I have no idea how long I've been in quarantine.  I've stopped counting because the numbers were just making me twitchy.  Life is going about as well as one could reasonably expect.  We're all save and sound in northern California, as much as we can be during a pandemic.  Working from home is working from home.  To minimize risk we're getting as much stuff delivered as we can, modulo periodic trips to the local pharmacy to pick up filled prescriptions and suchlike. I wish I could say the same of things back home in Pennsylvania, but I'd be lying and …

By some accounts, the Amazon crash that began somewhen around 1600 EST5EDT today is the first downtime they've evidenced in years. On one hand I can't help but chuckle a little bit when I see this because, for once this isn't my fault. I can just sit back and fiddle while somebody else's network burns. On the other hand I've been on the other side of the screen when stuff like this happens and the thought of getting trapped in the data center trying to resuscitate the service of one of my old employers jolts me awake dripping with sweat …

Always double-check what machine you're working on. And always, always make sure your backups are good!

In the state of Alaska, a sysadmin at the department of revenue accidentally reformatted a hard drive that contained information pertaining to a oil fund account worth roughly $38bus.

Yep - billions of US dollars.

For an encore, rather than restore the data for the account from a backup hard drive, he then reformatted the backup drive on top of that - he probably hit the up arrow, changed the device name, and touched it off again. By this time, any sysadmin worth the name would …

Always double-check what machine you're working on. And always, always make sure your backups are good!

In the state of Alaska, a sysadmin at the department of revenue accidentally reformatted a hard drive that contained information pertaining to a oil fund account worth roughly $38bus.

Yep - billions of US dollars.

For an encore, rather than restore the data for the account from a backup hard drive, he then reformatted the backup drive on top of that - he probably hit the up arrow, changed the device name, and touched it off again. By this time, any sysadmin worth the name would …