on the nature of fuckups. or something.
Mar. 1st, 2009 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmdapparently, i was due for a good solid shoot-yourself-in-the-foot fuckup.
words to the wise from the voice of experience: if you have two devices working as a primary/failover pair, and you want to test them both, you have to test through each of them and not twice through one of them. *facepalm*
*sigh* this is the sort of thing that would've had me wearing the 'bonehead' headpiece when i was at ftp.
on the other hand...
back very shortly after i started at msft, working for the then-fledgling msn, i had an coworker for about 2 months. the guy started, and very shortly after he took another job wrangling networks at some HMO or something. i was told after he left that he apparently thought the stress of working at msft was more than he wanted to deal with.
and i couldn't quite understand this. because at msft, OH MY GOD PEOPLE MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO READ THEIR EMAIL if there was a fuckup. or, you know, have a fuckup show up above the fold on newspapers all around the world. (yeah, that happened. not my fault, although i did kick myself for not diagnosing and solving it before other people did.) but at an HMO, people might ACTUALLY FUCKING DIE due to information technology fuckups.
words to the wise from the voice of experience: if you have two devices working as a primary/failover pair, and you want to test them both, you have to test through each of them and not twice through one of them. *facepalm*
*sigh* this is the sort of thing that would've had me wearing the 'bonehead' headpiece when i was at ftp.
on the other hand...
back very shortly after i started at msft, working for the then-fledgling msn, i had an coworker for about 2 months. the guy started, and very shortly after he took another job wrangling networks at some HMO or something. i was told after he left that he apparently thought the stress of working at msft was more than he wanted to deal with.
and i couldn't quite understand this. because at msft, OH MY GOD PEOPLE MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO READ THEIR EMAIL if there was a fuckup. or, you know, have a fuckup show up above the fold on newspapers all around the world. (yeah, that happened. not my fault, although i did kick myself for not diagnosing and solving it before other people did.) but at an HMO, people might ACTUALLY FUCKING DIE due to information technology fuckups.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-01 04:04 pm (UTC)And this classification worked quite well at my next job, which did automatic Linux package maintenance.
But at the job after that, which controlled 25-ton factory-floor robots, a "Critical" bug was one which could kill or maim a worker.
And that was the outfit which didn't have any QA.
In my current job, our 'bots don't exactly kill people, but they can expose users to enemy fire if something goes wrong, so that's now the definition of "Critical".
no subject
Date: 2009-03-01 07:23 pm (UTC)given how stressed i sometimes get over things like email and tcp/ip, i worry about how i'd handle the stress of actual lives in the balance.
i assume i'd deal. because humans are flexible that way. i'd probably drink more, though. or maybe i'd drink less...