I'm on the server floor of a "highly secure data center with 24/7/365 surveillance, direct access control and robust perimeter security".

An actual duck just walked by.

The panic is absolutely glorious. I think this just became one of the highlights of my life.

No photo or name. The general vibe here is "we'll punch you if you take photos, let alone share them"

Female mallard btw.

My joke was not appreciated. Maybe Mastodon likes it:

"Oh, is this that penetration testing IT people talk about? Would it not be better with a male duck?"

This Is Just To Quack

I have walked
all across
the data center
floor space

on which
you were probably
banning all
of the ducks

forgive me
it was so shiny
and cold
and full of blinky lights

edit: changed warm to cold as today the outside temperature was actually higher.

No, it's not the DuckDuckGo datacenter. For a moment it did become the Duck Duck Goooooooooo! FFS datacenter.

edit: this was my other unappreciated joke. By then from the parking lot. It was truly an excellent visit but by then I didn't feel like anyone would appreciate me saying so :-)

I'll probably go there again on Friday. Hoping they ask me to sign another NDA just so I can ask if that's a No Ducks Agreement.

:-)

edit: tips on actually signing some ducks random NDA: https://mastodon.online/@Pepijn/110593227095090840

Update: the duck was eventually removed from the premises. It required a bit of human flapping about. The access point was found as well. The duck had just walked in via multiple openings that should not have been openings.

As far as they could find no literal shit had hit the fans. The figurative shit is reaching for the stars by now.

And here's a song about another animal that reminds me of the good times and also reminds me of the bad times:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y7fwg_gqaZU

Lol @ the person(s?) going through my post history to find the name of the datacenter. Don't bother as you won't find it.

Some hints though: it's indeed in the Netherlands, and I indeed travelled here from Denmark yesterday. And something easily overlooked: it's in an area with ducks (at least one).

To everyone else: I love the duck puns

Dinner time. I've never before been sooo tempted by the duck option

Figured this can do with a meme ;-)

Dinner was good btw. I had a goat cheese salad instead of duck.

I see questions on what happened after the initial shock. I'll share what I can.

As I personally prefer to know the ending of a story at all times let's do so here as well: The hero of our story, Agent Duck, ended up being absolutely fine.

So. Here we were inside the datacenter when suddenly duck, DUCK! After the initial surprise slash utter panic it was clear Duck was not at all stressed and didn't seem bothered by the complexity of the situation.

Frankly. Duck was just ducking about.

-->

Meanwhile I had stopped laughing (CCTV footage from the initial moment shows me with a massive grin on my face shouting "hah, there's a duck!", my colleague neutral, and the locals in instant shock) and decided I would absolutely not be the hero.

Reasoning was that I didn't want to be redshirted by being shat upon while being filmed from all angles. My colleague clearly had the same reasoning. The locals appeared to be "caught outside protocol" and looked genuinely bemused.

-->

By now Duck was puttering about in some cable-heavy-area. Locals were very nervous about that.

The Operations Manager (in charge of the tour) heroically aimed for a quick resolution, ran at-, and aimed to grab Duck. This ended in unfortunate failure as Duck speed-wobbled away and our hero graciously fell on the floor face first.

Duck did a tiny poop on the floor.

While this was going on, staff in the operations centre had started to pay attention and informed us there was a duck.

-->

A somewhat heated discussion evolved that I won't document here. It did conclude with the operations centre being fairly sure there was only Duck, and not Duck, Duckster, Ducky and Ducktilla.

They also figured out how Duck had penetrated the facility.

Also by then an organic process of fricking common sense had figured out that it would take two people to catch Duck. A decision was made to bring in two people with tools: a jacket and a broomstick.

-->

After a couple minutes two security type dudes and their tools got into the server area via the timed door system (or whatever it's called: it's like an airlock that cycles between two doors and deliberately takes a couple minutes).

We were still there as well as protocol, safety, timed doors etc etc.

I was fine as, again, one of the best days of my life. :-)

Duck by now had done a fully 360 loop of the server area. My brain started leaking out the duck puns.

-->

Now it all went fast. Dude one used the broom to duckhunt Duck into a corner. Dude two then jumped on Duck while using the jacket to cover and grab Duck. This went super well as Duck was remarkably okish with all of this.

Dude two then secured Duck in his jacket/arm combo and looked extremely proud of himself. I said "Nice, you must've played a lot of Nintendo!" and received cold stares from the datacenter people and a smile from dude two. Dude one tried really hard to be professional.

-->

The two dudes were now ready to escort Duck off the premises. They cycled through the "airlock" while we waited inside for the Powers To Be. Those powers soon decided a debrief was needed, which we ended up doing over coffee in a meeting room. We got our phones. The NDA was discussed again.. And no, we would not be getting a CCTV clip of Duck.

Meanwhile Duck was released in the little pond close-ish to the datacenter. When we left later it had already blended in with the other ducks.

---------

Some updates:

-No, we didn't return to the facility today.

-I talked to the Operations Manager who had been forwarded this by a friend (who has no idea it is about his friends facility). He used his office printer to print the entire thing Note: the post mentioning him was fine-tuned: https://mastodon.online/@Pepijn/115029182763323544

-people keep asking for photos. And that won't happen. That said. I want photos as well, so when I'm home again Toddler and myself will reenact it all as professional as we can.

Re: fine-tuned: It was pointed out to me that the Operations Manager did not "flopped on his face." but in fact "graciously fell".

He has access to the CCTV footage thus has the means to check whether he indeed was gracious in falling.

We do proper datacenter duck journalism here. So that's why it now says "graciously fell on the floor face first."

I was also informed the lawyer laughed when reading this thread and didn't see any issues. I wish he simply hadn't mentioned the lawyer. :-/

You brought joy to someone's workday. Lawyers are like sys admins in that they have to see all the bad ideas people are having and that gets grim dark. As I was reading this thread I was thinking of how much joy this would bring the person who has this normally terrible job and was delighted for you both.