Friday, October 25, 2013

So apparently I'm blogging about my job now?

I had a really great day at work.

My colleague and I managed to win in foosball and give the other team a bright and shining egg. I love when that happens.

The weird part is a lot of not so great stuff actually happened today. But we came together as a team and fixed it. I love when you're able to feel like you're actually working together - and not just people working within the same vicinity.

So what happened? A little after 2PM a lot of our systems started crashing. I am responsible for most of our web-based applications. Every single one I’m responsible for (on our SharePoint and .NET farms) were unresponsive. Our automatic phone systems were down as well. The combination of this affected all of our 2000 employees.

I’m in application support, in case you’re wondering. I know a bunch of stuff about the different applications and I help develop new ones and maintain the ones we’ve got.

I don’t know a whole lot about servers. I don’t have any hard technical education, with the exception of a java-programing course.

I have access to every server that is important for the applications I support. And when the applications became non-responsive, I logged on to the web-front-end servers in the SharePoint farm and there was no issues I could see. The load-balancing tool told me that they were online and working just fine.

So when everything seems to be working, what do you do? You reboot everything you can get your hands on.

This was done by the server-team.

But it didn’t work.

Now at this point about an hour had passed. I’d given notice about the error to the relevant people in the business. And I had called users from our different locations in the country and established that it was indeed all users across the board that was unable to access the web applications.

Not sure what to do, I logged onto the application servers and started checking the event logs. It turned out there were a lot of error messages regarding one of the SQL servers in the SharePoint farm.

On the SQL server, there was some information messages about a failed windows update in the event log.

I gave this information to the server team, and it confirmed their suspicion that it was an issue with a group policy that had affected the firewall of the SQL servers. This had also been the issue with the Solidus server responsible for the phone application.

It meant that they now with certainty knew what was wrong. And how to fix it.

And it sounds so fucking obvious when you write out like this. Like of course, this is what was wrong. But I feel proud as hell, because I actually helped solve a server-related issue.

Usually when our systems crash I fidget around a bit but I’m never able to actually contribute anything that the server-team isn’t already on top off. So either I’ve gotten better at this. Or they’ve gotten slower.

Anyway. I kick ass at my job. And I had sushi and champagne for dinner.

All in all a pretty good Friday.

I hope you all get to have days like this too, once in a while. They’re nice.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

A Sunday in Copenhagen

I’m back in Denmark again and I feel like I’ve been hit with a sledgehammer.

Is it possible to get a hangover without actually having any alcohol? This is the worst.

Anyway.

The leaves on the trees are pretty. All yellow, red, and green. The skies are grey and everything is wet.

I’m trying to get my brain into gears. I have tons of work to do on my thesis.

And this is where I’m supposed to be positive about my thesis-progress, so here goes: I think I’ve finally found the right angle in my discussion. For the first time in months I actually have an idea of what my final conclusion will be. Now I just have to line up all the arguments for and against, and write a discussion that effectively demonstrates that I know what I’m talking about.

Ha. What do you know. The sun is shining again. It’s breaking through the grey clouds.

And now I’ll get to work.

Have a wonderful Sunday out there.

Btw, I've started reading Deadpool. He's awesome. I love my characters a little crazy and with a ton of bad puns.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Hocus Pocus

I wanted to explain to my sister how my thesis was going along. I used the metaphor of magic.

It’s not that I have extensive experience crafting spells but I’ve read enough urban fantasy to know my way around an incantation or two.

The first step is to pick the spell you want to use and then line up the ingredients that you need. Now some of these ingredients might be a little hard to come by (e.g. blood of a dead sinner or the last breath of a virgin).

But you know it’s possible to collect these things. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. It’s just a matter of hard work and knowing a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy. Either that or you sell your soul to a demon to get some of these ingredients. I’ve watched enough of Supernatural to know that that isn’t a good course of action though.

 Halloween in San Francisco.

Once you’ve gotten your ingredients all lined up, you start to mix them. You say words of meaning. You stir a pot of green goo and watch as the bobbles pop in sync with your incantation. You do the witchy stuff that ties the spell to the purpose at hand.

It’s important to stay focused at this point. You have to make sure that all ingredients are used in the correct manner, and applied in the correct order. The devil is in the details, and if you don’t pay attention to him (and the details), he might come after you.

You’re getting close to the really exciting part now. You’ve done the tedious work. You’ve done the hocus-pocus witchy stuff. But you’re still not done.

You need to center yourself, collect all of your intentions and will this spell into actual existence.

It’s going to take determination. It’s going to take will-power. It’s going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

It’s not easy to create something from nothing.

You need to know with every fiber of your soul that you’ve completed the previous steps perfectly, because they are your foundation now.

You need to be steadfast in your determination to complete this spell. Doubt is not a luxury you can afford.

For some this last step is done in a frenzy of activity. For others it’s a slow burn, where you enter a meditative state. Regardless, you cannot stop until you’re done. And the last step will always be the hardest.

Hopefully you’ll succeed in the first try. The alternative is that you have to collect ingredients anew and start over, paying extra attention to ensuring that your foundation is sturdier this time.

 More Halloween in San Francisco. I really love Halloween.

I’m at the stage where I’m beginning to mix my ingredients. I’m binding my spell to the artifacts I’ve chosen to be a part of my thesis. I’m still not quite sure I’ve gotten everything just right yet, so I’m moving forward slowly, double checking that everything fits together as it should. That my ingredients complement each other as intended.

So please excuse me while I continue working my magic.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Time travelling

I’m going to travel for 11 hours tomorrow and land 2 hours into the future.

Also known as going on a jet plane and flying to San Francisco.

I leave for the airport in 10 hours. I haven’t packed a thing yet and my apartment is a mess. But I have caffeine on my side. And sugar.

You should drop by and say hello. Not in my apartment. That would be weird, since I’m leaving very soon. And I don’t think my roommate would appreciate you just dropping by.

No, come to San Francisco instead. I’ll be there until the 18th of October.

It feels weird going back. I’ll only be there for 16 days and that’s just not enough.

To be honest I don’t know why I’m going. To see the city, I guess. To get away from Denmark. But it’s not like me to do stuff without and explicit purpose – without a plan. But this time I haven’t had time to plan. I just booked the ticket and found a place to stay. The rest will take care of itself, right?

By the way, I do not appreciate the country shutting down just as I am about to go there. That’s not really giving a friendly vibe and rolling out the welcome wagon you know?

I'll leave you with this picture I took today.
Yes, I'm abusing the filters on instagram. But it's pretty. 

The next sunset I see will be in San Francisco. I'm looking forward to that.