Lock-in to legacy code is a thing. Being locked in by legacy code is another thing entirely As Friday rolls around and the prospect of fleeing the office looms, The Register brings you another instalment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed stories in which techies are asked to help – but too often end up needing to help themselves. Progress bar Boss put project on progress bar timeline: three months … four … …
That must be the first time I have ever even just read about a boss saying those words.
It's incredible, so much so that I firmly believe that, no sooner had he said those words, a wormhole to a different universe opened to return him to whence he came, because that guy didn't belong in this one.
That must be the first time I have ever even just read about a boss saying those words
Certainly not one of my early bosses - put in the work and paperwork for a shiny new 386 (we had 286's so running anything to allow multitasking was a problem). After giving a presentation to the higer-level manager, my request was granted.
I got word that the machine had arrived - and discovered that my manager had decided it should be on his desk rather than mine - despite the fgact that my job role would benefit from it and his wouldn't.
Came very close to committing a gross malpractice event.
We had a manager who insisted his laptop was higher spec than his subordinates, even though he didn't need the power. Even when he was under threat of redundancy he demanded a replacement, despite being warned if he did go he would not be permitted to keep it.
He was made redundant (as the plant closed) but failed to return the laptop until threatened with the police for theft (we knew they would say it was a civil matter, he didn't). The irony was if he'd just played the game he could have kept his older, but very good, laptop as we'd set a book value limit where they could be retained (strangely mine came in just under that limit).
"Came very close to committing a gross malpractice event."
I need to correct your terminology here. Your boss commandeering the 386 was gross malpractice.
The reaction to him like say, shitting in his desk drawer, or knocking his favorite pen to the floor and then accidentally sliding the 386 off the desk and onto his head when he goes to pick up the pen, now that would be a gross misdemeanor event!
More people need to wake up and realise that theres no such thing as leadership. Almost always "leaders" are frauds who are nothing more than a tax on the business and good will of employees. Reading a self help or any type of leadership book for advice is bullshit.
The Vl'Hurgs were a species who lived on the far reaches of the galaxy. They declared war on the G'Gugvuntts, the original reason being to force the G'Gugvuntts' leader to take back what it had said about the Vl'Hurg Commander's mother, when a freak wormhole carried Arthur's words, "I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle", into the midst of their negotiations - it just so happens that in the Vl'Hurgs' language, that phrase is considered the most dreadful insult imaginable.
The Vl'Hurgs waged war on the G'Gugvuntts for a long time, until they realised that it had all been a terrible mistake, and the two armies joined forces to attack Earth.
Unfortunately, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire fleet was eaten by a small dog.
Useful advice i was given, if locked in a lift at night don't bother with the service number - just call the fire service
They'll be there in minutes and love breaking into things.
They are the Labradors of Emergency Services - hugely destructive but so joyful you just can't get mad at them
I was working at what was to become a 6th form college in 2009.
As the new building wasn't ready (still a building site) a temporary server room was created in the existing building.
This included bars over the windows and metal shutters in front of the doors.
I'd been working late one evening* (not that late - maybe an hour) and as I opened the door to leave, a security guard almost jumped out of his skin. He was literally about to pull the shutter down for the night and had been told no one was in the room**
Had I been a mere few seconds later I'd have likely been spending the night in the server room.
*Pre-planned for a while as I wouldn't usually give more hours in the day without good reason
**Apparently he didn't have access to the room to be able to physically check, but one does wonder why he didn't knock on the door first just to be sure.
"higher-level brains"
I'm pretty sure security guards often have these, but are forced to work in dull, poorly paid jobs because there's nothing else. You could say the same about people studying for qualifications while flipping burgers, serving beer, cleaning floors, and so on.
Never diss people doing lowly jobs, they're still people and they deserve respect. If your life was to become difficult, it could be you.
Often this is also done because the client is a d!ck and will penalise the security company for anything they miss, so they take an "we'll follow the contract exactly" methodology, which often ends up backfiring on the clients because it wasn't catered for in the contract
Maaany years ago, I was working on a small part of the control desk for a nuclear installation - something naval up on the north coast of Scotland - during construction. When I went in, there was someone already in the control room, and I never thought anything about it. When I came to leave, I found the door locked - the other guy had "just gone" and without even mentioning he was going had locked the door behind him. So I figured he'd be back after lunch and carried on.
