Tone Parsons

Oh boy! It’s the weekend!

Here’s how I spent my Saturday so far:

• 7:52 – wake up, brew coffee
• 8:00 – fire up the computer and prepare to move the domain and all it’s sub-domains like you promised to the new server.
• 8:10 – begin sql dumps for sites with blogs/forums/etc.
• 8:20 – begin pulling those sites down from the old server.
• 8:24 – lose connection to old server.
• 8:33 – realize that the internal NIC on the firewall gave up the ghost. Spend next 20 minutes looking for a spare. Open every computer you own to find one that is exactly the same. Finally find one in a box in the basement.
• 8:58 – install NIC, discover that the server is pissed at life. Call for help
• 8:59 – Friend telnets into firewall, makes a change that a 6 year old should have figured out, life is good.
• 9:12 – log into registrar website to change the DNS entries to the new host
• 9:13 – realize that you’ve just screwed yourself as you can no longer access the hosting tools on your own machine.
• 9:13 – shrug your shoulders, say “fuck it” aloud, continue.
• 9:15 – remember that you brewed coffee a while ago. Wander upstairs for a cup only to discover that other family members have already drank it.
• 9:16 – brew more coffee
• 9:31 – show shock and awe that the DNS has already propogated enough for you to connect to the new server and upload your files.
• 9:48 – power goes out at the house
• 10:25 – power is good, start process over again, do the largest websites first
• 11:15 – fuck… there goes the power again (but only for a few seconds… just enough time to shut your pc off and make you scream). Start over again.
• 11:20 – remember that you made more coffee a couple of hours ago. Go upstairs to find a full pot of burnt and nasty coffee. Turn it off, dump it, and give on caffeen for the day.
• 11:25 – stare at your ftp program in disbelief that you’re only getting 8kb/s upload rates… and you’ve got about 700mb left to go.
• 11:26 – cry… a lot
• 2:47 – decide to purchase a gun and go talk to the power utility, becuse the damn lights just flickered again, killing your connection.
• 4:52 – finally finish uploading files, restoring databases, and installing extra software.
• 4:53 – beer, in large quantities.

Of course, we lost power again about an hour ago, and again my firewall got pissy with me. I had to call my friend back and he cleared things up for me (it’s “ifup eth0” not “ifconfig eth0 up”).

Tomorrow, I’m not touching anything technical.