delcielo's Journal: Entry 2, flying, sharks, sand dunes

Oy, I can't wait for Friday. I need the coming vacation.
    About a month ago, N and I upgraded the SDD (subsystem device driver) software on one of our 2105 IBM ESS storage units (sharks). This was necessary because the backup system had already been upgraded during an outage/crisis. This, of course, is the way of things. You upgrade when the machine faults on something. Anyhow, we upgraded the SDD, and reconfigured the vpaths. Everything looked good. We rebooted and smiled beatifically as we watched the filesystems mount, and got the all-clear from the DBA's.
    The next day the DBA's were having problems. While they looked at changes they had made to the database ("One change at a time," I told them) we started looking at the machine itself. Sure enough, we were missing some paths.
    It was really screwed up. Not only were an odd number of paths missing (you would expect the number of paths missing to represent a number of datapath device times the number of disks attached to it/them); but one of the volume groups had decided to go mixed (some hdisk, some vpath).
    Needless to say, a lot of dinking around was done to no avail. This last weekend, I removed the dpo, and reconfigured all of the crap during an outage that hadn't gone so well for DBA's (did I mention that I told them "One change at a time"?) Anyhow, my work turned out to be the bright spot in things that day.
    While I was working on it, all I could think about was flying. I'd been out with a student in the morning. It was gusty as hell. I was trying to demonstrate soft-field takeoff and landing techniques; but it wasn't happening. It wasn't a day where he'd learn anything. It was all about survival in the little 150. So we went to the practice area and did some hood work.
    While I was doing the vpath work, I kept thinking about flying and how I hardly get to do any of it anymore. I'm always instructing, so I don't get to actually fly the thing much.
    The next day, I went up with my student again, and while he was flying, I couldn't get those damned sharks off my mind. I kept mulling over what had happened, trying to figure out how to prevent it the next time. Meanwhile, T is really nutting it in on the touch and goes because I'm not coaching him as attentatively as I should. "There you go. Start your flare. Hold it off... hold it off... hold it off... oof! Hold it in. Hold it in. Hold it in."
    This really disturbs me, as I have always been very good at forgetting everything else but flying when I got in the airplane. While others worried about flying when they had too much stress in the world, flying has always been the great relaxing force in my life. I not only have an excuse for forgetting all of my troubles and responsibilities, I have an obligation to do so.
    I've worked very hard on those sharks and S80s. I've babysat them, tuned them constantly, made them purr, so to speak. And now I'm going to turn them over to R. R has no real motivation to take care of them. W will. He'll be okay; but R bothers me. He shoots from the hip, or actually, from the lip. R's a talker. W's a doer.
    I suppose it will be okay. After all, R knows everything. Just ask him.
    So I'm ready for the coming vacation. I'm off to the Great Southwest. I'm loading the airplane up Sunday and flying off to someplace that doesn't have cell or pager coverage. The hot searing desert is my sanctuary. It's a place that doesn't care about computers. It has no release schedule. There's no maintenance, no support contract. There's just the same elemental forces that have worked on the world since its birth.

Mixture - rich
Electric fuel pump - on
Prop control - full rpm
Flaps - takeoff
Trim - takeoff
Autopilot - off
Pager - OFF