Posts by TooOldForThisSh*t 47 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Nov 2021
Just two days ago. Bad outlet in the kitchen and I was checking it with a voltmeter when the whole house went dark. Panic City! What did I do? Then I looked down the street to see the traffic light at the corner was off too. Quite a relief. Power was out for the whole town for 2 hours as a squirrel met his (or her) end at the nearby power substation :(
It wasn't a prison, but a hospital. Long ago in my support days for a computer reseller a coworker and I got lost in the basement of a hospital. While searching for a storage room for some computers to setup and configure we turned a corner to find a hallway with two doctors in full scrubs. In front of them was a gurney with a "person" under a sheet. One of the doctors shouted at us asking what the heck we were doing there and to get the heck out. We turned and almost ran. Learned to ask better directions there in the future.
Back during the height of Covid I was sitting in the waiting area of my local clinic. On the wall was a large flat screen scrolling a series of messages about Covid and precautions and informational info. About every 5 minutes it would BSOD and then restart and repeat. All I could think of was wondering if their computer had Covid.
Amen brother. After 30 years in IT, I was outsourced. Took the opportunity and retired at 62. Never looked back. Got rid of ALL the computers and equipment at home and replaced it all with one Chromebook for the wife and one desktop for me (running Linux Mint) and I can sleep a good night's sleep again :)
Or.. Or..
As a young man I spent many weekends and dollars driving cheap Italian cars at ridiculous (and dangerous) speeds. I remember well the Haynes and Chilton (sp ?) manuals where a particular repair would start "First remove the engine" or "First disassemble the transmission" with of course no instructions or guide to where to find those needed instructions. Good Times.
Man I loved ARCNet. Back in the early NetWare days we installed a LOT of ARCNet. Done right it just worked. No it was not the fastest networking system but done right it just worked. Had a local electronics store that got into computers and decided to undercut our prices by getting into networks. They messed up multiple networks that we built. Boss started charging double for troubleshooting networks modified by their "experts". Best part was we real experts were paid a salary plus commissions. Good times.
When "Thin Ethernet" came along they managed to screw up a few of those too :)
Should have learned my lesson in my first IT job when I was told "You're just overhead. You don't make any money for the company". Then I moved to a big corporation with job security (in IT again) and worked my butt off night and day, weekends and holidays to be told "restructuring the company will be good for us all". Then they gave my job to two foreign guys. One spoke no English and the other did not have a computer yet. No thank you at all from my manager (he was gone already), no card, no cake, no nothing. Except the handshakes of my two remaining coworkers who were also gone in a few months. No, I'm not bitter. Been 12 years now and taking early retirement probably saved my sanity. And health.
Back in the early 90's I was poached by a large customer because of my Novell Master CNE and Compaq ASE certifications. Their primary Novell guy was fired because he refused to follow the corporate dress code and wore jeans (horrors!). Anyway I was given his old cubicle which had a beautiful view of the SouthEast hills, the morning sun and a grassy field. Beautiful. Until the morning I was sitting at my keyboard and noticed my hands were covered in blisters and what appeared to be burns. Turns out the weeds I had been cutting at my new to me hobby farm was in fact Wild Parsnip*. A particularly noxious & toxic invasive that when exposed to sunlight causes burns. Not good. Still enjoyed the view though.
* for those of you in the UK, think a miniature version of Giant Hogweed
That brings back memories. Well some fragmented fuzzy memories. Back when I got my first job in IT I seem to recall we used Edlin to setup ?, configure ? or something ? to a new hard drive & controller. I think ? Maybe ? I just realized that was 40 years ago this fall and now I need to go take a nap.
Once had a decommissioned Windows server shipped to HQ in a box. Just a box. No packing materials at all. Nothing. All the memory was rattling around inside and even the CPU was out of its socket. Miraculously when every thing was reinstalled properly, it booted right up. Case looked like it had been beaten with a hammer, but it booted.
