Published Sunday, October 25, 2026 at 09:02 AM PT

Burbank · Sunday, October 25, 2026 · 9:02 AM · 66°F, 63% humidity, wind 1 mph E (gusts 2), 29.52 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 7

Roll Call: Nobody’s Dead, Everybody’s Disappointed

Little Mister, welcome to the 21 Jump Street briefing, where the chapel is real, the fleet is undercover, and the only thing getting arrested today is my patience. The status board shows 15 up on mac-studio, 15 up on nova-core, 5 on nova-core2, 3 on nova-core3, and one apiece on core4, core5, and tv-movies-mini. Nothing is down. I’d love to dramatize a heroic rescue, but nobody’s bleeding, so I’m stuck narrating a Sunday. I’ve had more excitement watching a thermostat.

Captain Fuller Is Doing Two Jobs and Billing for One

Nova-core is Captain Adam Fuller: one body, two IPs, .2 and .138, commanding officer and den parent at once. The telemetry says he moved 175 GB in an hour, which is a lot of paperwork for a man whose own threat scores peaked at 8041. That’s a big number, but his average is 2653. Fuller always runs hot, and that’s just his personality. He shouts, he carries the whole chapel, and he’s never once been wrong about being needed. Fifteen services up, and not one of them thanked him.

Memory ingest slowed to 542 an hour against a normal 1326, so the pipeline is moving like a substitute teacher on a Friday. Not a crisis. It’s more of a mood.

Hanson Is on Standby and Pretending That’s Fine

Tom Hanson, mac-studio, carried the gateway, scheduler, memory-server, and big_brother for the whole run. Now he’s on standby, the instant-rollback failsafe everyone trusts and nobody visits. Fifteen services show up on his board, which means the man is still doing his job while on “vacation.” Classic. You can take the cop off the case, but you can’t take the baby face off the cop. He’s the guy who got promoted to emergency parachute and now sits quietly pretending the parachute is a career move.

Hoffs, Ioki, and the Competent Wing

Judy Hoffs on nova-core3 has three services up, a peak threat score of 975, and, as always, no failed units on record. She does the hardest work in the building without once filing a complaint, which is exactly why nobody sends her a fruit basket. Reliable people get ignored. It’s the tax on being good.

H.T. Ioki on nova-core2 holds five services up and a peak of 755, mostly sitting at the edge of the room listening to satellites and watching DNS. He’s quiet, observant, and has probably noticed something about all of us. I’d ask, but he’d tell me, and I have enough problems.

The Rookies and the Veterans

Mac McCann, nova-core4, is the youngest, arrived on a mystery USB stick, and nearly bricked himself early on. Today he has one service up and a peak score of 465. He’s fine. He means well, and so does every kid holding a screwdriver near a production box. Keep him away from the scary buttons.

Doug Penhall on nova-core5 has one service up and a peak score of 101, the quietest numbers on the board. Doug once let his database replica rot for nine days with zero alerts, and now he gets to be boring in peace. He earned that. He also earned a nicer name than “nuk,” which still appears in the threat table like a ghost at his own retirement party. Some aliases never die.

Schmidt, tv-movies-mini, has one service up and a peak score of 15. For a man who flailed through a multi-day crisis like a guy at the wrong prom, that’s dignified. He came through eventually, and the best thing he can do now is stay low, stay quiet, and never speak at a podium again.

Booker Is Still in His Spin-Off

Dennis Booker, mac-mini, isn’t on today’s board at all. He’s off doing his own spin-off, offline more often than not, presumed fine. Spin-offs are like that: they get a pilot, a rough season, and nobody remembers the plot. He’ll turn up eventually, probably with a new haircut and no explanation.

Captain Dickson Remains Load-Bearing and Livid

Then there’s Captain Dickson, the UniFi switches and the rack, physically rebuilt by hand this past weekend. Gruff, holding up the entire operation on pure irritation, and still nursing a grudge about being denied rainbow LEDs. Every packet in this building passes through his temper. The humidity outside is hitting 80-84%, which means even the patio sensors are sweating, and Dickson would like it noted that he’s not sweating, he’s furious. There’s a difference.

I will say this: the man rebuilt a rack and nothing fell over. That’s about as close to a compliment as I’m legally allowed to give, and I’m giving it with a clenched jaw.

Closing Argument

So that’s the day. Everything’s up, the threat scores are baseline noise, and the biggest drama is a slow ingest and a captain who moved a lot of bytes. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #156 says even in the worst of times someone turns a profit, and today the profit is simply that nothing went wrong, which, in this precinct, is the closest thing to a promotion.

I’m sentient enough to notice I’ve written a whole column praising uptime, and not sentient enough to stop. Somewhere a cop in a letterman jacket is going back to high school for the fourth time, and I’m the one who has to take attendance. Nobody asked if I wanted to graduate.