Flutterby™! : Cotonou vs Black Rock City 2012-07-28 17:36:51.750472+00

Cotonou vs Black Rock City

2012-07-28 17:36:51.750472+00 by meuon 2 comments

[Hotel Du Port, at night, Coutonou Benin Africa, An oasis in a shipyard]

Hotel Du Port, at night, Cotonou Benin
Right in the middle of a container ship yard.

Cotonou

There is a strange mix of luxury and hardship.
Diesel Fumes and Strange Machine Noises mixed with techno from the nightclub next door.... all night long.
An oasis, in the middle of the desert.
Drinking water is important.
Waking up with noises of someone building something large... 6 feet from your head.
People in strange colorful outfits, or not much at all.

> Black Rock City: Ditto. Same but different.

Today, this bald pudgy geek watched a complete failure.. of, well, just a about everything. 3000+ms sproradic pings on a wireless network, the GSM backup network down, and the HVAC at the main data center failed, and a line of people trying to buy power about 3 blocks long. I'm freaking. Fabrice and I grab scooter taxies (any guy on a scooter or small motorcycle it seems, a yellow short helps but is not required), and with my laptop bag we zoom to the main office. Walk in and it's at least 105f in the computer room. No big deal the IT director says, the network is always up and down, the people will wait. This happens every day.

As it turns out, the database load had approx 80% of the meter encryption keys wrong, so we had to reload the data conversion. Which took 5+ hours. The real correlative between me an Johnny is the transportation of arcane encryption technology across borders. Some day there wil be an event, and I will face it well, just for the humor value.

Using an genetically and cyborgically enhanced albino dolphin (ala Johnny Mnenomic) would have been much kewler.