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From Gail Burns, Assistant Editor:

UNSUNG HEROES

It kind of crept up on us slowly late Wednesday morning that something was terribly wrong with the Tripod site. One reason it managed to happen so quietly was that our Systems Administrators were not here that day. They were down in Jersey City installing new hardware on our servers. This was actually a good thing, because they are the people who needed to know what was going on and they were the people who could fix the problem — and they had to be in Jersey City to do that.

So, it slowly dawned on me that I wasn't the only one who couldn't get onto the site, access my member page, or get to the myriad vital internal spots I needed to get to do my work; our valiant System Administrators were already well aware of the problem and frantically working to fix it.

I have never been down to the cage in Jersey City where our servers live. Having been born and raised in New York City, I have an inbred aversion to that state on the other side of the Hudson, and I confess that the closest I have ever come to Jersey City is the Statue of Liberty. But in my imagination, the combination of the words "cage" and "New Jersey" form a picture of a place I would not like to be. So I hereby award laurels to Ed, Hank, and Zayar for not only going there, but staying there for many sleepless hours until our servers were up and running again.

The other week at a staff meeting, we gave Ed and Hank pillowcases with the Tripod logo on them. Actually we gave them pillows, too, in a wildly extravagant gesture to compensate for those all-nighters they have to pull in the cage. The only reason Zayar didn't get one was because he hadn't joined the staff yet, but I sure hope Ed or Hank shared, or that they were foresighted enough to tell Zayar to pack his own.

Now, I am no techno-wiz. I can bravely battle my own PC, but even a LAN is too big for my poor little brain to fathom. So I have nothing but admiration for our System Administrators and their capability to tackle such large machines and networks and problems. As near as I can tell, they were installing wonderful new gizmos which, now that they are in place and working, will greatly enhance the way we all experience the Tripod site. But it turned out that the servers had a severe allergic reaction to one of the new pieces of hardware. As our VP of Technology Don Zereski explained it to us, the server went into a "Panic" mode. I can't understand why anyone would even build a machine that could panic. Panicking has never done me any good, and I am a human capable of standing back and looking objectively at the cause of my panic. To build a machine which is capable of panicking seems just plain dumb. Anyway, the machine panicked, which caused Ed, Hank, and Zayar to panic, which in turn caused all of us and all of you to panic. SHEESH!!!

Ed informs me that the Sys Admins were seriously stressed and sleep deprived during the whole ordeal, but that they did have a cheering view of the NYC skyline from just outside the cage to keep them going. ( I suppose that is the one good thing about northeastern New Jersey: you can see New York from it.) The sight of my hometown glittering and gleaming across the Hudson helped give them the strength and courage to struggle on until they had de-panicked the servers and all was well in the world. It brings a tear to my eye just to think of it.

So I vote that we all give Ed (Schwab Unix Systems & Network Administrator), Hank (Zill, Systems Administrator), and Zayar (Maungmaungkhin, Assistant Systems Administrator) three hearty cheers and an extra pillow for their strength and courage in the face of a "panicked" machine. Men, we salute you!

Meanwhile, a building caught on fire on Spring Street, here in scenic Williamstown — the second building in two months! — but that's another story, and the panic is over.

Sincerely,
Gail (7/16/98)

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.