The BPE, near total data loss, managing freelancers, and jury duty.
(The following blog entry was originally posted on Blogger on 10/28/11)
As the 4th quarter of this year got underway we began discussions with a big magazine publisher here in New York. They brought us in to brief us on the scope of a huge project — which I'll refer to as Biggest Project Ever (BPE). And it needs to be done in about a month. A proposal needed to be submitted ASAP. It wouldn't be sexiest project we'd ever taken on, but it might be the single largest. And if we were awarded the work it would basically save the year for us revenue-wise.
Soon after we dug into the details of our proposal for BPE, we realized the scope of it would require every ounce of project management skill my business partner and I could summon. BPE was going to be very challenging from a problem-solving and workflow/information flow standpoint. And the sheer scope of it clearly would dictate that we outsource a lot of the early-stage set up work — most of which could be done offsite.
Running simultaneously with BPE was the imminent threat that our office NAS drive was slowly losing its mind. (NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, for those of you who don't know — it's a high capacity hard drive that functions as sort of a scaled-down server for small businesses like ours.) I downloaded a firmware update to it one afternoon, and the next day it started to freak out on me. Files wouldn't copy from it. Folders couldn't be compressed. Read/write errors kept popping up. Maddening stuff like that. I of course started to sweat large cold bullets. The damn drive was malfunctioning. Those of you who have lost data or have come close to losing data know how utterly horrifying this scenario is. Our NAS drive had a 2TB capacity, and we had about 200GB worth of mirrored data that was in jeopardy. 11 years worth. The timing of this seemingly colossal failure was so not good.
Seven tech support calls later to Western Digital (the maker of the NAS drive) concluded that our drive's RAID hardware was failing. But the good news was that it appeared that the data could be copied off it. I ran over to Staples and picked up a 1TB external drive, connected it, started the copy process, and went home. I bought a new NAS drive the next day, and then begged my close friend and network security guru Gary Morse, President at Razorpoint Security Technologies, to come by and save our company's data on a Saturday night. He's a mensch, let me tell you.
We restored all the company files on the new drive, but there's another layer to all this anxiety. The following week we were awarded Biggest Project Ever. Oh and I had to report to City Hall for jury duty. Yeah. That's right. Jury duty. Can you believe it? I still can't.
So in order to get BPE off the ground while the first stage jury duty selection process holds me hostage downtown, we bring in freelancers to help out. Fortunately we knew a couple of pros who could do just that. I keep hoping I'll get dismissed early in the process and I can get back to work. And FYI — they don't allow computers, cell phones or any electronics in the jury duty assembly rooms anymore. Not even in the room designated "Juror Work Room". It was agonizing.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday go by without my name being called. I'm thinking maybe I'll get lucky and sail through this unscathed. Thursday however was a different story. Shortly after I arrived in the morning I'm forced to watch a video on the Grand Jury process and responsibility. What? What is this? This is not good. Then later in the day, a lottery of names were called out and I became Juror #21, on a Federal Grand Jury. Damn! It was devastating. Some of these jury panels have to participate for 18 months! I went into a mild state of shock. I pleaded with the judge when my turn came, but no dice... he wouldn't excuse me. And my service would require one month of participation. Good God. A month. Really? It was really bad news. The only silver lining was that our particular jury panel would last only a month. That's OK I thought. I'll die of sheer exhaustion by then anyway.
The rest of October was a blur from that day on. As it turned out my jury duty service would require only a half day one day per week. And for those of you who've never had the honor of being a grand juror, you don't sit in on one case — you vote to indict or not indict defendants based on evidence an attorney presents. And within a half day you can hear 3-4 indictments/cases. But it was nerve wracking all the same. The grand jury process keeps you on a short leash. Every evening at 6pm all the jurors had to call a number to check a message that gave us the next day's instructions: whether we had to show up or not, what time to show up, etc. And that's how it went through the month of October. I'll end my service November 2nd, and then I think I get a break from jury duty for 6 years. Ya-effing-hoo!
BPE got off the ground with the help of our freelancers. I've worked every single day since the last week of September. It was really a bitch to get through all that. My business partner really stepped up and directed projects well in my absences. It looks like we'll survive the storm — a little tattered but no broken bones.
This is how scary having your own business can be. It can be unbelievably toxic and stressful for long stretches. Things you never thought you'd have to deal with suddenly appear in front of you and you have adapt. It really makes you appreciate calm waters when your little ship glides into them again. Your mind relaxes, your blood pressure returns to normal, and then you plan a vacation.