How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer Welcome once again to On Call, the Register column in which readers recall how they dug themselves out of holes while delivering tech support. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Doug," who told us about the time his phone rang around 6:00PM on Friday afternoon and he was asked to visit a client that operated a mine. …
In the 1970s I worked in the Oil business in a company that stored data - hard copy and tapes mainly - for oil companies. My job was data acquisition and data management; we used a series of computer or computer-adjacent systems to manage the catalogues. At times I had to work in the offices of our clients. The level of paranoid security the oil companies engaged with was amazing! I've been in places like Los Alamos National Laboratory and none of them have security like the oil companies did in the 1970s.
To the downvoters:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forgotten-oil-ads-that-told-us-climate-change-was-nothing
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/09/politics/big-oil-disinformation-record-profits-climate/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/oil-industry-documents-disinformation.html
A company isn't likely to send their tech into a warzone to support a computer, I'm surprised they were willing to send him down a mine which is equally dangerous!
Obviously they didn't know where it had been moved, but I bet if he'd pushed back and said "hell no I'm not descending into the bowels of the Earth, you guys can bring it up to the surface first!" his boss would have backed him up. If for no other reason than that their company's liability insurance would have become unaffordable if there was an accident and they had to make a claim for "tech died in a cave-in while down a mine providing tech support"
"A company isn't likely to send their tech into a warzone to support a computer"
I was sent to Beirut a couple times in '82 and '83, and again in '89. Got to keep the money flowing, regardless of anything else going on.
"I'm surprised they were willing to send him down a mine which is equally dangerous!"
Nah. Mines are a lot safer.
I hope you were paid REALLY well for that! If I had a boss who told me to go to a place where bombs are falling I'd ask him how big the bonus I'll be getting for putting myself at risk, and if he said "ha you're not getting anything extra for this" I'd say "ha you're gonna have to find someone else to do this job I quit!"
In '82 and '83 I was in a 9-5, with some field service as needed. The internal advert called for "unmarried and childless for two weeks overseas work. Field service experience a must. Standard Field pay, +long-term overseas pay, +hazardous duty pay, +6 weeks paid vacation and HUGE bonus at completion!" (their CAPS and !). Being young and stupid, I jumped on it. I managed about 4 years pay for the half dozen trips I made over there in those two years. And an adventure to tell the grandkids.
The two trips I made in '79 I was a consultant with my own company, a trifle older and maybe wiser, and made quite a bit more money than I did in the first 6 trips. They called me in because I already had experience with the site and most of the equipment. Except I didn't ... but that's a story for another day.
It wasn't bombs *falling* that you had to look out for... it was bombs in innocuous-looking vehicles that were the problem. Car bombs were a big thing back then because the likes of Hezbollah could easily string up a bunch of TNT or Semtex with a timer and some wire. A car (well, truck) bomb is what blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut that really kicked off the party in '83.
And since then we've continued to see how well they work... Oklahoma City, New York City, Baghdad, Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam, Mumbai... No-one suspects that something with four wheels contains something deadly until it goes KABOOM.
"No-one suspects that something with four wheels contains something deadly until it goes KABOOM."
No-one?
Suspecting exactly that was SOP in Northern Ireland. It became law that an unoccupied car should be locked because of the increased risk of it being stolen and used as a bomb (which puzzled me why it seems to have been so easy to lift documents from a PSNI Super's car). There were substantial areas where it was illegal to park an unoccupied car (they may not have been aware of it but my children were sometimes car-sitters on weekends when I needed to run a quick errand into one of the zones).
Even so, my lab was bombed. Someone the IRA wrongly though worked there was targetted. They loaded his car, told him to drive there and held his family hostage. As he didn't work there the car never got beyond the double gate trap. Everyone was evacuated to the back of the site until it went off
I was down town in court at the time and got told about it by a couple of Peelers (even writing about it brings back the terminology of the time and place) while the defence had asked for a recess whilst they considered what I'd just said. Windows were blown in but not much real damage. I was greeted by a strong smell of clove oil as I entered the door. I used it as a dehydrating agent for preparing wood sections and had a 100 ml bottle near one of the windows that blown in. The spilled oil must have got trodden right down to the door.
When I was an apprentice in the late 60s and early 70s, one of the postings most feared was to Autolite, Belfast. Luckily, I was not asked to go there, I went to Autolite Enfield (among many other sites) instead. I don't know what I would have done had I been selected for that posting, but several of my fellow apprentices went there and had some hair-raising tales to tell when they returned. One chap, though, committed suicide just after he returned!
On the other hand, I spent three months in Dagenham Foundry, the noisiest place imaginable, and I still suffer from Tinnitis to this day.
No-one as in no ordinary person... You walk past a van parked outside the FBI building in Oklahoma City and don't really think anything of it. Or of an unoccupied car in a parking garage in the bowels of the World Trade Center... or a big truck outside the Marine barracks in Beirut. Or a battered old Mercedes parked outside some apartment block elsewhere in the city. The list is endless.
Of course NI was different. And it only became different (with the regulations you mention) after several car bombs went off! Same in Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam, Beirut funnily enough, Jerusalem et al. People became suspicious of unlocked cars (or locked cars parked in places where you normally wouldn't park a car).
Growing up with terrorist threats, education on what limpet mines, hand grenades, Semtex packages, RPGs etc looked like and the instruction drummed into your head not to touch anything but to call the police immediately was lots of 'fun' as a child. That experience has changed my outlook on war refugees irrevocably.
> Why quit? Just say no.
Exactly what I was thinking. Why do the boss a favour when you can put the onus on him?
The worst he can do is sack you anyway, the outcome of which would likely be a case for unfair dismissal he'd almost certainly lose. (Unless such risks had been already clearly and explicitly-agreed in advance as part of the job contract, something I assume OP- and most other people- would refuse in the first place unless they were promised danger money).
Similarly, even if they were a contractor rather than an employee, I doubt even the most reasonable ones would go along with that unless- again- it was already an agreed part of their contract.
In the late seventies, I spent some months in Belfast installing and maintaining a new message switching system for the Royal Ulster Constabulary at Castlereagh. I did get paid an "overseas disturbance allowance" for that. It was an interesting trip, in all sorts of ways.
An over-seas allowance? I'd have appreciated that. Instead I was up against the Civil Service/HMG mentality which says "We rate people who are qualified for their jobs by their education well below those who aren't, promotion comes with responsibility measured by direct reports, not by what the actual job is, and if we want a national pay policy the easiest place to start is with the public sector."
