Computers and cycles

I used to work mornings. Early mornings. This meant that at 5:00, I needed to be in the NOC, checking for alerts at our customers.

Every day, there would be minor issues between 5 and 8. They varied from network issues to services stalling, but they would clear up before 8. It wasn't until I started asking the night person (later) about it that he commented that night is pretty quiet, save for a few actual alarms, but mornings always had issues that would usually clear themselves up.

We've got a pretty wide base of customers, so I think it's a good test set, but I never really could figure out why this would happen.

Another strange thing is; holidays are generally quiet. Even today, black friday, I'm at work while almost all of our customers are not, and it's quiet. This wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that the weekends aren't as quiet as holidays.

I know computers will always suffer from random cosmic-ray-related failures, and these failures should not care whether it's Christmas or not, but that doesn't change reality.

Even light user use doesn't explain why servers that work on weekdays get more failures on weekends than holidays.

Guess computers need days off too.