An outage on the IT Skeptic website and why technology hates me

I hate technology. Really. I work with it every day, but I feel about it the same way that sanitation workers feel about their medium (or the way I HOPE they feel about it). I use technology when I have to, to do what I want to do. But I hate it. And it knows it and it hates me back. Take for example the weekend's outage on this blog.

First of all, sorry about that folks. Sorry for the interruption to service.

I can't contract out of accountability, so this is not an excuse, nor an attempt to weasel out of blame. But the technology picked its moment and attacked.

For most of the past year, I've been working at home. The first time I travel 10,000km from home, the VERY DAY I'm in transit, the following happens:

Dear WestHost Clients,

On Saturday, February 20th at approximately 2:20 p.m. MDT, we experienced some hardware failure as a result of an annual fire system inspection at our Data Center (DC). An inadvertent release of Inergen was triggered in the DC environment. The release was triggered by an actuator that was not removed as required in the DC's pre-test checklist. As such, the entire DC was impacted at some level, however not all servers were affected. This error was not the result of a mistake by WestHost employees, our hardware or systems. The mistake was triggered by an error from a vendor. With that said, we take responsibility and are doing everything we can to restore all systems completely.

There were multiple servers impacted by this outage; some of the servers have had damaged hardware replaced while other servers need to be restored from backups. A large majority of the servers that were affected have since had all services restored and are back online. We still have a few remaining servers that are experiencing problems. We are doing everything we can to restore those remaining servers as quickly as possible.

We apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this outage has caused you. We are committed to providing you with the highest level of service possible. We will be providing more information on your server status throughout the day. Thank you for your patience while we strive to improve our services. Please contact us if we can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

WestHost Management

Just like me they can't contract out of accountability, but hey! these things happen. As I will continue to remind readers, complex systems are inherently broken, and every now and then the broken bits align. On the other hand that doesn't rule out negligence. If there was negligence in this case, I say to that guy that this is a bad time to be unemployed.

But wait! there's more! I'm at the Pink Elephant ITSM Conference in Las Vegas (thank-you guys for the opportunity). Didn't bring a laptop. My PDA wouldn't connect with the Bellagio's wireless. Nor would a number of other folk's devices so it's nothing I did. See how the technology gangs up on me? (Incidentally I am writing this on a laptop loaned from Chris Dancy, the famous ServiceSphere, the maestro of service management social media. Thanks dude. Again. And thanks to Martin from Pink for lending me one yesterday.)

And not only are my websites down but so too are my mail servers. And gmail doesn't tell me it can't get to them. So I don't know. (Thank-you all the people who emailed or tweeted me to warn me - I really appreciate your support.)

Not only didn't I know about the outage but my wife didn't know I was safely in Vegas, because I emailed her to tell her so. She uses the company email server too. (I'm broke. Global cellphone roaming is one of the last remaining great telco scams - I refuse to participate).

I hate technology and it's mutual. (Chris is nervous about lending me his PC now).

Another reason I have this aversion to technology is to try to restore some balance to IT. Technology seduces IT people, and leads them astray, makes then think it's more important than process and people. Take for example Steve Chambers who made an attack on ITIL (and on this conference I'm at, and me personally) recently. Sometimes I thing Steve is too dependent on shock value in his posts. You can read his post if you want (so you get the idea, it's called "The ITIL believers are massing, Pink with embarrassment?"). My comment was:

Folks know I’m no fan of ITIL (and especially not of CMDB – ITSM should have stayed out of technology) so I agree with some of what you say. I take exception to your opinion that I have nothing to say myself in this space [because "Rob England, The IT Skeptic, is the biggest offender here and a self-professed technophobe. Yet he’s preaching to IT staff how to run themselves?!"].

Technology is important to ICT like trucks are important to transport companies. Can’t do it without them but if all you have is mechanics and drivers you’ll go broke. Process is and should be technology agnostic. The mapping comes in the work procedures which MOF does well and ITIL doesn’t try. (At a process level MOF and ITIL are of course very similar and if you think MOF offers more you are confusing process with procedure)

I studied Operations Management for my degree [before the 25 years I've spent working with IT technology] – I could tell a transport company quite a bit about how to arrange their logistics whilst knowing jack shit about how to drive a truck or fix a truck engine.

Mechanics have been the high priests of IT for way too long. It’s not about the technology any more. The reason ITIl got a following in the first place was because techoes with no process break things too often, don’t look after users properly, and have no way of engaging with customers. If techoes could work this out for themselves there would be no ITSM consultants. That’s why we keep you in the back rooms now :D

I could give you some great SAN horror stories – that doesn’t mean the idea of SANs is a bad one (maybe). Likewise ITSM and ITIL – it’s not the theory that’s the problem. Sometimes it is the consultants. As often as not it is the failure of cultural change, of which a consultant can only do and drive so much.

So if you think technology is the means and end of IT, how 'bout you stay in the back room and leave the rest of us to worry about improving IT and meeting customer needs.