The office used to be a place of activity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There were even shifts working round the clock almost at Christmas and New Year, gradually though the requirements for such a service and the need to save money have meant that the operational functions have been consolidated at an other location. Whereas there was once a general buzz about the place, now you can be alone for the full weekend. The lights turn off on a timer, the aircon switches in and out at various times and the security guard keeps sneaking up on you.
When you have to go to other parts of the building, like the old computer room the sense that some thing is wrong is almost over powering. It’s like you’re the only person left on the planet, a room where the sound used to be deafening 24 hours a day is totally silent. So much so that the floor creaks when you walk around, enough to make you look over your shoulder in fact.
Today I read the report from one of our Vendors, it related to an incident that happened a while ago see “There’s a little problem!”. As I suspected the vendor produced a 12 page report which said in essence, “We don’t know what happened, but I can tell you that it was nothing to do with us or our equipment.” This was in line with expectations, just a load of waffle. Recommendations included, upgrade all the firmware, operating systems and anything else that we can think off.
The report is based on incorrect assumptions, the primary one being that the database was corrupt all day. In actual fact the corruption was filesystem related and didn’t happen until one of the storage team forced some disks appart, that would be why the systems admin was frantically running fsck with the “y” for “yeehaa” switch as in “I’m a cowboy” the kindest that I can be is that the report is the biggest bit of “horse pucky” that I have seen in a long time.