Wait for the contractor...


  • Garbage Person

    Something went wrong. The machinery on the production floor ground to a halt. We didn't notice in the bomb shelter, I mean production developer's cubefarm on the other side of the wall. What we did notice is that all network access except the time-wasting Internet kind has become dog-assed slow.  Mere minutes earlier, one of our biggest customers had dropped a pile of custom jobs on us, requiring the employment of a solid half the department on overnight turns. This was now nigh-impossible. Calls to local IT went unanswered. One of the financial services developers came downstairs from his cushy office to ask if we, too, were totally screwed. It was at this time I decided to go to the bathroom. To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way. At one point, the delay between the card reader accepting my card and the security server unlatching the door was measured in minutes. Customer reps started calling developers, nagging us about things we couldn't do.

    Eventually local IT answered the phone. He could see the problem visually. There was a complication, though... Local IT is only there to maintain our workstations. Anything involving servers or the network meant submitting a ticket to corporate, who would respond "within 8 business hours". Corp IT then submits a ticket to our outsourced IT provider - who would dispatch a tech from Central Ohio. We're damned near in Philadelphia.

     

     You know, it's not like three of the company's major profit centers are offline. Certainly saving $20k/year/facility by outsourcing IT was a perfectly sound business decision. I don't expect to do anything much today.



  • At least The Daily WTF is available...



  • And how much money do you think your company is not making by being down?



  • The century old tale of penny-wise, pound foolish.



  • Conficker? 

     

    Maybe it's time to start unplugging things from the network one-by-one.



  • @Weng said:

    What we did notice is that all network access except the time-wasting Internet kind has become dog-assed slow.

    And that's a problem how?



  • I hope you got to the bathroom in time!



  •  I suddenly had this mental image of strolling through your office two centuries from now. Here and there a few ancients skeleton lay. One of the terminals is still running somehow; on it a log of the last days of the company's employees detailing the grim fate that awaited them as the bombs disabled the servers and irrevocably sealed the security doors they controlled. I go through the desks collecting cigarette packs and the odd bottle cap here and there and after a quiet nod to the fallen I move on.

      

    I really have to stop playing Fallout.

     



  • @DOA said:

     I suddenly had this mental image of strolling through your office two centuries from now. Here and there a few ancients skeleton lay. One of the terminals is still running somehow; on it a log of the last days of the company's employees detailing the grim fate that awaited them as the bombs disabled the servers and irrevocably sealed the security doors they controlled. I go through the desks collecting cigarette packs and the odd bottle cap here and there and after a quiet nod to the fallen I move on.

      

    I really have to stop playing Fallout.

     

    +2! Btw, that raises an interesting question about what is the "backup plan" in the event that the servers that control the door locks become completely unavailable; i.e., the doors are sealed and will not open, how would people get out?



  • @DOA said:

    One of the terminals is still running somehow; on it a log of the last days of the company's employees detailing the grim fate that awaited them as the bombs disabled the servers and irrevocably sealed the security doors they controlled. I go through the desks collecting cigarette packs and the odd bottle cap here and there and after a quiet nod to the fallen I move on.
     

    We can be friends.



  • @dohpaz42 said:

    what is the "backup plan" in the event that the servers that control the door locks become completely unavailable; i.e., the doors are sealed and will not open, how would people get out?

    There is a manual mode, for emergencies and such



  • @serguey123 said:

    @dohpaz42 said:
    what is the "backup plan" in the event that the servers that control the door locks become completely unavailable; i.e., the doors are sealed and will not open, how would people get out?
    There is a manual mode, for emergencies and such.
    You mean, the roundkick?



  • @Weng said:

    I don't expect to do anything much today.

    You could prop open those card scanner doors.

    Also, if it were my company, we'd pool $150 and go grab a keg and some cups.



  • @Kuba said:

    @serguey123 said:
    @dohpaz42 said:
    what is the "backup plan" in the event that the servers that control the door locks become completely unavailable; i.e., the doors are sealed and will not open, how would people get out?
    There is a manual mode, for emergencies and such.
    You mean, the roundkick?

    Unless you are a terminator (or Chuck himself) I think it is impossible to roundkick open a 4 inch steel blastdoor



  • @Kuba said:

    @serguey123 said:
    @dohpaz42 said:
    what is the "backup plan" in the event that the servers that control the door locks become completely unavailable; i.e., the doors are sealed and will not open, how would people get out?
    There is a manual mode, for emergencies and such.
    You mean, the roundkick?