It wasn't long before a security guy on his rounds came in and was surprised to find me there - especially as I wasn't on the list of people allowed to be in the room on my own. So I didn't miss lunch - I'd have been quite a bit more unhappy if I had !
Yeah, some people just don't think, or are complete ****s.
Working at a secure government site the security guards would patrol twice a day to ensure that all was well. One area only worked Mon-Fri so when the security chap checked it on Sat morning and found a cupboard left open he reported the security guard who had performed the previous security check. Alas, he failed to realise that occasionally someone in the area would work on a Saturday. The outcome was that if that situation occurred again the security guard wouldn't simply report his mate for failing to do his job but check whether (a) someone was working in the area or (b) there had been a break in!
Working in a new building still being final fixed on the main site putting the network in, finished what I could do for the day - it was about 5:15 and walked out the comms room to a bulldozing with all the lights off.
The builders had all left site and locked the outer doors. I rang the site manager for the rest of the site and spoke to him. Five minutes of laughter later he agreed to come over and unlock the outer door so I could go home.
I think they had words with the builders over the importance of checking the site was empty before locking up.
In mah yuuf I had a job delivering telephone directories (remember them?). On one light industry office site I entered through the gates and walked clockwise around the site posting the directories to the various occupants. When I got back to the gate it was locked. The site supervisor had been walking around the site about five minutes ahead of me locking up, and locked the main gate behind himself. I was just able to get out by emptying my luggage trolley and pushing the rest of my directories a couple at a time under the gate, then scrambled over the gate and carefully dropped myself the eight feet down the other side.
Not locked in, but in the mid/late 90's I was doing some work at an HSBC office.
I had a visitors pass for the duration as I was due to be there for about a week, from memory.
It was well run and I was given a bit of a tour - alarms, exits etc.
The site was a bit unusual - the main doors were through a branch so during the day you came and left via them but at night you had to go out via revolving doors as they closed the others to the branch.
It's a long time ago so my memory of it's a bit dim but as I recall the only pad for card reading only opened the doors to go through the branch not the revolving doors - though they were placed as though it'd do both.
Except it was two thin wires in the edge of the door frame that actually read the card.
So on the first evening I swiped and of course it went green because... well even though they were physically locked, I guess the maglocks still functioned on the branch doors, and I managed to blunder straight into a locked door at full chat. Much to the amusement of those around me before someone kindly pointed out how to actually make the doors operate.
... of buildings after driving for an hour or more to fix an "emergency". Not my favorite waste of time. My standard contract now details the charges incurred for such rude behavior (once bitten ... ).
But locked in? Nope. Here in the Civilized world, we have fire exits. I had (and have!) absolutely zero compunction about this. If whoever is in charge is too stupid to make sure that whoever has the job of locking up has enough clues to check the building before doing so, they deserve the fine for wasting the time of emergency services.
I've lost one or two clients along the way, but usually they apologize profusely.
Yes, I always wait to explain to the emergency folks why I tripped the alarm ... it's hardly their fault.
It is an acceptable policy to lock fire doors when the building is closed & empty - but alongside that there must be procedures in place to check that the place really is empty before locking, and to unlock when opening up. You'll often see places with a board, prominently visible, with hooks for each lock so you can see at a glance that all the locks have been removed. It's all about having done a suitable risk assessment.
Why ? Well it really isn't a case of fire doors being unopenable from outside. There is a well known (so I don't think I've giving anything away) trick of drilling a fairly small hole (not too difficult in most cases, and doesn't make much noise) through the door, then inserting an umbrella or similar, opening it, then pulling. This pulls on the bar, opening the door. Obviously you can spend a lot of money upgrading the doors to be more or less drill proof (which might not be permissible in a rented property), or you lock it when closing up.
"It is an acceptable policy to lock fire doors when the building is closed & empty"
In your jurisdiction this might be true. It might not be in mine.
