Inside Joke

Some poor schmo came to this site by typing "FactoryTalk Redundancy" into Google. Check it out, I'm listed first! The Google search links to this inside joke between my boss and myself. Right now, three or four of you are laughing. The rest are totally confused. Let me explain.

The handful of people who visit this blog, are in the controls industry, and have used the latest release of Rockwell Software's product offerings are the ones who are probably still chuckling to themselves. FactoryTalk is a directory service that ties all these products together. It handles security, database connections, and more. It's one of the most frustrating pieces of software that I, as a controls person, have ever had to deal with. It never seems to be doing much, but MAN does it screw things up when it's not working. I've dubbed it "the mystery meat in our software pot pie."

To the visitor who accidentally stumbled upon this site: FactoryTalk redundancy is like a coelacanth. It existed once, and a few lucky people have seen it. I've even seen screen shots. The redundancy feature no longer exists, though. Instead, the FactoryTalk project duplicates itself to every machine that requests it. This works ok for a while. Just don't mess with anything in the project tree while the FactoryTalk server is down.

I think Google is going to have to rethink their strategy of adding blogs into the general search. Most people who use Google want informational sites, not opinions. And, they certainly don't want my silly off-hand comments. Either Google is going to have to redo their search engine, or I'm going to have to become an expert on everything that I spout off about.