I spring out of bed hours early, show up at work three hours ahead of time, log in ready to play with some software … and the entire system is down for an undetermined period of time for no reason that anyone can figure out. I’m literally just sitting here watching people play phone games and gossip. I don’t know how many zillions in company resources are lost every year due to computer crashes, but it must be staggering.
Just a few days ago it was really windy in central Texas. A tree fell across some power lines twenty miles away. It caused a surge that skipped down the line for dozens of miles, knocking off power and crashing systems in every building along the way, or at least those that were too cheap to use proper surge protectors. Our system was knocked to smithereens, everyone one that was logged into our servers — including something on the order of tens of thousands of customers — were kicked off, every single PC inside the building went dead and with it every piec eof data on every spreadsheet that hadn’t been saved, the power flickered, and because our phones go through our comnputers, every phone call dropped in mid sentence. It took over an hour to get everything back up. Again, I don’t know the total dollar lost, but it must be enormous, and this happens here several times a year.
When the world ends, it won’t be with a bang or a whimper, it will be with a completely avoidable systemic electronic crash.