Sticker Wanted: Don't Touch, You are too stupid.

Yesterday was one of 'those' days. The kind where you have to be at work before 2am for server maintenance and then just goes on and on and on from there. The early morning stuff actually went pretty smooth and we were hoping for a nice relaxing day to celebrate. This was not to be however.

Shortly after 8am the calls started coming in. Department heads were calling looking for my boss, who was on vacation yesterday signing his house papers (Congrats man!) and thus those calls come to me. We found out the clinic was on the verge of shutting down and everyone was in a panic. The problem? Severe network connectivity issues at the facility that houses all the medical facilities and clinics. They couldn't run any of their medical programs and thus couldn't provide patient care properly.

So after assuring about 12 different people that we were indeed working on it (which took about 30 minutes of time that I actually COULD have been working on it) we started to track down what was wrong. A switch closet at that location has the two switches that provides the bulk of the connections for that area. We went over armed with a new switch and started to figure out what was going on.

I know some of you are glazing over already.. so I won't bore you with the technical stuff. I will just say that after some troubleshooting we found that the fiber links for those switches were not in the right places. We moved them and suddenly everyone was back to work and the clinic was open for business. You could see the mixed emotions on the faces of the personnel over there as we informed them that they could all indeed work again. :P

So how did this happen is the real question. Do connections on switches that have been working for 3+ years suddenly jump ports on their own? Was it the wiring closet gnomes? A vindictive tooth fairy? Who knows for sure. So what I want is a big sticker to put on the switches that says "Don't Touch. You are too stupid"

Its a simple rule really. You add up the blinking lights on the device and then divide that number by your IQ and if the result is a number greater than 1, DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT. Clearly the 6 brain cells you have rattling around in that cavernous wasteland you call your skull are all going to be mesmerized by the 'pretty lights' and you aren't going to do anything but make it worse. The only downside to that simple rule.. is the people who shouldn't be touching it probably can't handle the math that the rule involves anyway. So maybe we should keep it simpler. If you are even the slightest bit unsure if you should be touching it... then DON'T!

After a 15 hour day yesterday.. I am ready for a half day today followed by a nap and then many beers and passing out for about 12 hours. I leave you with some of the most amazing guitar playing you will ever see. Timmy is just incredible.