I hear ya.
I used to support a large corporation's network. Wake up at 2am because something is making noise in the living room...pager on Vibrate. I made a decision about 10 years ago that 24/7 support wasn't something I'd ever do again when I changed jobs. When that company laid off my division, I job shopped and turned down a few offers that paid very well just because of the 24/7 support thing.
Back then, the best I could do from home was telnet in but 99% of the problems required me to be at the console...about a 45 minute drive into NYC. Man, thinking back on it, that job sucked. heh.
Exact opposite with me. When I first started, it was 7:30 - 4pm, and the Network admin, actually SHUT DOWN the server room at night. That's how parochial and bassackwards they were.
After he left, for a less stressful job, it took me 3 long years to convince them, computers, electronics, and other equipment, runs better at 24x7x365, and wouldn't it be nice..(and yes you can), check your e-mail at home, and read it at your leisure, instead of trying to cram it all in during a 5 minute break.
Now, I can't keep up with the demand for VPN, remote access, etc. Since we've only got a 3 man shop, with 5000+ pc's, not to mention the servers, printers, mini's, routers, applicances, switches and other stuff, getting the bosses to agree to leaving pc's on 24x7 is easy, when I showed them that Patchlink could update all 5000 pc's in one night, and it would take both of my guys, and me, about 60 days @ 8hrs per day, just to update our groupwise client, much less all the other patches, updates, virus definitions, profiles, etc, etc, etc.