Musings { Technology and Work, part (355/113)

I awoke, slowly, having not slept well again. Nerdwife was already up and showered and had gotten ready for work. I was not fully awake, trying to hold on to what little bliss of a comfortable and cozy bed remained, refusing to arise and face the day for a little longer. She kissed me goodbye, but it seemed like a dream.

I rolled over, shut off the alarm, and fell back into a fitful sleep for another hour. I was trying to sleep in because I knew tonight I would be in late, patching systems.

I finally got up and took a shower. Then descended into my still unpacked office (I put out my WH40K Battlefleet Gothic stuff this weekend and basked in the loving memory of painting the ships and the battles they fought). I was up late the night before switching VCS service groups to other nodes in the cluster so that I could patch the one that awaits me. I made the mistake of leaving my laptop open and logged into work with email open. The emails never end. Somewhere along the line, someone decided email was a real time messenger service and that important things could be conveyed, or worse that they would be read and accepted without discussion. Most people who use email do not understand that it is not 100%, even the USPS isn't 100%. Spelling and grammar have also declined, which is paradoxical since people are writing more. I'm not the best with letters or words, so when I notice, things have sunk to an all time low. I answered a few of the more urgent, to clarify mostly. The I logged off. Work would claim me soon enough. I fired up my PC at home, deciding to check on my WoW auctions. I'm saving for an epic mount, which costs ~560g. I'm level 51 now and need to start. But WoW is undergoing patching, I had forgotten that its Tuesday. Tuesdays are patch day. I instead switch to my Tau army on WH40K: Dark Crusade and progress to eliminate the Eldar, and make major inroads on the Orks and rebuff the Space Marines. But first a quick run to get cash from an ATM and a coffee and scone from Dunn Bros. As I wait in line, my mind wanders again to the Cities, and I miss the selection of coffeehouses that I used to frequent. I change the topic in my mind to something else. I dwell on the Cities too much still. It depresses me and keeps me from enjoying the now and making the best of the here. I think about Saturday. Saturday is nerding. I also need to stop by and visit my Grandparents. I received a frantic email from Grandma, here computer is doing things it shouldn't and not doing things it should. That's not good, but I miss them and I don't see them enough. When she found out when I'm coming, she said she is going to make breaded pork chops and mashed potatoes...how can I refuse? I'm not a lot of things, but I like to think I am a good grandson. Besides, no one else in the family can help, or rather she doesn't trust anyone else in the family to help. She knows I do things with computers.

The coffee and raspberry jam covered scone is delicious. I enter the world of Kronus to do battle.

The Eldar die quickly and are driven from the world. The Orks rise before me in a green tide and clash against my wall of Fire Warriors, who become awash in a sea of red. 5 to 1 kill rate, my Cadre literally kills thousands of them. The Orks are driven from the Bulwark, back to their home territory. I will finish them next turn, which will have to wait.

2:30pm comes too fast. I shutdown the game. Say goodbye to the cats, who both sit and watch me prepare to leave. They are funny like that. Always there to greet us when we get home and there to see us off when we leave.

I am unable to find a parking spot and I don't have change. So I park in a two-hour parking zone near work...I probably have a ticket. Parking has been tight since they eliminated another two parking lots at work.

I go to the hardware recycling center and pickup some components I need to craft a console patch so that I can work remotely on this system instead of sitting in the data center slowly going deaf. When did they start locking the door...

I forgot to lookup where the server was.

The server was moved since I last remember, not uncommon, I remember then that ACs had to go in where it used to be, it is now all the way across the data center and by itself. Damn. I bring a laptop over, the DC Ops Manager put various laptops on stands throughout the data center, they are great tools. I patch the laptop in to the server and head a few blocks away to my office. I remote desktop in and everything seems to work, console output is fine, but input is funny. Everything is changed to funny characters. Almost like I am typing in wing-dings.

I consult a co-worker. We get some long cables and do what you should not do, string cables over the raised floor to establish a patch connection. Much time is spent checking and re-checking and verifying the cables and connections, but to no avail. We figure the ASICs in the serial connector on the host are bad. This makes the job far more interesting, and much, much riskier. The machine is venerable. The likelihood of something going wrong when you touch it are high. Uptime is over 400 days. But the kernel level says the OS is running at a patch level off an old CD, I figure it to be Solaris 8, 02/02, but I'm too pre-occupied to look it up at the moment. It is part of a large, but dwindling cluster of systems built by the previous regime as I call them. The collection of cowboys and pseudo-admins from whom I, and the rest of the team inherited the environment. The stuff they built are land mines waiting to go off. And they frequently do, and then we have to pickup the pieces. In most cases this is actually a blessing in disguise as we can rebuild them better, and most importantly more supportable. But we pay, for everything we do, we pay. The political price is always high. The previous regime left us in a spot of 'most hated'. Not by all, we have allies and friends, but we have many enemies. Though the winds are changing and slowly we are coming to at least professional understandings. At my old job I learned the valuable ability to separate people from the work they do. In most cases you can dislike, hate the person at work, only to find away from work and the pressure and stress they are not at all bad people.

I digress. I un-encapsulated the OS disk, its not mirrored. Few of these ancient systems have mirrored OS disks. Without a console, I have to patch in multi-user mode, another 'don't try this at home' situations, but options are few. Patching from such an old kernel rev will mean it will take probably 8 hours on weary ultra-sparc II CPUs. They're tired, if you listen you can hear the wheezing of age in the system's fans. The groan of its power supply. The age of its machine spirit. I try to do what I can revive and resuscitate these old installs, but you can only bring them back from the dead so many times before you just must retire them.

So far the patching is going, but the moment of truth will be the reboot...hours from now.