I got stuck on a lunchtime video conference today with some people in my department and a vendor. I hate meetings at noon, but with timezones being a factor, it was the only available time the vendor could meet. Usually, I’m only on these for technical consultation, so I rarely need to speak other than to clarify a point or answer questions about our infrastructure. Those are usually toward the end of the meeting.
That said, I just muted myself and ate at my desk because I was starving and would have plenty of time to eat a quick bite before it got to the point where I had to say anything.
What I did not realize was that even though I was muted, my webcam was on. So 6 people I work with plus three vendors all watched me eat a bag of tacos, and no one said anything!
Like, when I eat a taco with people around, I do eat it in a dignified way. Less so when I’m alone (or think I’m alone) and wolfing it down before I have to do something So, yeah, it was not a pretty sight.
I’m still mortified, but at least I am laughing about it as I’m typing this out.
My day consisted of users complaining about speed, everything on analytics looked fine, I checked some random high demand applications and they indicated that they were waiting on network IO pretty consistently, so I go to check the file server where the data for those apps is centrally located with no redundancy, and I managed to… Turn off the network interface on the file server.
🤦♂️
Don’t ask me how, I’m still confused about it myself. My manager calls me not 5 minutes later after he got a call from the client. I’m sitting there absolutely shitting myself trying to figure out how to turn the network card back on, and every method I’m trying to use to connect to the system is failing.
Even my manager had some serious trouble trying to figure it out.
Took about 45 minutes until the system was back on the network. Right at the end of the day, on one of the busiest days of the year for that specific customer.
I feel really stupid.