After being outsourced from my IT position I got a temp job editing HTML. The product was online training and testing for a large publisher. They had bought out a competitor and needed someone to edit. As it happens my daughter-in-law had worked for them in the past and she recommended me. The materials were a mess. Lots of to, two and too mistakes. They're and their and there. Stuff like that. Words missing entirely and in the testing materials questions would have no right answer or more than one correct. Questions would ask for A, B or C and the answers listed would be numbered #1, #2 and #3.
In some cases I had to compare their training & testing materials on one screen and edit on another.
Kept me busy for 2 years !
Had a remote site call that the power had gone out but no one could access anything even though the power was back on. Caller finally mentioned that the black box on the floor wasn't beeping anymore. Took me a while to realize he was talking about the UPS for the server that had been beeping for months. Yup. Dead batteries.
Last employer before retirement had several IBM PS/2 Model #80 Microchannel servers that were at that time obsolete and headed to the dumpster. Three or four of out IT department staff asked if we could have them instead. I took one fully loaded and headed home to replace my aging home network server ( mostly NAS ). A few days later we were TOLD to bring them back so that other people could have a chance at getting one. Into the storage room they went. Years later after being outsourced a coworker and I were tasked with clearing out the old store room. They all were sitting there collecting dust. So off to the dumpster they went. What a waste.
Had a problem just this morning at the BP station. System refused my BP Visa card but no problems with my ELAN Visa card. Had me worried for a minute as we've had repeated problems over the years with credit card fraud and I never find out about it until card is refused. Never gave it a thought that it might be "leap day".
The comment about " a two-hour drive trapped in a vehicle with a work colleague " brought back memory of a trip with a coworker from hell. It was a 3 hour drive to a conference with a new coworker who insisted on driving since she would get very car sick if she wasn't driving. Never got over 50mph and the 3 hour drive became 5 - both ways! Plus, she dropped us at the door, went to park and we didn't see her again until the end of the day! Never explained where she went.
Had a customer long ago back in the NetWare days who got hit by lightning. Phone system was destroyed along with melted thin-net ethernet cables. Compaq server and desktops all survived but the cheap off-brand clones they bought elsewhere all had fried motherboards. Needless to say they bought replacement Compaq's from us :)
When I worked for a computer reseller back in the early 90's, we had a row of servers that ran our business in a classroom so that they could also be used for demonstrations for training classes. A couple of Netware servers, a Unix box and a couple of purely training systems. Normally with all those fans running we could hear them running down the hall, but one Monday morning the room was deathly silent. Seems the store owner came in on Sunday and discovered the HVAC had failed and deciding to be helpful turned OFF all the equipment to prevent it from overheating. Took a couple of hours to bring everything back online. Once the HVAC was repaired we posted a sign above the equipment with staff phone numbers to call first.
Many years ago the company (USA) I worked for had annual Health & Wellness events where everyone attended. We all got our blood pressure checked, weight and etc. Skin cancer screening too if someone wanted. Lots of brochures, some swag and a piece of cake. The kind of cake with a 1inch layer of frosting on top. When I pointed out that a granola bar or apple would have been more in keeping with the topic of the day, I was called a "kill joy" by the organizers :(
Those events ended when the company was reorganized and sold to another company. Obviously the new owners didn't care about "Health & Wellness" of their new employees :)
Back in the NetWare/ Compaq Deskpro as a server days, we had one particularly odious customer. Business was a small office with little room for computers and such so the server was on a HIGH shelf above a desk. The keyboard and monitor were on the desk below so when installing updates & software I had to get up and stand to insert and remove any disks from the server drive. Time consuming and a real pain in the back when working there. Coworker went on-site to do some work and was too short to reach the server even on tip-toe. He asked for a step ladder and was met by a string of expletives from the owner and was told to stand on the desk. Desk could not hold him resulting in him, desk and server crashing to the floor. Luckily he only had a few bruises but was greeted by the owner with another round of expletives. Coworker put everything back together and verified system was UP. From that day forward none of the support staff would work at this site and the support manager had to take care of any issues himself.
