So I’m not really one of those folks who thinks that Brad needs a lot of extra kudos. I mean, let’s face it. I’m an expert at avoiding work and taking credit for other people’s effort. So I know a player when I see one. And when email goes down and Brad says that it’ll take three hours to bring it back up again, I know he’s in there on his Xbox for two hours and forty-five minutes, and *then* fixes the email server. Right in the nick of time. Ya gotta hand it to the guy.
So when he took the servers down for maintenance and the blog server wouldn’t come back up, I thought it was just another of his typical attention-getting stunts. But after his promised deadline came and went, it was obvious it was really broken. Tom helpfully told him to just reinstall it. But the blog server also has our quasi-legal iTunes office music server. And since Brad hacked the install code, he couldn’t just do that. He needed the tapes from the offsite backup. Yeah, and that’s in Nebraska somewhere.
So Brad hops in his car and forces us to promise not to use email until he gets back. ”You’ll just break it and then you won’t have email until I get back to fix it.” Jane tried to ask why that would be functionally any different from promising not to use it, but Brad just reminded us of our promise and drove away in his Volvo.
I tried to call him from time to time and get an ETA, but I could never get a clear answer. He finally showed back up at the office three days later having drive non-stop for 36 hours. Turns out the tapes are stored in Maine, not Nebraska. Would have been smart to check that before leaving, huh? But he got in, spun up the backup tapes, restored the blog server (and here we are again, taa daa), and all was well.
He was feeling pretty good about himself until he dove into three days of missed emails. He’d missed something from the vendor explaining how to recover the blog server in case of a crash. And no, he didn’t need the tapes.
