The Server Is Down Again

When we first rolled out the Citrix Servers we had a few issues and there were a number of support calls that led to the creation of a generic category called Citrix Server Down. We then spent time and money to stabilize the farm and now the servers are very reliable with no outages for months and months, but it's too late, every problem that comes along gets thrown in the Citrix Server Down bucket.

Every morning the report comes in from our Bangalore office that the Citrix Server is Down Again. The twist is, their morning is our night so for me the calls come in between 8pm and 11pm with that same old complaint. These users are in various ODC's (Offshore Design Centers) which are basically branch offices off our branch office in India. These users have laptops and linux workstations that are maintained by a third party.

Here are the trouble report solutions for a typical series of tickets.

Day 1: Users can't even get to Google, obviously a network issue . Turns out all the local desktops were patched which broke their network software. The same thing happens on the Second Tuesday of each month with the latest Microsoft patch release.

Day 2: Some of the users cannot connect some of the time. I finally found a friendly user who admitted that it only happens when they use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. It is true that Firefox is faster in most cases but since it would not connect it wasn't really faster.

Day 3: Half the users can't connect half the time because they are trying to use “the other network” that they claim is faster. Ping and traceroute show they are not taking the right route. Turns out they are trying to use the unsecure network which is faster but also a security violation.

Day 4: No issues...Holiday in India.

Day 5: Many users cannot connect and all users have slow performance. As soon as I logon to one of their machines to investigate there is a big honking error message about a virus outbreak. I end up helping the Local Admin build a cleanup USB stick to pass around to all users.

Day 6: All users on one server are running slow. The CPU is maxed out at 100% due to a wreckless user running file sharing software. Kill the process but not the user.

Day7: One server locked up with all users frozen. There is a runaway process sending the memory past the limit. Their backup software is running at the wrong time due the time being off. Corrected the time and killed the backup.

In every case it was not the server at fault but I still had to fix it to prove it was their fault and not mine. After too many reports they formed an Action Team to meet every day with special reports to all the big shots in spite of my protests. That finally led to a meeting where they got the ODC Local Admin on the line and he sheepishly admitted that putting calls in the server down queue was the only way to get anything fixed. I will yell sooner next time…

Railroad Series – Chapter 9 : Fatalities

Over the 17 years I spent working on the railroad there were a number of fatalities at work but the first one is the most memorable. The poor victim was the System Crane Operator who was required to ride in his crane while in transport between Los Angeles and Portland. Normally the crane was attached to a slow moving Work Train but for long distances they would put the crane in the middle of a regular train. He was killed when an oversize boxcar hit the tunnel walls in the year 1973. The train only went about 100 feet before it ground to a halt but that was enough distance to cause a cave in on the crane and crushed the poor operator to death.

The process of clearing the cars and then rebuilding that last 100 feet of tunnel took almost a week to complete but the worst part was the first day when we faced the gruesome duty of removing the crane and the corpse. The tunnels just south of Ashland Oregon were not full size and there were sensors along the track before each tunnel that were meant to alert the train crew if an oversize car came through but in this case they just assumed it was the special crane car they were taking through and they ignored the warning signal.

In the post-Accident Investigation aka, Post Mortem it was found there were many chances to prevent this accident. The first question was why the oversize car was with the crane in the first place. The crane had been scheduled to go through Klamath Falls which has full sized tunnels but they made a last minute change that turned out to be fatal. If the crane had been locked down at the other end of the car it would have made all the difference. If the oversized car had been on the other end of the crane car. If the sensor alarm routine had been followed according to the rules. They changed a lot of the rules after that starting with no more operators riding in the crane. Each fatality brings a new change in the rules so it keeps getting safer but the fatalities have not stopped.

I never knew the name of that first guy but the second person to get killed was a welder named Marcel Chacon who died instantly by a runaway push car that rolled for 17 miles silently down the same hill near Ashland. The next fatality was a guy named Gonzalez who stepped in front of a passing train followed by a fellow named Mathews who fell off the end of the work train and then there was the gang truck roll-over that only had one fatality but injured all of the other 17 workers onboard.

There were so many accidents they had a Safety Meeting every morning before work where each employee had to sign a form saying they had read the Rule of the Day from the Book of Rules. After a fatality the Safety Meetings were a little more serious for a while at least. That is the subject of the next chapter in the Railroad Series: Safety Meetings.

New Year’s Resolutions

It’s good to make resolutions even if we don’t keep them. At least we care enough to try and then when we feel bad for not following through we are motivated to try harder or at least make more resolutions. If we didn’t feel guilty we wouldn’t have to make them in the first place. Back when we still smoked cigarettes we quit every New Year only to start again in a few days or a week at the most. Then in 2000 we finally did quit but it was in March and not related to a New Year promise. There is a good chance that all those false starts were good practice and helped reach the final success.

Every day we make a list of things to do yet we rarely finish, that is a miniature version of the annual resolution process. There is a list for the week ahead and another for this Month and even one for the next. All those lists are full of things that got rolled over from the previous list so it is standard procedure to not get everything done. The same thing that happens in our personal life shows up at work where we make promises that will not be fulfilled. Why do we play the game when we know it will never be finished? It must be fun for some unreason.

