So I’ve been out of touch the last two weeks. I blame work and and its little projects that go along with it. I work in a data storage team and I mostly help out with the backup side of things. This involves moving backups to an offsite storage facility or recalling other tapes to write more data on them. We have a lot of tapes. Thousands of the little buggers. Some are ancient things, others are cutting edge.

For the last couple of weeks I have been attempting to audit the tapes so that we get a picture of where they are and which tapes are still relevant. So at this point I am up to one of the most painful points in this “adventure”. I have to find every tape that is currently in offsite storage. This means driving out to the storage facility and going through their vault of tapes and look at tapes, scan them with a gun while comparing the list I have. There are thousands of tapes. I am doing this on my own.

Normally I do very well by myself very well. However, I am a guest to this storage facility. The tapes are stored in a place that is a mix between a military bunker and a bank vault. The two and sometimes three people that inhabit this underground concrete grotto have slowly become insane due to their insular environment. At least this is what I swear has happened. On my first day there, two of them would scream each other names. All damn day. So some heavy gauge headphones and the loud music of Venetian Snares, Deftones, Circle Pit, Crystal Castles and others have helped. But I still have about another week of this.

Thank the gods there’s a booze importer across the road. Speaking of which, this is where I picked up this:

Beer with Ralph Steadman labels. Normally I don’t drink American Beers, but I do need to give this a try. Will let you know how it goes.