The railway depot in the city of Dalian, China, was thrown into chaos on January 12, when Adobe flipped a switch to end its support for Flash. It turns out … it was critical for several of your systems!
However, the technicians who administer IT for the station seemed to have quite a sense of humor about it, because while struggling to revert to an earlier version of Flash, they posted real-time WeChat updates about their difficulties – “in the style of a thriller. military, written with all Dwight’s self-awareness of ‘The Office’, “as David Cohen and Yue Sun joked at Technode.
As they write …
The team split into hardware and software task forces and tried to restore an older version of Flash from a backup “GHOST system”, an effort marked by triumphs and defeats. By 10 pm, they had restored most computers to their backup states – when, suddenly, automatic updates caused systems to disable Flash again.
According to a brief statement that later replaced viral posting, the problem was limited to newer computers in the warehouse and no trains were affected.
After midnight, the team began to record lasting victories:
“January 13, 0113 hours: ‘Wan Jia Ling station is fixed! Ling Ma shouted … we all got together and confirmed. The room exploded with cheers and applause.” [snip]
“1411 hours. The station is back to crisis. Once again, we cannot use the printer.”
The authors note that Flash is still “in widespread use” in the Chinese government, which is quite interesting, if true.
(via wax)