Two years ago I made a new year’s resolution to not make any more new year resolutions but I failed to keep it and accidentally made another one last year that I also failed to honor. So I figured if all resolutions fail anyway, then the real solution is to make a resolution not to keep any resolutions. So now if I fail, it will be OK and if I succeed that will be OK too. It's a guaranteed win\win even if I lose\lose.

Most resolutions are based on regrets from last year. Some resolutions are promises to stop doing something bad like smoking while other resolutions are promises to start doing something good like losing weight but if they were such good Ideas why would we wait and only want to do it once a year? We say we are making a promise for the next year but what we really want to do is erase the past so we can feel good again. Instead we should erase the future so we won’t keep repeating mistakes like making resolutions that can’t be kept.

The Drama Department : 1960’s

There was a long standing tradition of Theater in our family with my parents first meeting while playing parts in the play The Taming of the Shrew at Chico State. My Dad went on to lead the drama department to the annual Shakespeare Festival in the fall and the One Act Play tournament every spring. For such a small town Chester California had a top quality stage that saw regular use throughout the school year. The Drama Department was just as respectable as the Athletics Department back then but now it has been cut from most curriculum budgets. Maybe Glee will start to change that…

My first experience on stage was at the age of 6 in the first grade Christmas Pageant and all we had to do was walk around in a circle doing an Indian War Dance while holding our tomahawk in one hand and clapping our mouths with the other. We had plenty of rehearsals but we failed to have a full costume dress rehearsal so at show time I was surprised to find my burlap sack of a costume kept falling down around my ankles. Suddenly I had to decide which hand to use for which purpose. I was so determined that the show must go on that I had to let go of the pants every so often to perform the other acting bits. I was vaguely aware of the laughter but too young to appreciate the brief glimpse of fame.

For the Second Grade show I was happy to accept the job of opening and closing the curtain. It was a relief to work behind the scenes and it was still a big deal for a little kid to open and close that big velvet curtain. My next onstage effort was in the third grade production of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I was given the added responsibility of running the lights in addition to pulling the curtains. I felt like a real stage-hand and truly enjoyed the job. With two banks of lights including the house lights over the audience it felt like real power. I wanted to stay back stage for the remainder of my theatrical career but the next year I was convinced to play the Third Wise Men and had to sing We Three Kings for the Fourth Grade Holiday Show.

In the fifth grade we were assigned Frosty the Snowman for the Christmas show. We spent a couple of weeks building the Snowman Costume and I was offered the part of getting inside but for some stupid reason I turned it down and instead took simple role in the chorus. So my friend got the role and right away I had regrets and wished I had taken that part. It is true that I suffered claustrophobia and maybe I was worried about getting too hot in that big suit but the real truth is I was afraid of looking goofy.

The next year the Sixth Grade put on a production of Scrooge and I was not going to regret anything this time around and by practicing for the audition I was lucky enough to get the lead role. By then I was ready to live the part and I was good, maybe too good. I got rave reviews but after all these years I wonder if I would have been better off with the Frosty role instead of Scrooge?

Pitfalls of the Poor and Anonymous

There was an old TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous where we got all the inside scoop on that group, but why has there has never been a show about the Poor and Anonymous? It’s about time they got some representation so I am here to speak for those who didn’t get a reality show.

The basic difference between the lower class and the upper class is how they deal with ownership. Poor people don’t own much so they keep what they have while the well-off turn over their property so fast they never get attached. That sense of ownership is just enough satisfaction to keep folks from complaining. A wealthy family can own several houses but they never move all the way in while single home families take full ownership and are in no hurry to move.

The next most common pitfall for the poor people has to do with entitlement. We all see the wealthy acting entitled to the good life but we rarely notice when the poor person exercise their right to lose. The scam is getting some of the people to believe they are entitled to be poor. We don’t just accept our poverty, we embrace it and actually learn to love it. That is why there is no revolution today. We have been programmed to love the life of disadvantage we live.

Another mistake the poor people make is delegation. Rich people get others to do all their work, not just the dirty work but even the fun stuff too. Regular people have to do all their own work both at home and on the job. Poor people would rather do it themselves. Even when there is someone that can help, we often prefer to do it ourselves.

Guilt is the best example of how different the classes can be. The well to do have no guilt but everyone else has to feel bad for enjoying some basic luxury such as cable TV or a six pack of beer. Hoarding is another pitfall for the poor. I still have clothes from much too long ago…even after a house fire I still have too much old stuff. Poor people are too busy working, too tired to try harder and just plain out of energy from all that worrying.

So the solution for poor people is to stop settling for less, stop feeling guilty and start delegating your poverty to someone who can better afford to be broke. We do this by making poverty more attractive to the upper class. Somehow, someday we will find a way to make it fashionable to be poor.