>” I'm surprised they were willing to send him down a mine which is equally dangerous!”
As part of my brother’s undergraduate training to become a doctorate Sheffield Uni. in the 1970s they had to go down a working coal mine (and steel works) so that they had a better appreciation of the conditions the stream of industrial accident patients they would be treating worked under.
Hailing from that area, and being at school from the late 60s to early 80s, I went on school/6th form college trips down mines, into steelworks, oh, and at around the age of around 10, into Ladybower Dam (that was a lot of climbing that day!) I think RAF Finningley was the most exciting, though, standing coder than the usual airshow flightline whilst a pair of Vulcans took off. I don't know whether I'm more sad that school children would never have the opportunity to do any of those things today because of risk-assessment disorder, or that only one of those things still exist.
"I don't know whether I'm more sad that school children would never have the opportunity to do any of those things today because of risk-assessment disorder, or that only one of those things still exist."
In my case, while I have a different list than yours, I'd say I;m equally sad.
Risk assessment disorder. I like that. Have a beer.
I remember that a local airfield had a family day, which despite not being family we had an invite to from the chap living across the road who thought the kids would enjoy it.
The family day area with "show your family your workplace" wasn't actually on the runway, but it was literally straight down the side of it. It probably should be mentioned that the local airfield was prefixed with "RAF" and this was still during the cold war, and this was [presumably] before anybody considered health and safety like minimum safety distances for displays near runways.
Que an alert klaxon, much swearing and shouted commands from people to walk or run towards me [and away from the runway] while holding your hands like this cupped over your ears. This was followed at a short interval [that required for the Quick Reaction Alert pilots to get to their aircraft] by the single loudest noise that I have ever heard by several orders of magnitude; an entire flight of fully armed and fuelled fighters taking off on full afterburner to intercept a potential Russian attack on the UK as the opening stages of WW3. Just a normal day at work for the RAF at the time!
I distinctly remember more feeling the noise than hearing it, and it's probably surprising that i'm not profoundly deaf. That said, I do think it's a shame that kids are kept miles away from anything mildly dangerous and interesting these days because of risk-assessment disorder; I think it prevents kids from learning to make sensible risk assessment decisions for themselves and denies any number of different experiences far more educational than the inside of the classroom.
Previous poster has alluded to doing work in Northern Ireland with armed escort during the troubles. Even the bloke from the Post Office/BT fixing the phones would be considered an IRA target.
I was in Damman/Dharan working in IT during the Gulf War with bits of Scud missile dropping on the roof. It's more common than you think.
What on Earth was the point ? It was a mini. Put it on the surface and snake a cable down to wherever to put a terminal at the bottom.
That's about as stupid as putting backup power generators in the basement of a building that might get flooded. No, you put them on the roof.
You are quite right. Positioning is important and must be carefully considered.
I recall a standby generator, container-mounted to save building costs. 40 tonnes and placed high on the banks of the river. Ugly but far above any possible maximum water level.
When called into action, nothing happened. No-one had noticed a change to the horizon; the generator had been stolen. Being containerised made it easy to load, then hidden in plain sight.
"Wow. Do you also go on random forums about star wars and periodically remind them that it's just fantasy stories that didn't actually happen?"
Of course not, don't be silly.
But if some deluded fan of star wars posted here on ElReg, I might comment.
The Register decided long ago that some American culture wars clickbait comments were good so why expect any better of its readership. It has a lot of stories on controversial topics that have nothing to do with tech and both articles and comments will bring up anything that will get people emotional from abortion to Brexit on the flimiest pretext..
It is an idiotic comment on many levels: ANE mythology was not made up for children, only (American style) evangelicals think such stories are literally true, and the commentard cannot spell "tales" but it fulfils it purpose of letting someone the commentors tribal side with regard to anything to do with religion. The commentard is just as stupid as the biblical literalists they claim to despise, but that is irrelevant - its all about being on the right side.
Gandalf was selling what was then called "line drivers"[0] specifically for this kind of thing in the very early '70s. Their trade advertising included mining. No carrier based solution involved, assuming you had right of way for the wire. I assume a tin mine in Cornwall would have that.
They cost far less than calling a tech out from London to Cornwall. Or, as in my case, from Palo Alto to a cinder operation outside Baker, California (about 900 miles round-trip).
[0] Kind of an extension cord for serial communications.
RS-232 is great, but it does have line length limits (I've seen it work effectively at 9600 baud at the end of a 1200-foot cable). I suspect a tin mine shaft is much-deeper.
Did they have the RS-232 repeater/extenders they have now, back in the 1980s?
Wasn't RS-485 an option on a minicomputer serial output? RS-232 is single-ended and voltage-based so susceptible to interference while RS-485 (or a similar protocol like, erm, 422?) uses balanced lines and is capable of driving cables over a kilometer I believe. Current-loop based signalling can work over even greater distances and I can't imagine it wasn't an option for a minicomputer.
Then again, as someone with a very distant ancestor who was found guilty of filling his Cornish Tin ingots with a (cheaper) Lead (I think) core, penny pinching in the Tin mining industry obviously has a long history!
M.
Your telephone ran on a current loop, and could be several miles from the nearest exchange. Telegraphs ran hundreds of miles without repeaters. The same kind of technology ran refineries and oil wells, with control circuits instead of telephone handsets. Technology to do remote process control and remote communication has existed since the earliest days of electricity. RS232 is special in that it was specifically designed for short lengths rather than "normal" distances, but the technology to connect short RS232 lengths to each other existed before RS232 itself.
That's about as stupid as putting backup power generators in the basement of a building that might get flooded. No, you put them on the roof.
Only worthwhile if you put the fuel tanks up there as well. ISTR that a few years back when a huge storm flooded Manhattan one company found out the hard way that leaving the diesel tanks in the (now flooded) basement was not such a bright money saving idea as they had thought.
"DV BC: Run a terminal video signal 100s (likely 1000s) of meters? In an heavy industrial setting? On a shoestring budget? Not likely."
Video signal? For this kind of thing? In the '80s? Not bloody likely.
A VT100 (or similar) fed by a standard RS-232 would have been pretty much normal (although as several people have pointed out, a 20 mA current loop was also an option). Even something as primitive as a VT220 would have been considered luxurious down a mine (and thus unlikely), and they weren't released until 1983.
