Slaving away

Well, I'm up in the middle of the night again. Apparently the "24/7 Datacenter" was neither 24 nor 7: we lost power, generator, and UPS. I used to work there, so I won't throw too many stones, but they cost me a lot of sleep tonight. Since I left the SysAdmin gig and work as a developer 90% of the time and Oracle DBA the other 10%, this happens a lot less frequently. As a SysAdmin, I was working all hours of the night, all the time.

Developers whine about admin staff, but the fact is, I've done both; and the developer life is definitely cushier.

I was up all night last week too: we lost a Streamed Oracle instance last Tuesday at 3:30 PM, and I got an emergency maintenance window to fix it at 1:05 AM. We finished 5:15 AM. I worked a lot that night: I started on recovery at 3:30, broke for an hour to drive home, then prepped for my window until 11:00. I called kingjaymz at 11:00 or 11:30, and we chatted until 1:00, when I got back to work.

It's all part of IT in the post-dot-com world.

A couple years ago, I wrote a little piece in the wake of a terrible troubleshooting session with a user. This guy really rubbed me the wrong way: he was clueless, and tried to throw me under the bus to cover his own ignorance. It didn't turn out too well, that's what happens when a mediocre "Java Developer" attacks a seasoned Solaris Guru. I'll post it here for your enjoyment:

Come not in thine arrogance to the Unix guru: neither with pride in thine heart nor insults on thy lips.

But thou shalt come in humility and with purity of heart:

Lest he smite thee in his wrath and recursively delete thy data.

For great is the wrath of the sysadmin: his anger burneth hot and his displeasure woundeth to the quick.

For he can delete thy files; yea, and corrupt thy backups. He can hack thy system, and destroy thy work.

And verily covereth he his tracks so that thou canst not prove his sin.

But gracious is the Unix administrator, and patient. If thou hast sinned, thou canst repent. Then must thou own thy fault and acknowledge thy sin.

For the sysadmin will surely forgive the humble and repentant. Yea, the lowly fill his soul with pity. The poor he heareth: their Perl will he help debug.

But the arrogant and the scoffers doth he spurn: their files doth he delete, and their volumes doth he newfs. He sealeth up their firewalls, he deleteth their backups, his ears are deaf to their cries, and his eyes blind to their emails. They go down into unemployment in shame and frustration.

Well, it's 4:00 AM here; I'm going to bed.