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August 08, 2003
Field Circus, er, Service
The USS Clueless is having connectivity problems. The usual first reaction anytime this kind of thing happens is to replace the modem. Nor is that necessarily the wrong thing to do. The last time I had networking problems, last November, it turned out to be the modem. However, in that case it was a gradual degradation of service over a period of weeks. Nonetheless, the guy will hook into the wire outside and test the RF signal quality, and then he'll probably come in here and do the same, and then he'll probably replace the modem. Back when it, er, still existed, Digital Equipment Corp. used a highly modular circuit-board design for their popular VAX machines. While this no doubt reduced maintenance costs, it led to a rather simplified view of hardware diagnosis and repair: Swap out a board. See if the machine works. If not, swap out another board. Repeat as necessary. Presumably, the boards were taken back to the mothership and diagnosed in more detail, and those components that were still serviceable went into the DEC Field Service Organ Bank. Still, it led to some interesting humor: Q: How can you tell when a DEC field service tech has a flat tire? For more on DEC field service, see the sad story of Mabel the swimming monkey. And remember to always mount a scratch monkey. Posted by Kevin Shaum at August 08, 2003 12:50 AMComments
It's an odd thing -- Den Beste occasionally singles out blogspotters and blogger users because their software is a single point of failure that for a while failed quite often, yet after the hundreds (well over a thousand if you figure in the server) he has spent on his system, a $100 cable modem is his bottleneck, which acts up from time to time taking him all the way down. He'd be better off sticking that box in a dedicated hosting facility somewhere (and so would his readers). Maybe some blogger/blogspot users should write snide posts to that effect. :) Posted by: kevin whited on August 12, 2003 08:09 AMEveryone gets brought down once in a while. Remember the great Hosting Matters Server Room Fire of 2002, that took Insta- and VodkaPundit offline for a couple of days? Colocating ain't cheap, either, and the poor guy's a retiree on a fixed income. :) I like the idea of being in complete control of the server myself, and might be doing the same as SDB, at least if I could get a fixed IP at home, and for a reasonable price. (Damn you, Time Warner and SWB!) Though after reading about Steve Gibson's ordeal with a Denial of Service attack, I kind of prefer letting someone else deal with the security issues. Posted by: Kevin Shaum on August 12, 2003 11:41 PMPost a comment
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