Teen interns brute-forced a disk install, with predictable results Welcome to Monday and another instalment of Who, Me? It’s The Register’s reader-contributed column in which you admit to mistakes and reveal if they derailed your career. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Kerry” who way back in 1996, when he was still in High School, scored an internship at what he described as “a …
You'd at least expect they'd return it as DoA (which wasn't all that unusual with drives*).
*Over the last 40 years or so I've seen drive reliability wax and wane, usually for any capacity range they start off poor, then improve steadily before the next new technology is introduced and the cycle starts again.
This. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, warranties on drives were pretty reasonable and manufacturers were often quite good at replacing dead drives without too much complaint.
I had a Seagate 2.5GB drive which died after a couple of years (OK, the PC was jolted whilst it was turned on, resulting in the "tick of death"). I shipped it back to Seagate complete with RMA code and they shipped out a 6.5GB replacement without any argument.
Today, there's a lot more pushback from them when it comes to refusing warranty claims on OEM parts and all the rest of it.
I had a Western Digital disc fail on the last day of the warranty.
WD put up no fight about replacing it, but claimed three weeks later they had not received it.
But because I am super paranoid about mailing stuff I own to Big Companies for work, I had sent it in such a way I was able to tell them they had received it, on <day> at <time>, and they could check with Mr <person> who had signed for it.
Immediate 180 by WD.
When a hard drive arrives in a jiffy envelope, you already know what is going to happen. Late 1990s. We install in PC. It is a "little off centre" with the spin. This was so badly off centre that the PC case was shaking violently. It became a new rodeo game. You could sit on the PC case and it still wobbled so hard it walked across the floor with a person on top of it.
That drive was sent back for replacement.
And this the moment people learn about DOA products and how a good relationship with a supplier will cause no friction in getting such a DOA product replaced.
One construction supplier i used regularly years back, would swap stuff without any problem, told me they had pallet sized bin full of stuff that that come in looking like it had been run over or was smashed up in transit, due to being bounced about in the back of the lorry or just badly stacked at the warehouse - guy said it was unreal how much stuff they sent back every week due to bad stacking at the warehouse.
Though worked in a supermarket as a student and the amount of stuff that went out as food waste on a normal night was bad enough....the lead to Xmas is just plain obscene, try largeblack bags x 20 to 50 (or more) full of stuff like mince pies that are going out of date weeks before Xmas - the amount of resources and money just wasted while people Inc children, those with disabilities and the elderly go hungry is a scandal, meanwhile we castigate people via the media for throwing out one or two things a week....
My wife helps run a charity cafe and one of her bugbears is the expiry date system. People assume a "Best by:" date is the same as a "Use by:" date and perfectly good food gets binned.
Use by: this relates to food safety and may be unsafe after this date, so bin it. In the UK, it comes under food standards legislation. The date assumes correct storage and, whilst it might pass a sniff-test after the date, it's best not to risk it. It should certainly not be handed over to a food bank.
Best by: this relates to food quality and it should be safe to use after the date. These dates are (in the main) voluntary; it might not be at its best but, unless it is clearly "off", it should be safe (which is the same criterion if used before the best by date).
Tinned food is a real issue - as long as the tin is still intact (and not bulging or deformed) a best before date is almost irrelevant. I've heard it said that some manufacturers (reportedly) voluntarily add best before dates because it shortens the shelf-life and increases sales.
Add spotty(?) to the can test. I was sorting out some real old cans from the back of the cupboards. I wanted to recycle the cans so I was emptying them. Some of the old cans had little spots on the tops. Turned out they had corroded through the metal and the insides were going bad. No bulging because it couldn't build up pressure, I verified there were very tiny holes with a pin.
Funny, that - because every time I've had a flu shot I've been bedridden by the flu within 24 hours. I'm always told "you have a different strain." If I don't get one, if I get sick at all it's very mild. It's the one vaccine I won't get anymore. Some of my relatives on the othet hand get the flu shot yearly and don't get sick.
The symptoms you feel when you are sick aren't directly due to the flu. They are the consequences of your immune system powering up to fight back against the invaders. Because the vaccine is designed to get your immune system in shape to fight The Real Thing, if the vaccine works well you SHOULD feel some symptoms, although usually they aren't as severe as the disease. I'm sorry you find vaccination unpleasant - for me a good strong response gives me the hope that it will actually protect me against illness.
Flu vaccine may make you feel fluey, in my experience first time especially. Then, whether the flu strain you catch is the one that the flu vaccine makers expected you to catch is a bit random - they have to guess it a long time in advance. I've caught fairly terrible flu during Christmas after buying a vaccination with my own money.
