/var/log/vadept.log

At 10:00pm on 3/18/09, I went down to the InReach building at 4635 Georgetown Place to move my one lone server out of their colocation area.  I got a call 2 days prior saying that they are shuffling everyone left in the building over to their rack at Pac-West telecom.  They are moving out of that building.  That building that I helped wire, that I helped setup, that I spent more hours there than anywhere.

I got to walk around the vast empty InReach building.  I knew where all of my desks were throughout the almost 10 years I worked there.  Looked at the tiny pieces of CAT-5 jumpers that I wired by hand well over 10 years ago.  My eyes started to tear up to realize that I’ll probably never ever see the inside of that building again.  I spent most of my teenage years confined within that small building working on servers, putting out fires, dealing with shit that now-days I could of never deal with.  Remembering the laughs, the long nights, the sitting at my desk wondering how in the fuck I was going to fix this server (but yet always did), the walks to McDonalds.  A ton of people who read this (or my LJ) worked there and grew up there with me.  That faculity saw the birth and the move of DeadJournal and housed zillions of bytes of data that I could never replace.

I unracked my one server, and followed Mike over to Pac-West.  Considering that over 10 years ago VAdept (this server) started out in the PacWest colo was sorta ironic.  I could still hear the sounds of the Ascend modem boxes heating up the room like huge rackmount hair-dryers.  Visualizing the USR 5+U modem chassis with the HyperDSP cards (that could never work right).  The smell of a real colocation faculity, and how a few times I slept on that cold raised floor hearing the air woosh under it while waiting for an array to rebuild.  Remembering the time Andy formatted a web-server array by accident, then said “See ya!” and left me there to restore from tape (you dick, I still remember that.. ).  It was a very weird and awkward feeling to be there again.  Everything looked exactly how I remembered it to be.

So since I was there, I decided to help Mike rack the gear that he brought over from customers who didn’t care enough to drive down to move their own damn computers.  It was such a weird feeling, that its hard to describe what it was like to be sitting in that colocation again after so many years.  In a way its fitting that my server ended back up to where it was born, with real generator power, real Halon and temperature monitoring, real 24/7 NOC, a “real” facility.

But using the same rackmount screws, the same power cord, and the same piece of cat-5 I’ve used for years and years; I’ve managed to pocket a few handfuls of dirt from the grave of the InReach colo.  Really, my server is its legacy.

DDoS at faculity. Leveling everything. DJ, VAdept, email, dns, everything. Its down, dont bother going to it, its not working.

It looks like www.surbl.org is the target, which I unfortunally run a web mirror for. Yay me.

On the upside, I did get to go and visit with a bunch of old InReach people I havent talked to in 2+ years. Glad to see everyone is doing fine and dandy over there.

I feel horrrible about it. I’m afraid my colo is going to boot me for this (though I dont see why, these things happen, and I pay them good money). But still, other people are effected because of my equipment.

Exciting stuff this weekend that I should write about:

Ugh.. Well, I suppose I better start looking for new housing for DJ in case the shit its the fan over there and im out of a home.

Lame, that really fucked my day over.

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http://www.mobileprocorp.com/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 11/01/05
MobilePro Acquires InReach Internet
Transaction Expected to Add Over $5M in Annual Revenue, be Accretive to Earnings

Bethesda, MD, November 1, 2005 — MobilePro Corp. (OTC Bulletin Board: MOBL) announced today that it has acquired InReach Internet, a leading independent Internet service provider based in Stockton and Oakland, Calif. Terms were not disclosed.

Jay Wright, MobilePro chairman and CEO, said, “InReach is a highly respected California-based ISP. Not only will the acquisition immediately add to our revenue and cash flow per share, it also provides us a solid base of operations for our wireless build-out of Sacramento and other cities in Northern California. I look forward to working with Lisa Bickford and her team to maintain InReach’s tradition of excellent customer service while bringing new products to InReach’s customers, such as local voice service, long distance and cellular service and expanding InReach’s high-speed connectivity product mix.