The Car That Wasn't

Went to play soccer and managed to twist my knee awkwardly. Now cannot go to the gym or play soccer for two weeks. Sucks - just like some character in a recent movie I saw.

The guy at work who's responsible for all our million dollar equipment and hardware (I am more of the software guy) went to Jamaica on vacation. Before he left, he went over all the various server, network and database configurations with me.

"Has any of this ever failed?" I asked him tentatively, as I took in all this megachunk of information.

"Well, ma'an!" He shrugged dismissively, "we've been running these for years and nothing's failed."

You know what's coming, don't you?

I had a list of scenarios with me. If this fails, do this. If that fails do that. Then he had outlined what he called the "Worst Case Scenario". This, he claimed, would NEVER occur.

Well, the first day some glitch occured and I had to reboot one server. This produced a groan from the tech guys. Apparently the server had been running continuously for 5 years 3 months and 21 days. Apparently, that is important.

The second day I got to work the "Worst Case Scenario" nearly occured. I would badger that Tueday was my most religious day at work, ever. I don't think anyone has ever programmed a configuration file in hex to the sound of 'Bismillah' before. Thankfully it worked. One more day.

To take my mind off the computer glitches I went to Kensington Market. There, right in the back of the market, was this.




It seemed to grow weeds - and I don't mean the one you pull out of your lawn. Given that this was Kensington Market I wouldn't be surprised.




I asked one of the guys nearby and he said they take old cars and turn then into nurseries, after emptying it of parts that can be sold to the junkyard.




I think I know what I can do with some old servers from work ...