Monthly Archives: June 2019

Call 911, If You Can

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Also known as “things have changed”

For one my of clients I monitor and maintain some of the jobs that run on their various servers. One of them had started to fail about two weeks ago. The goal of the job was basically to download a file from one server, transfer it to another and upload it.  Easy-peasy. However, sometimes the job fails because there’s no file to transfer (which really shouldn’t be a failure, but just a warning).  So, despite the fact that it had failed multiple days in a row, I hadn’t looked at it. And of course no one was complaining (though that’s not always a good reason to ignore a job failure!)

So yesterday I took a look and realized the error message was in fact incorrect. It wasn’t failing because of a lack of a new file, but because it could no longer log into the primary server. A quick test showed the password had been changed. This didn’t really surprise me as this client is going through and updating a number of accounts and passwords. This was simply obviously one and we had missed this one. (Yes, this is where better documentation would obviously be a good idea.  We’re working on that.)

So, I figured the fix would be easy, simply email the right person, get the new password and update the process.  I also was taking the time to update the script to that the password would be encrypted moving forward, right now it’s in plain text and to give the correct error in the event of login in failure.

Well, the person who should have the password wasn’t even aware of this process. As we exchanged emails, and the lead developer chimed in, the conclusion was that this process probably shouldn’t be using this account, and that perhaps even then, this process may no longer be necessary.

So, now my job is to track down the person who did or does rely on this process, find out if they still are and then finish updating the password.  Of course if they’re not, we’ll stop this process. In some ways that’s preferable since it’s one less place to worry about a password and one less place to maintain.

Now, the above details are somewhat specific to this particular job, but, I’m sure all of us have found a job running on a server someplace and wondered, “What is this doing?” Sometimes we find out it’s still important. Sometimes we discover that it’s no longer necessary. In a perfect world, our documentation would always be up to date and our procedures would be such that we immediately remove unnecessary jobs.

But the real world is far messier unfortunately.

(and since the full photo got cropped in the header, here it is again)

Call 911. If you can

Apparently not only can guest rooms can not be called from this phone

And as a reminder, if you enjoy my posts, please make sure to subscribe.

 

Tighter than I Remember

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I’ve been reading a book off and on for about a year now called, Being Wrong : Adventures in the Margin of Error. It ties into my interest in meta-cognition and how we think.

We build a model in our head of how the world is. Often times it’s accurate, but often times it’s wrong. In my model of the world, the Sun rises in the East. This model is accurate and corresponds with the model most of us have. But I can easily construct related models that are wrong. Looking back I can remember that it was sunny on a particular day, only to find if I check the records, it was raining. My memory is wrong, but it created the model I had for that day. I can also create a model going forward. Last night, going to bed, the world I was going to wake up to was sunny. This was based on the weather forecast and the fact that the Sun rises in the East. Well, the Sun may have risen today, but it’s not sunny. There’s far too many clouds. So that model was wrong.

This all comes to mind because of a caving trip I did this weekend. There’s a fine little cave near here called Ella Armstrong. It’s really not much of a cave, perhaps 250′ of walkable passage total. But I’ve always liked it even though I hadn’t been there in 15-20 years. It’s got a nice vertical drop at the entrance that’s great for beginners. And it has an easy walk-in entrance.  As a result, I had been considering using it for some cave rescue training next year.

So you can imagine my surprise when two of my fellow cavers who had been there just a few weeks ago said I was in fact wrong and it’s not a walk-in entrance and that in fact it’s rather tight. I was surprised. I didn’t really doubt them, but figured perhaps we had a different definition of what we considered a tight entrance.

Now, let me take a little detour here and mention that almost every caver will at some point joke about how a particular cave has gotten smaller over the years. It’s a little lie we tell ourselves to account for the fact that many of us have put on a few pounds since we first started caving and some passages are in fact harder to get through.  The truth is, rarely due caves get smaller, though sometimes passages sometimes do get larger. There’s a cave in Vermont where I’m pretty sure fitting through 2 of the 3 tightest spots is probably close to impossible for me now. And I know the cave didn’t change sizes, so I’ll have to admit I have.

But back to Ella Armstrong. If you had asked me to describe the entrance prior to this weekend I’d have described it as about 12′ tall at its tallest and 3′-4′ wide most of the way to the top of the drop.

Well, as Saturday proved, the model in my head was only half right. The map lists the entrance as 8′. I’ll call that close enough to 12′ since it simply means there’s no chance to hit my head on the ceiling.

On the other hand, most of the entrance from the surface to the top of the drop is NOT 3′-4′ wide. It probably averages 18″ at most and in parts is just wide enough for me to work my chest through with some contortions. My first reaction when I got to the entrance was, “perhaps some rocks have fallen in and narrowed this from what I remember.” But, after I started to scramble beyond some of the rocks on the surface, I got to the bedrock, which I know hadn’t moved and realized that my model was dramatically wrong. It was tight enough that at one point I considered calling off our trip. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I couldn’t make it further down and past a particular spot; gravity would see to that. It was more that I was afraid I might not get back UP past that spot. Finally after some mental gymnastics I figured a way I could not only get down past the choke point, but felt comfortable thinking I could get back up past it. As I’m writing this from the comfort and safety of my home, you can see my mental gymnastics worked.  Actually, it turned out the crux move on the way out was a bit further up that wasn’t nearly as tight, but had a short shelf about 3′ up in a spot that wasn’t great on foot or handholds. On the way in, that spot didn’t appear to be an issue at all. So again, in the narrow space of about 20 minutes my mental model failed me.

