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top o' the mornin'®

Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 5:48 am
by earendel
Yesterday was one of those days when I wish that we were still living in the days of typewriters and telephones. It began innocently enough with a retirement party for our District Engineer, which started around 10AM and lasted until after noon. Shortly after that our computers went offline - nothing network-related would function, including the Internet, e-mail, even printing (we use a networked print server). Turns out that somewhere in the northwest a fiberoptic cable was cut, which knocked out "multiple networks" (according to our Network Operations Center). Now this puzzled me because I thought the whole point behind the Internet (or at least the government's portion) was that it was redundant and distributed so that no one thing (like a nuclear bomb) could disrupt it. Guess it ain't so any more.

Then after going to the fitness center I came home to find that one of my sons had decided that my computer was running too slow, so he tried to reinstall Windows XP. He failed, leaving the computer in a very disorganized state that took me several hours to restore. FWIW the reinstall might have worked had it not been that for some strange reason the installer was looking for files on a CD when the files were actually on a DVD.

Anyway, things are back to normal(?) this morning.

Re: top o' the mornin'®

Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 6:51 am
by MarleysGh0st
earendel wrote:Turns out that somewhere in the northwest a fiberoptic cable was cut, which knocked out "multiple networks" (according to our Network Operations Center). Now this puzzled me because I thought the whole point behind the Internet (or at least the government's portion) was that it was redundant and distributed so that no one thing (like a nuclear bomb) could disrupt it. Guess it ain't so any more.
Apparently, a nuke isn't nearly as fearsome as a pair of wire cutters. :roll:

Re: top o' the mornin'®

Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:33 am
by earendel
MarleysGh0st wrote:
earendel wrote:Turns out that somewhere in the northwest a fiberoptic cable was cut, which knocked out "multiple networks" (according to our Network Operations Center). Now this puzzled me because I thought the whole point behind the Internet (or at least the government's portion) was that it was redundant and distributed so that no one thing (like a nuclear bomb) could disrupt it. Guess it ain't so any more.
Apparently, a nuke isn't nearly as fearsome as a pair of wire cutters. :roll:
Or a backhoe, as was more likely the case