Reminds me of my calculus final exam back in the day where my HP calculator started flickering and rebooting 4 minutes before the exam.

I'll tell you the rest after the Pluto encounter...

"Snafu"

I'm not blaming you personally, it was just some "side tech". If an org or situation puts people into positions outside of their specialty, bleep is likely. That's just the way it is.

Looks like a new entry is coming.

Look on the bright side: if it were an F-35, the panel would have 13 nuts instead of 3, and all be different.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

The poster was not the boss. The boss calls the final shots. The technician's job is to present the risks (trade-offs) as accurately and clearly as possible. If the boss(es) then choose to ignore the risk warnings, the blame falls on them. If you usurp their power, you are out the door (unless it's a legal matter).

Incidentally, I was in a somewhat similar situation where marketing planned to release about 30 websites for satellite offices all at once along with a press release about the new sites. I pointed out our "budget-oriented" infrastructure may not be able to handle such a sudden load, and suggested staggering the releases. Other technicians agreed with my warning, but the marketing chief was really disappointed, saying something like, "It's better P/R to have one big release. Staggering the releases takes the punch out of it."

I was tempted to respond, "30 crashed sites is not good P/R either", but smartly bit my tongue (based on prior experience with "reality" statements). He was a true P-H-B, always looking for a cheap short-sighted shortcut, but tried to blame us when his paper tigers got eaten. He drove one guy to retire early. Later he was under investigation for giving contracts to his buddies instead of basing them on merit. Not surprising, his buddies were also idiots.

Was it too late to re-inspect when mentioned in the meeting? You perhaps could have said, "I don't recognize that nut, but I'm willing to go in and look around."

Databases should be backed up with a text-dump (such as an SQL INSERT list), not the actual database file, because of the internal pointers that are fragile. A text-dump "flattens" the pointers. If you do use the actual database file as a backup, shut all DB writing off first, during the backup. And keep multiple generations.

I confessed, I worked on Slashdot Beta ;-P

"using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem"

Sounds like a drunken data orgy with the NSA.

I'm not a "troll", I'm an Agitation Engineer.
   

Crappiness can be done cheaper overseas.

Quick! Hide it before they use it to generate H-1B targeting resumes having impossible combo's of skills to filter away citizens.

Perhaps the whole idea of automatic tagging should be scrapped.

We can finally visit our "cloud servers" while there