Terrible Analogies

Q: What happens what a rat gnaws through the wires leading to a live circuit breaker?

A: You get one very dead rat, and one very dark data center.

Six months ago this very scenario occurred, forcing us to tap into a “temporary” power feed.  This past Saturday we finally began the process of moving back on to the main power supply.  Working in conjunction with several groups, we managed to gracefully power down all 600+ servers, enabling a complete power outage of our building.  General Electric was supposed to have their portion of this monumental undertaking done in 8 hours.

As I write this post it is now Sunday evening, and there’s no word on when GE will have the power back online.  Needless to say, this does not bode well for anybody involved.

And so I sit here with phone in hand, waiting for the panicked “all hands on deck” call, ordering me into work to assist with bringing all of our systems back online.

…And this event was so well planned, unlike the initial unexpected rat BBQ that initiated the original emergency power cutover.  This is shaping up to be one exciting week.  *sigh*

Computer, Work Computer, Work

Looking back on a year filled with enough fear, uncertainty and doubt to last me multiple lifetimes, I’m amazed at what took place on the periphery when I wasn’t paying attention. Putting the housing crisis, political tensions, and financial hardships aside, 2009 (and the decade) shaped up to be a rather interesting time.

And with that mindset, let me introduce to you a collection of links highlighting the good, bad, and downright ugly of 2009 and beyond. If there are any that I missed, please let me know.

Top 10 Archaeology Finds of 2009
9 Astronomy Milestones Of 2009
Top Ten Space Pictures of 2009
Life’s 2009 Photos Of The Year
LA Times Best Photos Of 2009
Reuters Best Photos Of 2009
100 Best Sports Photos Of 2009
The Top Ten Google Earth Finds
The Decade In News Photographs
Top Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2009
Ten Gadgets That Defined The Decade
40 Things That Were Popular At The Beginning Of The Decade That Aren’t Anymore
50 Things We Know Now That We Didn’t Know This Time Last Year
Wired.com Readers’ Favorite iPhone Apps Of 2009
Sports Illustrated Notable Pop Culture Moments Of The Decade
Sports Illustrated Top Ten MLB Games Of The Decade
Top Ten Tech Failures Of 2009
Great And Disappointing Operating Systems Of The Decade
The 87 Lamest Moments In Tech 2000-2009
The Best Free Software Of 2009
The Best Free Fonts Of 2009
The Best Of CSS Design 2009
50 Best Websites Of 2009
Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies To Work For
Joystiq’s Top 20 Video Games Of 2009
Board Game Gift Guide Of 2009
NME’s 50 Best Albums Of 2009
Billboard’s One-Hit Wonders Of The Decade
50 Best Albums Of The Decade
Top 10 Vinyl Albums From The Past Decade
The Strokes’ ‘Is This It’ Top NME Albums Of The Decade List
Wired’s Favorite Sci-Fi Movies Of The Decade
New York Time’s 10 Best Books Of 2009
Amazon’s Best Books Of 2009
The Smoking Gun’s Mug Shots Of The Decade
11 Greatest Mug Shots Of The 2000s
‘You lie!’ On Yale List Of Year’s Memorable Quotes
Time’s The Top Ten Of Everything 2009
YouTube’s Viral Video Legends Of The Decade Compilation

Books, Computer, Movies, Music, Politics, Random, holiday Books, Computer, Movies, Politics, Random

I was researching an apparent coolant leak on my car this afternoon when this autofill return from Google caught my eye:

Am I to believe that enough people googled “why does my boyfriend want me to pee on him” that it’s become a default autofill?  What’s with this apparent rash of strange urinary practices, and why does this not fill me with confidence and hope for the future?

I am most certainly not one to judge others, nor am I a prude, but come on people…why would anybody want to relieve themselves on somebody else?  IMHO, the very desire to want to do such a blatantly foul act on another human being smacks of a serious mental disorder.  Ladies, if your man expresses a need to pee on you (or vica versa), take my (obvious and sane) advice and leave him.  Wishing to do something so patently foul to another human being is a sure sign of a mental disorder, and it requires immediate professional psychiatric help.

Computer, Tech Computer, Tech

So, instead of doing some much needed housework, prepping the guest room to make way for baby, or doing any number of constructive tasks around the house this weekend, I shirked my responsibilities and opted to back up anew my music collection to five external hard drives.  I’ve made so many changes to my master library as of late that simply copying over the changes to my various backup hard drives was not an option.  Turns out that pushing 196+ GB over a USB 2.0 line takes six hours.  Due to my lack of SATA / FireWire cables I couldn’t daisy chain the lot of them together and make just one big rapid push.

After a few failures, stops and starts, and a Blackberry falling from the heavens and hitting a unique series of keys that killed one backup job (Heh…I swear it wasn’t me!) I finally got all of my backups completed.  In the end, I felt stretched and spent, just like Peter Griffin after he watched The Ring:

I’m now in the process of making duplicates of my MAME games for a co-worker.  I’ve completed copying five of the 14 DVDs.  It’s a hard core collection of games to be sure, and the duplications will continue throughout tomorrow.

Whilst in the midst of this Herculean, marathon backup undertaking, I’m reminded of what Tyler Durden once said.  ”The things you own end up owning you.”  I feel as if my data is pimping me out, slapping me across the face with the back of its hand while screaming, “Where’s my money?!”

Ahh, but there I go again, anthropomorphizing my computer.  Next thing you know I’ll be dressing up as a vintage Macintosh, attending furry conventions, and looking for the nearest yiff pile to dive into (God, why do I know such things?).

Arcade Game, Computer, Random Arcade Game, Computer, Random

Between Friday / Saturday / Sunday, I worked a total of 37 hours.  It could have been worse had I not needed to show up at 6am on Saturday.  You see, on Saturday we had take the entire data center offline for a scheduled power outage starting at 8pm that very night.  If I hadn’t shown up at 6am on Saturday to run a few required change controls, I would have had to come back to work at 12am Sunday morning to help power everything back online.

Unfortunately, because I didn’t have to come back to work Sunday morning, I became (unbeknownst to me) the default on-call admin for Sunday, and wouldn’t you know it, the fit hit the shan Sunday morning and I had to work 13 hours to placate the panicked denizens of our crippled intranet.  The first call came in just as I was digging into a bowl of Lucky Charms.  One hour later I was in the office, and didn’t emerge until well after the sodium lights kicked on in the parking lot.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills...

For all of this work, I did get a few “atta-boys” and Monday off to recuperate, which I used to run a few vital errands I was unable to attend to during my missing weekend.

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

And the moral of the story?  Be sure to get your Monday morning blog post ready to go a couple of days in advance, because you never know what weekend surprises will bite you in the ass

Computer, Work Computer, Work