I did have an issue at one employer, computers stood on the floor in a factory office with work boots frequently in close vicinity. I encouraged them to put the computers on desks but to no avail, "there's not enough room if we do that!" Computers were much larger then of course! We ended up with purchasing floor stands which helped a bit but any time you needed to work on those a vacuum cleaner was required.
Like many people, the biggest issue, back when smoking in offices was common practice, and occasionally since with wfh, is tobacco. I've had laptops returned that I would only handle with rubber gloves (and I'm not squeamish about such things) and that were impossible to clean and reissue. Some keyboards were positively disgusting, with ash, food scraps, etc. as well.
I was lucky enough that from my first job (in 1997) all the offices I've worked in were no smoking. But we had a client back in those days who was a large Tobacco firm - if I had visited them I walked through the door and got undressed. And then more recently even though the office is no smoking, one person was senior enough that she smoked in her own office. And her keyboard was as you described it...
keyboards and mice are consumables
Nowadays I agree, and chiclet keys on laptops have minimised the problems there, but I go back to when a keyboard was £100+ (IIRC DEC keyboards were around £130 in 1985) so we often had to go to great lengths to clean them, including dismantling and literally scrubbing under a tap (I thing that was the one that had Tizer spilt on it).
"Just takes two days to dry out and it's all good!"
If you use a dishwasher, don't use added detergent! The residual soap left behind from last night's dinner dishes will be plenty. Also, do not use the heated dry option.
I use a Makita cordless leaf blower. The thing has a throttle, simply set it to about as low as it'll go, point it at the keyboard and walk away. It'll be dry in under an hour, unless you're unfortunate enough to live in very humid conditions.
DO NOT USE A HEAT GUN! No, it wasn't me, but naturally I got yelled at for it (how was I supposed to stop the kid? I was at lunch!)
A hair-dryer will work, but keep it set to low heat and keep the thing moving.
There are a zillion HOWTOs on keyboard cleaning available online. Check out a few before trying to clean your own, just so you don't make the same mistakes that have been made thousands of times in the past.
The above is for well made keyboards, like IBM's legendary Model M. Modern flimsy keyboards are one-time use crap. Just toss and replace.
Early on with CoViD I got involved with a client who had to deep clean everything, I was glad the particular HP keyboard they used most had been designed to be disassembled and the plastic dishwasher cleaned. But as you note, need to go carefully with the detergent and heat settings.
> they should be considered personal hygiene items and not shared between people.
That is so true.
I caught impetigo from a keyboard I'd just been issued - I still have scarring on the bridge of my nose, it was stopped only a few mm from one eye!
Another reason - aside from a sensible layout - to use my own keyboards all the time.
I did first line IT support for a diagnostic bacteriology lab. The hospital also had a Computer Services Unit who did complicated stuff, and had to sign off on all IT equipment supplies. After the second time I unstuck nameless gunk from a lab keyboard, I thought sod this and put in an order for ten of the cheapest keyboards I could find. CSU denied the request and told me that I could ask them for a new keyboard if I needed one, and they would take the old ones away and clean them.
I invited their boss to come over and have a look. When he arrived, I did the full visitor's thing -- plastic "one-size-fits-all" lab coat, latex gloves for them and a Howie coat buttoned up to the neck and gloves for me, then took them down to the Faeces Lab. I didn't let them look through the door window, I took them right inside to witness the staff prepare faeces for culture, then move to the PC and enter the details of what they'd just done. (Mostly, the guys took off their gloves before touching the keyboard, but gloves are starchy and their fingers leave gunk all over the keyboard -- also at busy times, the gloves just stayed on.)*
As we came out of the lab, I showed the CSU guy where to wash his hands (and made him do it twice.) He ok'd the requisition there and then and always sent round a minion if anything needed done in the future.
[*If you've never worked in Microbiology, you should know that the gloves are precautionary and folk who habitually got -- matter -- on their hands would face the wrath of Dave, the senior BMS]
Had to start using a desk recently previously occupied by a smoker. I did manage to get a new keyboard arranged but couldn't get it immediately so I thought what the heck, I have a stack of cleaning wipes, let's just clean this thing off. After 10 minutes of scrubbing I started to notice my finger tingling, my heardrate increasing and a slight headache set it. It's then that I decided to chuck the damn thing and just use my laptop keyboard, dealing with the discomfort until I could get the new keyboard. Once again confirmed my suspicion that smoking is disgusting.
> But what about the rest of the desk?
Or the whole house?
Our first house, we bought from an older gentleman who lived there 1947 to 1987. A pipe-smoking writer.
We wanted to freshen-up the off-beige paint on the walls. We noted that it was not uniform. A spritz of ammonia water told the truth. It was builder's white paint with 40 years of pipe smoke stains. Spray it, and brown sludge rolled off like thin mud. I was a cigarette addict at the time and even I thought it was gross. The back room we finally put up plastic sheeting and wood paneling.
I was involved in an international sporting competition. The computers were in a room under the main arena floor. With the additional visitors the toilets could not cope, and there was a leakage into the area under the area - about an inch or two a day. It was decided that by the time the competition was over, the "water" would still not be at table height. In normal operation, these computers needed no human intervention. The power was at waist height.
After the competition I think the computers were left there until the sewerage problem was fixed,then thrown in the bin.
I see you, and raise you ... a mini-tower PC owned by a chain smoker.
It came in once for a repair, and I said I was not prepared to go near it. It was not just a bit brown, it was covered with a thick sticky layer of "tar and other nasty chemicals". Obviously, the inside was as you'd expect the inside of a fan-ventilated device that sucked lots of contaminated air through it. Best thing was, this was a what I'd describe as an eco-zealot - massively into his cause (anti-nuclear) but apparently oblivious to his chemical cocktail.
And a friend (before I got into IT) supported an Apple II (that dates it) he'd sold into the local cellophane factory. For anyone that doesn't know, these produce a certain amount of hydrogen sulphide - toxic and stinks of "rotten eggs" (we knew from 5 miles away if the wind was in our direction). This computer sat there for years beside the production line, just recording some data and printing a line out every few minutes. When it broke down, it had to be scrapped - the HS had corroded all the pins on the chips such that a little force and they just fell off the board leaving tiny stumps behind.
Well I have been to several nasty places to support IT things.
I supported a pair of Netware 4.11 severs in Portharcourt, Nigera, which while the place was ok, it had the dirtiest power ...