Be wary of making sweeping proclamations of this sort in an international forum ... or, if you do, name the jurisdiction.
Or you do what is considered the best practice, and rig the fire door to automatically trigger an alarm and call emergency services when it is opened. That way you are taking care of the safety of the buildings' occupants without compromising the security of the premises.
As a student on placement overnight in a teaching hospital I was given an overnight room on the fifth floor of a building described as "nurses' quarters". One morning after night shift I thought there had to be a quicker way to street level than through the twisty maze of corridors that connected the building to the main hospital, so I legged it down the emergency exit... and into the convent where the nuns who still were associated with the place had their quarters / retirement home. Turned around in time to hear the click as the one-way lock on the door I'd just come through closed.
Those nuns had jammed open the fire door and filled that fire escape stairwell with potted plants, photographs, souvenirs, basically the accumulated detritus of years, in a place where they obviously expected no-one from the outside world to ever visit.
I just asked the first person I saw what the quickest way out was, and followed their direction, taking care not to make eye contact with anyone until I was out of there. Coincidentally it was right across the road from the headquarters of a fire brigade that serves a city of 4.5 million people - but who can't find anyone willing to inspect a nunnery.
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OP noted that they were in the Fire Brigade's "naughty" list, probably for having blocked/locked fire escapes amongst others. Or you find that the only opening fire escapes are in a corridor that you actually thought was a storeroom as it's filled with boxes floor to ceiling...
I started a new contract at a regional electricity supplier (this was before UK de-regulation, which was why they took me on, to help commission the required systems for that).
They gave me a temporary badge which gave me access to pretty much everywhere I needed to be, while they sorted out my proper photo ID.
Because it was the regional electricity company for the area I had just moved to, I thought I'd drop off the paper work for the new electricity account for my new house into the mailbox provided for such things, located in Reception. It was just after office hours, and reception was shut, but I could get in (my badge let me through the internal door into Reception).
But it didn't allow me back into the main building, and the external door was shut and locked. This gave me the same problem, because it was before I had a mobile phone, and reception had shutters that prevented me reaching the phone on the desk.
After about 15 minutes of trying to work out what to do, the door into the building opened, and a bemused security guard looked out, and asked if I needed help! Apparently he had looked at this alert screen when finishing a round, and seen the failed authentication attempts when I was trying to swipe my card, but had paid little attention because he knew that reception had been locked up, and nobody had been in there when he'd checked! Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him, and he came to see what was going on.
Shortly afterwards, they put an enquirey button somewhere where it could be pressed, just to prevent the same thing happening to someone else.
I think that is reserved for high end secured BMWs inhabited by expensive people whilst being parked in the sun on Bangkok airport.
At which point the air conditioning failed as well. And no, the windows didn't work. "Secured", remember, and they certainly were.
I think they had to fly in an engineer to convince the car to unlock. This happened quite a while back so I can't find the details anymore.
Not sure if the inhabitants suffered the same fate as dogs left behind in a car in sunlight, but I think it's safe to assume they were at least very unhappy.
"too dumb to read the manual"
Too panicked, more likely. "Stop, think, act": there's a reason that formula has to be taught -- because it doesn't come naturally in an emergency, when emotions and adrenaline are running high.
Or maybe they did, but the manual was as confusing as the one for my not-a-BMW.
A few years ago someone got locked in a branch of Waterstones: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/17/us-tourist-locked-inside-london-waterstones-book-shop. The idea of being locked in a bookshop with only sofas and a café for company proved so popular that they ran a charity sleepover a short while later.
At the last place I worked door access was all on some sort of reader and it was based on groups that where managed directly in the controller system. This was managed from security. One day I turned up at the office to find someone outside our external door waving a card trying to get it. The assumption was that his card had failed. I tried mine, nothing. Gradually more people arrived whilst we were speaking to security. The system that managed the doors had a "failure" so nobody could get in, this included security into the room where the PC needed to drive this operated from.
We have really bad remote access at the time to manage systems. We could connect to the WiFi but not our corporate network. Access to the systems was mostly tied down to a limited range of IP addresses.
