Monday, November 21, 2005

Sometimes Doing the Right Thing Sucks

Alright. Confession. I didn't win the Trifecta/Tri Challenge that we have been so worked up about. Why? Because I Did The Right Thing. And it Really Blows.

My team stood up and made sure that everything was working. We didn't run fast, but we stayed up and running. We did the tasks that we said we would. We did the end to end processing of teh CAM model's data. We stood up a Wide Area GPFS file system and it worked. Not the best, but it survived some rough spots. We did what the other team could not on the first try.

The other team got too ambitious on the first try and they fell down. They completely failed the StorCloud Challenge. They pushed their servers too hard immediately and they died.

So why didn't we win?

They got a second chance and I was the one that was responsible for making sure that it worked. Huh? Why?

The reason was that I was on the StorCloud Committee for the express purpsoe of making sure that the file systems worked for the various users of StorCloud at SC05. That means that all users of the StorCloud assets that needed help with their file systems. That means even the other Challenge participants. That means even a team I am competing with.

I could have passed the buck under the mumble words of 'conflict of interest' under the guise that I'd not be responsible either for the success or failure of the other team. What it really meant was either the students would be responsible or the other person working on file systems who was burnt out would be. Either way, it'd be a failure for the team. So. I stood up and did the work. I take pride in what I do and it worked.

Even when it means my own undoing.

So.

We lost.

The other team had outright won the analytics challenge and had higher bandwidth numbers.

So. We lost.

Doing the right thing sucks.


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