Day: January 20, 2016

I found the problem

by dougpete, posted in Computers, Just Rambling

Like many people, I woke this morning, put on the coffee, turned on the news, and grabbed my computer to check out any messages that I received on Twitter last night.

Sadly, nothing.

That’s unusual because usually there are some interactions from my friends in Europe.  Oh well, maybe they had better things to do.

I decided to check the great and neverending Twitter feed.  Nothing there either.  Literally nothing.

My wifi indicator showed that I was connected.  I tried to hit the CBC News website and it was there with no problem.  Back to Twitter.  Nothing.

I check my news feed to read this.  “Twitter is down for some, and people are freaking out on Facebook“.  Wow.  OK, that would explain the no interactions.  Fortunately, News 360 and Flipboard were up and running so I did my regular morning reading routine.

What could bring Twitter down?

As any computer using person knows, it could be anything.  The thing is that, the more you need it, the higher the chances that it’s not there.  Sort of like setting aside time to do report cards only to have the system crash.

But, the computer savvy among us know exactly what it could have been.  Squirrels.

In fact, there’s a website devoted to infrastructure outages as a result of animals – http://www.cybersquirrel1.com/

So, I filled in the blanks and got the answer.

If you take out a ruler, and line them up, you can see them pointing directly at my house.

Take a wander through time and see all the incidents that have been attributed to animals.  Click on the pin for details and a smile.  Lots of smiles.

So, there’s my theory.  Who’s with me?

Fortunately, squirrels can’t swim or they’d wreak havoc with the underwater cables that keep us connected.  After all, we have it nicely mapped for them.

It’s a fun look at infrastructure if nothing else.

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OTR Links 01/20/2016

by dougpete, posted in Links

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.