@jerry-d

In another life, I used to work for Hewlett Packard as a reactive engineer. If any UNIX-based high availability system failed, I’d be the guy they’d send. As long as it’s under contract, I’d arrive onsite with parts that the engineer who took the support call would recommend. 24/7/365. HP sold systems with an SLA of 4 hours which meant that ideally, the system would be back up and running in 4 hours or less. Being a part of the reactive team meant that if one of those systems went down at 3am on Christmas Day, we’d be called out to resolve the issue. So, yeah, it took a certain kind of zealous HP gear-head to answer the call. It was a fine time for me. HP sent us to training classes to learn about their HP-UX servers and peripheral devices and how to troubleshoot them. We were a bunch of like-minded technologists. Some of us got so good at fixing digital linear and optical libraries, we’d troubleshoot by sounds alone. I think back fondly on those days with a wry smile and misty eyes.

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