The Way Of The Dinosaur

It's been a long time. I can't remember how long, and I'm too lazy/busy to look it up. But somewhere around two (yep, count 'em, TWO!) years ago we had a major problem at work. One of our Cisco Catalyst 6509 core Ethernet switch had major problems. Turns out we had some bent pins on the backplane in slot 2. In laymen's terms, the place where you plug the brains into the switch was broke. We still had one "brain" (a.k.a. supervisor module) but the redundant one couldn't be used. The only solution to get our redundancy back? Replace the whole chassis.

Replacing an entire switch chassis is NOT a small job. There were literally hundreds of servers connected to this switch in the data center. So we set out on a very. long. journey. We got a replacement chassis from Cisco and sloooooooowly began moving one server network connection at a time from the old switch to the new switch.

Fast forward to today. Thanks to a big push in the last few days by some coworkers and me, we currently have only 7 more connections on this switch. And if things go according to plan, they'll all be changed to the new switch by Saturday afternoon. (Yeah, I have to go to work on Saturday. And it's supposed to be nice weather, too! Bummer...)

Some might not see the significance of this accomplishment, but those of us that have worked on it over these many months are psyched! We've scheduled a ceremonial power-off ceremony for Monday afternoon. Two of us will switch off the dual redundant power supplies, and everyone present will have the opportunity to disconnect one of the many ancient RJ-21 Ethernet cable connections. It will be stupendous when this switch makes itself extinct, and we can go on with our other more exciting, less mundane, projects.

Does anyone know who I am?

It happened at the Denver Airport. This is hilarious. I wish I had the guts of this girl. An award should go to the United Airlines gate agent in Denver for being smart and funny, while making her point, when confronted with a passenger who probably deserved to fly as cargo.

A crowded United Airlines flight was canceled. A single agent was re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly, an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket on the counter and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it has to be FIRST CLASS."

The agent replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these folks first; and then I'm sure we'll be able to work something out."

The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?"

Without hesitating, the agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone. "May I have your attention, please?", she began, her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal: "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his Identity, please come to Gate 14".

With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the United agent, gritted his teeth, and said, "F*** You!" Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry sir, you'll have to get in line for that, too."

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

Friday Joke

Father O'Malley rose from his bed.. It was a fine spring day in his new Washington DC parish. He walked to the window of his bedroom to get a deep breath of air and to see the beautiful day outside. He then noticed there was a jackass lying dead in the middle of his front lawn.

He promptly called the US House of Representatives for assistance.

The conversation went like this: "Good morning. This is speaker Pelosi. How might I help you?"

"And the best of the day te yerself. This is Father O'Malley at St.Brigid's.. There's a jackass lying dead in me front lawn. Would ye be so kind as to send a couple o' yer lads to take care of the matter?"

Speaker Pelosi, considering herself to be quite a wit, replied with a smirk, "Well now father, it was always my impression that you people took care of last rites!" There was dead silence on the line for a long moment.

Father O'Malley then replied: "Aye, that's certainly true, but we are also obliged to first notify the next of kin."

Putting Sacrifice In Perspective

An interesting letter in the Australian Shooter Magazine this week:

"If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the past 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

"The firearm death rate in Washington , DC is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period.

That means you are about 25 percent more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S., than you are in Iraq ."

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington, DC..

To Blog Or Not To Blog...

That is the question! I've been toying with the idea for a while, because I feel like there are some things that are worth saying that take more than 140 characters (Twitter) and don't fit neatly into a Facebook or LinkedIn status update. I won't promise to write often, but at least now I have a place to express myself. I humbly present my blog to you. Now, go SWACK YOURSELF!