I've been consulting over at Danger for a few days over the past week, since they or someone they hired made their database inaccessible. There are a number of things wrong with that statement, which lead to obvious questions: Why is this such a big deal, when surely they have backups? Don't they know if their users' data is inaccessible? What do they need former employees for, when they have their own engineering staff? All good questions! Let me address them point by point (venting a bit here because I know no one reads this):

1. There were no backups. Or rather, there was "a" backup, a tenuous process anyway, which was in progress and corrupted by the same Event that impaired the original. You may be generously thinking that perhaps a team of seasoned professionals knows something you don't, and didn't need good backups, but no, it's just inexcusably stupid.
2. T-Mobile went ahead and told everybody their data was gone, about 18 hours before the storage company said they could get about 96% of it back. Some rocket scientist is also floating the idea that if there haven't been enough Customer Service calls about a certain type of data (photos, say), then maybe no one cares and they shouldn't bother restoring it. True story.
3. Microsoft has been steadily reducing the original Danger staff by layoffs and attrition, while simultaneously lying to T-Mobile about the level of resources they're dedicating to the Sidekick platform. Most of Danger's resources have been pointed at writing a brand-new Microsoft-based replacement for the Sidekick platform, called Project Pink, except that it appears to be a giant decoy project intended to gall Microsoft's other TWO (2) mobile teams, to spur competition. At any rate, Project Pink is failing miserably, and Danger's institutional knowledge is pretty much gone and the Sidekick platform left to bit-rot. So they had to summon back the alumni.

Anyway, I remember why I quit, because that place is batshit insane. But they are paying me a ludicrous hourly rate, so as an occasional thing it's okay.

The other excitement (which never seems to end) is that I lost my wallet at the library. I could have sworn someone picked my pocket, because I checked the books out, put my wallet in my pocket, and 40 feet out the door, I didn't have it and it was nowhere to be found. I left my phone number at the desk and ran home to cancel the cards; just after the library closed, they called to say they had it. So that's pretty awesome, since I like that wallet. Library's closed today, so I'll get it back tomorrow.