We have a corporate email filter in place to block spam. Of course, the first thing our employees did was ask for exceptions for "business-related emails" that were being blocked. Of course, about 85% of those requests are for non-business related email.
Today's request wins the "2007 Obviously Not Business Related Email" Award. We've been asked to unblock email from "rubberducky1234".
Well, Dear Reader, I'm headed to Philly for our annual Disaster Recovery test. For the non-techie, we pretend that our building is a "smoking hole" and we have 96 hours to get our systems back up and running. Normally, I'm just a worker bee, but this year it's different. I'm one of the Queen Bees, so to speak. :-)
I've been in charge of our backup system for about 6 months, which also makes me the guy that's got to get our backup server rebuilt and running. First. If I don't get the server up and the backups restored, we can't do shit. Nada. Nothing. Just a teeny tiny bit of pressure. And yeah, I'm a bit nervous.
Normally, I'd just show up and start working, but since this is so important I took the advice of a very good friend and came up with a plan. Yep, I put a plan together to create the tapes we take with us and to restore the server in Philly. It's a good plan too. It's got pictures and circles and arrows and step-by-step instructions and "in case this happens, do this" kinda stuff. Plus, it's got several "DON'T DO THIS" kinda stuff in big, red letters. I'll admit I'm pretty proud of it. I had two of my co-workers test it and they were able to get stuff restored each time. Sweet.
I wanted to take a minute and say "Thank you, friend" for teaching me to plan. It is much appreciated.
Have any of you ever heard of a "Faxer"? I don't mean as in "a person who faxes" or something like that. In this case, "faxer" is beer speak for...uh...well, we're not quite sure what it's for.
Of course we all know what beer speak is. For some of us, it's "I LOVE YOU MAN!", to others it's "I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!". But then there's the "special" beer speak crowd...no, not little yellow schoolbus special, but special in that "what the hell did they just say?" kinda way. In this case, the term faxer comes from the latter person.
My friend Sarah is getting divorced and her soon-to-be ex was 10 beers into a 12-pack when he uttered the phrase, "Yeah, well...you probably had your computer friend install a faxer on my computer so you can keep tabs on me." The funny part, Dear Reader, was this sentence was preceded by the phrase, "Well, I know a lot more about computers than you think I do." Uh...I think we all know the truth to that statement.
Let me also share with you that immediately following the faxer comments, the dumbass, er, I mean, Computer Genius, was in the process of 1) spelling his name wrong for the 4th time trying to log in and 2) was incapable of turning off the CAPS lock.
If he keeps this up, I'm betting we can get him a job with HP's Tech Support staff. He'd be Supervisor in no time.