It was urgent...
Usual long time lurker, first time poster (I think)...
It's 2:18 AM right now so please forgive any formatting issues, I just got home.
Just a quick preface. The place I work for has 4 connections on two separate networks, they do not aggregate traffic, they are merely for fail-over purposes and I'm not a network guy (server admin, but our network guy got a different job a couple months ago so I must don another hat).
About 8:30 this evening I got a quick phone call informing me that three of our four main lines are down, one network completely disconnected and I needed to get in there with the quickness... as I know the company that monitors our tunnels (really it's the softwares fault) occasionally makes mistakes and I'm not really feeling a 45 minute drive for nothing I decided to try to contact the location via the only "available" network (i.e. the one that is only half down). Sadly despite several emails, to several people that should be there, I get no responses and decide maybe I should just go in... that was when my night started to get bad.
I jumped in my car and was about halfway there when I hit a smallish board in the middle of the road and immediately though "Damnit! Now I'm gonna get a flat." So I turned down the radio and drove a little bit slower for 400 feet or so, nothing seemed to feel funny and I didn't hear anything bad so I sped back up and turned my radio back up... just in time to feel the car start to do that awesome shake that meant I was right. That in itself isn't that much of an issue; I am an adult, I have a spare and a badass 12 volt impact wrench that plugs into my cigarette lighter.
I turn on the hazards, pull onto the shoulder and cut off the car. Setup my warning triangle (it comes mounted to the trunk lid), dug out my spare, jack, and impact wrench while I called my supervisor to let him know I would be late as I got a flat... no biggy right?
I proceeded to remove the lugs with lightning pace (gotta love that impact wrench), before the last lug came out I realized the impact wrench wasn't working that well and it was getting a little harder to see... That's when I realized my mistake... I had my lights on, hazards on, trunk open, and had not turned the key completely off (so the stupid auto climate control was still blowing) and my damn battery was almost dead. Cue me trying to start my car to no avail (just a click).
So I called my supervisor and he said he would be there in a minute... sadly after he got there he realized his jumper cables were in his other car (he took his wife's car because it was blocking his garage). I realize this whole post hasn't been about anything technical yet but it's coming.
After finally getting my car started and getting to the office I check all the networks, everything is up on my end. I check with the people that are there (none of the people I emailed because I apparently don't keep track of their schedules) and none of them have had any issues all night, everything's worked perfect.
The supervisor called the company that monitors the network and they insist everything is down, so just to appease them we cycle the main routers, one by one until they all show good on the monitoring company's software.
Needless to say, I've saved the night shift phone number (big building but minimal manning at night) in my phone and forwarded the number to the monitoring company. What could have been solved by a quick phone call took around 5 hours.
Thank you for allowing me to have a place to bitch while I finish this much needed beer.
TL:DR - Anyone ever had a flat and then a dead battery in the same breakdown while on the way to fix a problem that never existed... I did, it sucked.