For physical dirt it would be a toss up between some peoples houses as a service engineer, and a server in a diesel train depot in Scotland.
Hhmmm all those lovely oily particulates all over the outside and inside of the case.....
Scene of crime visits could be nasty and some of the nasty bits got brought into the lab. A colleague had a sofa brought in; it stood around for weeks for some reason and had to be given a wide berth - the little buggers can jump. In fact fleas were a (fortunately infrequent) occupational hazard. But the nastiest job was removing bits of a bomber who'd scored an own goal from bits of his clothing so the latter could be shown to his family for identification.
My father worked as an electrician and got a job doing some work in the taxidermy section of a natural history museum.
When they had a new animal carcass to stuff, it was standard practice to leave it gutted and open to the air so that flies would come and lay their eggs - the maggots would then hatch and do a fine job of cleaning thing up ready for the taxidermist to do his stuff.
Poor old Dad got to spend a few days doing a rewiring job with a deceased elephant and Chillingham cow for company in the height of summer.
Regarding crime scenes, I once was asked to clean up a PC that was owned by someone who barricated themself in their house, made some threats, and unfortunately ended up committing suicide. When the police entered the house, they deployed tear gas upon entry.
IIRC, we used a plain water rince and air dry.
Diesel soot is nasty. As a PFY I got to run cat5 through a mezzanine in a former diesel repair shop. The shop floor area had been powerwashed and repainted. The mezzanine had not.
My coworker remarked that he never before had to wash his hands *before* using the bathroom.
By far the nastiest place I ever went to was a rendering plant. In high summer.
For the uninitiated, a rendering plant takes in all the leftovers from butcherings (sometimes roadkill as well, but not this place) that had no value on it's own. Think fat/tallow, guts, blood, beaks, feet/hooves, etc. That stuff then gets "rendered" (processed) into commercially viable by-products. The smell alone is enough to knock you off your feet, and there's a coating of rancid grease over pretty much everything on the plant floor. Including the electronics. Covers helped, but not much - you still need ventilation!
The dirtiest place i've ever had to work was in a metal workshop.
He didn't have an office, all space was dedicated to stacking piles of scrap or for projects he was working on.
The poor little printer he had out there had stopped working. It was covered in a layer of metal dust, and the humidity from it being a large, cold hall with open garage doors didn't help either.
He actually built a protective box for the replacement printer himself, it was very well made and kept the filth out! We ended up commissioning him for a similar cabinet for a lumber yard.
Damn you I want a proper Ivor Dewdney Pasty* from Sidwell Street now.
Ivor Dewdney pasty was inferred as the company had sold the business to a employee\rival, who was disinclined to remove the exterior signage & the Ivor Dewdney Company couldnt remove it as it wasn't their premises any more. At some point after many lawyers missles back n forth, the interior signage kept the same fonts\artwork but no reference to the ID name. Being ignorant of this, you would get some dark looks if you walked into the other outlets in the area & said you preferred the Sidwell Street ones.
I used to work for a government department in Liverpool. The 20 storey tower block we worked in had been the subject of one of the longest running strikes in British history - the main fabricof the building went up - walls and floors. heating and AC ducts etc, but no windows and doors, before the site was picketed by building workers for over three years. During this period all of the local feral cats moved in as they had found an ideal home.
When the strike eventually ended the site managers realised it would be impossible to round up and expell the sitting tenants, so they covered all openings in plastic sheeting and pumped the shell full of poison gas, then continued the fit-out, removing any corpses they found. They probably foundabout 20% of them.
Several years later , we used to come in to work every day to find our desks sprinkled with a grey, gritty substance which management insisted was coal dust from the nearby coal shipping dock. We all knew that it was mummified cat dust!
The building, St John's House, was officially the "sickest" building in Europe, and this is what they eventually did to cure the problem! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3i2baydpCM
Several years later , we used to come in to work every day to find our desks sprinkled with a grey, gritty substance which management insisted was coal dust from the nearby coal shipping dock. We all knew that it was mummified cat dust!
That used to be traditional, but don't think it ever made it into the building regs. Apparently burying a cat in a wall would keep evil spirits, or ghost mice away or something.
As for Cornwall. One fun time was when there was an eclipse, the best UK viewing spot was Cornwall, and that's where the cable landing stations are. So figuring on the usual traffic chaos, except worse, we chartered a couple of helicopters on stand-by incase we needed to get engineers or kit there in a hurry.
we chartered a couple of helicopters on stand-by incase we needed to get engineers or kit there in a hurry
Wouldn't it have been simpler to send a couple of engineers down in a camper van a couple of days ahead of time and supply them with deckchairs, dark glasses and a 'fridge full of cold drinks?
M.
Wouldn't it have been simpler to send a couple of engineers down in a camper van a couple of days ahead of time and supply them with deckchairs, dark glasses and a 'fridge full of cold drinks?
The landing station had it's own on-site engineers, it was just one of those contingency things. So in the event of something wonderful happening, how to get any specialists or spares to site if they were needed. Just one of those fun things I've encountered in industry, ie helicopters and max cargo loads either in the helicopter, or slung underneath. Also one of those fun opex challenges. Finance types might argue that it'd be cheaper to run the site dark, or centralise/reduce spares holding. But then when the SHTF at times like this, doing it properly can save a lot of time, reputation and compensation.
In my youth I worked on a farm in my spare time. Coming up to summer, I was sent into the shed to grease the hay making machinery - in particular the baler. One of the wild cats had got itself into the knotters (the devices which defy the laws of physics and tie knots into the strings that hold each bale together) but clearly had not been able to get out. It hadn't reached the "desiccated and no longer stinks" stage - the smell as soon as you tried to shift it was ... indescribable.
I hadn't long been at the company I'm at now when we were all sent home for COVID. Eventually the office reopened and some office staff were allowed back on site. But you had to keep the whole 2m distance etc. The other thing with all of this though is that I hadn't really gotten to know my coworkers so I was still putting names to faces and getting to know what everyone was like.
One chap is on a spectrum of his own. He's lovely but very quirky and the littlest bit of IT trouble he goes in to a panic. I am really not over stating this. I was on a remote call with him and he once tried to delete Outlook because he had clicked on the button to hide the ribbon bar because he wanted it gone from his machine. He found the Mail app and deleted it thinking it was Outlook, but as Outlook was still there he got in to more of a panic. It's something I soon learned about him and whenever he has an IT problem I know to treat him with kid gloves. We've a good working relationship now.