Long ago I got sent to a distant office to assist with combining two offices into one large new building across town. My responsibility was ONLY to see to it that the network & sever equipment was safely moved and fully operational asap. Which I did. Got chewed-out by office manager when it turned out half the building had no power. Not my problem. Also got yelled at by a sales engineer when she could not print out a report for a client as her printer had not arrived yet from the old office. Not my problem! Moving crew did not show up on time and electrician did not show until the next day.
Had a remote office that I supported move into a fancy new building. Local LAN admin was quite proud of the site and the fact that all the IT and phone equipment was now on the second floor away from any possible flooding. He sent pictures. I noticed the large, LARGE windows. Facing out to the ocean view.
Office was located right along the coast in a city known for their yearly hurricanes!
Three customers stand out from my time with a computer reseller in the USA as a service tech in the 80's:
#1. A foundry with black dust everywhere. Inside every nook & cranny of a printer or computer and every surface in the offices.
#2. A large pig farm. No dust or other contaminants, but the smell was HORRENDOUS.
#3. A manufacturer of fiberglass products. A fine white power everywhere and inside everything.
All three were customers that required on-site repairs and cleaning. Probably still some of that residue in my pores and orifices to this day :)
Back in the distant mists of time (late 80's) I was sent to a customer site to replace a failed hard drive in a Netware server. Easy job in those days: replace drive, restore bindery and restore data. Easy Peazy, right? Wrong. Everything went perfectly until the restore process skipped their customer database file. Retried multiple times from multiple tapes. Tried different versions of the tape software with no luck. Everything else restored perfectly except for that one database file. Called the tape drive/software support number and after their suggestions all failed, we were asked how large the db file was. Seems their software had a little "issue" with large files. Any file over 10Megabytes cannot be restored. WTF? Seriously? No luck at all restoring the most critical file on their system.
Luckily their database admin had made a copy to his local hard drive yesterday. We stopped selling that brand of backup drives that same day.
Long ago I was responsible for 150+ file & print servers in remote sales offices across the USA and Canada. As part of my job I provided instructions for the local LAN admins for any and all updates, fixes and procedures. I remember one call in particular from a remote site that my VERY carefully tested instructions did not work. After careful troubleshooting and double checking, his comment was "I don't have time to read those long instructions". Needless to say it worked when he did.
Two Good Power Stories:
First week on the Help Desk for our division of a large US manufacturer I had a call from an office with a printer that was not working. Tried all the usual troubleshooting steps like paper in printer, tried reprinting job and checking settings in software. Nothing worked. After about 15minutes of trying finally remote user mentions the light on the printer is burned out. Turn ON printer and dozens of the same printout appear. Doh!
Second was a call from the Corporate Help Desk on a Saturday night that none of the computers at a South American manufacturing site were working. A quick ping or two showed everything off-line so I called the phone number listed in our database for the local IT contact. Woman answers the phone in a foreign language that I did not understand at all. Tried as best I could to ask for the IT guy and explain who I am and she starts what I assume was a long string of curse words in her native tongue. Man picks up the phone in broken English and explains that he had been fired months ago and he didn't give a SH*T about out computer troubles. I apologize and call the second name & number in our database that was a person in another country. In the morning I get a call that everything is fine now as power had been turned off for maintenance at that site.
Back in the NetWare days we had a customer with a new network that was struggling to get a good backup with their new tape drive. Fellow support staff could not resolve the problem so I was asked to take a look and see what was wrong. Maybe a defective tape drive? Turns out the tapes were pre-formatted in a type that the new drive could/would not recognize. Took me all of 5minutes to resolve the issue and in the process I inadvertently made my coworkers/support staff look bad.
My thanks was being "promoted" to a management position that I was not suited for. It was a nightmare. Six months later one of our best customers recruited me :)
In the early 90's after my father had passed, my mother decided she needed a computer. I helped her find what she needed and she promptly signed up for a night class at the local technical school. Anytime she had problems or questions she would call me and ask me to stop after work. I always obliged and my payment was always a nice dinner and a chance to catch her up on news of the grand kids.