    You'd be better served by a rear leg push kick, or maybe a spinning back kick.  Round kicks are better for making legs into hamburger or knocking fools out.



  • @frits said:

    Round kicks are better for making legs into hamburger or knocking fools out.


  • Garbage Person

     Oh, and the cause of the problem is pretty damned epic, too. Apparently, down at the local datacenter, one of these contractors from Ohio was sent in to change some cabling around. His work order said exactly which pairs of fiber to move. He did exactly that. The work-order was mistaken, and he ended up disconnecting our fat pipe in. Of course he didn't bother checking what the alarms were about (because he didn't have a work order about it) and went back to Ohio, while we failed over to 64k half-ISDN (the other 64k channel was busy being used for phone circuits).The production machines ALONE churn a steady background noise of nearly 100mbit.



  • @Weng said:

    At one point, the delay between the card reader accepting my card and the security server unlatching the door was measured in minutes.
     

    Doesn't you company have a QOS policy on the security doors? Our policy is 500ms between detecting your card the door MUST be unlocked if you are allowed access. So all our security doors have to be self-contained and UPSd. Log information is transmitted as normal network traffic.

     



  • @Mole said:

    @Weng said:
    At one point, the delay between the card reader accepting my card and the security server unlatching the door was measured in minutes.
    Doesn't you company have a QOS policy on the security doors? Our policy is 500ms between detecting your card the door MUST be unlocked if you are allowed access. So all our security doors have to be self-contained and UPSd. Log information is transmitted as normal network traffic.

    ... why do you assume Weng is responsible for the doors? I'm guessing Weng's answer would be "how the fuck would I know?" (as would mine, if you asked about the doors at my company.)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - [b]each way[/b].
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?

    Two different paths?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @frits said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?

    Two different paths?

     

    But if there's a path that has fewer security doors, which seem to be an obstacle Weng wants to avoid, why wouldn't he take that secondary path exclusively?

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @frits said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?

    Two different paths?

     

    But if there's a path that has fewer security doors, which seem to be an obstacle Weng wants to avoid, why wouldn't he take that secondary path exclusively?

     

    I thought we were talking about what is possible.  I guess you want to change the subject to what is reasonable.

    Also, there could be some one-way checks controlled by an automatic door.



  • @frits said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @frits said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?

    Two different paths?

     

    But if there's a path that has fewer security doors, which seem to be an obstacle Weng wants to avoid, why wouldn't he take that secondary path exclusively?

     

    I thought we were talking about what is possible.  I guess you want to change the subject to what is reasonable.

    Also, there could be some one-way checks controlled by an automatic door.

     

    Didn't we already have this discussion?



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @frits said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?

    Two different paths?

     

    But if there's a path that has fewer security doors, which seem to be an obstacle Weng wants to avoid, why wouldn't he take that secondary path exclusively?

     

    One way hallways, obviously. They probably have a building in the city, and there is no such thing as a two way corridor in a city.


  • @Justice said:

    @frits said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @frits said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?

    Two different paths?

     

    But if there's a path that has fewer security doors, which seem to be an obstacle Weng wants to avoid, why wouldn't he take that secondary path exclusively?

     

    I thought we were talking about what is possible.  I guess you want to change the subject to what is reasonable.

    Also, there could be some one-way checks controlled by an automatic door.

     

    Didn't we already have this discussion?

     

    The way I see it none of you are thinking with Portals

     


  • Garbage Person

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Weng said:

    To do this, I had to pass through no fewer than three security doors - each way.
     

    Because you normally use the non-Euclidian Escher hallway?

    Or doors with card readers on both sides.

  • Garbage Person

    @Mole said:

    @Weng said:

    At one point, the delay between the card reader accepting my card and the security server unlatching the door was measured in minutes.
     

    Doesn't you company have a QOS policy on the security doors? Our policy is 500ms between detecting your card the door MUST be unlocked if you are allowed access. So all our security doors have to be self-contained and UPSd. Log information is transmitted as normal network traffic.
    Dude, we obviously don't have any sort of SLA on the servers that allow us to make money. Why would we have such a thing for mere doors?


  • We don't have any sort of SLA on the server either, but we do on the doors :)

    Heck, we run 10+ web sites over a 2MB Microwave link!

    The door SLA might have something to do with the CEO being unable to leave the corridor to his office however. That happened a few year back - the electronics to the door were above the door on the inside (In fact, they still are, for security reasons) but no one could get in (or out) as the power was out. So they spent thousands on new self-contained battery backed security locks. 


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