monday number four

Sometimes it takes me a while to figure the larger things out. Sometimes I get it instantly. This morning I got it almost instantly because it took me so long to figure it out earlier.

I awoke well in advance of the alarm, which is odd for me. I was fully awake, which was also odd. Normally I stare at the alarm in horror because it’s five minutes before it’s supposed to go off.

It occurred to me almost instantly that when I awake too early for no apparent reason that there’s an apparent reason for it. One of which I do not wish to become aware.

There was still no reason I could find as I somehow managed to dress myself (even fully awake it’s still a challenge - my heritage has me at a distinct disadvantage). I got down the stairs without any help from the cat, although he did attempt to herd me into the kitchen to feed him. If he doesn’t eat every twenty minutes or so he gets (more) evil and starts destroying things. Even the dog was kind enough to let me know he wanted to go out.

At this point I should have become extra superstitious.

Arriving at work, after surviving the almost quizzical lack of traffic, I noticed the place was almost empty. I must’ve made great time or something. I stopped looking at clocks when I started listening to podcasts and audio books in my car.

Our archetypal dumb blonde greeted me and said I was late. This confused me as I was very early. To spend any additional time thinking about this would cause major head pain, for which I was not prepared. Murphy also says not to argue with an idiot; people might not be able to tell the difference.

Inside the office, I looked up at the Big Board, our network monitoring system, and saw a lot of red lights. Needless to say, this is not a good thing. Checking my small army of pc’s, I noticed no internet connetion. Just for fun I pinged the firewall, which flatly refused to dignify the query with a response.

After three previous days of Server Hell partially brought on by Temperature Hell, this was becoming daily and more than a little inconvenient. If I had the ability to look at myself, I suppose I resembled a slot machine a bit, with my eyes rolling upwards and occasionally starting at each other for effect.

The server room provided no relief. The firewall kept up its steadfast resistance to being pinged. Naturally there was still no net connection. Mind you, all the blinkies were there. We recently purchased another firewall for just this occasion, so I swapped a few cables and we were back up.

Unfortunately it was about this point that I realized there was something else amiss…..it might have been that the temp was registering 90 DEGREES. Yes, it was officially Time For Panic.

Having very little time for panic, I sent out an email warning everyone that they would only have email and internet til the building’s best and brightest managed to get the air conditioning jump-started. Mind you, it was good and cold ten feet outside of the server room.

We killed the servers. On the way out, I was accosted by a department head who was rather unhappy about her server being shut down. She sweetly intoned that I had better bring it up. I sweetly replied that I had brought it down because it was 90 in the server room.

“Bbbbbbbbbut…… it’s very important that the server is up. “

I told her I would very happily bring it back up for her, but that it would then burn up like a used booster rocket falling from the shuttle. This caused her quite a bit of difficulty because she was caught between demanding someone else do something and that something destroying her server, for which she would then bear responsibility. She decided the better of it but then figured she could bolster her position by asking One More Stupid Question.

Yes, you guessed it… “When will it be back up?”

I’m a pretty humble guy. I have no problem admitting that I do not control the weather, the power, the air conditioning, or the repair of any of the above. So I admitted this to her, much to her consternation.

I emailed a couple of Important People with the suggtestion that we purchased a room air conditioner for just such an emergency. I honestly did not think this would be necessary due to the fact that the server room already has two air conditioners. Both systems failed repeatedly.

Word followed that the roof air conditioner would have to be replaced (no doubt along with seven others) and that a rental room air conditioner was on its way.

Not that I don’t appreciate immediate action, but we need to purchase a unit, not rent one. I have enough lack of faith (and experience) to know that this is not the last time the air will go out.

The last time we used rentals was in our office. They looked like Robot from Lost In Space. I kept referring to them as “Danger Will Robinsons.” (don’t worry, it was probably before your time)

After we had brought back the critical systems we noticed that the Very Expensive Software wasn’t working. Thus ensued almost an hour of booting, rebooting, checking services, re-rebooting, generalized guessing, and praying for the imminent arrival of the One Poor Guy who could almost make the program work.

My boss finally got it running. He said it was because we had to bring up Server #3 last. Mind you, yesterday we had to bring up Server #2 last to make it work. I strongly suspect neither of us has the answer - we just kept rebooting in earnest until something worked, then assumed that was the Magic Bullet, so to speak. Boy would I like to Magic Bullet that software.

“So that,” I told the teacher, “is how I spent my summer morning.”

And that, I’m telling you, is how I finally figured out that awakening early is never a good thing. And it’s only eleven in the morning.