I am in charge of 273 databases at sites throughout the world, some of them
in places with no electricity where we have an elephant on a treadmill
supplying power. I personally had to once step in for the elephant when he
was feeling under the weather.
All of these databases are 26 x 8, meaning 26 hours a day eight days a week
since we have to deal with the additional day caused by the international
date line, and two extra hours because of some places have weird time zones.
On certain days the International Time committee adds a leap second to the
day which means that on those days I have to work an extra second * 273
databases which adds up to several minutes.
On 19 of those databases, due to the lack of funds for storage, I have to do
a backup to paper, i.e. I have to manually read every table through select
statements and write them down on paper using a broken pencil.
We are planning on sending a few databases out onto satellites, one of them
on a probe to Neptune. I will also be in charge of the backup/uptime for
those mission-critical systems, since they will be used as the back-end for a
website that receives thousands of hits per minute (a Britney Spears fan club site).
I am the only human DBA. We have three helper monkeys at remote locations
but they are currently on strike.
I have to run off now because the coffee machine is broken and no one is
here to fix it except me. I had to carve my own coffe cup out of wood because I can't afford ceramic.
