A day in the life of a thirtysomething Sysadmin

I am not sure about you, but I sometimes wonder what other peoples lives are like day-to-day. I thought I would do a deep dive into a typical day of mine, a thirtysomething Husband, Father, Windows sysadmin.

4:30 am – My one year old daughter is crying. Not crying like she is in pain, crying like she wants Daddy to get his a$$ out of her crib, and take her into his bed. This has been happening for months. At first, my wife and I thought it was cute. Now, my brain automatically wakes up around 4:30 anticipating this. Each time this happens I think we need to start sleep training her.

4:45 am – I may or may not fall back asleep, if I have been up for 15 minutes, I am probably not be going back to sleep. If I am still awake, its time to look at my phone so I can read mail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and CNN. It is quite amazing at how long someone can spend looking at the same five apps.

6:45 am – My daughter starts to make weird sounds and roll around next to me. She does this hilarious thing where she pops up from laying down as if shes suddenly wake, looks around, and then falls over again right back to sleep. Each time I see this I think to myself that I really need to video this.

7:05 am – Getting up now, brushing my teeth, getting washed up and getting dressed. Kid and wife are still sleeping usually.

7:20 am – I pack my lunch up. Usually protein shake, yogurt, whatever else is in the fridge that looks good.

7:25 am – Leave for work in my RAV4. I have a 20 minute ride to Princeton, NJ. I usually debate whether to take the back way which is faster, or the long way to get some good coffee at a cafe. Usually it is the long way. I listen to Spotify or an audio book. Last book I listened to was  “Stranger in a Strange Land”. I highly recommend, it was literally one of the best books I have ever read.

7:50 am – Arrive at work, I am usually the first one here. I put my lunch in the fridge, open my office door, logon and start checking mail. If there is any critical issues happening, I get right to fixing them. I have a early morning script that checks to ensure backups ran correctly, if if they didn’t, it usually means there are snapshots still existing on VM’s because we use VDP and VDP absolutely blows. I have this script down now though so it does whatever I need it to do without me manually intervening.

8:30 am to 1:00 pm – Start working on whatever projects I have going on at the time. This ranges from deploying Windows 10, implementing Puppet with Windows, Automating more of our Chocolatey environment and so on. I keep all my projects in Trello. I love Trello. I usually work on a few projects at once and switch off between them when I get stuck or bored.

1:15 pm – Lunch but not really lunch. Usually either watching Netflix in my office or going to the gym. This depends on how tired I am. Getting old sucks. I know if I go to the gym I will feel better and have more energy. With that said “Defenders” just came out so….

2:15 pm – Back from lunch and time to get back to work. Resolve any tickets coming in from the help desk, and get back to projects.

5:00 pm – Time to go home. It is a 25 minute trip from work depending on traffic. Getting out of Princeton is a pain in the butt during the school year. I will put on either ESPN radio or whatever I am listening to on Spotify at the moment. I have been really into the newish Green Day album “Revolution Radio”.

5:30 pm – I pull into our apartment complex and breathe deeply never really knowing what I am about to embark on once I open that door. A fussy baby? A miserable wife? The smell of chicken picatta? Your guess is as good as mine.

5:31 pm – I start to walk up the stairs. I always says “Helllllooooo” and wait for the screeching noise of my daughter. She greets me and immediately wants to be picked up. She is smiling ear to ear. God, I love her to death.

5:30 to 6:00 pm – Catching up with the wife and playing with my daughter.

6:00 pm – Dinner. My wife and I eat fast. Like within five minutes fast because my daughter sitting in her high chair is a ticking time bomb. Once she is done being strapped in, she lets us know. We clean up, put the dishes in the dishwasher, but one of us needs to be holding my daughter otherwise she freaks out.

6:30 pm – Hang out for a bit, playing with my daughter some more. Usually this entails me crawling around with her acting like a baby.

7:00 pm – Time for a bath. My wife bathes my daughter while I shower. She always asks the same question right before I go in. Do you have to shave? This means my head, not my face. Ugh. Shaving a head sucks and it takes forever.

7:20 pm – Time to dress my daughter into her onezie. She HATES being changed and clothed. You would think we are abusing her if you heard the sounds coming from my loft.

7:30 pm – Feed my daughter her bottle before bed. By this time she is tired but still in a good mood. We let her play for a few minutes before reading stories to her.

8:00 pm – Story time and bed time. I read her two stories before bed. One is my choice and the other is “Goodnight Moon”. My wife refuses to read her anything else besides that for the last book. I need to change this up at some point. I can literally read Goodnight Moon with my eyes closed.

8:15 pm – I go downstairs while my wife rocks my daughter to sleep. I wash the bottles, do the dishes, organize her toys. Same routine every night. Then, I open up my Macbook and do some work for a while. This could be writing an article, or doing some stuff for my full-time gig. My wife hates that I do this. HATES.

8:45 pm – Wife is downstairs now, baby asleep. Time for ice cream and watching TV in our living room. I bought these awesome bluetooth ear buds that I connect to my Apple TV. They are necessary because my daughter sleeps in our loft so we can’t make much noise. Usually we watch either “Parks and Rec” or “The Office”. Sometimes Teen Mom. Don’t judge me.

9:20 pm – Time for bed. We tip toe upstairs making sure not to wake up the baby. We wash up, get in bed and watch another episode of something. Without fail I start to fall asleep after about 10-15 minutes of watching.

9:45 pm – Sleep.