So, we’re finally saying goodbye to ‘Samoan’. Man, what a journey that was. It feels like shedding a massive weight, you know?
The Beast Called Samoan
This ‘Samoan’ thing, for those who weren’t around for the horror show, was this ancient piece of… well, let’s just call it ‘infrastructure’. It was cobbled together years before I even joined, a Frankenstein’s monster of old code, undocumented patches, and sheer willpower holding it together. Nobody wanted to touch it. Seriously, mentioning ‘Samoan’ in a meeting was like saying Voldemort’s name. People would just shuffle their feet and look away.
And guess who got to be its primary caretaker? Yep, yours truly. Started off simple, “Can you just keep an eye on Samoan?” they said. “It mostly runs itself,” they said. Famous last words, right? It became this albatross around my neck. My days, and many nights, were spent wrestling with it.
My Daily Grind with the Monster
What was it like? Well, imagine this:
- Waking up to alerts at 3 AM because Samoan decided to take a nap.
- Spending hours, sometimes days, figuring out why something that worked yesterday suddenly didn’t. The logs were a joke.
- Patching one hole only to find two more springing up. It was like whack-a-mole, but less fun and with more swearing.
- Trying to explain to management why this critical-yet-awful system needed resources when all they saw was a line item that ‘just worked’ (thanks to my sweat and tears, mostly tears).
It was exhausting. Truly exhausting. I learned more about creative problem-solving and debugging obscure issues from Samoan than from any textbook, that’s for sure. But it wasn’t sustainable. Something had to give.
The Long Road to Farewell
Getting the green light to actually replace Samoan was a battle in itself. You know how it is. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” even if ‘ain’t broke’ means it’s held together with duct tape and prayers. I had to document every failure, every hour spent, every potential risk. I made charts. I made presentations. I think I even made a puppet show at one point, just to get the message across. Okay, maybe not a puppet show, but it felt that dramatic.
Then came the actual work. Months of planning. We had to figure out how to untangle this beast, migrate its functions to something modern, all without causing a total meltdown. There were a few close calls, let me tell you. We’d think we had everything covered, and then some weird, undocumented dependency Samoan had would rear its ugly head. We basically had to reverse-engineer a decade of undocumented tribal knowledge.
The Sweet Release
And then, finally, the day came. We ran all the tests. Double-checked. Triple-checked. Held our breath. And then… we pulled the plug on Samoan. For good. The silence in the monitoring channels that used to scream bloody murder every few hours was… golden. Pure gold.
So yeah, goodbye Samoan. You were a pain, a massive, complicated, frustrating pain. But I can’t deny I learned a ton. Still, I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy. Okay, maybe on one or two people. But mostly, I’m just glad it’s over. Time to move on to breaking new things, hopefully less ancient ones this time around. It’s a weird feeling, almost like a chapter of my life closing. A really annoying, stressful chapter, but a chapter nonetheless.
