Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Usually that statement is applied to people who act hypocritically... but this time around, I'm going to apply it to my self last week, naively thinking life was all good and fine, and the worst things that could happen were little cheap LEDs burning out. Oh, you poor unsuspecting fool.
I imagine at this time, not a lot of regulars read this blog on a weekly basis- but for those who did happen to visit between the last few days and were wondering what happened, well, it was a little thing called a trickle of fate... or more literally a trickle of water. So apparently the closet in which I've had my server rack staged for like two years now has always had this very slight leak in the ductwork coming in from above... and as is the case with most evils in life, it wasn't the kind of thing that was just waiting for the big storm to do its worst, no... no, it was the slow accumulation of little trickles of water that just subtly found the easy and small channels into the chassis of my main hypervisor. And so, when Saturday night came around, after getting fast food for dinner, I was just about to look up a random meme I had remembered (anyone else a fan of the good ol' Starprise Entership?) and that's when it began.
I noticed I wasn't getting any internet. I then noticed I wasn't connected to Wi-fi. I then noticed my Wi-fi network wasn't broadcasting at all... I THEN noticed my big ol' server which usually sounds like a pleasant jet turbine was as silent as the grave... and that analogy is too fitting, because I spent the next several hours trying to clean and resurrect that beast, but my last-ditch effort to resuscitate life into that dead shell were not rewarded with any success. As a last-effort compromise, I would have to restore some unfortunately outdated backups and run some virtual servers on Hyper V so that I at least had the bare necessities running. Thankfully, only two days later, I've now got most everything back up and good, now.
But that night when the turds hit the fan, I won't beat around the bush, I was doing my best to hold back panic and great fear. Indeed, there were a few times I came a bit close to breaking down, but between my determiniation to move forward, and my wife who was a comforting angel, I saw it through the best I could. But as naive as I call myself regarding this experience, I also can't ignore (and I apologize for making it feel like deja-vu, but) I was all too correct with my words last week. For all the fear, anxiety and panic I felt that night, the night which came next may as well have been the exact antithesis of it.
I had the blessing of singing in this local Easter Cantata in my area, which I've been practicing some weeks for, and when the time came to perform that Sunday night, the string of experiences and emotions is almost too overwhelming to describe. In fact, the only time I can ever remember feeling anything like it dates back to my days in high school, when I got to sing with the all-state choir, and we got to sing in this choir of hundreds of awesome voices, and be up next to this huge, beautiful organ, and it was amazing! But this last night was one that left me with nothing other than what I could describe as the most pure and simple joy in my soul. There were a few songs that, as I sang them, I could hardly keep my voice sounding right, because the words and the music of those moments touched me so deeply I could hardly keep from weeping- which is a rarity for me.
But perhaps if there's two things I learned this week, they are this: first, sometimes the greatest joys are only felt after the lowest and least favorable fears and miseries. And when you experience something that moves you, you should journal it; I made the mistake of not doing that back in high school after those events, and all I have now are the memories I think I had.
You know what, there's one other valuable lesson I learned- make sure your backups are up to date! It's almost 5 in the morning for me, and I have work soon... so I'm gonna get what rest I can. Until next time, see ya!
mrw
network
cantata