weren't necessitated by my mistakes. The ones that were my fault were identified as such as quickly as possible. People make mistakes. When people try to hide their mistakes SO they won't be identified as the causes of outages, the outages often last longer than they would have if the people troubleshooting had been properly informed. Regardless of the problem or the situation, there are some things to remember when troubleshooting an outage. Here's my short list. Remain Calm I once worked with a former Marine Sergeant. He had been in combat, and had lived though months of rehabilitation after a gunshot wound to his shoulder. He was now working for me as a senior network engineer supporting a global network that included more than 10,000 nodes. One day we were in the middle of an outage that had the vice presidents standing over his shoulder while he worked to isolate and resolve the issue. He was getting more stressed by the minute, and I could see that it was hampering his ability to troubleshoot effectively. As his boss, the first thing I did was to usher away the exec- utives with the promise that I would give them updates every 10 minutes. The second thing I did was to write on his whiteboard, "Relax-no one is shooting at you." He smiled at me, and became visibly more relaxed. We had the problem isolated and resolved in time for the next executive update. Network outages usually do not put lives at risk-including your own. In extreme cases, they may put your job at risk, but you'll still be able to go home and hug your kids, your spouse, your dog, or your Xbox, if that's what makes you happy. The more stressed you allow yourself to become, the longer the outage will last. Log Your Actions When troubleshooting an outage, every time you do something, write it down and record the time. Eventually, you'll need to document what happened in a post- mortem report. Keeping a log of your actions will prove invaluable later. It will also serve as a way for you to keep track of what you've already done SO you don't was