Heart stopper

I happened to be in work today using the workshop and whilst I was having lunch decided to run the HP Proliant Support Pack on my three main servers, seeing that nobody was around to notice when they were offline for a few minutes. Made the classic mistake of telling my wife that I was ready to be picked up before doing the last server, just so I wouldn't have to hang around (which is what I am now doing anyway....) So PSP updates BIOS and firmware in P400i controller, server reboots and I get the heart stopping, stomach churning "no boot disk found". Long story short anyway, firmware update has put the 2 logical drives in failed state. I discover this after seriously rethinking my career kind of hour.

Anyway. Booted from SmartStart CD reenabled drives, ignored all warnings that all the data was probably screwed and prayed as the server restarted and booted up fine. A few data integrity checks later and I am relieved, but cold waiting for my lift, and a little older and greyer.

There are so many lessons and morals to this story that I don't know where to start.....


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Consumer madness

I love living in this country, but often the lack of options when it comes to buying things drives me insane. Case in point. I’m trying to buy a new bike for my daughter at the moment, and I can’t buy the one I want. I’ve researched it and found that the best one is a Scott Mach One Jr. Most of the others are mass produced steel framed bikes that weigh as much as a small car. The Scott is light, well made, gets good reviews and according to the Scott website is readily available in New Zealand. Most importantly it is adjustable enough to last until she is 8 or 9 unlike the other bikes that will only last for 18 months or so. However, having spent the last 3 days on the phone and email to pretty much every bike company in the country I have worked out that they all buy their bikes from one wholesaler and they, and the wholesaler are out of stock and another shipment will not be coming until October. End of story.

I understand that we are victims of our remoteness here, but the socialist in me can’t bear this lack of competition. It pretty much applies to everything that you buy in New Zealand. Whiteware, cars and definitely computers.  In every industry there is the manufacturer, an importer (generally only one or two), the wholesaler, and a couple of retailers thrown in for good measure. We as the consumers get shafted from all directions – price, availability, quality and after sales service (which also is surprisingly bad here in NZ)

Maybe, it’s just me. Maybe I need to research less and just buy what’s on the shelves and be done with it. Put my logical side of me away and stop questioning this stuff. Otherwise I’m going to end up even more bitter than I already am..... If that is at all possible.....

Snobbery

I am trying to understand the inverted snobbery that is associated with computers and technology in general. The attitude that I come across daily that computers are somehow 'below' many people. That they are too busy or important to have to think about these pesky computer things. Or even better the certain pride that some people have about being (can't believe I'm even going to write it) "Computer Illiterate"......


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