back to article 'Hmm, why CAN'T I run a water pipe through that rack of media servers?'

Welcome once again to The eXpat files, our Vulture Weekend feature in which readers who've well and truly left the nest explain what it's like to ply their technological trade in another land. This week – we're going weekly by popular demand – meet D. Hayes Blanchard, who made the move from the US to Armenia, and then Dubai. …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'Blanchard: In Las Vegas I was working for a local TV channel which was quite bureaucratic and after a while I needed a change. I decide to take two years and teach English abroad...'

    An American teaching English?

    What's the world coming to.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "An American teaching English? What's the world coming to."

      Well lets face it, they're taught grammar better than we Brits are.

  2. bazza Silver badge

    Marmite

    "There are also many things, everyday products in the West that are simply not available in Armenia at any price, like peanut butter and Marmite."

    No Marmite? Well, that's it then.

    1. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      Re: Marmite

      Hear, hear

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Marmite

        "Inventor of the Marmite Laser"

        !????

        As names go that one boggles the mind.

        One wonders what a Marmite laser would be. Lets see...

        "Laser: a device that produces a nearly parallel, nearly monochromatic, and coherent beam of light by exciting atoms to a higher energy level and causing them to radiate their energy in phase."

        I can barely imagine what a monochromatic coherent beam of marmite would be like, but it sounds highly destructive. Perhaps one of those Marmite squeezy jars can produce something like a Marmite laser beam if put under enough pressure. It does suggest the existence of a whole pantheon of marmite based fundamental particles of nature. Presumably they can be exicted in some way so that they can radiate their marmite in phase?

        Does the Grand Theory of Everything possit the existence of the Marmiton, the particle heavier even than the Higgs? If not, I think it should. This could be the missing piece that the particle physicists have been looking for all this time. It's been right there, on their morning toast, all this time.

        Here's an important question. What percentage of Nobel Physics Prize winners like(d) marmite? I think we should be told.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Marmite

          You can make a solution of quinine in ethanol lase.

          The gin and tonic laser was invented 50 years ago

  3. Tom 7

    I'm currently using a condom for cooling!

    Filled with water and tied up so it rests on the top of the chip - does a wonderful job.

    1. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      Re: I'm currently using a condom for cooling!

      Pastic or Rubber Integrated Cooling Kit

  4. DropBear

    Funnily enough, after the first few words, it took me a second to realize the article is not going to be about parsing XML files...

  5. unitron
    Coat

    I expected it to be...

    ...about actually using water cooling for server racks, kind of like they used to do when mainframes were vacuum tube and about the size and heat output of railway locomotives.

    But what I want to know now is how a guy from Kentucky/Vegas got turned on to barbecue from the right side of The Old North State, where we use a vinegar based sauce and save the tomatoes for salads or sandwiches.

    I wonder if he's also a beach music fan.

    Mine's the one with the bag of hush puppy mix in the pocket.

  6. jake Silver badge

    "30 per cent creating the media."

    Really?

    What tools have you "created" to store and/or deliver information or data?

  7. keithpeter Silver badge
    Windows

    "Armenia has a culture of kludging things together and working to western standards was my biggest challenge."

    Pretty resilient people the Armenians. Survivors. I wish we did more kludging and less globbing everything together into just-in-time cost reduced systems

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another IT expat in Armenia

    I will agree that Armenians are slow to adopt western standards but I'll disagree that they refuse/resist change, in fact you can always wave to them a fancy European degree, tell them that's how it's done in the west and you can pretty much have them running with a power cord between their buttocks! but I think I can pin point the problem for Blanchard, he was with peace corps, which means he speaks fluent or near fluent Armenian, big, BIG mistake, if you want them to take you seriously don't learn Armenian!!, no kidding, the moment you learn enough to hold a conversation they'll just stop taking you seriously, stick to English at all times during work!

    1. Uffish

      Re: English at all times

      Where's the fun in that? I mean, it's not as if he was there for the money.

  9. mathew42

    Try servers + sewerage pipes

    > And a general contractor didn’t understand why he couldn’t run a water pipe through the cabinet containing a rack of media servers (the pipe wasn’t on the blueprints).

    I worked in a small 2 story office where the toilets were between the ground and first floor. The servers were jammed in a storage room under the stairs with the sewer pipes ran across top of the room.

    The other interesting thing was the toilets had louvre windows and it did occasionally snow.

  10. Greg J Preece

    Ex-pat here

    Though I cheated and went to Canada. Bit less of a culture shock, but you get tripped up in ways you don't expect, mostly language related.

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