I suppose it was only a matter of time before the dreaded Pepe struck back, today in the middle of the afternoon things started to run noticably slower and for no apparent reason. But when it was brought to my attention and I checked sure enough all things networky were running slower, after investigating for some time nothing was found. Then the call from someone else in the Systems Administration team, “you’re on call tonight aren’t you”? “Yeees?, “well this is just a quick heads up, they have upgraded the DNS and things aren’t working as they should. I’m sure that they’ll fix it, just a quick call to let you know that there is a problem”. Now I’m not a great believer in people returning to haunt you, but this does sound suspiciously like someone we used to have working for us returning from the dead! Now the conversation with the other systems adminstrator was a bit surreal, this in no small part being due to the fact that it was a Friday and only a fully qualified Muppet would carry out this kind of work on a Friday.
Now most places don’t allow this type of work on a Friday, This is in the main due to the possibility of a screwup. I mean you can imagine how things would go – can’t you! here’s how I think that it would go myself.
Hi, this is the communications team and we have an upgrade to do late on Friday.
“There’s no changes or upgrades allowed on a Friday, so the job’s off.
No seriously it’ll be OK we’ve tested it! So there’s no need to have any standby for the change, me and the other chuckle brother just have to make a small change and we’re done.
Well tested or not, the damned upgrade bolloxed up the DNS and all the search paths got screwed up! So a further frantic half hour of checking was required, then came the “It’s bolloxed up the DNS and we’ll have to fix it! message.
Well no shit sherlock I thought to myself, trust me to be on Standby when the dreaded Pepe has been turned loose on an unsuspecting world.