One day though, during this period of 2m separation, he had a problem with his laptop. Fine, I'll be right over. Masked up and walked over and it was the first time I had gone near his laptop in person. We had given everyone keyboards to bring home with them and use in the office. Honest to God, I have never seen a keyboard covered in dust, cat hair, and dried white liquid substance. It was grim, and I thought there is no way I'm touching that. I used COVID as an excuse and said I would use his laptop keyboard to type on for that reason. He was fine with it. As soon as I finished I doused my hands in hand sanitiser.
I learnt 3 months after this that he's an erotic novelist too. So while I would like to think the substances were just cake icing (as he often says his wife makes cakes and he eats it over the keyboard), knowing that about him, and the state of the keyboard, I'd say it's a biohazard. What makes it worse though is that we have since given people a keyboard and mouse to use in the office (separate to the one at home) and his work keyboard is no where near as grim.
The electronics company I worked for in the 1980's was assimilated by a much larger company that made aerated concrete blocks. We had just developed a networked RS232 port sharing device, and were asked to install a few at the head office factory site. Once there, I was confronted by a minicomputer that was inches deep in grey dust, along with just about everything else. The terminals had to be wiped before you could see anything on the screen, and the keyboards turned upside down first to unblock them.
I made my excuses and left.
...a Slaughterhouse. Not the office but the middle of slaughterhouse floor (actually a platform 2 metres up) where animals were killed, bled, beheaded, skinned, split and hung. It was used to connect to the Meat Hygiene Service to register the approvals and had sat there for some years without issues, amazingly. I worked there a few times between university terms in the late 90s.
One day it stopped working and being fairly au fait with PCs I said I'd take a look. I put in a floppy boot disk, powered it up and the disk was immediately chewed up beyond repair. Apparently, the read heads had an unspeakable amount of crud condensed and congealed on them (the room was pretty hot and humid). I gave up and said it was one for the professionals. There was no way I was taking the cover off that thing.
Yes I've worked in a slaughterhouse too as the site IT Guy & dealing with grumbling visiting printer tech(s) about blood on his clothing (Partly my fault as I took him in the quick way, rather than 30 minutes spent donning nice white PPE & walking around the facility).
Nice leftover steaks when we had VIP's visiting.
Are you implying the VIPs never left? At least not in one piece?
Can't resist this classic
Press room of a medium sized newspaper. Press was built pre 1968 (the year it was installed).
The iMac used to verify the print runs has been replaced 4 times since January 2023 and this last time, in early July, the back was wrapped in cardboard, with minimal airflow from the top, just to reduce the ink dust. So far it works well. It is a really old iMac there since it will die sometime soon just like the others.
The keyboard for that machine is in a clear plastic bag that they replace weekly because they can't see the keys any more. Still working on a way to keep from having to replace the mouse so often. Nasty stuff newsprint ink. It has to be scrubbed off surfaces, or use a very harsh solvent, to get it off any surface.
"The worst environment I encountered computer equipment was a tyre factory. Absolutely everything in a layer a black dust. Miracle anything functioned at all."
Yeah, rubber dust is an insulator, so at worst, you had cooling issue. Now, the black dust covering everything, including the insides of the PCs in an iron foundry...well, that's a very different matter :-)
Or the paper mill that despite looking all white and pristine is actually "filthy" with paper dust where I saw a printer that appeared to have some sort of carefully machined sound insulation block inside with a perfect "slot" for the dot matrix printhead to travel along. Until I realised it was absolutely rammed with compressed paper dust, the only gaps being where moving parts needed to move.
I had heard rumours that some Cornish tin mines were considering re-opening due to the increase in the world price of tin.
Here is one from March 2023:
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwalls-last-tin-mine-plans-8217474
TLDR : It says that the mine closed in 1988.
Maybe a mincomputer is still down there waiting to be re-booted (after receiving its "once-in-a millenium clean").
"I read somewhere recently that one is reopening as they can also extract Lithium from it"
Different site, same idea:
https://www.imerys.com/media-room/press-releases/imerys-and-british-lithium-announce-strategic-partnership-accelerate
It's almost the weekend -->
PS
They're just installing fibre to the premises in our area. Working impressively quickly: just lift up the paving slabs in the footway, dig out some sand, lay the fibre bundles (one fibre to each dwelling), backfill and compact the sand (it'll be interesting to see if the vibration from the Wacker plate affects my spinning rust), put the slabs back, have a cuppa.
If there's a minicomputer still down there it's likely been underwater for quite some time. There's a reason mines need to be pumped.
Also, South Crofty has an incredibly heartrending piece of graffiti -
'CORNISH LADS ARE FISHERMEN AND CORNISH LADS ARE MINERS TOO BUT WHEN THE FISH AND TIN ARE GONE WHAT ARE THE CORNISH BOYS TO DO?'
The story goes that the graffiti was being written along the wall outside of South Crofty Mine when a policeman came around the corner. Having taken it all in, he apparently turned and walked away and left them to finish the job.
"Maybe a mincomputer is still down there waiting to be re-booted (after receiving its "once-in-a millenium clean").
...and possibly a quick "Millennium Bug" test too, just in case. We do all still have our testing kit/software, don't we? And a copy of the OS on 8" floppies or tapes as appropriate.
This post has been deleted by its author
1998 in fact
From the author's description, this sounds like Geevor, which closed in the 80s, opened again and then closed. For a year or two it was mothballed and had a small income from tours but shut for good in 1990.
Mrs R and I went on one of these tours - 400m+ down the main shaft in a cage that did not so much fall as plummet and then a few hundred metres walk down an incline to go down another 200m or so. That did not take us to the last working face, just a side tunnel of old workings. Any equipment there would be a long way from connecting to anything on the surface!
The site is now a museum and while they have underground tours, the areas we went in 1990 have long been flooded.
The mine closure made everyone in the nearby villages redundant and there was much bitterness. Not a great time to be a tourist there and I can totally understand why. There was us on holiday and there was them facing a dismal future. We went in the local pub one evening and it all went quiet, like a scene from a film. The landlord said he would serve us (we had quite a walk to get there) but it was best for us to leave straight after.
While working in the networks division in ntl many years back, we had a few hundred DHCP servers scattered around the country, including peoples garden sheds, a partitioned off stall in a pub toilet, etc. Theses were eventually consolidated onto new hardware in data centres an number of years later.