The truth is, we make mental models all the time. It’s how we operate in the world. But sometimes those models are wrong. Sometimes in a positive way, the tight spot getting out wasn’t as bad as I thought, or in a negative way, the spot I thought would be easy, was in fact the hardest sport. But regardless of the errors in many of our models, we generally navigate the world in a successful manner. Being wrong isn’t necessarily the end of the world.

Unfortunately though, as much as I love this cave, it really is too tight to be practical for cave rescue exercises. Which is a shame, because it is a great little cave. And if you’re ever in the area and want to check it out, let me know. I’d love to take you. But I’ll warn you, it’s a bit tight in spots!

Sincerity

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There’s an old sales joke about sincerity: If you can fake it, you’ve got it made and can sell anything. I was reminded of this at the SQL Saturday Virginia event. The location was the ECPI campus in Virginia Beach. From talking to Monica Rathbun, the event organizer they were amazing (and more about that in a bit).

But… first a bit of a laugh (at least to me)

Best decision ever made

Best decision they ever made!

I mean I suppose it’s possible both of them had the exact same thought and expressed it in the exact same way, but I think I’d have posted the two posters far enough apart that it didn’t seem so obvious these quotes were probably made up.  It didn’t really come across as sincere. I was amused.

That said, as I understand it, ECPI donated the space for the weekend, setup the tables, took them down and basically did all the site-work that normally SQL Saturday organizers have to do. So kudos for them. Also, at least one professor sent his students down to check us out and gave them extra credit if they went to any of the sessions.

So, in that sense, I will say, I think the folks at ECPI were very sincere in supporting the event and really appreciated it.

But more so, I appreciated what appeared in the speaker room later in the day:

Good eats!

Speaker afternoon snacks

and

More speaker snacks

More speaker snacks

I spoke to the chef who brought them in and apparently ECPI has a culinary school and this was the day of their practicals.

I’ve seen a number of places where food is provided and generally the food staff do an adequate job.  One thing I noticed here was how professional the catering staff were. They wore the typical white jacket of chefs. But, despite being basically a cafeteria across the hall (and the culinary school which was apparently in another building), they acted like this was the Ritz-Carlton and we were buying $75 steaks. Their professionalism and, yes, you knew I was getting here, sincerity in doing their job stood out.

I appreciate it when someone does their job well and sincerely and isn’t just putting in the time.  I recognize we can’t always do that and we have our bad days, but in general, if one can be sincere about their work, I think they should be. It can be obvious when someone doesn’t treat their job seriously or sincerely.

All in all, a great SQL Saturday and I say that sincerely.

 

 

Rolling Back

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I’ve had a number of thoughts rolling around my head lately and they’re somewhat related so here goes.

I’m going to start with a depressing headline and URL: Civilization will end in 2050. Ok, perhaps that’s more of an alarmist headline than anything else. I posted this elsewhere, and some folks correctly pointed out that this could have been written by Thomas Malthus over two centuries ago.  And it’s true; prognosticators have predicted the fall of humans since probably before recorded history.  How many of us recall in the last century alone predictions of world-wide famine, a world-wide ice age, comets smashing into us and other horrible events.

Some were prevented, such with the Green Revolution. Some were corrected with better data or a better understanding of the data. Some where just… nuts.  That said, some predictions can be made with 100% certainty, even if the bounds on the actual circumstances are fuzzy. I’ve been giving this particular nugget a lot of thought.  Since I’ve passed that magical (at least to humans) mark of a half-century, I’ve given more thought to what I call my expiration date. It’s a fact. At some point I will cease all biological functions and will be dead.  I can’t escape that. Every day the odds increase a very tiny percentage.  So, I am predicting my own death, most likely sometime in the next 1/2 century. There’s a very slight possibility it could be tomorrow, and a much greater chance it could be 40 years from now, and based on current medicine an absolute certainty 80 years from now.  You’ll note I hedged that last one. It’s quite possible in the next few decades we figure out how to extend the human lifespan by decades if not centuries.  But I’m not counting on it. And even then, there are no guarantees I’m not hit by a driver while biking or some other catastrophic event.

That said, right now I’d say the odds are decent I’ll be alive in 2050. And almost certainly my kids will be (and very likely I’ll have grandkids by then).  So, am I worried that the world will end in 2050? Yes and no. For one thing, there’s time between now and then for a lot to happen. But, as we get closer, it’s going to be harder and harder to forestall the impacts of higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans. Yes, to be clear, I believe the evidence supports that humans are greatly impacting the climate via CO2 and other emissions.

But I’m also optimistic that we’ll work harder, especially as things get worse, to stave off the most pessimistic scenarios. But it won’t be easy and the longer we wait, the harder it will be.

While anecdotal, I’ve already seen the impacts in my life, earlier springs, caves that once held ice year round no longer do, less snow in the winters, etc. It worries me. But I also still have some hope.

That said, an analogy that’s been rolling around in my head that isn’t 100% perfect but fits me as a DBA.

Many of us in the SQL server community have started a long running transaction, only to realize we’ve brought the server to a halt. In other words, no other user can access their data until our transaction is complete. We can abort the transaction, but if we wait too long, that can be a far worse solution than trying to stop it early on. For the non geeks, in other words, if our transaction is going to update 1 billion records and we realize 5 minutes in that it will take 10 hours, we can abort it and it should take about 5 minutes to rollback to the original state. This means we’ve only brought the server to a halt for about 10 minutes. However, if we ignore the problem, and keep pretending it’ll go away and we wait say 9 hours and then finally decide, “oh what the heck, let’s try to fix the problem now” it might take another 9 hours to rollback. In other words, by waiting to long to resolve the problem, instead of being 10 minutes, it can be 1080 minutes.

In other words, the longer you wait, the harder it can be to recover. I think that’s where we’ll be at by 2050. Whether or not I’m still alive (though I plan to be!)