Last week was great. Then Sunday came around.
Let's start back where I can remember. Jesse came to town Friday. On Saturday I rode up to the city with Rene and Phil in Rene's new Jetta. We went to Joe's place where Jesse was staying. We joined his watching of B5 episodes on the TiVo while we waited for Joe and Lorah to get home. And then we went out to dinner at this great, well-priced sushi place called We Be Sushi.
The story behind We Be Sushi is that they were originally going to be McSushi, they had their sign and everything, but right before they opened, the suits came from McYouknowhere and, well, they solicited new names from the community, and picked the one they liked best.
We ate much sushi, and it was good, and like I say it was moderately priced. Todd was about ready to pay for the whole thing for us but they take no credit cards. If I remember correctly we were at $13 a head. I tried to treat Jesse as I try to treat guests from out of town, for that is how I was treated when I came to interview, (thanks Mikey!) but Jesse would have no such kindness bestowed on him. He's on vacation from his tour of duty for the Marines in Japan, and I figure whether or not Uncle Sam's paying him well, he can spend his cash any way he likes. After the initial feast we had ordered salmon and yellow tail sashimi. That went down so nice it felt like a great, happy dessert. A dessert of raw fish!
I bet my kittens could dig that.
Back at the Apartment, Lorah served some Coffee and Hot Chocolate and Tea. As she was out of cream she offered to run to the store real quick, because she takes her domestic situation very seriously. Well, I needed a walk myself, and I wasn't the only one, so Phil and Rene and I joined Lorah and we picked up some ice cream. The evening was spent watching TV, talking, eating ice cream, and greeting Linky as he arrived from San Diego.
And I got to drive Rene's Jetta home. It's kind of a small car, but comfy enough. It's a Turbo with a sun roof and lots of pick-up. It's a great car and Rene loves it. It was weird for me though as I don't believe I've ever driven such a quiet car. It just didn't make sense to me ... I hear the Insight is kinda noisy at highway speeds. Frankly, I'm used to the chatter of a Beetle, and all the weird rattling the Volvo makes, so if the Insight is kinda noisy by fancy new car standards, that's going to be a plus in my book.
My crew slang flow worldwide like a current
Went to every spot, where nobody got insurance
Brother do the math, you ain't half near exotic
My man's claim true, you, forget about it
Po-Po just a nuisance, like my influence
Well recognized you a lie tryin to do it
Got juice told your lady, oops, we nuts baby
Smooth and charismatic automatic you gon save me
God bless the dead as my son survive
We strive to teach the youth baby, and stay alive
Sunday I was going to run to the beach with the Harvard kids, except I forgot to activate my alarm, and missed the boat. Turns out they had a lot of fun. Ana chilled on the beach while Ramy went surfing. Too bad I missed it, but it gave me a good opportunity to finally balance my checkbook, after a quick run to the store to feed the cats, and buy some nice big shiny new litter boxen.
I have not yet finished balancing my checkbook.
The real reason I missed the beach is because it left me available when the corporate firewall went to hell, and I came in and moved its disk to a new home.
A few hours later the corporate mail spool went somewhere else, and I had to find it from backup tapes. Ewww! That took several hours and denied me the pleasure of a Red Dwarf triple-header on KTEH. To top the evening off, my car wouldn't start when I was ready to head home, so I hoofed it.
On Monday, the day of the big launch, I finally got the mail disk back online, only to find that the file system was basically trash, and the new RAID I'd gotten in wasn't configured quite right, and well, Monday was our launch party! That's right, call 800 555 TELL right now, but I wanted to get to the party, and get sloppy drunk. And I did that very handily because I never found the food, but found the free booze very quickly.
And I danced, fell down, danced, made lots of noise, kissed a few people on the cheek, talked to the wait staff in French, allegedly told Holly she has "une belle derriere," and puked in the garbage can. I walked home, calling out cadence, leaving people at Tellme trying to find me to give me a ride home, flopped down on the bed, and made it again back to the bathroom to purge some more in the sink.
I slept two or three hours late this morning, feeling great. Woke up, met Joe, Dan, Rene and Linky for a cheeseburger on Castro Street. I take it Jason was stopping in Mountain View on his way back to San Diego. Strolled in to work, and set about getting the new RAID set up. What's this weird configuration they did? Hrmm. No, that wont do. Let's blow this away and set it up proper. Hrmm. Thirteen hard drives? Two chains? No, that should be eight drives on one chain. Are these like phantom drives I haven't received yet? This is very weird.
Weird indeed ... hrmmm ... no ... no ... nononononononnonoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCKIN' SHIT OH MY GOD FUCK and so forth.
The new RAID sat atop an existing RAID, and I had my laptop plugged in to
the existing RAID. So, if you're not following along, note the phrase
let's blow this away and set it up proper.
Well, I certainly
blew it away, and upon realizing what I had done I experienced a new feeling,
which is the feeling that you've just screwed up big time and it is has
fucked a great bunch of people that you care very much about - your users
- your coworkers.
I called the vendor who called the manufacturer who confirmed that yes, I was SOL. I rebuilt the RAID sets, formatted the disks, and for the past several hours I've been waiting for the first two of nine backup tapes to finish dumping. Fortunately the dumps are from very late last week, so we didn't lose a lot of work.
Everyone was very, very, very understanding and nobody has given me a droplet of grief over any of the outages I've been dealing with, and in this case, responsible for, throughout this short short week. All the same, I know that when things screw up, it ... well, maybe I just take IS too seriously, too personally. Well, that and we all have our moments, and just as Dug might feel upset that I trashed a couple days of his work, he knows I feel upset that I trashed a couple days of his work, and we're all mature adults or something.
Damn.
It's nearly 3AM here. Just how long does it take 40G tape cartridges to dump? Once I get these first two done, I'll rig up some automation for the rest. The one is on a tape robot that can be scripted up. The other is a single-drive tape device, and I can send something to my pager after it finishes dumping, so I know to go and swap the tape. These filesystems took two days each to dump through the one robot, so I figure that with both my drives running, it'll take two days to finally restore all the data. (Two filesystems, two days, divided by two tape drives.)
I'm going to crash here at work for a few hours. By the wee hours these first tapes ought to be just about finished. Maybe.
So, the high point of this week was getting sloppy drunk, puking, walking home, sleeping well, and enjoying a cheeseburger and some friends the next day only to shoot myself in the foot an hour or two later. Oh yeah, the Calendar server was hung while we were at lunch. Whee!
I keep it intact, yo Clef, do the track
John, play the mack while I, pay the tax
Business as Usual, watchin Suspects
Steal my assets, get cut with Gi-lettes
We built this concept, connect like Nynex
Drinks at the bar, my American Express
14 July
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