blargh

[unixronin]

I have a respiratory infection and need to go see the doctor to get antibiotics.  They can't fit me in until tomorrow.

My VXA1 tape drive, which I use for nightly incremental and weekly differential backups, appears to have failed hard.  I can't even get it to eject the loaded tape.  Not even after two powercycles.  I'm manually running the differentials that should have run last night, to the LTO1 drive instead (which is supposed to be used only for full backups, according to my schedule).

cymrullewes is completely offline at her job because of a Verizon service outage.  They have no internet service and no land-line phones.  Many things just aren't happening because of it.

I know monday mornings are supposed to suck.  It's in the contract.  But come on ....

Comments

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

I keep telling myself that I need the bad days to appreciate the good.

[msa.livejournal.com]

Cue myself, ten years ago:

Tape drives (http://home.xnet.com/~raven/Sysadmin/ASR.Posts.html#tk50)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Egad. What a stupidly wretched design.

I never knew Bloody Stupid Johnson had worked for Digital....

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I almost forgot to ask. What's the whole "Down, not across" thing?

[msa.livejournal.com]

The proper way to slit your wrists, knowledge that may become useful as a systems administrator.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Heh. I didn't make that connection ... though personally I think ritual seppuku gets the point across much better.

[msa.livejournal.com]

The thing is, they had three drives based on this design, and even a successor. Any drive that must go fishing for the tape is bad news.

They get bonus points for being smart and dumb at the same time -- the TZ30 and TK50 were the first DLT drives on the market, a technology they developed, and then sold.

And remember, 18 bits? You're only playing with half a DEC...