Fortunately the old servers were Sun E450's - which were nigh on bulletproof, and still worked happily with layers of leaves and other detritus in them.
Had to clean up a laptop returned by a field service tech, before i could fix it.
Was wiping mud of the body when i was informed that it wasn't mud, it was splashed while in a sewage works..
The absolute worst though was one where i was cleaning what i assumed was tobacco ash from the keyboard, and when i pointed out it was bad for the computer he said "its not ash, i have a skin condition"
That how i learned to ask BEFORE i handle the PCs.
On site dirt: Machines in Lime quarry. replacement policy was to buy a new machine, set it up for someone in the office, their old machine would replace the dead one out on site, to give at least some life span out of them. The Aircon for the computer room needed work every 3 years when the lime dust killed its external unit too.
Coffee company: all the desktop machines had between 3 and 5 cm of coffee grounds they had pulled out of the air in the bottom of the mini tower cases..
Machines that came into the workshop for work: "mouse issue" turned out to be "mouse has made a nest in the amstrad 486 AIO and used the motherboard as it's toilet"
Did a stint as a onsite support at a place called Devro - they take cow skins in at one end and push out sausage skins and other collagen stuff for food products at the end.
There was always a slightly tacky sensation on every surface and you'd invariably leave site smelling like a dog treat.
We had a task to replace some hardward on the shop floor, upgrade some RAM, basic stuff.
Opening the case can only be described as appearing like a prop from the Reactor building in Aliens. Peeling a layer of film off the motherboard was also rather grim.
Back in my systems engineering days, I had to perform a Netware upgrade on a server for a company somewhere near Gloucester.
On arrival at the site, I was escorted to the 'computer room' - which was an unlocked wooden shed, outside the main office building, next to a river!
To compound matters, the server was on the floor of said shed.
I suggested that they might want to consider putting the server somewhere safer, more secure and less likely to float away when the enevitable floods came.
They responded that it had never been an issue before and poo-poohed my suggestion.
Six months later I had to attend the site again - to install their new server in a room in the office, as their old server has met it's watery fate. B->
I actually, did that once. I was setting up the networking and router for a company moving into the area and were going to rent an office in a shared building for the project team while their new place was being built. Except they'd not yet sent the relevant details/credentials etc to set the router up. Mobile data was still horrendously expensive or possibly non-existent at the time, not sure if I was still on an actual mobile phone or had a feature phone by then, so being stuck there most of the day awaiting the info and no external data access, pretty much had a choice between Solitaire and Minesweeper or twiddling my thumbs to keep me entertained. :-)
Once spoke to another engineer that used to have to "Hoover" (other vacuum cleaner are available) 4 or 5 inches of various dusts from the bottom of a tower case whenever it came in for service.
It usually sat under desk, just next to the access door to the service garage for the bus company.
Most of the dust was brake dust with some concrete combined, they never sealed the floor properly.
Doug is lucky, he only had to deal with mud and dust. Once upon a time I worked as a repair tech for a retail chain. In comes a system that just reeked of cigarette smoke. Saying you could smell it a mile away was far less of an exaggeration than it should have been. Once I open the thing up, the entire inside was literally coated with a thick film of tar. There were tar-cicles on the fan blades, and if you thought the smell was bad before... I was amazed the system hadn't died a long time prior. Ended up just sending the unit back as a biohazard, but my best guess is the weight of all that tar on the various fan blades ended up burning out the motors, or at least slowing them down enough that things overheated and baked to death.
My first job in the early '80s was at a mining firm manufacturing cat litter and oil&grease absorbent.
They took Emathlite (a fuller's earth found in Emathla, Florida) and ran it through a 900ft rotating horizontal kiln, and out came cat litter and oil& grease absorbent at the other end. For the premium stuff, they ran it through twice. It was fired with waste oil, and yes, it was the stuff you drained out of your car and gave to the auto parts place.
Anyway, we had a bunch of CompuPro S-100 boxes running MP/M 8-16 with dual Z-80/8086 boards, with Pragmatics/Fujitsu 40MB hard drives (not 40GB) and ArcNet. Pretty spiffy for 1980.
One of the machines was in the plant, and every couple weeks, I had to flip it over and pour out a pile of fines a foot and a half tall.
That was the place I coded dBASE II with a tiger curled around my feet. He was the ex-circus animal that they took to trade shows as a mascot. He liked me because I was about the only one that didn't go OMG TIGER around him and just treated him like an animal that wanted a little companionship. His paws were the size of frypans, and if you petted him, your hand sunk halfway to your elbow in fur.
After my boss died (20 years later) I discovered in his obituary that he had degrees from Yale in chemistry and psychology. He was *VERY* good at the humble good 'ol boy gig except after being around him a while, you discovered he was no dummy and was probably one of the sharpest people I've worked with. I've always wondered why he wasted away in an illiterate backwater shithole.
Under the manager's desk in a dollar store. The CCTV camera power supplies are there, along with the UPS for the DVR. That area *never* gets cleaned, and is always disgusting.. Once got sent to a store for an unlocatable screech. Somebody'd plugged a space heater into the UPS, causing it to go into alarm. It had been sounding its alarm continuously for 17 days, they told me. Unplugging and replugging it cleared the alarm.
Stockroom of a dollar store. Got sent to one on a Saturday because the alarm panel had lost power. The area was piled high with random boxes that they'd tossed there while unloading a truck. I could barely see the alarm panel, let alone get to its power source. Told them that if they couldn't clear a path that day (which they couldn't; chronically understaffed), to call back when they'd removed the freight. Went back on the Tuesday. Sure enough, a box had knocked the wall wart out of its socket. Suggested that they lean a pallet or board there to forestall recurrence.
Another time in a dollar store, the place was awash in rain water. Old multistory building, store was on the ground floor. I doubt that there were other tenants. The roof leaked. Rainwater would percolate down through the building, creating a nasty mess and odor every time it rained. Landlord had refused to fix the roof. A customer had reported them to the Health Department. They'd voluntarily closed to forestall a formal order to do so, which would have created more of a paper trail.
I used to work for Laser-Scan Labs in Cambridge, founded by Professor Otto Frisch. Reading his biography "What Little I Remember", I came across this description of him visiting Blue John Cavern, whither a Manchester Hospital's radium supply had been moved for safe keeping, in order to get some radon gas, a decay product of the radium, for his research into separating out the uranium 235 isotope using heat and gravity.
