20 Things I Learned From Outages

Something I posted over at my other blog. This is a list of what occurs to me during/after a network outage. Luckily these are pretty rare.

Now is a perfect time to panic.

No matter what you may think, everyone knows it's your fault.

Everyone is always losing 'thousands of dollars' during outages.

When the network is down, you burn calories at an exponential rate.

People who haven't worked in the last year are suddenly desperate to get busy.

How many managers can you cram into your workspace?

When the network is down, you'll have your answer.

Manager love to take up space and offer valuable 'suggestions'.

Ignoring these 'suggestions' proves you don't have what it takes for management.

It also means the network might be fixed sometime soon.

No matter what, payroll gets fixed first. There is no exception to this rule.

The answer to all other inquires is, "Yea, I'm working on it."

Time passes in two modes during outages. 'The crawl' and 'freaky lighting mode'.

Freaky lighting mode is while you are troubleshooting.

The crawl occurs after you think you've fixed it.

More than likely, it's worse than you think.

Never say 'it's fixed.' This is a sure sign you have failed.

Once you send the 'all clear email', is when the second shoe will drop.

For some reason you never expect that second shoe. No matter how many times you've done this.

Get comfortable. You are probably going to be here for a while.