Firefighting

I had a Computer Science professor in college. Many of my fellow students thought him to be cantankerous and unfriendly, and I initially had that impression myself, but eventually I realized he was one of the best people on the department's faculty -- supremely knowledgeable, sharp, intellectually curious and, once you got past his mannerisms, a very good explainer of complex ideas. He was also much friendlier in one-on-one conversations than he was in a classroom. Anyway, the syllabus for one of his classes said something about the need to complete assignments early because computer systems had a propensity to crash just before deadlines. Thankfully, I have never been too much of a procrastinator, but I thought the statement was a little melodramatic, and was designed to get our lazy undergrad butts in gear. Computer systems do crash -- I wouldn't have a job if they didn't (or would have had a much more pleasant one, depending on how you look at it) -- but surely statistics show us that they crash all the time, not just before deadlines. But maybe there is a grain of truth to what the old prof said after all. I am leaving for a vacation this Friday, and I am trying to finish a zillion projects at work before I go, and starting last Friday, every single morning there is an unexpected problem that needs to be dealt with. It is now Tuesday, and we are three for three, and I have a feeling there will be more to come before I can finally hightail it to Michigan for a week and a half. Statistics, schmatistics...