Eventually someone decided which doors would be easiest to force to access the offending PC. I think it took about 2 hours to gain access and fix it. The problem is that it could not "fail open" from the outside as this would leave all the buildings with unrestricted access.
Mid 80s, IBM had an office in central Belfast. Security being considered Very Important (Belfast, 80s) this office was linked to the main security centre, in Manchester I think. This included master control of the door locks.
One evening the last people were preparing to leave, and found that the remote link was down, so they couldn't lock the doors. No-one had thought to provision a manual backup (i.e. a key).
After several fruitless hours trying to restore the connection, and faced with a ruling that the office was not to be left empty when unlocked, one poor sod had to stay the night, on a chair by the door. I hope (s)he got overtime...
"Eventually someone decided which doors would be easiest to force to access the offending PC. I think it took about 2 hours to gain access and fix it. The problem is that it could not "fail open" from the outside as this would leave all the buildings with unrestricted access."
Was the eventual solution to have at least one access point that can be entered with a traditional lock and key?
"Unless you get pulled over for some reason, the copper is in a picky mood[*] and, not finding anything else, does you for "going equipped"."
In your jurisdiction this might be true. It might not be in mine.
Be wary of making sweeping proclamations of this sort in an international forum ... or, if you do, name the jurisdiction.
Is there an echo in here?
I was working late one night after the lights had gone off, when security came by. Security was retired police, who knew how to protect themselves just by being intimidating and by putting you mentally off-balance. And the ex-police had been hired after one of the cheaper security guards had been bashed, injured, hospitalized, and retired with permanent disability.
So there was none of that "excuse me sir, you aren't supposed to be in here" The greeting was very sudden, very loud, and very immediate.
Several decades ago I was doing some conformance testing to verify software compliance with US government standards. The software was sold to the Federal government, and the test lab was in Reston Virginia, Fed central.
My usual day was to spend most of the time doing testing with the lab techs, then to retire to our local office where I could login to my development system and spend a few hours fixing the issues, prior to returning to my hotel for dinner, and a repeat the following day.
Our local office was in a building full of federal agencies and military suppliers. One evening it took longer than expected to solve a problem, and by the time I left the building was empty, and secured. I knew the way out, but it was quite nerve wracking walking through that building, very aware of my visitor's pass, UK passport, and complete lack of US security clearance, with my fingers firmly crossed that I could get to the exit before any large uniformed guy decided to find out who I was.
I felt very relieved when I reached my car.
I have once had an armed military guard run after me.
Worst part was that the gentleman didn't speak any English, and I spoke even less Persian. Unmarked access cards, too. So explaining what I was doing and why I was supposed to be in the secure area involved a lot of pointing.
Fortunately, entirely by me. The guard was perfectly polite and did their job entirely correctly.
It was a far less concerning interaction than when I got locked out of a Spice Girls relaunch so couldn't turn the power on. Supposedly I'd been issued the "wrong" AAA pass, whatever that meant. (It'd been fine until then)
Though in retrospect, maybe that guard was actually trying to save the world...
Back in the late 90's I was work as a contractor for a SATCOM company, and I was tasked with travelling out to Japan to one of their suppliers to witness a Factory Acceptance Test on a system that was due to be delivered by the supplier. Everything went fine for the first morning and half of the first afternoon, then suddenly one of the critical test failed significantly. Much panic then occurred with the Japanese supplier's staff; in order to minimise the loss of face to them I took myself off to a safe (and discrete) corner of the factory floor and watched proceedings with considerable interest and a certain amount of amusement.
Come 17:00 and the end-of-day bell occurred. It had previously been explained to me that when this bell rad you had 30 minutes to vacate the site then the doors would be locked and not opened until 08:00 the next day, so I dutifully said my goodbyes to the Japanese supplier's test manager. The next day I was back on site just after 08:00 to find a very frazzled test manager (and equally frazzled team under him); apparently they found the problem at about 02:00 in the morning (a simple case of forgetting to purge a configuration left over from the previous test case) but had then had to camp out of any sofas they could find. Not a pleasant night for them! On they other hand I accrued a lot of brownie points for being understanding and giving them room to sort the problem out.
