squeezing into an ever shrinking maintenance window

There once was a down day in store
But the mill wanted just to roll more
For early on Monday
They'd lost nearly one day
Turned up bar had destroyed feed roll door

Rediscovered this comment from June 2009 on the frustration of seeing yet another planned maintenance day cancelled so the plant could stay operational.

This is one of the challenges of supporting computer systems in a market where plant throughput is valued higher than essential maintenance. After all, that's what weekends are for and your systems support personnel don't have a real life anyway, just a second life at work. In the words of one of our managers, "I know weekends are obnoxious but the work has to be done sometime (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)". Another subtle hint.

My wife refers to my periods away from home during the week as meeting up with my other wife/mistress. The server might be a lot like a nagging wife and the fans do whine a bit. She calls in the middle of the night when she hasn't received enough attention. A bit of remote fiddling seems to quieten her. She's getting on in years now. Perhaps her hardware has a seven year itch, coinciding with the time the manufacturers withdraw extended support for her.

There'll be other suitors knocking on the door soon, a fancy blade server might want my attention, or some high end virtualisation rig. Who knows, I might take on their advances. They promise increasing flexibility for essential maintenance tasks and that could mean more time to dedicate to my real wife and family. Just have to make the manager believe that not doing something will lead to a far more obnoxious outcome.

Maintenance periods shrink ever smaller.
The amount of maintenance grows ever bigger.
The only solution is to perform the maintenance continually as the window shrinks to nothing.