Actually, I think pagers are obsolete. It has been a while since I’ve seen a tech person wearing a “beeper” because the pager has been replaced by Blackberrys and other mobile devices–except in emergency situations where a phone would fail for lack of coverage or not be “loud enough” to deliver the requisite persistant annoyance to get you out of bed/away from the bar/off the bike. I am grateful that dynamic is dying–forcing people to wear annoying devices so they can be summoned to appear when things go wrong.

But it is replaced by the always-on culture–and we’re signing up for it willingly because it makes us feel important. I can not only be notified of a problem on my phone, I can even launch an ssh session back into a server and do something about it. While the kids are busy playing in the park, Daddy (or Mommy) can be working away on their little device. When things get really complicated, it’s easy to take the laptop out of the minivan, dial in, and continue working. Maybe it only takes 15 minutes. We tell ourselves that availabilty and convenience to work lets us balance our work and life.

Entrepreneurs tell themselves many lies. Sometimes, they learn from their mistakes and work out a balance or blend that is honest and realistic. I think it is all about taking responsibility for your time, recognizing the value of it, and investing in solutions that make the work in your life easier.

I can’t make the case here that buying Heroix software for networking and application monitoring is part of a work life balance strategy, but I think it is helpful to apply a broader perspective to how you approach solving your challenge to keep systems working. Maybe the investment in mastering open-source monitoring solutions is worth it. Maybe spending more time training other people to be as proficient as you are is a better use of time than designing or purchasing what you believe is the perfect solution that will give you the proactive alerts and warning you need. But if your support strategy is simply to make sure someone is always on call to deal with crisis, that is essentially a strategy to keep having crises.