Went to a meeting at a university* campus. Confusing directions, unlabelled buildings, so ended up in the wrong one. Door open, but slammed shut behind me. However once in, it became apparent the building was deserted apart from me, and the only way to get out was to use a key-card, which I didn't have, or to trigger the fire-alarm, which I did. That unlocked the door, and I was able to watch the ensuing drama from across the road. *Specialises in MBAs.
"Had he seen a bump there, on the ramp near the exit? Asking because jumping on those often triggers the garage door."
The other mechanism, of course, is the induction loop. I often wonder how much is needed to trigger those. I've seen that on an exit-only gate and wondered if something like s few flattened cooking oil drums pop riveted together would do it. Throw it through the gate and, for good measure, reverse in so that if the guard looks up at the CCTV he sees a car apparently leaving.
My daughter was once returning home from her university some 100 miles away, and when she arrived in town in the wee small hours, the traffic lights refused to sense her 125cc motorbike, it didn''t contain enough iron to trigger the sensor. She waited and waited, and eventually had to dismount and push it across the pedestrian crossing after pressing the button to announce her presence.
"I often wonder how much is needed to trigger those."
A friend lives in a block with an underground car park. They keep a metal bin lid close to the exit, to trigger the loop if you want to open the main door to leave by bike (easier than using the wicket door).
That time of week again -->
Back when I was using my road bike regularly I found that induction loop vehicle detectors for left-turn lanes would often fail to trip. Partially dismounting the bicycle and laying it parallel to the road surface for a few seconds, usually did the trick.
Don't know what you'd do in this situation with one of those fancy carbon fiber framed bikes -- carry a trash can lid? Kinda defeats the purpose. Weight reduction is a fine thing, but as someone once wrote, if you have to carry a 20-pound chain to keep your 20-pound (9-ish kg?) bike from getting stolen, you might as well ride a 40-pound bike.
A few decades ago when I lived in Baltimore, the city used ultrasonic vehicle detectors. They broadcast a chirp that was annoying to those of us whose hearing extended to higher frequencies than it does now. Rumor was that they had a theft problem, because the transducers made excellent tweeters for your stereo.
> Partially dismounting the bicycle and laying it parallel to the road surface for a few seconds, usually did the trick.
Yes. I got to where I could wide-straddle with one foot on the pavement and the bike almost-flat, for less than a second. This was an exit gate so instant response, not like posting a request to a traffic light sequencer.
And long-long before practical non-iron bicycles. (I did attempt an Aluminum but that level of alloy welding was not yet commonplace.)
"if you have to carry a 20-pound chain to keep your 20-pound (9-ish kg?) bike from getting stolen, you might as well ride a 40-pound bike."
But you still need the 10 kg chain to stop the heavy bike being stolen. Even if it's a cheap bike-shaped object, it'll still get nicked and you'll still have to walk.
"induction loop vehicle detectors for left-turn lanes"
Or right turn lanes in the UK.
The loop for this one used to be situated where the cement mixer is now: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.6438468,-1.773666,3a,75y,328.58h,92.19t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1unTI35lU_eVQU5hVOqt_A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu i.e. past the stop line. It meant that when the lights changed for the straight ahead the leading vehicle for the right turn had to roll forward and then wait for the filter. If that vehicle was driven by a stranger it could take a few changed before they noticed the loop and realised this.
A place I used to work at had several free parking spaces in a courtyard right in the city centre which tended to be unused on evenings and weekends - you needed a pass or code to get the bollards to drop on the way in (which wasn't always available) but just had to trip the induction loop to get the bollards down on the way out.
Someone figured out - and shared with a select bunch of people - that if you put a mobile phone on the corner of the induction loop and phoned someone from it, that was enough to get it to trigger. Your milage these days may vary, but I'd always give it a try if desperate!
" I often wonder how much is needed to trigger those"
In at least some implementations, I think it's tunable. It used to be that my cromoly bicycle was enough to trigger my neighborhood's traffic lights to change. There was even a road marking to tell cyclists where to stop, to make that happen. But now it no longer works and the markings are much worn; I have to go push the pedestrian-cross button.
