🦈 Sharks, Oysters, and Technological Fossils

If yesterday was a struggle against the Windows ecosystem, today was a full-blown journey into a digital archaeological dig. It was a "Monday sort of Tuesday," spent putting out multi-state server fires before heading out to St Helens for a system deployment that turned into a proper battle with the past.

Given the nature of the voyage, the Shirt Du Jour was remarkably prophetic: a vintage "Quint's Shark Charter - Amity Island" tee. As it turned out, I definitely needed a bigger boat.

The client in question makes his living harvesting oysters out on the water, which meant no pre-arrival phone checks while he was out on the lease. I marched in with a brand-new modem under my arm, ready to upgrade a dead connection, only to hit the first major curveball of the day: the client is still running on ADSL. In this day and age! No modern modem in plastic wrap was going to coax a signal out of those ancient copper lines.

The retro tech tour didn't stop there. Upon setting up the brand-new system rig, I discovered the existing monitor was a dinosaur sporting only VGA and DVI inputs—completely incompatible with modern video outputs.

Still, we managed to secure a partial victory. The new system is physically assembled and ready to rock. I managed to rig up a temporary 4G/5G mobile connection as a single-machine stop-gap to keep them operational, and a shiny new 27" modern monitor has officially been ordered to put the old VGA screen out of its misery.

As for the rest of the deployment? In the fullness of time, at the appropriate juncture, it will all come together. The client will work with their ISP to get the ADSL line sorted while I am away, because this Friday, I'm boarding a flight for a week-long trip up to Sydney.

Three steps forward, two steps back, but the heading is still correct. Time to put the tools down for the evening! 🦪📺✈️