This was shortly after he and Rudolf Peierls had published their memorandum on the feasibility of an air droppable atomic bomb.
At my request Oliphant arranged for me to get some radon from a hospital in Manchester; the radium had been removed to safety, deep below ground in the Blue John Cavern in Derbyshire, a well known tourist attraction in peace time.
So one day I went by train to Manchester and was taken from the hospital by car to the cave. Down I went over slippery ladders and through narrow, muddy passages to a slightly larger cavity where, incongruously, there was a laboratory table with a lot of glassware on it, bulbs and tubes and stopcocks, rather like the equipment I had used in Hamburg. That was the plant for "milking" the radium, for extracting the radon and compressing it into a small glass capillary, no longer than half an inch.
At Oliphant's request the radium had not been milked for a whole week so that a large amount of radon had accumulated. Less than an hour later, when the local technician had done the work for me, I walked out with my little suitcase containing a heavy block of lead at the centre of which was this tiny capsule full of radon, equivalent in radiation to about three-quarters of a gram of radium.
Any safety officer would shudder at the thought that I walked out with that thing, protected by only a couple of inches of lead, and that I travelled within a few inches of that radiation source first by car and then by train. Today that would be considered an unacceptable radiation hazard both to myself and to other people in the compartment.
Indeed, in Derbyshire (Blue John Cavern is Castleton way) it's quite rare to find a house in the county that's not in a radon affected area (though surprisingly surveyors in the area not really caught onto the idea of trying to sell radon testing as part of their services (or more likely sub contracting it) when someone is getting a survey done on a house, a potential nice little earner mainly unexploited, especially on houses with cellars (radon far heavier than air, so (obv depending on house air flow) tends to "pool" in the lower points of a building and can often get high results on a cellar test)
Back in the '80s I spent 10 weeks one summer commissioning several microcomputer controlled MJ multi wheel grinding machines for grinding the bearings of a 6 cylinder crankshaft. There were lots of teething problems with the software that only showed up in production. I had an Intel MDS II In Circuit Emulator for debugging. The whole place was hot and dirty with metal particles and lubricating fluid, so they built me a little hut out of 2x4 and polythene sheeting, complete with a small air conditioning unit.
Thankfully, these are the worst things I've ever had to deal with:
The computers sitting on wood pedestals for a uniform company's soiled linen intake line- wooden because they would powerwash the floor when it got too nasty and the computer cases would rust-weld themselves to the floor.
Installing Code Red / NIMDA patches on windows 2000 machines in a factory that made APUs for aircraft- "$250,000 CNC mill that carves up blocks of titanium costing more than a caddillac, brought down into non-functioning because the $50 dollar CD-ROM drive on the $700 desktop machine driving the machine was crammed full of titanium dust." the company's in-house IT department got to deal with those, I was just part of the hoard brought in to clean the place up.
performing an overhaul on an old LaserJet 4si with 2 million on the counter, and replacing the failed main drive train on it on site because the client didn't want it hauled back to our shop for some reason.
I ended up buying my own toner-safe 'datavac' after borrowing one of the units that my employer had, which ended up spewing cyan toner all over the place because the last person who borrowed it didn't bother cleaning it out or telling anyone that the bag had exploded inside the unit. (the client was annoyed, but I managed to at least clean the mess up using a spray bottle and an entire roll of paper towels. I, however, was PISSED.)
The server that had a literal rat's nest in it- that got put into the back of my truck and hauled back to the shop for the bench techs to deal with.
Went to a timber mill where the manager was complaining about the SCADA PC being a little unreliable. It was an ancient 286, back when Pentiums were commonplace, so it was probably getting to the end of its life. Opened it up and it was chock full of sawdust! How it didn't catch fire was beyond me. Spent 10 mins with a vacuum cleaner, wiped all the dust and it ran perfectly. I suspect it will still be running at the heat death of the universe.
I had to deal with a pc in a furniture factory once. Compaq 386 running windows 3,if i recall. Same story, opened the case just to be greeted by a slightly undulating layer of sawdust where the motherboard should be. Think it was still working at the time, too. I'd just been sent to put in a network card and upgrade to WFWG.
I saw that sort of thing many times back in those days, and I never could work out why they put "office" kit into that sort of environment. They spent lots of money on machines and control equipment designed to cope with or exclude those sort of containments, but almost without fail, cheaped out on the PCs. At least in the short term. When they failed, we charged for repairs, even if they were on contract because they were exceeding the normal environmental conditions. And this is the days when PCs were still usually classed a capital purchase. I did once suggest to a factory foreman that he'd not go down to the local DIY shop to buy consumer grade power tools, so why would he use consumer grade/office grade expensive computers costing 1-2 thousand with no mitigations?
... I clean out the computers in the barns, whether they need it or not. It's amazing how much dust and hair can accumulate in a desktop PC without affecting it noticeably. The one in the main barn office gets especially bad when we are clipping horses.
Not particularly filthy, mind, just good clean dirt.
That would be the ground floor of a British Rail signal box where they racked the computers. Axle dust gets everywhere and there's a lot of it when you are track-side, have a lot of axles on a train, have a lot of trains, all slowing down as they pass, and the door is wedged open to let some fresh air in.
A short-lived stint at a dotbomb had me going to a carpet remnant store to check on the PC we'd sold them. Lots of carpet fibers around, and the case had filled up with them before the PC literally burned up. The inside was melted and charred at the same time, and reeked of burned plastic. The owner demanded that we repair his computer and have it back the next day "And not a single file lost, either!"
My boss told me to give them what they wanted, never mind that it was impossible. So I brought it back to the office in a large garbage sack. Carried it into the boss's office and requested that he show me, his junior, how to make this chunk of charcoal run again. He took a look and had me put it out back, then called them and told them the service contract was void. "We'll sue!" "Please do, I'll put that box in as evidence and rest our case." "We'll never buy from you again!" "Thank you!"
As a young, green techie I was sent on-site to some offices of BAT (British American Tobacco) to help sort out some desktop computers.
In those days, their employees were given free cigarettes and, of course, could smoke in the office as much as they liked. You can imagine how unpleasant it was in the building.
After opening up the nonfunctional computer, I found a thick and heavy layer of ash and tar deposited all over, which may have been the reason for overheating and failure. Still cleaning things off and unblocking vents somehow did the trick, though my clothes had to be fumigated after returning home and my hands were stained yellow.