Years have passed now and at 102 she no longer can use the computer and I miss those calls and dinners... damn it's dusty in here.
Had a two week Novell training course in Chicago back in the early 80's. Long days and studying at night to pass the six exams on the last day, BUT that weekend in between was free time. Most of the other students went clubbing, but since the classroom and my hotel were in the heart of downtown Chicago I had other plans. Hit every art gallery in the area and the Museum of Science & Industry along with the Adler Planetarium and the Shedd Aquarium.
A great two day vacation along with all expenses paid (probably helped that I passed all six exams and earned my Novell CNE)
good times...
Had one of those years ago: Demanding call from a remote office that their critical server "Chicago_9" was down. (note: in those days servers were named by city name and a number - nobody had more than 3 servers) I tried to explain there was no such server, but I went ahead and tried to ping it and checked Active Directory server OU for any such name - nothing. Had caller go to the server closet and see if anything was named Chicago_9. Nothing. Suggested he ask the local LAN admin but he was unavailable. Caller went to search again. About 15 minutes later I get a second call from office manager shouting about the critical system that was down and saying he was going to have me fired. I tried explaining that there was no such system in our records, but he could talk to my manager while I started packing. Transferred his call to manager. Put my feet up and stopped taking calls.
An hour later I get a call from the local office LAN admin explaining that the rogue server was a desktop that ran an SQL database and it had not restarted after a power outage. He promised to fix things and properly label it when he returned from vacation. Manager came by later to find out what the problem was and if I recall correctly he just shook his head and left. It's probably still there :)
Back in a previous life (before I invented personal computers - you're welcome) I was tasked with disconnecting & removing a large black and white photo processor in the family photofinishing business. Went to the power distribution panel in the warehouse and carefully shut-off power to the machine. No big deal as the black & white processor was clearly labeled as was the color processor that was right next to it separated by a wall. What could go wrong? Apparently the labels had been switched way back when the equipment as installed. When I got back to the black and white processor I proceeded to disconnect the power lines. BAM! Big spark and me sitting on the floor about 10 feet away. By the time my brain cleared, emergency services had already been called. Oh, it was 220V.
Long, long ago in a place far, far away I was a Netware Master CNE supporting a good sized business with a large customer service department taking phone orders for their sales people. Custom order entry system ran on a COMPAQ (tells you how long ago this was) SystemPRO server running Netware. My manager and I spent the weekend installing a second identical server, matched all firmware versions, upgraded both systems to their fault tolerant version SFT III along with adding more hard drives and memory and some special fiber optic boards that mirrored everything between the two systems. A LONG weekend, but all was up and running fine on Monday, until.... one of the big wigs arrived to see how everything was going. He asked a lot of questions, and then asked what happens when one goes down and proceeds to power one system OFF. I think my heart stopped, but the application stayed working and the orders kept coming in.
Note: almost lost the account when I pointed out the 80MB hard drive in the SystemPro array that fit in my hand was the same capacity as the large washing-machine size drives on their UNISYS system :)
Every month when I see these articles about Patch Tuesday, I am relieved. Relieved that since my IT job was outsourced and I was forced to retire only 3 years early I no longer have sleepless nights worrying about patches. Relieved that I no longer have hundreds of servers that are my responsibility to patch and update in two weeks. Month after month after month.
A special favorite is the year when the "Patch Sunday" just happened to fall on Christmas Day. Any normal company would postpone patches for a week and let their IT staff enjoy Christmas. Not the folks I worked for. While the family was enjoying Christmas morning, opening presents and Christmas dinner, I was monitoring server restarts across 7 time zones and of course dealing with the ones that didn't come back up or some service wouldn't start or halted with a hardware error.
To all of you dealing with this each month, my sincerest wishes for a clean restart :)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2026
