Flashes of Panic

Sometime after the sad server incident, one of my co-workers said something like, “What would we have done if you hadn’t been here?”

Leaving aside the obvious answer (“Well, you would have hired someone competent,”) I started thinking about what might have happened if I’d been on vacation, or hit by a PVTA bus while running, or run off to graduate school. And it occurred to me that I should probably do a better job of documenting all this stuff, because even if they did hire someone competent, I’d still need to explain everything I’d done, and (in some cases) why, so they could take care of it.

But documenting is something geeks are really pretty bad at. We like solving problems; explaining the solution is somewhat boring once the solution has been applied. So I’ve been trying to find fun ways to document stuff.

I ended up installing UseModWiki on our intranet server, because then I could be entertained somewhat by the process. And, in the process, I could allow others in the company to not only read the documentation, but highlight bits that were unclear or make changes if they needed to.

Next I need to make sure that all the information about troubleshooting the intranet server is available somewhere else, because what if the problem was that you couldn’t reach the documentation?

Now playing: Boxing from Ben Folds Five by Ben Folds Five