Lynch mob.

Probably time for the tech to dust off the resume.

The backups were unreadable? Is that a polite way of saying they had it misconfigured and weren't making backups?

Only 1 backup for 38 billion dollars?

Its not the IT tech who formatted the thing that should be fired, its his boss.

There was no witch hunt,

Is it considered a hunt if you *know* who did it and where they are?

Its not the IT tech who formatted the thing that should be fired, its his boss.

Nah, he's been promoted for his efforts to cut costs.

So that's what the "ANY" key does

labman [TotalFark]:

The backups were unreadable? Is that a polite way of saying they had it misconfigured and weren't making backups?

Either that or the jackass in charge of backing up the data has just been re-using the same tape over and over and it finally melted.

Something tells me they should hire less Eskimos and more properly trained techs to do the work.

And fire nanooks ass in the process. I wonder how much this little fiasco cost the taxpayers?

Oil hitting anus in 3.. 2..

Backups 9 times out of 10 seem to be completely farked!

I had an associate on a client site I was on years ago that found out that the truncate command in Oracle is much faster than the speed of light, bad news, or bullshiat. The nice thing is that if you don't run commit (at least as we were configured at the time) you could rollback no harm done. Nope, this guy yanked the network device out of his laptop in a vain attempt to prevent the truncate command from completing. Oddly enough, our system was configured to auto commit in the case of a connection drop. Well needless to say it did.

We went after the backup tapes and they were unreadable. They were produced the night before and were "verified" as part of the process.

Bleh!

Yeah. "Ooops! I think it was about 38 billion dollars in the fund. Yeah. Let's go with that."

/Walk away with hands in pockets, whistling innocently.

I did that to my d-drive last week....lost a ton of tunes and photos. Except I didn't really delete them...the drive went fubar and took 'em out.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Two words-- cold sweat.

Dearest in Christ,

I am Nanook Johnson, Barrister for the Alaska Department of Revenue...

etc.

Yeah but I bet that tech would never ever lose the porn he's discovered while doing routine maintenance on other people's computers.

Oddly enough, our system was configured to auto commit in the case of a connection drop.

whiskey
tango
foxtrot.

drsewell: So that's what the "ANY" key does

Where the hell's the "ANY" key????

ahwahoo2006
Where the hell's the "ANY" key????

Please tell me you're kidding...

Computer Glitch Causes random Capitalization Of words in Middle of Sentence

/grammar nazi
//I before E except in Heil!

ooooh.

that's a spankin'.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but what actually got deleted was the Permanent Fund rolls, right? It's not like the money in the fund was ever in jeopardy, just the list of dividend recipients. Which is a pain in the ass, but ain't going to bankrupt the state. Well, bankrupt it more.

krelborne: Nah, he's been promoted for his efforts to cut costs.

Yeah, those backup tapes are farking expensive! And have you seen the prices for robotic libraries?

Subby
Oops, my bad

At least you apologized for all those extraneous capital letters. You're forgiven.

Couldn't they have just sent the hard drive to one of those recovery places?
If it's a common OS, Unix, Windows, whatever, I can recover formatted drives with almost 100% success with a $200 software app....Whole lot cheaper than their $200,000.

I can't wait til I get my MCSE!

JimmyJones: If it's a common OS, Unix, Windows, whatever, I can recover formatted drives with almost 100% success with a $200 software app

Maybe he wrote zeros to the drives, or maybe they have one of those super secret DOD-certified drive erasing programs

LilDave

Backups 9 times out of 10 seem to be completely farked! ...

We went after the backup tapes and they were unreadable. They were produced the night before and were "verified" as part of the process.

Not if it is fully proceduralized and QC'ed at every step. In a good datacenter, after procedures are tested and signed off on, there are two levels of backup done: Level "1" (performed nightly on that days additions with three separate days backups kept in reserve - grandfather, father and son) and Level "0" (performed weekly backing up everything with full file names and information).

This is not rocket science.

The only backup was the paperwork itself - stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

Sounds like that tech will spend the next several months scanning PDFs.

Having had to handle large boxes of thousands of documents in a short period, I do not envy the several hundred paper cuts he will have.

I actually did something like that once. Where I used to work, we had a cross-reference file that was *HUGE* (at the time). It took up most of a 2 Gig drive, and was the only file on that drive. This file pointed from units, to bags, to cartons, and back. It was the way we knew what was where in our inventory. Because it was so big, and because it was in constant use (24 hour shift work at the factory), it was usually in use when the nightly backup process ran, so it would usually not get backed up.

