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Quick appreciation post for checklists.

I had to do a delicate migration in prod recently, so I did the usual SRE thing: step by step checklist, minimize the critical section where things are down, lots of sanity checks throughout, dry run before the real thing. (If I was really serious, I would have found someone to watch over my shoulder too.)

First time through, one of the sanity checks in a critical section failed, so I immediately aborted and rolled back. Turned out to be a trivial bug, but it would have been ugly if I’d continued and didn’t catch it until later.

Fixed the bug, started the procedure again from the beginning, everything worked fine this time through.

Kudos to the humble checklist. Far from the first time it’s saved my ass.

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Fun fact: “six seven” traces its roots all the way back to Old English in the 1380s. Geoffrey Chaucer coined it in his epic poem Troilus and Criseyd:

But manly set the world on sixe and sevene;
And, if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.

200 years later, Shakespeare picked it up and used it in his play Richard II:

But time will not permit: all is uneven
And every thing is left at six and seven

The common English phrase “at sixes and sevens,” from an early dice game that preceded craps, is unrelated.

It is thought that the expression was originally to set on cinque and sice (from the French for five and six). These were apparently the most risky numbers to shoot for (‘to set on’) and anyone who tried for them was considered careless or confused.

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