"source disclaim"

So, when I get into the office that day, the BOFH has left a sticky note on the monitor of the workstation asking me to look at harry. It seems he's been quite busy lately, which is backed up by the numbers scribbled on the note:

I mentally add to my list of task for the day, "clean up harry's running processes", and get on with more important things, like checking my email. A usual, the BOFH is not to be found in the office, so I can go about things with some amount of leisure. As I dig into the few enticing offers still in my Inbox after the junk filters run, my glance drifts.

The "office" actually is a largish office, about the right size for a corporate executive in a profitable company. It even has a small window, perpetually covered by mini-blinds. This is not a company, it's a private college, and I'm not an executive, so I share this space with a few people and lots of computers. The network administrator (usually just referred to as the BOFH, in deference and fear) has the nice desk closest to the window (which is in the back of the long rectangle), and there are two desks as you move out towards the hall door, not to mention the racks of equipment lining one wall. As the junior network monkey, I have the desk closet to the users (and the hall). There's also a water cooler, a small fridge, and a large volume coffee machine wedged in against the wall between sickly plants next to the door. It is here that my gaze comes to rest, and I look at the pot to see if there's any coffee left.

Right now my shift in the bustling network operations center is third, also known as the graveyard. After I'm through with my classes for the day, I grab some dinner. and stumble in here about eight o'clock in the evening, and fortified with coffee and some kind of take out (take away) cuisine I keep watch over the network and answer stupid questions. Er, sorry, that's answer questions from stupid people and sleep. Typically I can get though all my email, read the day's news, and check on the flamewars and sand-throwing continuing in various parts of the WWW with plenty of time to catch a nice four hour nap before the relief stumbles in around dawn. Often enough the BOFH leaves little projects for me to work on, so the note about harry wasn't unusual.

Well, to be more accurate finding notes from the BOFH isn't unusual, but them being about harry is a bit odd. harry is the name given to the database server here at Blackmun College, and access to him is restricted to faculty and staff. Even as a Junior here at Blackmun, the only way I have any access to harry is as junior network monkey, and I can count the number of times I have worked on him on one paw, er hand. I remember hazilly, the day he came in, only about a year ago ...

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It was a sign of respect that the BOFH actually let both of us monkeys be in the room for the unveiling and installation. (Actually, our help was required to get the thing into the rack.) The amount of political capitol and the number of threats used to get the purchase of such a fancy thing approved were then, and are still, closely kept by the BOFH, perhaps in the fireproof safe. However it was, the Trustees actually had approved it, and there he was *grunt* sitting in our rack. You will note the distinct lack of a Dell™ logo on this server. harry.blackmun.edu is an Apple XServe™, with dual 1 GhZ G4 chips, maxed out RAM ... basically, dream specs for a network server less than $10,000 USD. It was hoped that after the suits got used to harry, that we could wrangle another Xserve out of them to replace the utter crap that was running the rest of the network.

So, harry is not only the utterly vital internal database server, and a piece of hardwware that causes even geeks at the engineering school to drool, but he is also vital to our efforts at infastructure improvements. The rest of the school's network runs off various discarded equipment, including 486 and Pentium™ class workstations recycled as firewalls and small servers, hubs and switches donated by alumni, and one hand built workgroup server, justice. Lady Justice, you may recall, is blind, and wields a set of scales and a sword. This is a fairly accurate description of the the state of justice most days: blind, tipsy and sharp around the edges. That we keep the lady going, and that she keeps handing out email to the students everyday is testament to the might of our BOFH, and to how fast I can chew bubble-gum.