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Welp! My cat destroyed the server!

Did the cat do it? Or the laptop? You be the judge.

In the world of humans, cats have seemingly carved out a nice living, usually looking down over dogs, and even humans occasionally.

I swear, if things were more favorable for cats, they would've taken over the world already.

Anyway, in the most cat-like fashion, a weird thing seems to have happened at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

As Robert Bryne once said:

To err is human, to purr is feline.

Let's see what kind of purr this cat made.

Cat + Server = CATastrophe? 😼

via GIPHY

So, this incident is a few weeks old.

On September 13, 2023, the Kansas City VAMC sent out the following statement via a press release:

On September 13, 2023 the Kansas City VAMC [Veterans Affairs Medical Center] experienced an issue with image transfer within Vista due to an inadvertent deletion of server profiles.
The issue was quickly identified and the system restored within four hours. There have been no further issues or direct impacts to veterans from this incident.

The 'Vista' mentioned here is not the one you might be thinking of, rather it stands for Veterans Health Information System Technology Architecture, which is a system that handles critical records.

📋
You can read up on VistA if you are curious.

But, the press release did not mention the feline connection behind it.

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So, what about it?

According to sources via The Register, the Veteran Affairs department conducts regular weekday calls to review any IT problems encountered during the week.

During one of these calls, a participant revealed that when a technician was going over the configuration of a server cluster, their cat jumped on the keyboard and deleted it.

Do you see a connection there? 😺

Even the assistant secretary for information and technology/CIO at the Department of Veteran Affairs, Kurt DelBene is said to have responded with the following:

This is why I have a dog.

Though I bet our editor, Ankush, would still want his cats around 🐈

With laughter following, and a short incident report being filed.

When folks over at The Register poked Terrence Hayes, the press secretary for the Department of Veteran Affairs, regarding this CATastrophe.

He declined to comment beyond the press release they sent out. So, you can take that as you want to 😆

💬 So, what are your thoughts on this interesting turn of events? Share them in the comments section below.


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