Making Lemonade
So, some things went well today, and others, not so much.
Virtually all my hardware arrived yesterday and I was able to start getting things setup. Which was good, but not everything went according to plan. For instance, my giant terabyte external drive array is still on a UPS truck somewhere in the greater Houston area. Or so the UPS tracking website tells me. Then, there’s the Novell Open Enterprise Server/SuSE Linux CDs that won’t be arriving. Why? Well, both the salesman and I were surprised to discover that they don’t send the media anymore. Now, it’s a download, which is what they’re doing even as we speak.
Also, there was the left side panel on the half-height rack from Dell that wouldn’t stay on. Any guesses why? Because the underage, third-world welder was overworked that week and the welds on the hooks at the bottom of the panel were extremely substandard and popped. Of course, I could have taken it out to the guys in the shop to get them to weld it quick, but that’s not the point. Dell sold me a fully functional rack that should have had all its parts together. They didn’t send that, so, now, they’re sending a replacement door. I figure it’ll arrive about the time that missing drive array does.
Now, here’s the lemons to lemonade part…
The great, big UPS that was shown on the quote as simply being 120 volts, which should be standard wall power, turned out to have a funky, 30 amp, round, grounded plug. So, I had to con one of the electricians we have on staff to help me out. Turns out he’s going to run a completely new 30 amp circuit just for the server. Which, as you old server monkies know, is just precisely what we should have anyway. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t want to hassle with it, so I totally ignored that and, well, sometimes, God likes me and sends me just enough lemons to make a whole, yummy pitcher of lemonade. Just like today.
So, in short, I’ve had worse days. The server is almost ready to go and the boss still thinks I walk on water. All in all, not bad at all.
