, so we replace both of them."

So that's the next trick.

In case you all wondered what I did in my day job.  Trust me, figuring out how to put a quilt together is a hell of a lot less stressful.