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Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

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Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#151
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their role in making him look foolish (what I said, incidentally) is indeed quite minor. If he'd actually done the things he advocated and, frankly, implied that he'd done, he'd still have his images, his downtime would have been close to zero and he'd probably get to write a triumphant article about the value of following his own sage advice. Someone else pointed out in another comment, there's a good analogy to be…

"Their role in making him look foolish (what I said, incidentally) is indeed quite minor." Fair enough. But he's not complaining about looking foolish (nor is grandparent as far as I can see). He's complaining about losing data . In that link he isn't saying "it's your fault no matter what the world throws at you, suck it up." He's saying, "look harder at yourself before you decide somebody else is to blame." Not an…

for the record, I blame 50% hosting provider, 50% myself

Is his tweet. Sounds like blaming to me. I suppose it's a matter of personal taste but if you write about how you're serving your images off S3 and how everyone should be making redundant backups and then get bitten by the fact you somehow wrote about these things but didn't actually do them, you're not looking very hard at yourself.

My simple point is - if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility.

Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#152
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their role in making him look foolish (what I said, incidentally) is indeed quite minor." Fair enough. But he's not complaining about looking foolish (nor is grandparent as far as I can see). He's complaining about losing data . In that link he isn't saying "it's your fault no matter what the world throws at you, suck it up." He's saying, "look harder at yourself before you decide somebody else is to blame." Not an…

for the record, I blame 50% hosting provider, 50% myself Is his tweet. Sounds like blaming to me. I suppose it's a matter of personal taste but if you write about how you're serving your images off S3 and how everyone should be making redundant backups and then get bitten by the fact you somehow wrote about these things but didn't actually do them, you're not looking very hard at yourself. My simple point is - if you…

"Sounds like blaming to me."

I thought we were arguing about whether he cares about looking foolish.

Of course he's blaming them. There's reason to blame them. Regardless of what he did or didn't do, they screwed up. In fact I think he's being very restrained and humble taking 50% of the blame. I'd be fucking pissed if that happened to me. Even if I restored from backups in 30 minutes (extremely optimistic).

"if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility."

Again, the humility he was referring to was to assume first that it was your fault until you determine otherwise for sure. What's that got to do with them screwing up?

You're basically saying: if I act holier-than-thou and advocate backups, then Slicehost or Amazon can give me crappy service because I'm not allowed to 'blame' them or mention how they suck. Which is really weird.

(I feel for the guy. I'm sitting here yakking because I can't connect to my EC2 slice for the last n hours.)

Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#153
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for the record, I blame 50% hosting provider, 50% myself Is his tweet. Sounds like blaming to me. I suppose it's a matter of personal taste but if you write about how you're serving your images off S3 and how everyone should be making redundant backups and then get bitten by the fact you somehow wrote about these things but didn't actually do them, you're not looking very hard at yourself. My simple point is - if you…

"Sounds like blaming to me." I thought we were arguing about whether he cares about looking foolish. Of course he's blaming them. There's reason to blame them. Regardless of what he did or didn't do, they screwed up. In fact I think he's being very restrained and humble taking 50% of the blame. I'd be fucking pissed if that happened to me. Even if I restored from backups in 30 minutes (extremely optimistic). "if you'…

Heh, we are absolutely going to validate the 'comment value drops exponentially with nesting' rule.

I didn't say he deserves crappy service or that his provider didn't screw up by firing his VM into Neptune. What I'm saying is (in 17 different ways, at this point) - if you are a vocal advocate but don't actually practice or believe what you preach, you're not really an advocate or useful commentator but a hack. When circumstances (that incidentally and in part happen to be someone else's fault) expose you as somewhat of a hack, it's a little uncouth to be pointing fingers at others for their much more minor screw-ups. Being a hack is bigger screw-up than accidentally (or through negligence) firing someone's VM into Neptune, that's all.

Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#155
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I often confused Jeff's blog with Daily WTF. Jeff might be self-effacing, but at the same time he also dispenses a lot of programming and software development advice.

Conferring advice does not imply a claim of authority. If I give someone directions to a coffee shop in New York, the recipient should not infer that I am an expert on New York, traffic grids, coffee, etc.

If, on the other hand, you set up a kiosk labeled "NYC Directions" on a corner, I'd assume you knew more about getting around the city than your average bear.

Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#156
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're thinking of Daily WTF. Jeff's blog is/was just a programming blog. He also frequently said he was the world's worst coder, so...

Well, he did make sure to tell us to shut up, stop what we're doing and make a back-up. Because he knows things, you see: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:2HHNAk2SB6EJ:www.codingh...

Actually, it was JWZ who said that.

Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#157

1. Register an Amazon AWS S3 account - https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/registration/... 2. Download my S3 backup script (or anyone's S3 Backup script) - http://github.com/leftnode/S3-Backup 3. Set up a cron to push hourly/daily/whatever tar's of your vhost's directory to S3. Spend, like, $10 a month. Thats 30gb of storage, 30gb up and 30gb down. Now, I know that may not be a lot, but I doubt codinghorr…

I do the same thing, with a script using ruby s3sync I wrote a while ago (that I should probably update): http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-bulletproof-server-backups-w...

Thanks for s3sync!

Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#159
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing, with a script using ruby s3sync I wrote a while ago (that I should probably update): http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-bulletproof-server-backups-w...

s3sync is great. I'm using it for automated backups for a number of work projects. Thank you for writing it and sharing it.

Oops I should clarify: "script using ruby s3sync I wrote a while ago"

I wrote a bash script that uses s3sync (not written by me). You can thank the s3sync community for that! :-) http://s3sync.net/wiki

Re: Coding Horror and blogs.stackoverflow.com experience "100% Data Loss"

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but if you pay for a mission critical service and never bother testing it, you've pretty much passively decided to fail.

Joining the chorus of other people saying "WRONG". Reason 1: I pay for my bank account one way or another. It's bank's responsibility to keep the system running and secure, not mine. Sometimes we just can't do everything ourselves and have to rely on others. Reason 2: Many of us host something somewhere. How many do backups? How many of us check the backups? How many do check the backups checking process? (enter infi…

> It's bank's responsibility to keep the system running and secure, not mine.

As others have pointed out, it is your responsibility to check your bank statements to ensure that all is secure. But also, with banks you're dealing with money that is easily replaceable. If your card is compromised that money is gone but if it's their fault (or criminal) the bank will replace that money. Your data is not replaceable -- when it's gone, it's gone.

"Many of us host something somewhere. How many do backups? How many of us check the backups? How many do check the backups checking process?"

True you do have to stop somewhere -- but there is due diligence and there's negligence. Making sure you are making offsite backups and periodically testing them is due diligence. On the otherhand, completely relying on someone else to backup your critical data is negligence. If your data is at all important to you, then you need to have a copy. But at some point you have to accept that you've done enough.

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