The moral of the story?
Be nice to your BOFH! Buy them a pint, a packet of pork scratchings, heed the "do not disturb" signs, buy them something nice on sys admin day…
BOFH: Don't back up in anger
Backups. Backups Backups Backups. Backups Backups Backups Backups Backups. What more can I say? "So do you have a backup of that?" the Boss asks. "No." "We don't back up your laptop." "But you told me you back up everything?" "Everything on the server, yes." "YOU SAID you backed up everything but desktop machines." " …
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Friday 17th March 2017 13:13 GMT TRT
Re: New technical terms.
Combined ultrasensitive magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) / 3D image reconstruction achieves magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with resolution <10 nm. The image reconstruction converts measured magnetic force data into a 3D map of nuclear spin density, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the “resonant slice” that is projected outward from a nanoscale magnetic tip. The basic principles are demonstrated by imaging the 1H spin density within individual nano-scale particles sitting on a nanometer-thick layer of adsorbed hydrocarbons. The result represents a 100 million-fold improvement in volume resolution over conventional MRI, demonstrating the potential of MRFM as a tool for 3D, elementally selective imaging on the nanometer scale.
Think I'm making this stuff up?
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Friday 17th March 2017 11:42 GMT Phil W
Re: New technical terms.
It works better if you do the recovery while the drive is rested on top of the user's head, due to quantum entanglement between the electrons used to store the data and the electrons in their brain that originally created the work.
Although this does inconvenience the user a little by requiring them to sit perfectly still with a hard drive vibrating away on their head, it's worth while if it means they get their data back surely?
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Friday 17th March 2017 11:51 GMT John G Imrie
Re: New technical terms.
Although this does inconvenience the user a little by requiring them to sit perfectly still with a hard drive vibrating away on their head, it's worth while if it means they get their data back surely?
The problem with that is if they do move you get the smell of burning hair as the lazer hits their scalp.
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Friday 17th March 2017 13:00 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
Re: New technical terms. @TRT
I recently read a white paper (with perforations) on how our brains store an image map of all the file names on our computers (so that we know where to find them, natch). If you delete the files you can apparently induce the brain to re-produce this image map by flashing an 100000lux light directly onto each retina in 1ms pulses. Apparently the image map will form on the wall behind the persons skull, so be ready with that photo insensitive paper to record it! (You won't get a second chance, because once the retina is incinerated it can't be used to transfer all that light to the brain anymore).
I'm sure the paper used more technical terms, I've paraphrased it for the management types.
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Friday 17th March 2017 20:32 GMT Blofeld's Cat
Re: New technical terms.
"It had um, interesting rhythmic devices, too, which seemed to counterpoint the the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the poet’s compassionate soul which contrived through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other. And one is left with a profound and vivid insight into whatever it was that the
poempresentation was about!"With apologies to the late
DentarthurdentDouglas Adams.
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Friday 17th March 2017 16:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: We only backup the shared drives
I once worked for a major I/T provider (name withheld to protect employment!) who told us that "They back up the system disk packs nightly.". Seemed safe enough. So, we used them for six months or so, before, in an idle conversation with one of the system guys, it became apparent that by "system disk packs", they meant the disk packs that held the operating system. This did NOT include the "user disk packs", which held all of our development code. Ack!!!
Oh, yeah, this was the same outfit that, once they did start backing up the user disk packs to tape, they ran short of backup tapes. So the night tape operations person grabbed a tape from the scratch tape pool, used it to finish the back up run of the user data, and then returned the tape to the scratch pool! ACK!!!
You just can't make this stuff up. The sad part is, I could go on and on and on about such screw-ups that I've personally experienced.
Anon Y. Mus
P.S. Did I just hear a stampede of running feet, to check on the backup status of user disks?
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Friday 17th March 2017 23:21 GMT Stoneshop
I've encountered this before with a cherry on top: they couldn't even tell me the name of the file.
I once got a restore request for a missing file*, with the ticket stating "file was there yesterday, today there is only $otherfilename".
As if that would allow me to divine the name of the missing file.
*documents had to be saved on a backed-up network disk; saving them anywhere else but in their department's directory was as good as impossible.
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Friday 17th March 2017 15:07 GMT gryphon
I once annoyed an internal guy trying to get us all up to speed on BS5750.
Him - It's a quality assurance standard
Me - No its not, it's a repeatability and conformity standard
Him - What do you mean?
Me - Well if I write a process that says someone has to take every product we make smash it against the wall and send it to the customer as a broken box of bits it would technically be BS5750 compliant wouldn't it?
Him - Umm, yes. But, but....
Happy days.
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Friday 17th March 2017 16:43 GMT Steve the Cynic
"Me - No its not, it's a repeatability and conformity standard"
Somebody knows.
Many, many moons ago, I worked for a company that had 9001 certification. When I started, I had a brief session with the main Quality Manager, and he said essentially the same thing, that 9001 guarantees a product of CONSISTENT quality, not one of HIGH quality.
The quality manual (the book of company-specific procedures) has to state a quality goal, how it will be achieved, and how the company will track deviations from that target back to root causes and fix them.
If your goal is that 10% (with a +/- one percentage point margin) of shipped product is functional, and the rest is essentially fit only for landfill, you'll remain 9001 compliant as long as you ship 9-11% good product and 89-91% rubbish. You have to be able to find out why you've started to ship 12% good product and you have to FIX that because continuing to ship 12% good when your 9001 target is 9-11% good means you aren't compliant and will have to pay for more prostitutes to bribe the auditors.
(OK, the QM didn't mention the part about the prostitutes. That came from something my late wife said about the company she worked for at the same time - more than once, they "passed" their audits because they provided enough bribes, including prostitutes, that the auditors overlooked the lack of compliance.)
