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Jul. 26th, 2007 03:13 pm
Take me down slow and easy
LJ was down for a few hours a couple of days ago, due to a power outage in San Francisco. Computers like their electricity. Power cuts are a bad thing, although they're a good chance to goof off work. There's very little a programmer can do deprived of a computer. Once you've tidied your desk you're pretty much out of options. Computers also like to be powered down properly. They like to follow their correct shutdown process, and not just have the rugged pulled out from under them. The title above refers to me spending the early 90s telling operators at Pindar that "Macs like to be taken down slow and easy" :-)
So here are some of my power outages:
Pindar, early 1990s: I'm sat using my Xenix machine, feverishly working late on Macmillan's Dictionary of Art. The cleaner comes in to tidy the room. Suddenly my screen goes blank, and I hear the fan in the computer slow down. I look up, and there's the cleaner, plug to her hoover in one hand and plug to my Xenix machine in the other. "Er, I really shouldn't have done that, should I?" she queries.
Pindar, mid 1990s: suddenly, the Ryedale building on Picadilly loses power! Well, actually, *half* the building (vertically) loses power. I'm in the broken half. It's about lunchtime anyway, so I decided to head off out for a sandwich. When I reach the ground floor, I encounter one of our tech support guys, plus a man in blue overalls, coming out of the main switching room with very guilty looks on their faces. They declare the power cut is absolutely nothing to do with them, honest, no guv, it was broken when they got there, really!
Pindar, late 1990s: With tight deadlines approaching, I'm running various batch jobs to process huge chunks of catalogue data. I notice a colleague with a fast PowerMac is away for the day. I power his machine up, logon to the file server, copy across a few Perl programs and leave it ripping through the data. I switch the monitor off to conserve power. What I don't notice is another colleague wander past, think "hey, why has Simon left his machine on" and just flip the power switch off. Some hours later I go to check my progress and find it all powered down. Argh.
Ananova, early 2000s: for some bizarre reason never adequately explained to me, our office has an unusual power arrangement. The desktop machines are on a circuit protected by a UPS. The server room is not. So, when there's a power cut your desktop machine stays up. Of course, you can't actually *do* anything as the email server is down, the main file servers are down, and the Linux machines where all your actual programs run are down too. You can't even wibble about in the internet as the routers, proxies and firewalls are all down too. Well, you can sit at your desk and play solitaire...
Ananova, early 2000s: not power, but related. One lunchtime, I step past workmen with a small JCB, digging a hole on the pavement near our office. They're clustered around the hole, pointing and gesturing in a worried fashion. I only vaguely take it in. When I get back to my desk, I note that our connection to the internet is not there. Support staff are on phones saying things like "I can't get a connection at all - it's like it's just not there." A horrible thought crosses my mind, and I mention what I've just seen. Later it's confirmed - they've cut through our comms cable.
So here are some of my power outages:
Pindar, early 1990s: I'm sat using my Xenix machine, feverishly working late on Macmillan's Dictionary of Art. The cleaner comes in to tidy the room. Suddenly my screen goes blank, and I hear the fan in the computer slow down. I look up, and there's the cleaner, plug to her hoover in one hand and plug to my Xenix machine in the other. "Er, I really shouldn't have done that, should I?" she queries.
Pindar, mid 1990s: suddenly, the Ryedale building on Picadilly loses power! Well, actually, *half* the building (vertically) loses power. I'm in the broken half. It's about lunchtime anyway, so I decided to head off out for a sandwich. When I reach the ground floor, I encounter one of our tech support guys, plus a man in blue overalls, coming out of the main switching room with very guilty looks on their faces. They declare the power cut is absolutely nothing to do with them, honest, no guv, it was broken when they got there, really!
Pindar, late 1990s: With tight deadlines approaching, I'm running various batch jobs to process huge chunks of catalogue data. I notice a colleague with a fast PowerMac is away for the day. I power his machine up, logon to the file server, copy across a few Perl programs and leave it ripping through the data. I switch the monitor off to conserve power. What I don't notice is another colleague wander past, think "hey, why has Simon left his machine on" and just flip the power switch off. Some hours later I go to check my progress and find it all powered down. Argh.
Ananova, early 2000s: for some bizarre reason never adequately explained to me, our office has an unusual power arrangement. The desktop machines are on a circuit protected by a UPS. The server room is not. So, when there's a power cut your desktop machine stays up. Of course, you can't actually *do* anything as the email server is down, the main file servers are down, and the Linux machines where all your actual programs run are down too. You can't even wibble about in the internet as the routers, proxies and firewalls are all down too. Well, you can sit at your desk and play solitaire...
Ananova, early 2000s: not power, but related. One lunchtime, I step past workmen with a small JCB, digging a hole on the pavement near our office. They're clustered around the hole, pointing and gesturing in a worried fashion. I only vaguely take it in. When I get back to my desk, I note that our connection to the internet is not there. Support staff are on phones saying things like "I can't get a connection at all - it's like it's just not there." A horrible thought crosses my mind, and I mention what I've just seen. Later it's confirmed - they've cut through our comms cable.