Skip to main content

Databases, Consultants, and Marketing, OH MY.

The Web sites that I'm responsible for marketing have been down for 4 days. We're almost back up as I type this - and as a marketing guy who is dangerous enough to fake his way through a conversation with techies, I'm about baked.

Sunday at 3 am we crashed. Not an unusal occurance for our site but still a problem none-the-less. Monday comes and I find out we lost a (some?) hard drives in an array on a cluster. Blah blah blah.

Monday night is here and I've managed to survive by sending emails to my entire company, thereby sealing my fate as the tech, web guy. Did I mention I'm a marketing guy yet? Never coded an original program, never loaded a database, never even saw an Oracle table. She was good in the Matrix though.

Tuesday, still down. No relief in sight. An array controller is broken. Get a new one! Not good enough.

Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, Wednesday night - still down. Can't sleep, can't breath. What's so hard? I hate technology. I'm in marketing for god sakes... I'm not even supposed to be here today!

Thursday comes - not up, still down. Still down. Still down. I'm babbling.

We get something called an array controller for our array, which is different than our cluster, which OF COURSE is NOT our database server. It's not db1 or db2 and it's nothing that is making any difference at all. We're still not live.

I'm building pages by hand, planting redirects because YES - we have radio ads hitting this week. URLs galore, web traffic like mad... angry emails, consternation from the corner offices. Just get the site up already goddamn it. Why is it taking so long?

Friday Morning..., 12:14AM... after midnight... almost up... supposedly so. 30 minutes - just hang on...

The geeks are handling it or so they say.

Still down. Still down. Still f**cking down G**d**n it! Why the F**k can't we get our site back up and running? Why? Why? Why?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What Would Google Do: Non-Profit Edition

I've been tweeting and yapping to friends about Jeff Jarvis's terrific book " What Would Google Do " even before I've properly finishing the thing. I sat myself down tonight and plowed through the last 100 pages where Jarvis examines different industries including automotive, manufacturing, telcom, healthcare and more to see what Google would do if they were in those businesses. On one hand, I was really hoping that Jarvis had taken a look at the non-profit sector given my personal history in the sector and my ongoing interest in how non-profits operate. I'll also note that I used to write a fairly well read non-profit marketing blog . Unfortunately, the book doesn't delve into this much, if at all. I thought, instead of a basic set of notes or a book review as I usually do that I'd jump back in time and take a look at the sector with fresh, and "Googley" eyes. If you haven't yet read the book, the basic premise is that Google fundamenta

The Future of Non-Profit Fundraising is Already Here, and You Are Not Ready

This blog post is loosely transcribed from a talk I gave as part of a Future of Non-profits meet up hosted by my buddy  David Neff . I was asked to do no more than 5 minutes and came up with the following. I'm also posting my hand scribbled notes I used to plan the talk, may as well show you my doctor like scribble. The notes were written on my iPad mini using Penultimate in case you were wondering. And now... the talk... Hi everyone and good morning (In my head there is awesome music playing!). My name is Marc Sirkin and I'm currently a Director with PwC, focused on helping organizations transform their digital marketing and social media. I spent 10 years in the non-profit sector, with large health charities such as March of Dimes, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and Autism Speaks. Most recently, I've been volunteering and doing pro-bono work for much smaller organizations focused on mentoring and youth. Before I jump in, let me warn you, I'm extremely enam

Disconnect - 3 keys to disconnecting while on vacation

Previously posted on Medium , reposted here. I blog so infrequently, I figure I need to repurpose as much content as I can! (Photo by Marc Sirkin, Utah Mountains 2013) Even before mobile/smartphones I was bad; sneaking away to check email, reading business books or memos while on the beach, working on proposals or ideas at the pool. All behaviors of someone who would rather lose himself in work, instead of being present with family, focusing on clearing the mind and having a good time. Over the past few years I’ve improved my efforts to disconnect. I did however notice that it would take 2 or 3 days to fully disconnect. Similar to an addict, I’d have dreams about work, fanatically check in and have to almost physically restrain myself from replying to emails. It was bad, very bad. I’d come back from work up to date, but feeling like I hadn’t even had time off. As my kids grew older, it became more and more important to disconnect from work and get focused on my family and fri