Milestone

Those of us who work on web sites for a living know that there is certain milestone nearly all of us reach at some point. It's called "Crashing the Website".

It's just one of those things. You make a change, test the change, then upload the wrong file. Or forget an essential step. Or accidentally delete a critical thing. I've done it several times. All you can do is keep your cool and be ready to troubleshoot in a hurry.

One morning last week I walked into the office and stopped to say "hi" to the Golfer. We didn't get very far in our conversation before SWoAN (She Without A Nickname) ran up and shouted, "OoRah just crashed the website!"

It's always fun when there's a full-scale crisis and I haven't even made it to my desk yet. I wandered into the main part of the office where SWoAN, Merik and OoRah were scrambling and shouting.

Together, we got the problem sorted out pretty quickly and fixed. As the website churned back to life I looked over at OoRah and said, "Is this the first time you've ever crashed our website?" OoRah looked concerned. "Yes?..." he replied. "Congratulations!", I shouted. "You're a real boy now!"

Sometimes I look back on the things that I say to our former Marine, and I'm amazed that he lets me live.

Anyway, it was 5 or 10 minutes later when Big Dawg came into the office. "You missed all the fun!", I told him. "OoRah is a real boy now!"

"What?", Big Dawg asked. "Did he crash the entire web site?"

"Yes!"

There were several loud noises from SWoAN's direction. She was valiantly attempting to contain choking laughter while trying not to fall out of her chair. "You knew!", she shouted, amazed. "Big Dawg, how did you know?"

Big Dawg grinned. "It's just one of those things."