The Changelog

I stepped out the front door Monday morning at 2AM. Our house was a bit warm and stuffy, and I expected a nice, cool breeze. But instead I got a blast of... slightly warmer and stuffier air. Summer must be here.

Terah and I were setting out on a train trip. The train east out of Newton, KS leaves at 3:01AM. We got our bags loaded and set off to the station.

Not long after we got on the train and to our room, the train started moving. Terah fell asleep right away. It's hard for me to fall asleep so quickly the first night of a train trip. The excitement of the upcoming trip keeps me awake. Plus, once I wake up, I usually stay awake. Even if the alarm woke me up at 1:20AM.

This time, I lay awake remembering my ancestors, who migrated from Russia to Kansas in 1874. Some of our trip will follow the same route that they took 132 years ago.

In the train, you hear what sounds like a distant train whistle fairly frequently. It's from the locomotive on our train, but sounds distant because the passenger cars keep the noise out.

We slowed a bit, went around a gentle curve, and the whistle sounded again. Off to one side of the train were the lights of a small town. It's Peabody, KS -- where my ancestors arrived in the middle of the night back in 1874. They were excited to finally be at the end of their journey -- which had taken months and spanned oceans and railroads on two continents. So excited, in fact, that they set off to find their new land in the middle of the night rather than wait for dawn. But how did they cover those 15 miles at night? Did they rent horses and wagons from someone? I couldn't remember, trying to sleep here in the middle of the night.

I'm still awake. I come to a pause in my thoughts and notice the train's horn again. Somewhere ahead, there is a dirt road crossing the tracks. Nobody is there, but the train is sounding its horn to keep them away anyway.

I think back to 1874 in Russia. Not everybody in the Mennonite settlements there left. Those that were too old, too weak, or that couldn't make the trip for whatever reason stayed behind. For most, when they left Russia, they were saying goodbye to their families for the last time. They would never have the opportunity to see them again.

Then their trip began. Through rickety Russian railroads, to long days at sea, then through New York, and on the railroad again, stopping some points along the way. They'd never seen what would be their new home. And there was no going back if it wasn't to their liking. I can only imagine how hard that must have been for this group of German-speaking immigrants from Russia. And how anxious and exciting it would be to finally get off the station and head to their new home.

This group of settlers made quite the impact on Kansas. They brought their "turkey red" winter wheat with them from Russia. This wheat turned Kansas into the world's leading wheat producer. And it helped rescue the ATSF railroad from the precarious financial situation it was in. That was a good move on the railroad's part -- they were the ones that sold land to the Mennonites in Kansas, recruited them to settle in the area, and even built them temporary housing for their first winter in Kansas.

And that's the same railroad we're taveling on now, as I hear the crescendo and then the WHOOSH of a passing train just a few inches from ours.

By now its 4AM. I think back to the train station in Newton, which we left behind just an hour ago. I remembered how earlier in the 20th century, after the Mennonites were well-established in Kansas, they would send off missionaries to other parts of the world -- China or India especially. Those that went off served two 7-year terms. They departed from the Newton train station, just like we had. They probably waited for the train to carry them away in the same room we did. But they knew they wouldn't see their friends, relatives, or home for 7 years.

When missionaries would leave, a large group of church members would accompany them to the station. As the train approached, the people there would start singing their favorite hymns -- a capella, in German. The sound filled the old station, and followed the departing family out onto the platform as they boarded their train. The people leaving weren't the only ones to miss their friends and relatives. Those staying behind would also go 7 years without being able to talk to the missionaries that were departing.

A light flickers by the window. Maybe a yard light, or a small town, or the back side of a warehouse somewhere. Off in the distance, the horn sounds at another crossing.

Time for some sleep.

I just read the absolutely hilarious account of a call to AT&T asking them to install a telegraph line. The even funnier part is that nobody at AT&T seemed to realize that he wasn't talking about a telephone. Or even knew what AT&T stands for.

While at ZUG, I also read the very funny story about impersonating Michael Jackson by getting a credit card in his name, complete with al sorts of media coverage.

I've been managing servers professionally for some years now. Support is one of the most important things when you are managing computers for work. You don't need support to help you out with a printing problem or an e-mail problem. You need support because every minute the machine fails to power up, your company may lose twice the value of the entire machine. Or even more.

