by Will Schreiber

This morning I was walking down Divisadero.

This morning I was walking down Divisadero. “I’ve battled crashing servers in that Starbucks,” I thought to myself.

There are lots of places where I’ve frantically tapped my keyboard, cursing myself, wondering why I’m such a bad developer:

  • The upstairs bedroom of a shared Airbnb in Boise (after driving through the night from Nevada) (I broke my arm while skiing less than 24 hours later)
  • My desk overlooking the Paulina Brown Line L station
  • A Starbucks in north beach
  • A quiet room overlooking the Chesapeake bay
  • A call tiny room in the Manhattan Industrious
  • (and exhilaratingly, more…)

Our servers at Bottle have bricked at some very inconvenient times.

When I boarded my Southern China flight to Guangzhou last September, it was going to be the longest time (13 hours) that I’d ever been unable to check on the servers. It was terrifying. I upgraded the hardware we were using. I noted how lucky we were that it was late on a Friday.

Right when we landed in China - data charges be damned - I checked my email.

Nothing catastrophic.