Had I known ahead of time how this past Tuesday would have unfolded, perhaps I wouldn’t of even gotten out of bed for the entire day.
- While working on a site for a client, we have production and testing directories setup on the server. I have been doing web development for over 11 years now, and this setup is pretty standard for me. Well I made a completely idiotic error and decided to delete the files on the production directory. aka I deleted their live website. At this time my stomach dropped to the floor and I began to feel very stupid (it’s a very beginner’s error).
- My phone rings at work. Someone is getting hundreds of form submissions as they’re speaking to me on the phone. I hang up and the phone rings again, it’s happening to several co-workers and by the thousands. The most aggressive spambot form attack I can recall by far.
- The hard drive on our web server at work dies. The server is down and the hard drive must be rebuilt. This means no website for several hours at the least.
- I decide to send out a text alert letting students know that even though our website is down, they can still access other servers, such as their online classes. It turns out that despite being completely branded with no messages stating otherwise, the login for Blackboard has changed from last semester. Now I have to send out a correction text alert. Few things are more embarrassing than a correction text alert.
For any of the above to happen in a work day, would constitute a bad work day. However to pull off all 4 completely unrelated events in a span of 2 hours is truly amazing. While the above is clearly a mix of my error and bad luck, I’m still amazed that all could occur at almost the same time.
It’s a good think I’m a pretty calm guy. I survived the day of course, but wow was I burnt out from all of it.