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Friday 17th March 2017 17:27 GMT Doctor Syntax
"If your goal is that 10% (with a +/- one percentage point margin) of shipped product is functional, and the rest is essentially fit only for landfill, you'll remain 9001 compliant as long as you ship 9-11% good product"
Similar experience. Coming from a background where qualitative and quantitative are alternatives I quickly twigged that in this crock we're actually dealing with something that's quantitative. It doesn't matter where on the "How good" continuum you are providing you can quantify it. Given that "quality" and "mediocrity" both belong on the continuum I took to calling it the Mediocrity Management System.
One thing I never got a satisfactory answer to: We'd previously been on TQM which has a mantra of "get it right first time every time". ISO 9000 was supposed to be about continuous improvement. If we'd already been getting things right first time every time how come there was scope for improvement?
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 03:25 GMT Diogenes
I actually documented something similar to this - prior to checking out the code, the developer has walk to exposed brick wall next to the lifts(elevator) and strike his/her head thereon 3 times, and complete the Register with time & date noted -(This was to prove a point to our QM)
We passed not only an ISO audit & CMM-CEI level 5 audit with this sort of nonsense (the devs just signed the register at odd times) - my continuous improvement was to reduce the number to 3 from 5 and I was able demonstrate a small improvement in productivity :-)
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Friday 17th March 2017 12:45 GMT Terry 6
If only
A few decades back when I started in education my boss was very complimentary about an analysis I did about the reliability of some educational assessment materials- even though she only had the barest understanding of anything beneath the conclusions. Then she asked me to prepare a presentation on it.
I later found out that she hadn't used it for preparing part of a training pack ( with full credit) as she'd said she would be doing, but had actually presented it to a panel of local authority bosses and inspectors as her own work. If only there'd been some way of inserting a few slides....
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Friday 17th March 2017 12:51 GMT Alistair
"Almost as good as the users who want you to recover a document from backup, but don't actually know whether they saved it locally, to a network drive or to some other external media in the first place."
Or.... These files we can't find on our server, or on our backups should have been in the archival process...
Gotta love those "should have beens". I have a wicked recipe for "shouldabeen stew".
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Friday 17th March 2017 13:48 GMT RyokuMas
What goes around...
Brian here is supposed to be doing a presentation..."
Hmmm.... that name feels familiar.... Set the way-back machine for -21 years...
PFY: ""Uncle Brian, you know, on the 6th floor. The big office with the leather furniture. I'd hate to disagree with your report to the CEO"
Don't tell me we've been through so many bosses we're now recycling them???
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Friday 17th March 2017 15:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What goes around...
Bosses are always getting recycled around the BOFH. They become filler in voids under raised floors/false walls/elevator pits. They become fertilizer in nondescript fields just outside of the city. They become cores for rolling up unneeded carpets. They have all kinds of uses.
They've recycled enough bosses that they're bound to have name collisions from time to time.
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Friday 17th March 2017 13:58 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Great episode
I had almost expected some questions on how you could "accidentally" secure erase a file. You could even envisage some conversation on "secure erase protocol requiring mandatory erasure of all back-ups to ensure ISO-9001 standards compliance following IEEE-235478523676 standard on complete data security, in line with EU directive 72563762357-2016 clause 42-B"
Come to think of it, I might try that line of what can pass for reasoning in low light
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Friday 17th March 2017 14:18 GMT PatientOne
Re: Great episode
You accidentally secure erase a file by right clicking and selecting 'erase' rather than 'delete' from the menu, then clicking 'yes' when prompted because you've been secure deleting files for a while and got into the habit. Yes, you need secure erasure software installed to do this, but who doesn't these days? o:)
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Friday 17th March 2017 14:24 GMT VanguardG
I once had to pop open someone's email, with the person's manager peering over one shoulder and the director of HR drooling on the other, to search for "inappropriate emails". I found them. Lots of them. Nothing truly disturbing taken individually, but given how many there were on various themes, I have the feeling the subject of the investigation was sent on a permanent unpaid vacation, and he'd already been warned once about that kind of thing.
C'mon, its Outlook...purge the sent items and empty the recycle bin, at least *try* to cover your tracks. Trying to cut the idiot a break would have been like trying to hide an elephant in the dining room by throwing a tablecloth over it.
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Friday 17th March 2017 16:37 GMT Dave 32
Re: Ooooh...
What elephant? Oh, so you're seeing imaginary elephants in the dining room? What colour are they? Pink, perhaps? Exactly what have you been drinking, or what kind of drugs have you been taking? Should you really be coming to work after you've consumed those items? ;-)
Dave
P.S. I'll get my coat. It's the one with the pocket full of peanuts.
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Wednesday 22nd March 2017 20:04 GMT Lord_Beavis
The majik in the box
This one time, a fellow tech and I were called to look at this one particularly thick headed users computer. She had created a document, saved said document to the file share and then for some unknown reason, deleted said document.
VSS only runs a couple time a day and she missed the window.
When asked (by her boss) how can something like this be prevented in the future, my colleague answered about a millisecond before I did. Don't delete it in the first place. You wouldn't believe the shit storm that caused because that particular boss thought they were someone not to trifle with.
It ain't rocket science... Yeah, that remark got him in trouble latter on too.
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Saturday 8th July 2017 05:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Apart from the obvious flick through the director would do to check it's OK.
You sysadmin people might think everyone else in the world is a complete retard...
In 25 years I've never seem anyone just take an unknown deck and start presenting it, especially to a board. Even when you wrote the deck you check it's good before you plug-in.
Nice dream that definitely didn't happen.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
