My day of mass technological revolt

Case in point: The other day, I was dealing with a particularly quixotic network problem, intermittent random packet loss across across a VPN as noted by myriad Nagios warnings that would hit on the spur of the moment and inexplicably. Testing the fiber circuit itself revealed no problems, nevertheless intratunnel traffic was showing 50 percent packet loss. Was it the tunnel endpoint having problems? The internal switching? The fiber circuit itself? As in the near future as I'd dig in to test one particular subsystem, the problem would cease and all would be then, like as not for 10 minutes, like as not for 10 hours. Yeah, one of those.

That alone is a real PITA, however for the day I spent fixing it, I was accosted by all manner of other technological failures. My phone without warning refused to make calls and would drop calls where it hadn't done so previously. I was working from a remote site, and my Internet connection that had been rock-solid for many moons hurriedly went flaky. I had a wireless access point on its own bite the dust, gone for good. The coup de grâce was when the coffee machine quit -- in all seriousness. I was either amazingly unlucky, there was an electromagnetic pulse released overhead, or I was being subjected to a phenomenon I call mass technological revolt.

The insidious MTR maladyIn essence

Inside the insidious MTR maladyIn essence, MTR involves an initial technological problem that at that time somehow creates a localized technological war zone. Any number of pieces of technology perhaps succumb to MTR while an event, as a rule in arcane and obtuse ways. In layman's terms, it's as if there was a rabble-rouser that convinced other devices to say, "Hey, screw this guy," and start breaking down. Like a mob, once this idea starts to spread, it catches like wildfire. Earlier you know it, your coffeemaker flips you off and throws a heating element.

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