gbobeck's Journal: Charlie Foobar, Story # 1:The ETL Heat Saga

Sometime in the not too distant past (Assume after 7/12, but before 7/19), in a land far, far away, Charlie Foobar must have been a bit on the cold in the ETL and decided to turn off one of the A/C units. Charlie's comfort was assured... it wasn't freezing in the lab anymore.

Much time passed, and Charlie eventually went home. Unfortunately, Mr. Foobar forgot to turn the A/C back on before vacating the ETL.

The sun came out and the heat and humidity were strong. The temperature in the ETL climbed. The lonely server cabinet, with the 16 machines inside chugging away on their benchmarks and other tasks, became an oven.

Time passed, until one day, one of the resident ETL hackers traveled to the ETL to work on his various projects. Upon entering the lab, he said "Wow, its a tad bit warm in here. I wonder if something is wrong." The hacker carefully checked the lab and found that Charlie Foobar left the A/C off. Immediately the resident hacker turned on the A/C unit.

The hacker then began the duty of inspecting the machines to see if Charlie Foobar's actions invoked the Snafu Fairy. "G64a, nominal. Workstations, nominal...." The hacker continued the check until he was left with the final set of machines: the lonely server cabinet.

The hacker carefully opened the cabinet door and saw that everything appeared ok, so he proceeded to touch top server in the cabinet. "OW! This cluster is exceptionally hot." he exclaimed. So the hacker opened the cabinet doors and left the ETL in order to get lunch and a venti coffee at Starbucks.

After lunch, the hacker returned to the ETL and once again touched the top server in the cabinet. "Much better. The machines are nice and cool. Hurray!"

The hacker started to work on his various projects, bringing happiness and open source software to the world.

And everybody lived happily ever after. The end.