And Toronto likes to call itself cycling-friendly. Feh!
I had a university lecturer 20 years ago (eek) who bemoaned that the council had put some form of scale/loop device to trigger the traffic lights in his locality and his scooter wasn't sufficient to trigger it. Apparently he'd wired an electromagnet under the scooter to a pushbutton on the handlebars and via investigation, upped the strength until it triggered.
I once managed to get locked in my local students' union building when I was acting as the treasurer for my local beer festival!
I was hidden away in an office doing the end of day cashing up ready to put money in the safe. Came out to find a deserted building. The SU had cheaped out and got rid of all the staff we'd worked with for years and the new people didn't know to check if I'd finished - they should have known as they were the ones who would let me access the safe!
And no, I didn't drink the profits. Phoned university security who got the SU manager to come let me secure cash in the safe and then let me out; so fire exit wasn't an option, plus most were alarmed if I recall.
Let's see - there doesn't appear to have been a signing in book (which would show somebody still "present"). There also doesn't seem to be anybody that did a tour before finally locking up (or if they did, they did it wrong). And nobody thought to tell him about closing time.
Well, the article did say they failed the fire inspection. Seems to be an institutional lack of shits being given.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for one.
Fire safety is now entirely "risk assessment", where the assessment is almost always done by someone incompetent who doesn't understand (or doesn't care) that they may be asked to justify their decisions to a judge while sat in the dock.
(Since 1999, IIRC. Thanks Blair)
Insurance companies tend to drive UK fire safety these days.
"there doesn't appear to have been a signing in book (which would show somebody still "present")."
Signing in books are still quite common and reception are usually quite scrupulous in making sure visitors sign in. Signing out they leave? Not so much. I suspect if there was a real fire and an evacuation, the Fire brigade will be looking for an awful lot of visitor who've apparently been in the building for a month or more :-)
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Back in the mid 80's, back in my youth was a mainframe operator for a company in London. 2 shifts - morning and evening, with evening shift locking up the building once everything was finished for the day.
There were 2 doors at the entrance to the building - with just enough between them that both doors couldn't be open at the same time. The inner doors were on magnetic locks, which could only be opened by pressing a button on the inside if you didn't have the right keys.
I was the evening shift... Finished the job, put the mag tapes in the firesafe (those were the days..), had a quick scoot around the building (4 floors) to make sure there was no-one about and went home, locking the doors behind me.
The following day, I had a call to my manager's office to be asked if I'd checked the building before going. I had (honest guv) - but why?
One of the developers had been working late - and on hearing me putting the mag tapes away he'd decided to put on his cycling gear and go home; he'd switched off his terminal (ahh 3270!), switched off the lights and headed to the gents to get changed.
I did my rounds, saw no-one, no lights and naturally assumed the place was empty (I have to point out that we always checked the toilets too just in case, but on this occasion the dev concerned went to some toilets I'd already checked) .
Outcome was, he got stuck in the 5 foot "lobby" between the 2 doors, unable to open either one. Eventually he managed to attract the attention of a passer-by by shouting through the letterbox, who in turn called the police and they in turn called my manager (as registered key holder) to rescue him...
If he worked late after that, he always made sure he was visible to the ops!
Not a funny story this, more a small boast.
When I had just left school, I worked for BR in the Quantity Surveyor's office. a major part of the job was entering data into a database that used some relatively complicated code to generate some mailshots, and spreadsheets.
Basically, we had to mail out these sheets to various other departments, and the system did this. It also generated the covering letters, and labels for the envelopes.
My colleague who did my job before I did had gotten the boss to buy a fairly powerful (for the time) office suite called "Smart Office" (which makes the product difficult to google, as the name is too generic). This was the first office suite I'd seen, and certainly the first to have a scripting language linking the applications.
I was a decent hobbyist coder, and had a fair bit of experience with this suite from a previous job, so I started tweaking his code.
By the time I finished, the system ran something like 3 times the speed, with no change to the output.
