I hit the lottery and then some. This dog's got a new bitch. The downside is that as bad as shit is here at $MegaCorp, I'm doing the Obama brush-it-off-my-shoulder routine because she makes me that happy. Lassie's not here today, though; she's gone all week at a conference. Even that I can handle but yesterday I got stuck with a ticket from $CountryCo and the chinks in my new, non-unhappy MildlyAnnoyedPuppy armour appeared.

Need help for Disaster Recover(DR) installation?
Is it possible to install $YourBigApp with out accessing the database server?
What type of parameters we need to set in DR setup?
Please do the needful by reply today.

What the fuck? It's bad enough that he doesn't know the difference between DR and HA (high-availability) but this pigfucker wants to install what's more or less a giant fucking front end for a database without actually having a database.

Dear Pigfucker,

You write that you've installed $OurBigApp successfully before and you must therefore know that access to the database is required for this. What would you do with a database front-end application which can't connect to the database?

[explanation of HA and methods of implementation]

Love,
REC

And that should've been the end of it. I went home and ReallyBadDoggie-styled Lassie one more time before she left for her conference and the world was again good.

Until today.

I'd already woken up in a foul mood with a hangover from drinking Kölsch beer last night and no hot bitch asleep on my shoulder meaning no morning festivities before I left for the Panopticon. I arrived to find a response from Pigfucker.

As we have told you we have installed $YourBigApp in all environment with database access.Now we need to have the DR environment wherein we need installation of $YourBigApp .But we are told that we won't have database connectivity.According to our understanding,while installing $YourBigApp ,it asks for database connectivity.So we are not sure as to how we can go forward with the installation without the database connectivity.
   Secondly we are told that we need to have a clone of Production environment.We have checked in knowledge base and have not found any document regarding this.So, can you pls inform about the process of cloning an existing $YourBigApp environment.

Lassie is fond of saying, "Stupid should be painful," and she's right. Unfortunately it's usually their stupid and my pain. I hadn't missed its comforting shape but I returned my noggin to the my-head-shaped-dent in front of my keyboard.

You cannot "go forward". You can't go backwards. Without a database to connect a database front end to you cannot move. You cannot install $OurBigApp without database connectivity. You cannot use $OurBigApp without database connectivity. Without a database containing data $OurBigApp can't do anything.

That you were told by your management you need $OurBigApp to be cloned in no way requires us to design a method to do so. $OurBigApp has no method for cloning environments. By its very nature it cannot be cloned.

This ticket is closed.

Our internal application was "upgraded" over the weekend and I searched desperately for my Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit but this important change, like so many others, didn't make the cut.

I'm back.