2009-08-26

What have I been doing

Ok I fell off the side of the earth and landed in Phoenix for part of a week. It was a fun visit.. the temperatures were a moderate 105-110 degrees and the humidity only got bad after dark when the temperature tried to fall to 101 or so. Saw some friends I had not seen in a while and learned how they were doing.

The main reason for going to Phoenix was visiting and getting familiar with the Fedora Colocations. Currently the main part of the Fedora infrastructure is at one colocation and will eventually move to another as that site comes online. The old facility wiring is a bit hodpodge but a lot prettier than I was expected. [Many many hours of work had gone into cleanup over hte last year.] The new facility was so pretty, I thought I had died and gone to sysadmin heaven. Everything is marked, cables are clearly placed per need and the back of each system was easy to get to.

Both facilities had much nicer security than what I was used to from the early 2000's. Back then, if a site checked your ID you were at a High Security facility. If they escorted you to your cage if you were on a temporary pass, you must be at Top Secret. I remember being in one facility and watching people unplug the next rack over's computers to test if they had network connectivity. When the noc guys finally came down to see what was going on, the other guys had left.. and the noc guys just plugged in the computers again. [Also the number of systems that had passwords and names of accounts printed on terminals without cages was astounding.