What if I only had a hour to live?

I was flipping channels this evening in my hotel room and heard a very touching story
about a man who wrote a short Xen like essay about all the things he would do if he had
only one hour to live. By the way, he dies shortly after completing the essay. Then, I
started thinking what I would “really” do if I only had one hour to live.

Okay, first I probably would start thinking how cool this would make for a great CMS
Drupal-based Amazon EC2 application. I could create a really cool taxonomy for items
related to things that have to be done. Then, I would start thinking, “Could this
application sell?” I would realize that it absolutely could not and that I had only about 57
minutes left to live.

Oh man, I better get cracking. Let’s skip the Drupal thing for now and just jot a to-do list
down on paper. Why paper? I should do this online. This exercise would really make a
great mind mapper application, but I don’t have time for that now. During the wasted 30
seconds it takes to open a Word document on my laptop, I would start feeling guilty and
decide that I really should be doing this is in Open Office, so I kill the Word document.
Oh shoot, only about of a 10th of the people on the planet will be able to read the Open
Office doc if I die before I get it done. How about Google Docs? While the Google doc is
opening, I check my Gmail since I am already there. Darn, I know the answer to that
Tivoli question on the Tivoli mailing list email, and it should take just a minute to answer
that question. I quickly type the answer and check to see if the Google docs is open. Then
I realize that I didn’t hit enter so the doc wasn’t even trying to open. Okay, do over, let
me sneak back to my email while it is really opening this time. Oh, darn that person on
the Tivoli mailing list has a follow-up question to my answer. I need to take a quick
whack at it again. This time, however, I make sure to add a comment about how I won’t
be able to respond to any more questions due to some unforeseen circumstances (so as
not to seem rude when I don’t respond later–you know how touchy people can get on
those mailing lists).

Oh man, I have only 48 minutes to live. Ah, that’s plenty of time, back to the Google
docs. As I start creating the list of things to do, my mind starts drifting, and I start
thinking, “Man, this would make for a great Wordpress blog article.” Then, I open
another Google doc to jot down some notes. As I start thinking further about the blog
article, I realize that the only really important thing to do is talk to my wife and children.
So, with 40 minutes left, I start looking for my Verizon cell phone and realize that it
doesn’t have enough juice in it to last the 38 minutes that I will need to talk to my wife
and kids. I start looking for the juicer cord and, of course, I would waste another 3
minutes looking for it before I realize that I left it at home. Then, I start to worry about
how much the stupid hotel is going to charge me for a 35 minute long distance call. I
shouldn’t care, but the stupid hotel will probably find a way to bill my wife. I knew that I
should have stayed in a Marriott on this trip. I am a Platinum member, and that place
treats me like gold (err, platinum). It definitely would not charge my wife in a
circumstance like this. Marriott is a class organization. Perhaps the Hampton Inn which is
part of the Hilton chain would do the same, but I am not sure because I have no status
with them. The Hampton Inn was the customer preferred hotel for this consulting
engagement, and the customer is always right.

Wait. I’m wasting a lot of time. I’ll just have my wife call me back at my hotel room
number. So, I call her cell phone (she never answers the home number anymore), and I
get her annoying song telling me to wait before I get her voice mail. I leave a message:
“Honey, it is extremely urgent that you call me back in the next 30 minutes. I can’t
explain right now, but please call immediately.” I mean I don’t want to scare her so I
don’t tell her that I have only 29 minutes to live. While I am waiting, I realize that I
should have a backup plan just in case she doesn’t call back in the next 28 minutes. So, I
go back to Google docs to write a good bye letter and email it. Since I am there, I decide
to check my email one “last” time. It looks like someone else has answered that stupid
Tivoli list question and made my previous answer look wrong. I have to defend myself,
so I quickly write a rebuttal post. half way through it, I realize that I will need to use the
Eclipse-based Tivoli online documentation. Darn, this is the worse possible situation to
be in when you have only 25 minutes to live. All the documentation is scattered between
4 or 5 different documents, and I can’t remember where that stupid verbiage is that
proves my answer is correct. Here again, if I just had a Drupal system that allowed me to
use all the new Enterprise 2.0 features (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious) for this kind of
thing, I would have had that section bookmarked, making it really easy to find. In fact, if
there were a Tivoli Twitter feed, I could just micro blog to see if anyone else knows
where the the verbiage is for which I am looking. Then, I remember that it’s in a
Redbook. I quickly go over to the online IBM Tivoli Redbook and start searching for
monitoring. Sorry to say, although I really love the Redbook team, its search engine is
even worse than the Tivoli online documentation. I eventually find what I need and post
my rebuttal response, defending my technical honor before I die.

By now, I have easily wasted another 10 minutes, and my darn wife has still not called
back. I try her cell phone again and leave another message: “Honey please call me back
right away.” As soon as I close my cell phone, it starts to ring. Oh, shoot, it’s a customer.
He wants to know what the difference is between the DevCampTivoli and the
BarCampESM with which I am involved. Normally, I would tell him that I don’t really
have time right now and ask if I could call back latter, but this customer has been one of
my most loyal customers over the years, the kind of customer that always wants to do
business with me no matter where I’m working. I explain the difference and ask how his
Tivoli implementation is going. Before I ask if he’s considered open source as an
alternative to Tivoli, I realize that I don’t have time for this conversation, but he pipes up
with a question about open source and that his company is considering Nagios. Darn. I
explain the history of open source monitoring and give a quick run down on Hyperic,
Zenoss, and OpenNMS in record time (about 8 minutes). I also throw in a plug for what I
call Infrastructure 2.0 and Puppet (Luke rocks), and my customer is happy, and I am off
of the phone with only 5 minutes to live. Now, I use my literal last breaths to call my wife
again. She answers this time, and I start yelling, “Where have you been and why haven’t
you been answering your phone?” She calmly explains that her cell phone was on vibrate
and it was upstairs in our bedroom. Then she asks why I didn’t call the home phone
number. “Why I Oughta.” Anyway, alls well that ends well. I get to talk to my wife and
kids and tell them how much I really love them with just a few seconds to spare. So, with
the few seconds that I have left, I hop on to Kaneva, as opposed to Second Life, to spend
the the rest of eternity in a virtual world.

Johnmwillis.com