Entertainment in the 1960’s

TV: Television was (and still is) king. Black and White was A-OK back then because the first color sets sucked so bad it took an extra few years before people were willing to try again. All the first generation color boxes had a kill switch that would turn it back to black and white when the flashing colors started to nauseate delicate viewers. Tuning in was a science both at the box and in the field. For every hour of viewing there was a proportional amount of time required twisting the antennae. It was the early version of “Can you hear me now?” as we called back and forth, “How does it look now?”. Every Saturday morning we were up early to watch the test pattern change into the Captain Sacto cartoon show. We were proud if we made it up late enough to see the 'Signing Off The Air' show where they showed the flag and played the national anthem at the end of the broadcasting day.

Movies: We didn’t get to see all the movies that came out but some were too big to miss. The Beatles movies, James Bond, Disney and a bunch of Westerns were generic while The Graduate, Easy Rider and The Magic Christian are specific examples of what we saw. I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid followed by Bonnie & Clyde all within a year of my 8^th grade graduation. We also moved twice during that time so maybe that was when I changed. To Kill a Mockingbird was the film that moved my parents so I figured it must be good. With movies like that, one or two a year was still enough. Every year the school would take the entire student body to the theater for the Holidays where we each got a bag of goodies, mostly peanuts and oranges but still some actual candy too.

Music: The old hi-fi was in every house along with a stack of records, LP’s and 45’s. They were so common because they were affordable. Playing in the school band was required for all 9^th graders so we all learned to read music whether we liked it or not. I thought it would be cool to play the Oboe but that turned out to be a big mistake because it is not easy to play and I ended up frustrated for the year. I still managed to have fun with music after all but it was from outside the school.

Books: I was no big reader due to being cross-eyed and the glasses didn’t help enough to read more than a few minutes at a time even after my second eye surgery by the age of ten. Luckily my Mom was an avid reader and was willing to read out loud so I managed to keep up. Later I figured out how to use just one eye and after that there were many happy hours spent at the libraries: public, my school, my Mom’s school, My Dad’s school…there was an upside to having both parents being teacher.

Talking: I only include this because of the preference that people show lately for smart devices that make talking seem like something the dinosaurs used to do. People have lost their voices while they sit next to each other socializing with their thumbs. Reality is second rate today and makes the old conversations seem like lost magic. Even when we were out dragging main street in our junker cars it was only an excuse for elaborate dialogues straight out of That 70’s show.

Games: Board Games were big, but so were impromptu sports depending on the season. There were only three of us so we had a system for me switching teams but there was also a two-man rule book where each person was one man team. You had to pitch to the other guy in baseball but in football season you had to be your own quarterback and receiver. We followed the seasons with baseball all summer and then football until the lake froze over on Lake Almanor and we played hockey until the ice gave out and we started on baseball again.

Sports: In addition to the ad-hoc sports at home we did water skiing in the summer with the lake only 100 yards from our front door and snow skiing for the long winter on a regular basis. There was a weekend bus that would come and take all the kids to the local ski hill preceded by a pickup truck that would take our skis and poles. Extreme tree climbing was such a special sport it deserves a chapter of its own as well as the hunting, fishing, trapping and taxidermy.

Not Being Entertained: After all that other stuff we needed a break now and then and sometimes we had to do nothing at all in order to balance our sensibilities. Seriously, we could survive without constant reinforcement unlike today where even I have to have my phone mail fix every few minutes and I am not as bad as others I know. In the 1960’s we not only knew how to turn on, even more important; we knew how to turn off.

Global Warming Vs Ice Ages

It’s not that I don’t believe in Global Warming, it’s just that I am opposed to Ice Ages. They say the Ice was a mile deep over New York City~! I will take 30 feet more ocean over a mile of ice any day.

There are few people who deny that the earth has been through many Ice Ages and it will happen again. You would think we would appreciate this break in between but instead we are using panic to ruin the picnic. I know it is politically incorrect and possibly irresponsible to give an excuse for polluting and other bad environmental behavior. I am all for going green and doing the right thing, I just don’t want to have to wear long underwear all year long.

My real beef is with our urge to help mother nature in her natural progression between one Ice Age and the next. We want to make the clouds brighter so the sun will be reflected and we can cool the earth. It doesn’t take a Science Fiction writer to see the potential problems with this, and it again ends with a new Ice Age.

If we don’t want the sea level rising then we should shoot the moon out of the sky and do away with those pesky tides where the ocean level goes up and down not once but twice a day, we need to regulate that variation.

What would we do if we were going into an Ice Age. Would we encourage everyone to buy a big gas guzzler and drive it all night hoping to pollute our way out of the problem? If everyone held up a hair dryer would that help? I can only assume we would oppose an ice age as much as this global warming and we would also find a way to blame ourselves so we can take credit for the fix.

Why do we think we get to take credit for the problem anymore than we think we can change it back? And even if we could change it, how can we assume we should change things. What makes us conclude our reasons are smarter than the Mother Nature? When the sun finally goes supernova I am sure we will find a way to blame ourselves and then try to figure out a way to stop it.

I like to think of this contest between Ice-Age vs. Global Warming as a slow motion sports contest. Global Warming is leading but Ice Age still has plenty of time left to turn things around. I will be rooting for the Global Warming.