Struggling to the Data Center

The universe clearly doesn't want me to get to the data center today as it has placed hurdle after hurdle in my path.

I crawled out of bed earlier than usual --and much earlier than I wanted-- so I could be on my way to Sterling, VA, at a reasonable hour.

While I was in the shower, I heard someone knocking at the front door. Not expecting anyone, I just presumed it was our local god folks doing the tour, asking me to take their designated deity into my heart, etc.. Needless to say, I finished my shower as planned.

When I did finally finish and get dressed, I saw there was some tree trimming crew out front of our house. When they saw me, one hopped over to ask if the white car in front of our house was ours and if we could move it. That car belongs to our soon-to-be son-in-law, Lucas, who was at work and I had no contact info.

I telephoned the step-daughter who gave me the cell phone number for Lucas who then directed me to where I could find the car keys in his room. It took some digging and effort, but I found them. His car, however, wasn't about to cooperate.

I spent five minutes trying to open the driver's side door of his car before I finally gave up, went to the passenger door and crawled across; apparently the opening mechanism is flaky and needs to be pressed in just such a way for it to open. It took two extra minutes to figure out how to release the parking break: it's apparently also kinda ancient & sticks so it takes a huge amount of brute force to press the button, lift the handle slightly, then let it release downwards. I needed both hands to do it.

With the car moved 50 feet down the street, I then had to search several minutes for the release button which would allow me to remove the keys from the ignition. POS.

I was finally on the road an hour later than anticipated. About 15 minutes in, my blackberry began screaming with alerts concerning a process which spontaneously died on one server. I toyed with ignoring it until I got to the data center but decided that traffic was sufficiently questionable that I should address it immediately. I stopped in a nearby parking lot, powered up the laptop and restarted the process.

Sadly, issuing the restart command was about all I could do. My netbook's battery life really sucks and the replacement battery, while ordered, hasn't arrived yet.

When I continued on my way to the data center, I got another series of alerts about a vastly more critical production issue which required my participation on IRC and extensive remedial action by my team. Of course, I still wasn't anywhere near the data center.

I stopped in Great Falls, VA, and parked myself at a table in the public library. At least I had electricity while relying on my wireless broadband for access. Sadly, my Cisco vpn software has difficulty holding a connection over the wireless broadband. While my Juniper vpn client is much more stable, that config doesn't let me access our in-house IRC server. I can log into servers or participate in conversations, but rarely both. Figures.

Having joined our IRC channel for discussion, I learned that I'm the only person from my team in the office thus far today. No one announced they were taking any vacation time, sick days or such... they're just not in. Meanwhile, a team of developers were sending request after request at me in various instant messages, IRC channels and email. Whee.

As with every emergency, I've learned a few new things about our software and their obscure interactions. That's good. We've also largely figured out what was wrong. That too is good. The next big problem: the weather turned spectacularly ugly soon after I arrived and there is a colossal downpour between me and my car currently. Worse, there are tornado warnings and 70mph winds for the area of the data center, which I still haven't managed to visit yet.

How can so much go so wrong so quickly? Oh, right... It's a Monday.

Struggling to the Data Center

The universe clearly doesn't want me to get to the data center today as it has placed hurdle after hurdle in my path.

I crawled out of bed earlier than usual --and much earlier than I wanted-- so I could be on my way to Sterling, VA, at a reasonable hour.

While I was in the shower, I heard someone knocking at the front door. Not expecting anyone, I just presumed it was our local god folks doing the tour, asking me to take their designated deity into my heart, etc.. Needless to say, I finished my shower as planned.

When I did finally finish and get dressed, I saw there was some tree trimming crew out front of our house. When they saw me, one hopped over to ask if the white car in front of our house was ours and if we could move it. That car belongs to our soon-to-be son-in-law, Lucas, who was at work and I had no contact info.

I telephoned the step-daughter who gave me the cell phone number for Lucas who then directed me to where I could find the car keys in his room. It took some digging and effort, but I found them. His car, however, wasn't about to cooperate.

I spent five minutes trying to open the driver's side door of his car before I finally gave up, went to the passenger door and crawled across; apparently the opening mechanism is flaky and needs to be pressed in just such a way for it to open. It took two extra minutes to figure out how to release the parking break: it's apparently also kinda ancient & sticks so it takes a huge amount of brute force to press the button, lift the handle slightly, then let it release downwards. I needed both hands to do it.

With the car moved 50 feet down the street, I then had to search several minutes for the release button which would allow me to remove the keys from the ignition. POS.

I was finally on the road an hour later than anticipated. About 15 minutes in, my blackberry began screaming with alerts concerning a process which spontaneously died on one server. I toyed with ignoring it until I got to the data center but decided that traffic was sufficiently questionable that I should address it immediately. I stopped in a nearby parking lot, powered up the laptop and restarted the process.

Sadly, issuing the restart command was about all I could do. My netbook's battery life really sucks and the replacement battery, while ordered, hasn't arrived yet.

When I continued on my way to the data center, I got another series of alerts about a vastly more critical production issue which required my participation on IRC and extensive remedial action by my team. Of course, I still wasn't anywhere near the data center.

I stopped in Great Falls, VA, and parked myself at a table in the public library. At least I had electricity while relying on my wireless broadband for access. Sadly, my Cisco vpn software has difficulty holding a connection over the wireless broadband. While my Juniper vpn client is much more stable, that config doesn't let me access our in-house IRC server. I can log into servers or participate in conversations, but rarely both. Figures.

Having joined our IRC channel for discussion, I learned that I'm the only person from my team in the office thus far today. No one announced they were taking any vacation time, sick days or such... they're just not in. Meanwhile, a team of developers were sending request after request at me in various instant messages, IRC channels and email. Whee.

As with every emergency, I've learned a few new things about our software and their obscure interactions. That's good. We've also largely figured out what was wrong. That too is good. The next big problem: the weather turned spectacularly ugly soon after I arrived and there is a colossal downpour between me and my car currently. Worse, there are tornado warnings and 70mph winds for the area of the data center, which I still haven't managed to visit yet.

How can so much go so wrong so quickly? Oh, right... It's a Monday.