Network Launched!!! (and some good iPod karma...)

This morning, my project officially launched - and Cricket Wireless is now operating in the Baltimore / Washington, DC area!

I ended up pulling an all-nighter in the race to the finish. Why does it always happen that the last piece of equipment to be brought up has the most issues?? And in this case, this site had the most visibility. However, with some good teamwork and creative troubleshooting, the site came up and voice calls were successful at around 7:15am.

As I was going into the office yesterday morning, I had my iPod in the car. I set it to shuffle and started to "spin the wheel" to get to a random first song. I ended up stopping on "Keep the Customer Satisfied" by Simon and Garfunkle - very appropriate! However, it was the next song - picked at random by the iPod - which stuck out in my head throughout the day and gave me inspiration. It's an Israeli song by Yoni Rechter and the chorus translates to "Go on straight ahead; Go on alone; Don't be afraid; Don't get angry; Always keep going". It proved to be very good karma. There were a few times where I could have showed anger with the customer or may have been afraid that we wouldn't get that last, very important site on the air. However, I took a deep breath and kept going ahead to the very end. There's another Israeli phrase - "Yihiye B'Seder" or "It will end up being fine" - which I kept on saying to myself...this optimism kept me going and gave me the confidence to complete the project on a successful note.

This morning (OK, this afternoon) when I woke up, it was a weird feeling. The network is up and stable. There's no push to install new sites right now. I could relax - but found myself wanting to work just as hard as I have been over the past two weeks. It's going to take some time to decompress and get back into a normal swing of things...but I know that it will be much healthier to get back to normalcy.

I went for a short run this afternoon. It was tough. I haven't run in over a week, I'm tired, I'm still a bit sick and it was hot and humid outside. But I got in 3 miles (with a bit of walking up a killer hill). It was good to get the rust off - I'll need it as I start marathon training next week!!!! UGH!!!!