Unfortunately, the boss decided that the pretty blonde he'd just employed could then use the improved system to do both her and my job. He didn't tell me this, of course. He got me to train her, and being a teenage geek, given even a chance to spend some time with a pretty Blonde woman, I leapt at it without really analysing things. Being a temp, I really had no rights, so my agency got a phone call the next week asking me not to come back..
office suite called "Smart Office" (which makes the product difficult to google, as the name is too generic).
Probably SmartWare which is googlable.
For some inscrutable reason Informix bought it. For an even more inscrutable reason they didn't make the database element a front end for the Informix database.
"Probably SmartWare which is googlable."
Having used it (them), IIRC, the first version was Smart. Later, it became SmartWare II. For it's time, it was immensely powerful, even including a terminal client so you could pull in your data from the database, consolidate and mess with it in a spreadsheet and create some pretty graphs, and put all into a pretty formatted report via the word processor, possibly link to external programs if you need other stuff, then dial up and send the report to HQ, all under the scripting language control. Something that's still a pain the arse to do with MSOffice :-)
Have you been locked in, locked out, or rescued while working in tech?
Yeah more than once while staying late to use the college I was working at's speedy connection to play Unreal Tournament I found the caretakers had locked up , and I would have to use the fire escape , which would trigger the alarm and annoy people.
Its surprising Alesandro didnt have this option
Deploying PC's to a portacabin, the last remaining worker packed up & left, thoughtfully locking me in.
My phone was on my desk (We weren't allowed them on site), site security was obviously napping, so I broke the glass tube & exited via the fire escape.
Making my way back to my office, I advised security that the secure exit was now probably insecure.
Back at the turn of the century, I had a colleague, he was the counselor for the school I was working at... He was working late one afternoon, and decided to pop over to his couch for a few minutes of shut eye. A few minutes turns into many hours... Security makes their rounds, and don't see the counselor on his couch, pulls his door closed and locks it. The poor guy wakes up, building is dark, door is locked and his coat is in the foyer with his keys in the pocket. Being extremely embarrassed, he didn't call anyone, but went out the second story window, along the ledge to the corner of the building, and was able to shimmy down a drain pipe. This story didn't come out immediately, but at a cocktail party many months later... Embarrassed to say the least!
Was call back and say he saw a guy wearing a mask and carrying a gun walking down a hallway, and now he's hiding in an office. Bet the police are more interested in showing up then, and if the guy with the gun is not there when they arrive oh well I guess he stole whatever he came for and left!
A colleague and I worked late at a sports venue in Kentucky. The building was dark and locked. We found our way to a fenced-in garden area and were contemplating whether it was a good idea to climb the fence to exit. A security guard happened by. We explained ourselves to him, and he asked "You in that fo-wid?" After requesting a couple of repeats, it dawned on me: "Oh, Ford! Yes, my rental car is a Ford!"
(I grew up in a suburb of New York City, where fo-wid was the opposite of back-wid. So my ears were not well-attuned to his accent.)
Anyway, he sprung us without further ado.
I worked in one office where you needed a card to enter through doors, but no card to exit through doors.
The building had a trap: One little part that you could enter through two doors but not leave. So if you forgot your card and entered there you were stuck. I managed it once and had to wait five minutes for someone to open a door. If you were the last person to leave the office , forgot your card, and took the wrong route, you were stuck.
I once was doing some Unix consulting in a large office building entirely owned and occupied by the client. The first floor was the reception area/lobby; the second floor contained mostly open-plan desks, with some private offices, conference rooms, and the room with the Unix host (a 486DX PC with UPS). When I finished, it was 8:23PM, and the office was deserted. I walked down the stairs to the lobby and was beset by screaming alarms and flashing red lights. The doors all were locked. I had no idea where the switch was for the overhead lights, I had the number of one person from the business, and after ten seconds realized there was no way I could figure out how to call out from the receptionist's PBX mega-console.
Fire doors? Yes, they had them, somewhere, though not locatable by me in the dark punctuated by flashing red lights.
I ran back upstairs, found an ordinary desk phone, called my contact at home, shouted my predicament to her (the alarm sirens were very loud), and she said she'd inform their security service to come and let me out.
