-Random logout. We’ve seen it only once, but others on the webs have also reported getting randomly logged off while in the middle of working in MS Office applications.

-Can’t print to Sharp copiers. The drivers from Sharp for the previous version of OSX are incompatible with Snow Leopard. The word from the Sharp reps is they’ll have an update out in October. In the mean time, the generic postscipt driver works for black and white, and now does duplexing.

Otherwise, we’ve seen a few other things that were quickly patched.  More to come I’m sure.

Make one!

This morning from 3:30 to 6:15 our firewall decided to play hide-and-seek with Tom and I. It hid pretty well – blocking all incoming and outgoing traffic. It was a sense of deja-vu from our NYC trip but a different piece of equipment this time. I’ve never felt great about our brand of firewall but as Tom pointed out, once we’d fixed it, “Firewalls are just black magic and you’re a good wizard. Stands to reason you won’t get along.”

The house finally moved today! At around 10:30am, the cable people started mobilizing to take down the wires, and Brian and I proceeded to shut down the servers and workstations. Then we went outside. It was a thrilling sight. We (Craig and Roan were there too) stood at the corner of Detroit and Fifth and took pictures as it inched its way up the street. It was interesting to watch the different companies take down their respective cables. The trucks pulled in and out, cherry pickers swung up and down, lines fell in sequence. The house was about to roll on through when one of the men noticed a thin wire running between the ATS and Kerrytown buliding. They quickly sent someone up to cut the wire down. The house passed safely on by; the only thing preventing it from barreling down the street were two shovel trucks. Power came back on almost an hour later. ATS came back up okay. The loft is still down.

Update 12:30 pm:
Apparently, Comcast jumped ahead and began reinstalling all their lines. DTE is pissed because they’re supposed to go first, being the power guys and all. So they have to wait till the cable boys finish before they can get power back up to the Loft.

Update 1:30 pm:
Loft is back up! The Deli is packed with customers – everything is back to normal. That is, if you ignore the mess of wire and leaves left in the wake of the house up Fifth Street.

So we’ve scheduled all IT people across the 15 hours to be here when (if) the power goes down. I’ve made a checklist of machines to shutdown and issues to look for. Joe has 7 to 10, Elph 10 to 1, Brian 1 to 4, Craig 4 to 7, and Billie 7 to 10.

Update Monday, Oct 30:

The house did not move on Sunday, but we got some stuff moved around in the office. According to the AANews it is scheduled for this coming Sunday again. We still don’t know if the power outage will affect the Deli or not but are trying to find out. This Sunday Brian is on duty for the IT7 holiday project, along with Billie, until 5 pm.

Update Tuesday, Oct 31:

The Deli is not part of the planned power outage. Just the ATS. That’s a huge relief.

I made it to Mail Order by 4:20 or so and stumbled into the office section to the plaintive bleeping of the UPS boxes. I blindly stumbled to the door to the dotcom office, answering calls from people in the bookings office as to who I was, and brushed up against some warm body on the way. Once in the server room I got one monitor on for light and found all the machines had run out of juice except for two. One I was able to shutdown easily through the kvm monitor on the left but the other was on the right and the UPS driving the monitor had died. I ran to the car, grabbed my camping head lamp out of the glove box and a minimag flashlight. Getting the monitor and kvm switched over to a UPS with juice left I was able to shutdown gracefully the last machine. Craig called and I updated him on the situation.

Word from Kathi was that DTE estimated power back by 11 pm. We closed up the building and I headed over to Creamery and Bakehouse to imform them that internet and mail were down. I called Ron and he offered to call some other partners and let them know. All were very understanding about the outage. Though Grace surprisingly heard about the planned outage at Detroit St for Sunday for the first time. Don’t know how that happened. I called Joe, since he lives nearby and brought him up to speed and he offered to come in if needed.

I headed home to eat and think about further actions. Maybe rent a generator and get the internet connection back up? I gathered some extension cords and more flashlights and headed to Deli where I picked up some UPS 1000 boxes and the tool bags and talked to Grace. They did not have a strong need for internet connection that night so I scrapped the generator idea but instead decided to take advantage of the power outage to rearrange all the servers and their UPS boxes.

I called Craig and updated him as to my plan and he offered to join me later. Once at Mail Order I ran an extension cord from my Prius (and AC converter) to the server room and plugged in a lamp to see by. Craig arrived and we got down to business with a goal of each server having it’s own UPS, the big important ones on 1000s and the others on 700s. We also rearranged machines to get the new web servers on the shelf. Once done with the heavy lifting and power cord juggling we shifted our attention to the network equipment rack and straightened that out. It took a little over two hours but felt great to have it done. Craig left and as I was packing up my tools the power came back on (at about 9:45).

Checking all the machines I found them all to be in good shape except the two, arguably, most important ones. The mail server and web server. The web server wasn’t accessing it’s database server and mail wouldn’t load services. As I worked on those Billie stopped by for a bit to check in and provide moral support. After working on the mail server for at least an hour I finally called Craig to come in and help. I also called Tom and filled him in and learned that the web server was now working, though the database server was not providing a console. Good enough – focus turned to the mail server and with Craig on that I took a break and grabbed some food. Eventually Craig was able to determine what the problem was with the mail server and brought it around to his way of thinking. We checked a few more things then closed up. Made it home by 1am.

Each IT staff member commits to spending at least 4 hours at a Zingerman’s business. We rotate every week among five locations – Deli & Catering, ATS & ZHouse (ZingTrain, ZingNet, DSE), Roadhouse, Bakehouse & Creamery, Mail Order & Coffee. While out there we make ourselves available, we attend huddles, inspect and clean the machines, and offer direct on-the-spot technical support to anyone in the area. We ask questions, build relationships and trust, and get to know the routines of the businesses.

Bringing IT to the People: We realize that many staff members are very busy and may not be able to immediately email or phone IT when they encounter technical problems. Now there’s always an IT person in the area, so even the tiniest concerns get addressed. Just being around lets ‘cobbers know we’re here for them.

Report/Measure: We report on our on-sites during our weekly huddles. We share what we learned and document problems we’ve encountered and their solutions.

Better Interactions: The 4 on-sites let us give a higher level of service and a personal touch to our interactions with our customers. We found that our customers appreciate our presence and the full attention we are able to provide.

https://depot.info.apple.com/batteryexchange/

15″ MacBook Pro
https://support.apple.com/macbookpro15/batteryexchange/