The Keymaster

So as far as I can figure the company that I work must be at the center point of some crazy energies. You know, kind of like in Ghostbusters where there was the apartment building 55 Central Park West that Sigourney Weaver's character (Dana Barrett) lives in. The building itself was built by a leader of an apocalyptic cult designed to gather psycho-kinetic energy that would power a portal and would let Gozer and his minions through. Because of that it was the center of and the reason for all the paranormal activity in New York City (Wikipedia Ghostbusters) Anyway my office place is kind of like that but it's all weird energy not that bad psycho-kinetic energy that one would need to to open a portal for an ancient sumerian God to come through.

Yesterday I did something really crazy, I attempted to use the database and in doing so I brought it to it's knees, KNEES! See we use something Oracle calls "advanced data replication", and the only thing advanced about it is how much it likes to make you get down on your knees and admit who your Daddy is. If I had to guess I'd say it was probably first called "data replication" and it was only after they got the feature working that they realized what a cluster fuck it was they created and it was then that they added "advanced" to it. I mean I know if something is called "advanced" I tend to avoid it because all advanced says to me is, buckle down hombre and prepare yourself to become the pinata of whatever it is your trying to use. Just for reference Oracle defines advanced replication as so:

What is replication and why should one use it?

Replication is the process of creating and maintaining replica versions of database objects (e.g. tables) in a distributed database system.

Replication can improve performance and increase availability of applications because alternate data access options becomes available. For example, users can access a local database rather than a remote server to minimize network traffic. Furthermore, the application can continue to function if parts of the distributed database are down as replicas of the data might still accessible.

Anyway, apparently advanced replication is not advanced enough to replicate 500,000 records, I could go into why this is, but you know it really doesn't matter, really it just doesn't. I did my updates on Tuesday at about 1:45pm and by COB that day the updates still hadn't finished on the target database. Then on Wednesday our DBA stopped by and was like "Yeah those updates, still haven't finished" and then a little bit later she came by with a piece of paper showing what still had to be done on the target database and suprise suprise it didn't seem to have done any of them. So my pennance for yesterday was to watch and provide moral support as our DBA tried to kill all the stuck processes and then manually run the updates one at a time. I think if I had a choice I would have tried to bite my tongue off and then let myself drown on my own blood before going through that again.... oh wait I do have to do it again TOR!

Really that wasn't all that weird it, not enough to warrant this post, but I had to vent, really I did, if there was a Santa Claus that mofo would be bringing be coal because well I've just been quite an asshole. Anyway the weird stuff is when co-workers bring their significant others in and then the significant person hangs out for the next two hours. Sometimes the significant person goes and takes smoke breaks with this co-worker and other times the significant person just walks around with them as the co-worker converses with other co-workers. I mean doesn't that strike anyone as weird, or inappropriate. I mean I could understand bringing your kids in if school was closed and you couldn't get anyone to watch them, but a grown adult stopping by and staying at their significant others work place at least once a week is just silly.

Then there is mini-deuce's inability to understand that when you wear jeans that are a little to big that either underwear or a belt is required when you choose to sit backwards in a chair. Plumber crack never looked so jawsome. Oh then there is our DBA who tends to send out OOO (out of office) emails at 3pm when she isn't going to be in the next day, like two hours notice is enough time to get any work done that needed to be done the next day.

Maybe if I'm lucky Sigourney Weaver will knock on my door and ask if I am the key master, then again maybe I will just go home and cry myself to sleep.