01
Monitoring
A cat knows when something is wrong with a server. Unfortunately, it communicates this by staring at you.
FIELD NOTES / EST. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN COFFEE AND PRODUCTION
Cats don't understand IT.
IT people don't understand cats.
Yet somehow both spend most of their time sitting near expensive equipment and looking like they know exactly what they're doing.
$ systemctl status cat
● cat.service - Domestic Cat
Loaded: loaded
Active: active (sleeping)
Process: 1842
Memory: 847M
CPU: 0.2%
Status: occupying keyboard
Last action:
sat on laptop
Next action:
unknownTHE RELATIONSHIP
A surprisingly stable infrastructure.
02
High availability
Cats are remarkably good at being available whenever you're trying to join an important meeting.
03
Resource management
Every laptop is a heated platform, every server rack is a potential sleeping area, and every cable is apparently edible.
“The best debugging technique is to explain the problem to a cat. The cat will leave. You will then realize the answer yourself.”
— probably not a real quote, but it works
RECENT NOTES
Things observed in production.
FIELD NOTE 001
Why does the cat always sit on the keyboard?
Because the keyboard is where the human's attention is.
Read note → INCIDENT REPORT 002The 03:17 server outage
A cable disappeared. The cat was unavailable for comment.
Read note → MONITORING 003Monitoring the cat
CPU, memory, uptime and the mysterious 04:00 zoomies.
Read note →