Bits and Pieces
Jan. 22nd, 2013 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firstfrostAnonymous took out MIT's DNS service this afternoon, so all the people who put off backing up their email until the day before deactivation suddenly were SURE THAT THEY WOULD NOT BE DONE AND IT WAS NOT THEIR FAULT. So it's been a bit hectic here, on top of the general three day weekend of tickets for people suddenly thinking to be worried about deactivation.
Normally I'm pretty helpful, but deactivation kind of brings out the worst in me. I can't just help all the people who say "but could I keep my account for another year because please?". And I get frustrated with the people who essentially boil down to "I ignored the warnings until now so please give me more time." I kind of wilfully misunderstand people who say "Can you postpone deactivation" - no, it's a great big process, it involves nearly 10,000 users, we can't put the whole thing off a month because you need more time. Yes, I probably did know that wasn't what you meant. Most of the time, it's my job to be helpful, and it's only the really entitled cranky people who put my back up ("It's a disgrace that I'm still having to deal with someone about this. It shouldn't be so hard in a world-class institution like MIT to give me the exact thing that I want, regardless of any technical or logistical issues with my idea. I'm very busy, so stop wasting my time."). But deactivation is all about not being helpful, not giving people what they want. Oh well.
Things also got a little backed up because I was on vacation for a week (My family went to California for late-Christmas, and promptly all got sick. So we sat around like sleepy sick lumps on the couch. It was not the most exciting of vacations, but I guess if I'm going to be a lump on the couch, being a lump wiht adorable (if sick) nieces is better than not.) and then while I was out, Jacob got sick too. So poor Stuart had an extra-busy time of it.
It sounds like the Dragon run while I was gone went reasonably well - the method of "plan the first draft of the run a week in advance and then let![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mjperson mull it over for a whole week" definitely works. If we keep sticking to this "only run about half as often as usual" schedule we might even be able to do it again.
Oh, and whenmjperson and ilhander came to get us from the airport, there were apparently Mysterious Hiding Elevators, sort of like when you go north in Comet out of sight of land and the Broken Lands aren't there any more. "Okay, we're going to walk from this elevator over to *that* one, and go down a level, and walk back to here, because this elevator just ISN'T THERE on the floor below this." Life is always a little bit more fictional with Mike and Eon. :)
Normally I'm pretty helpful, but deactivation kind of brings out the worst in me. I can't just help all the people who say "but could I keep my account for another year because please?". And I get frustrated with the people who essentially boil down to "I ignored the warnings until now so please give me more time." I kind of wilfully misunderstand people who say "Can you postpone deactivation" - no, it's a great big process, it involves nearly 10,000 users, we can't put the whole thing off a month because you need more time. Yes, I probably did know that wasn't what you meant. Most of the time, it's my job to be helpful, and it's only the really entitled cranky people who put my back up ("It's a disgrace that I'm still having to deal with someone about this. It shouldn't be so hard in a world-class institution like MIT to give me the exact thing that I want, regardless of any technical or logistical issues with my idea. I'm very busy, so stop wasting my time."). But deactivation is all about not being helpful, not giving people what they want. Oh well.
Things also got a little backed up because I was on vacation for a week (My family went to California for late-Christmas, and promptly all got sick. So we sat around like sleepy sick lumps on the couch. It was not the most exciting of vacations, but I guess if I'm going to be a lump on the couch, being a lump wiht adorable (if sick) nieces is better than not.) and then while I was out, Jacob got sick too. So poor Stuart had an extra-busy time of it.
It sounds like the Dragon run while I was gone went reasonably well - the method of "plan the first draft of the run a week in advance and then let
mjperson mull it over for a whole week" definitely works. If we keep sticking to this "only run about half as often as usual" schedule we might even be able to do it again.Oh, and when
mjperson and ilhander came to get us from the airport, there were apparently Mysterious Hiding Elevators, sort of like when you go north in Comet out of sight of land and the Broken Lands aren't there any more. "Okay, we're going to walk from this elevator over to *that* one, and go down a level, and walk back to here, because this elevator just ISN'T THERE on the floor below this." Life is always a little bit more fictional with Mike and Eon. :)![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 03:26 am (UTC)Providing a site (or a thumb drive, or whatever) with downloadable copies of everything you own would probably make them happier, but would be a ton of work to implement, and more work to support (and answer questions a year later about how to read the thumb drive) and yeah, they're not really our clients at the point at which we are trying to pry their fingers off of our infrastructure, so doing the ton of work for them is probably not going to be anyone's priority.
(AFS backups are in fact kept around for ages; kerberos principals are (this is new) unable to get tickets after deactivation, so it's harder to do much to get at the old AFS stuff even with a local account.)