Back downstairs I went, waited by the front door, and eventually someone from "Joe's Security Service" showed up, unlocked the doors, shut off the alarm, escorted me out, then locked up again.
Yes, I billed them for my time waiting for Joe to let me out.
So, the response to the noisy, flashy intruder alarms is...nothing? It took a phone call to the security contractor to make time in their diary to come and let you out? I suppose they cheaped out on the security contract and relied on the noisy sirens and lights to scare off any real burglars.
In the US its not uncommon for small to medium sized office spaces to have both the entrance/reception area facing the parking lot and secondary doors onto a shared internal corridor which provides access to restrooms and other facilities. Naturally all these doors are alarmed and the unwary can be caught out quite easily when working after hours.
This particular incident happened to an engineer visiting from our Northern California office. Like all engineers he tended to dress informally but unlike nearly all engineers he was a "minority" -- a rarity in technology, an "African American". Our office was located on the periphery of Los Angeles County, in a nice area, the sort of area where there's a lot of money around along with the attendant paranoia that goes with nice people running into the hoi-polloi. Anyway, our visiting engineer runs off to the restroom, tripping the silent alarm, and on returning finds that there are several cop cars outside with cops facing him with guns drawn. (This might have been the early 2000s but still even in this day and age being 'of African descent' tends to be prima facie proof of criminal intent -- the idea that one of them could not only be an engineer but a damn fine one apparently would never cross anyone's mind, he's obviously up to no good).
Fortunately, as he told it later, there was a sergeant with them who calmed the situation down so we kept our engineer.
(PS -- For those who don't know, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department used to have a bit of a reputation of being a bit trigger happy -- shoot first, sort out the paperwork later.((Actually, they were downright dangerous to have any dealings with....)
Well my favourite was when we had a power failure and the generator did not start (the automatic starter was broken and the generator could only be started with a screwdriver)!
The mag-locks all defaulted to 'locked' and the generator was the other side of 4 locked doors. We had to kick the doors open to get to the generator room to start the generator. In the dark, with only a flash light and emergency lighting. That was fun explaining that to management the next morning.
I have a friend who was delivering to a secure site. He had to pass through several checkpoints, but the site went into lockdown between checkpoints. He couldn't go on, and he couldn't go back. He was stuck there for 4 hours. What was funny was that people knew he was there, but couldn't let him move even if they wanted to.
Not locked in, but this reminded me of a time one winter evening when a JCB further up the road dug through the power cable feeding our building, among others. We were in an industrial park in an otherwise rural location, so when the lights (and monitors) went out, there wasn't even any light coming through the windows. The way out was through an internal corridor and staircase with, it turned out, no emergency lighting. This was way before mobile phones (with or without torches) were common, so nobody had a light. In the end, I dug out a cheap electric rechargeable soldering iron from my bag, and led my colleagues out by the light of the single tiny bulb (I don't think it was even an LED) it had for illuminating your work, whilst hoping I didn't run into anybody and impale them on the burning hot tip!
Brings back memories of a colleague a few years ago. Some of the senior IT guys (of which I was one) had 24x7 access to the building, but Dean (not his real name) and his colleagues didn't. You had to swipe in and swipe out of each floor.
Anyhow, the cut-off for non-24x7 cards was 9pm. You couldn't get in after that. And it turned out that you couldn't swipe out after 9pm either, thanks to an oversight of design. He finished up at about 9:45pm, and his swipe card wouldn't let him out. For safety reasons, of course, there was a break-glass button on the door and so he used it to make good his escape.
The next morning all hell broke loose. Poor guy was dragged into a meeting with senior people to receive a major b**locking for using the emergency button. Happily I got wind of this and stuck my nose in and was able to point out that: (a) the third-party security guard was supposed to do a sweep of the building at 9pm prompt and was conspicuous by his absence; and (b) the reason Dean didn't call the security company to be rescued was that there was no signage along the lines of "In the event of a security emergency, call <number>" and he had no idea of what the company was called (and why would he - he wasn't on the extended security list).
Happily he was exonerated and the security company were "asked" to explain what happened to the 9pm sweep.
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