Of network re-wiring and new servers
Science doesn’t take a holiday (or at least it doesn’t in my new catchphrase) but many scientists do. As a result, my boss and I are doing significant projects while most people are out of their labs.
Last Friday we re-wired most of a network closet. It was tedious, but since very very very few people were using the network at the time it didn’t really cause any problems with ongoing research, and the results are considerably prettier and easier to work with than the old ‘wherever it fits’ approach. I’m not sure when we’ll finish that closet, though.
We’re also working on a new file server for one lab in particular. They have a lot of proteomic data, so they need quite a bit of storage: twenty terabytes. (I am quite certain we’ll all laugh at this capacity in ten years: “OMG can you believe that we thought that was huge?!”.) My first task was explaining what a terabyte is; all these scientists deal with milli- and micro- and nano- and pico-, not with mega- and giga- and tera- and peta-, so the scale of the new array is a bit beyond them at the moment.
The new server arrived fully assembled from the vendor, but apparently nobody warned my boss that the package would weigh about 150 pounds (i.e., as much as me). Turns out he’s never done any sort of weightlifting, so I had to kind of walk him through a rudimentary squat move so we could get it off the floor. I will confess that I found his expressions pretty amusing; however, his cursing remained in English and did not slip into French, so apparently he didn’t find it that bad. (He did revert to his native language once we got the stupid thing into the rack: a curt “Bon.” summarized it for both of us.) When it came to installing the new server, though, I wound up climbing very carefully through the tangle of wires behind the rack to connect the new server to everything. Joy. I don’t mind the small spaces, but I HATE thinking that my misplaced foot is going to knock out a cable and therefore destroy fifteen years of research data.
I might have some interesting news on the work front soon, but I officially know absolutely nothing of the situation so I won’t comment here. In the meantime, though, I still have plenty to work on, so I won’t lose myself to speculation.
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