Alaskan Cruise – Very Fun

I think it’s important for technology folk, especially programmers and system administrators, to take breaks and such that allow for us to be completely disconnected from our work. Its a very hard thing to do, especially if you work with very small companies. With Dating DNA, when I go on vacation, I’m the only Sys Admin and all of our web development stops for the time I’m gone. So if there are Web Service APIs that need to be updated for our iPhone Developer, he has to wait as well. Also, if something goes down, I’m not around to fix it. Not a very fun situation to be in.

So for Dating DNA & Clipish I put together the “Basic Server Administration Document” which detailed everything a person would need to know to perform basic sys admin tasks. It was nicked named the “Oh Crap” document. Fortunately, while I was gone, there were no problems, and the document was not needed.

For my other main project, CEVO, that was not the case. CEVO has 4 times the servers that Dating DNA has, and is a bit more complex. But there are two other programmers who also monitor the servers, so I wasn’t worried. Then, while I was gone, half the physical servers for a Virtual Server “Grid” went down, which was my pet project. The CTO for CEVO, Eric, had to try to figure out what was wrong and co-ordinate with the Data Center to figure what happened and how to fix everything. Since we host our Databases on this “Grid”, if it goes down, everything practically goes down. At the time, I was in Glacier Bay, watching Glaciers crumble and fall into the ocean, with zero internet connectivity.

So thank you Eric for putting up with everything while I was gone. It was all fixed by the time I came back.

But if there is anyone wondering if an Alaskan Cruise is worth it, it definitely is. My father-in-law took us, which was very nice of him. I’ll probably post some pictures in the near future of the trip.