My first day job managing servers involved Dell hardware. What a nightmare. I've never had a good experience with Dell support, ever.

First off, Dell support never puts me straight through to an intelligent support rep. I don't care whether I get to the Indian call center or someone in Texas. The first support person I speak to at Dell has less computer aptitude than my grandmother. One conversation I will always remember went like this:

Me: We have a disk in our array that went bad on our Linux server. The red light on the disk itself is on. Please send us a replacement.

Dell: Have you tried rebooting?

Me: No. This is a production server. The reason the disks are redundant is so I don't HAVE to. Besides, the light ON THE MACHINE ITSELF is on.

Dell: Ah, OK. Have you run scandisk?

Me: No. This is a Linux server, as I told you, and scandisk wouldn't see a problem anyway since this disk is in an array and the array is still up.

Dell: OK, great. How about you download the diagnostics .exe from our website...

Me: Can't. We don't have Windows on this machine. You did say you support Linux when we bought it.

Dell: Ah. Can you right-click on My Computer...

Me: NO. This runs Linux, and the BAD DISK LIGHT ON THE MACHINE IS ON.

Dell: Ah, OK. I wonder if the problem really is that you have a bad disk.

Me: Could be!

Our first HP server purchase happened to be at a time when HP had undercut Dell by several thousand dollars. I liked the hardware, but it wasn't anything that much more special than Dell.

But what I really like is the support. I haven't had to call HP support often, but when I do, I am almost always speaking to a live, experienced person within 5 minutes.

With only one exception, all the HP support people I've talked to have been very experienced. They all sound like they've been working with HP hardware since the late punched card era. They know what is going on and assume that I do too. The HP people don't make small talk (it *really* ticks me off when someone obviously in Calcutta or something asks me about the weather in Kansas, because you *know* they are reading it off a screen and don't care). But that's fine. I'm not calling them to talk about the weather, I'm calling them because my server is down.

We had a bad disk in an array on a HP server once. That conversation went more like this.

HP: Server support. Serial number please?

Me: [gives it to them]

HP: OK. What's the problem?

Me: The array dropped a disk. The failed disk light is on and the controller logged a disk error.

HP: OK. That's a 146GB SCSI, right? 15KRPM or 10K?

Me: 15K.

HP: OK. Is 1PM tomorrow good to send out the replacement?

Me: Fine.

HP: OK, your case number is xxxxx. Can you give us directions to your location?

Me: Sure...

So recently we got in our MSL4048 tape library. A very nice unit. And faster than most *disks*. 48 Ultrium3 tapes -- 400GB native each -- very nice. And a barcode reader built in.

So anyway, one small problem. When you open up a magazine to put tapes in, you can close the unit back up. It says "scanning", but it doesn't notice that we've changed tapes until we give it a command on the operator panel (yes, this tape drive has a LCD screen built in). This can be worked around, but is annoying and is just waiting to cause confusion. Plus it's not how it should work.

So I call HP support yesterday.

Turns out this MSL4048 is a brand-new unit. Had only been on the market a few weeks. Our support rep has never seen one or taken calls about one, and they haven't even given him all the HP technical docs yet. But no matter, he is willing to try to help us out.

He calls me back twice yesterday with tips and questions after speaking to colleagues. He asks intelligent questions, doesn't bother with the "are you sure you're putting the tapes in the right way around" or the "is the power cord securely plugged in" crap, and generally doesn't waste my time. He called me back about four times more today -- they duplicated our setup in their lab, right down to the exact firmware version, but didn't have the problem. Two of those callbacks were apologizing for taking so long, and explaining that they were learning about this machine as they went along. So a HP rep will be out to our location shortly.

Now THAT'S what I call service. No blaming it on someone else, no trying to make me do stupid troubleshooting things, and returning calls.

My *one* bad experience with HP was one time we put a new internal tape drive in the machine, and it was acting flaky. I got the only not-very-experienced HP rep I ever had spoken to that time, and they tried to blame Debian for what turned out to be a bad SCSI cable. (The symptoms weren't very similar to what I'd expect for a bad SCSI cable, and the cable had been working fine.) Oh HP, you donate to Debian -- why don't you support your hardware under it?

(In fairness, that is the ONLY time they have flinched when I said I run Debian, though it does make them hesitate sometimes)