Added a smoking icon because ...
About 2005 we were tasked with a one-off upgrade job at a BAT place, because we happened to be in the same town. The reps were to bring in their "touch-screen" WinXP machines and get extra RAM and fresh software. We also used a cleaning solution and lots of wipes.
Knowing the smoking policy at their site (yes, just as above), I printed off a few large NO SMOKING signs before heading over to their site.
Thankfully, everyone there obeyed the instruction.
Between the steel factory who's production floor PC's were so full of metal dust that PSU's had a half-life measured in days (they did eventually move most of them to less inhospitable locations & buy enclosures for the ones that absolutely had to stay, but not before we'd gone through a case of PSU's that would usually last a year in less than two months).
Or the ink factory where any attempt to work on their servers would result in the poor engineer emerging looking like a page from a Rorschach test as the various powdered pigments collected within the machine were dispersed over said engineer's hands, clothing and occasionally face.
Then there is the distribution warehouse with around 4 inches of God knows what collected on top of the steel beams over which the cabling has to run. Tracing cable faults there from the top of a hydraulic platform would rapidly result in you resembling something that had just escaped from the nearest coal mine!
And that said IT was a white-collar job!!!
I've worked in lots of places where the kit got filthy. Two different companies were in railway engineering.
At one site management refurbished an office space in the middle of the shop floor. New cabling, the works.
Two days later the fashionable pale grey carpeting could only be seen in the unreachable corners.
Another site had a failed print server. I found it under a desk and extracted it. Having unplugged it, I took it to the sink at the far end of the same office and turned on the tap. After a great deal of scrubbing I could actually examine the box, (and see my fingertips again). The problem turned out to be the network flylead, which had been crushed between the wall and the leg of the desk. With a fresh supply of packets it was ready for another few months.
You don't get much dirtier places than coal fired power stations, even the offices were dusty and PC fans complained when it built up too much.
The fix a sharp slap on the case and watch the dust being expelled by the fan. A quick squirt with an air duster and it's good to go.
I have two stories.
My first job out of college in the late 1970s was for a small magazine publisher (73/Kilobaud) in western New Hampshire. They had a PR1ME 300 mini, used both to manage subscriptions and to handle merchandise orders (TRS-80 games on cassettes!) The system was in an attic above a garage, with no air conditioning, so windows were open during the summer. Not only did it get hot and humid, but bugs and other debris came in the windows. The disk packs, in particular, did not like this. The publisher, a noted cheapskate, of course did not buy a service contract for the system. After a year of this I found a better job with DEC.
In my early days there, we had someone come in from Schlumberger and give a talk about what they did with our computers. I vividly remember hearing him explain how they would lower an LSI-11 (PDP-11/03) down a borehole with some sensors attached, and a cable leading up the hole to a van with recording equipment. An "event" would occur in the borehole, the van would jump up off the ground using springs, and record lots of data until the poor LSI-11 was vaporized.
I worked on quarries for a while in the latter half of the 90’s and we had these thin clients that used to sit on the desks in the weigh-bridges and offices.
The weigh-bridges spent a lot of time with either windows or doors open allowing everything to get a delightfully thick layer of dust and crud to build up on every surface. Add in chain smoking drivers and staff you could rarely clean anything as the sticky chemical residue from the cigarette smoke made everything sticky and brown - it was grim.
Even worse were the terminals in the plant operating cabins. Many had positive pressure environments to keep dust to a minimum. Why so bad you wonder? Well, at least you knew in the offices and weigh-bridge the staff didn’t sit for hours on their end with little human interaction. What can one do with all that time pressing buttons every so often, listen to the radio and ‘read’ the dozens of magazines the guys shared around. I never touched a single keyboard in those places .
Back when I used to actually touch computers for a living rather than drive a mouse and keyboard I was the lead engineer installing branch servers for a British company that made oxygen
These were tower servers to support a windows 95 rollout. Most were installed in stationary cupboards with no special environmental.
I was called to go and check on one we installed a few weeks later as it has stopped working. It looked find from the outside so I disconnected the power and cables put it on its side and opened the side panel.
What erupted from wiring was a black sludge that came out 15-20 cm from the case. It was sticky and disgusting but also a mystery.
After talking to the office manager we found out the computer had been making the room too warm so the little windows had been left open.
I walked around the side of the building and the building was actually built into a hill side and parked with its exhaust pointing directly at the window was a lorry. Each morning and throughout the day 10-15 small trucks would park there and when they started their engines pump a black cloud directly through the windows. The computer was dead
Many Many years ago, my company was outsourced IT support and equipmetn supplier to a company 3 hours drive away. that made Crucibles for steel foundrys.
These were made using lots and lots and lots and lots of powederd carbon/graphite cant remember the exact name for the from but the factory floor and poduction control areas were covered in very very fine carbon dust many layers thick.
We were called out every 2-3 weeks to replace the PC in the production control room, as it was fully covered with carbon dust which as its conductiove had caused a short or 2 blowing the PC
Despite being told of dust/dirt/waterproof systems they could buy the cost was alwas prohbitive, so they had a supply of 10PC's sitting, the control system PC rand a disk image between every job stored to the network
PC pops, we drive 3 hours to site, restore latest image to a new pc plug it in check it works and leave looking like a coalman.
Their sole hint to stopping the dust was a rubber keyboard cover (top only), and the PC and monitor sat in a wooden housing with a glass front, that wasnt airproof.
Many atteempts to get them to buy a suitbal system that had a chanc eof surviving was always met with opex/capex arguments,
replaceing The PC's were part of the running costs of the system, but buying a dustproof one wasnt.
Working 2nd line support for a large pharma company. Got sent into a restricted area with animal testing - negative air pressure zone so nothing outside could get in to contaminate experiments, which also meant that nothing in there with moving parts like CPU fans could leave without going thru an autoclave which would obviously kill any PCs - so fixing a lab machine had to be done in situ. Spent an unpleasant hour reimaging a lab PC whilst a worker gutted mice and chucked them in a bin a few feet away.
In the MS world I remember a PFE getting a call out for UK military for a sharepoint problem. Despatched to an address where it became immediately clear that it was an airbase and no, that wasn't where the server was. Straight into a transport plane and off to Iraq greenzone, after being allowed a phone call home to tell his wife that he probably wasn't going to get back home for a few days :-(
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