tower, my colocated server, wasn't responding. Sure, it responded to pings, but not to any higher level protocol. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I didn't want to drive all the way down to Davie [1] to reboot my server—not after yesterday [2] and not at 4:00 in the morning.
So I call down there and tell them which server to reboot. Now, one of my friends (who is also a client) graciously allowed me to colocate my system with his since he's not using all his allocated bandwidth, and what bandwidth I use isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to what he uses (obligatory commercial plug: Live monarch butterflies! [3]), so I stressed to the technician there to reboot the smaller server, the one sitting on top of the larger, rack mounted one.
Of course they reboot the wrong machine.
Sigh.
Another call down there. This time they hit the right server.
Now, my colocated server is a 486, so it's not the fastest thing in the world. And it does take quite a while for it to check the 17G drive when it doesn't shut down cleanly.
Half an hour later, it's back up and everything is fine.
Until the technician reboots my machine.
Fortunately, it's a clean shutdown, but why the second reboot? Especially when I didn't ask for it.
Sheesh!