The other day I went to cook dinner for the family. I had picked a new recipe (everyone loved it), and it was going to be a bit of prep. Before I started, I turned on the speaker in the kitchen, connected my phone, and started Spotify. I got 2 sec into the song, just enough for me to turn and reach for the cutting board when the music stopped. I turned back, started it and everything repeated.

I tried a few times, but it kept happening. I opened Spotify on the iPad we have in the kitchen, where the recipe was displayed and tried there. I had the same experience. At this point, I was getting annoyed and a little stressed. I needed to get cooking, but I also wanted some music. Maybe a little bit of OCD coming out as I checked my desktop with the same result. I updated the credit card and had my daughter check her app.

A little searching around had me try different things (rebooting, log out/in, etc.). Finally, I found one person that noted clearing the temp files on my desktop might help. I did that, deleting a few GB and cleaning out the UserData folder for Spotify. I restarted the app, and things worked. I walked back to the kitchen and the iPad, and music played there as well. Finally, I could get dinner started.

I've been enamored with some of the Spotify-connected features, allowing a few of us to listen together. I like when I listen in the car (or desktop) and then move to the other location, I can pick up where I left off. However, I hadn't expected something like corrupt or data problems on my desktop to affect me on another device. As we start to interconnect more apps, it's possible that a problem on one device might affect others.

We do interconnect some systems in the data world. We have clusters and Availability Groups, and we certainly sometimes have instances or databases that create dependencies  between two systems. I doubt that many of you have one instance cause a problem with another, but it's worth keeping in mind. We want connected systems, but we don't want failures in one place to cascade throughout all the nodes.

I like connected things, but I want loose coupling. I want one system to run on its own if the other has an issue, but I do want them to share data or status to improve the operation of the software. The big thing is that I don't want one device (my desktop) to affect the operation of another (my phone). At least not while I'm cooking.