I was doing some routine maintenance (having to wear several hats: Programmer, DBA, system operator), and I had two terminal windows up. I wanted to clear out a directory so did the typical unix 'rm *'. On the wrong farkin' terminal window...

Five seconds later, my phone starts ringing. Processes all over the plant are erroring out.

Luckily, we did manage to get a back-up of that file the night before. I dumped that back on to the disk, and had to write a program to recreate all of the records that had been created that morning (luckily, we had some redundancy in our files. The unit record also pointed to the bag, carton, or pallet it was pack on).

After that little fiasco, which took about 45 minutes or so to fix, we started to look seriously at data integrity, and management decided that it was cheaper to buy a RAID system with disk mirroring then to lose those records permanently.

After that, we got good back-ups. We'd break the mirror at night, backup to tape, then resynch them in the morning.

By the way, if you ever do something like that, own up to it immediately, and tell your boss how you are going to fix it. If he is a good boss (and mine was), he will keep the hounds of management at bay while you fix the problem.

Ant: Maybe he wrote zeros to the drives,

Possibly, I guess...but even one pass of zero's is typically recoverable...maybe not by the cheap-o software I mentioned, but by the pros, easily enough.

Thank God it wasn't 38 Brazillion dollars.

I'm sure this was entirely an accident.

This is not rocket science.

Except in the case of most excutives. I have worked at 5 different companies. Backups are last on the list of importance until something goes wrong.

Me:"Can I have 5 grand for a better backup system. Copying data to another server is not a good backup plan."
CIO:"Do what you can with what you have"
Me:"Backup server died, can I have a new backup system now?"
CIO:"Do what you can"
CIO:" I deleted my e-mail two weeks ago, can you get it back"
Me:"no, do what you can with what you have..."
Me:"Dang I hate packing my stuff, later dudes"

dittybopper By the way, if you ever do something like that, own up to it immediately, and tell your boss how you are going to fix it. If he is a good boss (and mine was), he will keep the hounds of management at bay while you fix the problem.

You know, I've found this to be true in any job I've ever worked at since I turned 18. The owner of the glass company I worked at for ten years used to say, "Look, we work with a fragile product, it will break. If it does, own up to it, and fix it, that's all I care about. Oh yeah, and try not to let it happen again. But let's face it, it will, it's just the nature of our business."

I've always found that to be good advice no matter where I've been since then. When dealing with volatile products and humans someone is bound to fark up once in a while. Just deal with it and don't cover up any mistakes because that really only makes it worse in the long run.

And Microsoft / Dell only charged them $71,800 to tell them they were totally farked.

/I'm sure global warming had something to do with it, right Al?

JimmyJones: Couldn't they have just sent the hard drive to one of those recovery places?
If it's a common OS, Unix, Windows, whatever, I can recover formatted drives with almost 100% success with a $200 software app....Whole lot cheaper than their $200,000.

I have used Ontrack Data Recovery Software. It has saved me a few times! Well worth $500.

Dryknife

Thank God it wasn't 38 Brazillion dollars.

Or worse yet, 38 Brazillion Gazillion dollars.

/>

"Did you set incremental backups for every night at 11 PM? MOOOOOOOOVE!"

What is his Fark ID?

I'm In Alaska deletin' yer billionz

Database is FBXRD!

Option 1 :$200 to $500 for recovery software.
Option 2 :$200,000 to correct the issue.

Private company, Option 1.
Government, Spend as much as humanly possible.

GG Alaska!

thedarkshadow: I wonder how much this little fiasco cost the taxpayers?

I'm guessing they took the money from the fund itself as it is a dividend payout. It's more likely that it was a ploy to skim off a few million into someones account or for that bridge to nowhere.

dittybopper: I actually...

You, my friend, are a dork.

If the data was worth that much they coulda sent the disk(s) to a data recovery lab. They can pull data off most HDD's even damaged or 'deleted'.

captainorbaggio:
Very clever. I LOL'd.

Kimpak: If the data was worth that much they coulda sent the disk(s) to a data recovery lab. They can pull data off most HDD's even damaged or 'deleted'.

The Alaskan Gov has been trying for years to find a way to end the fund check going out. This only created a 6 month delay where that money was still setting in the bank and getting interest? did the extra interest roll back into the fund or mysteriously disappear?

The thrill of victory, and the agony of delete....

Ant: Maybe he wrote zeros to the drives, or maybe they have one of those super secret DOD-certified drive erasing programs

A ball peen hammer? That's the only certified drive-erasing program I know.

/voting?