I think my first COVID-19 vaccine made me unfit to be working for about a day - but I didn't die, and that's the main point. As with the flu. Ideally.
I've heard it said that some manufacturers (reportedly) voluntarily add best before dates because it shortens the shelf-life and increases sales.
As far as I know, it is mandatory as even packaged salt has a use by date. Everybody with a basic understanding of things like this considers it bureaucratic madness gone wild and manufacturers really wouldn't go to the expensive of putting it on if it weren't mandatory.
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A friend of the family who owns a large enterprise making icecream once complained to my father that by law his products had to have (IIRC) a 15 month use-by date when he knew that in his industrial freezers it would be safe for maybe twice that time. Allowing a longer storage time would have made planning for his big periods – summer, of course, but mainly the special items for Christmas, and the factory shut down in January – much easier.
On the subject of food banks, and having volunteered at one for some years, donations from local supermarkets are extremely welcome, but the supermarkets do not discriminate between 'best before' and 'use by' which means we get crates (or bags) of donations which have to be sorted, and there is still quite a lot to go to waste. One particular bugbear is prepared fruit and veg. A bag full of lettuce leaves always has a 'use by' while a lettuce head has a 'best before'. The rabbits can make good use of the former, but human clients, not so much.
The other problem is that they all obviously get deliveries in batches. One day, all the Co-Ops are getting rid of (say) caterpillar birthday cakes, the next, M&S has a trolley full of artisan seeded sourdough loaves. We might not see another of either for weeks...
M.
<quote> Tinned food is a real issue - as long as the tin is still intact (and not bulging or deformed) a best before date is almost irrelevant. </quote>
Where I live tinned food does not have to have a an expiry date. And none do. The rule is that anything with an expiry time over 10 years does not require a best before or use by date. It's a fairly simple rule and works pretty well to prevent silliness.
In the Netherlands supermarkets do big discounts on items almost out of date (think 50-80%), this is a relatively recent development (at least at large scale, i'm sure it's been going on for longer)
The biggest problem is currently that legislation does not allow you to sell or give away food that is out of date, even if it is for charity or at no cost. For "best before" products it's liability, for "use by" products it's both liability and possible fines.
This means that they'd need to donate it to food banks two days before the actual expiration date, because even food banks can't use it when it's out of date.
Also, food banks in smaller towns usually aren't open every day, complicating matters even more.
If they do too much of that or too reliably (i.e. every morning have a bunch of "these expire tomorrow" items made available) they'll lose money because a bunch of their customers will stop buying items at full price and show up when it expires. If everyone did that (I know everyone wouldn't, but as an example...) then the supermarket would be effectively cutting their income by whatever the discount percentage was.
So it is much better for their financial condition to take the items as a tax writeoff by donating to food banks or throwing it out, even though that generates no income. At least that's the case under US tax laws.
I used to own a sports bar/restaurant and obviously we'd try to manage our inventory so that food didn't expire but especially for items/ingredients that are sold fresh the shelf life is pretty short, so if you have an unexpected event like bad weather that reduces your traffic you will end up with stuff that needs to be disposed of. We'd let employees take some of it home, but even then you have to be careful - you don't want to create incentive for over ordering.
Since its a fairly affluent area there wasn't much in the way of places to donate the food. Food banks around here wanted shelf stable items, they already had more refrigerated products than they had room for (probably getting those from local supermarkets) so the kind of stuff they wanted wasn't the kind of stuff we had to donate. So unfortunately it was mostly trashed. And doubly unfortunately, was actually "trashed" because there wasn't a viable way to have it used as compost. The county started doing residential composting for food/yard waste about five years ago, but AFAIK still don't provide a way for businesses to do it unless they deliver it to the landfill (which is where composting is also done) themselves.
Common around here as well - mark stuff down as it nears it's cutoff for being able to sell it. Sometimes you'll see people hanging around the discount shelves waiting for the next batch. I know one of our lasses knows exactly what times her local co-op does it's mark downs.
It varies. Some work on the basis that it's cheaper to sell it for next to nothing (the last mark down could be to only 10%) than pay to dispose of it. But another store near us is often more expensive for it's marked down stuff than the full price elsewhere !
When I were a lad....there was a "day old" table at the store/bakery. Much cheaper and tasted just fine to me....
Around here (Massachusetts, USA), the food banks have made deals with the supermarkets to take their "out of date" food and give it to the needy. Because there's nothing wrong with the stuff. And the state has, I believe, made it legal (by absolving the supermarkets of any liability for giving food to the food banks)
There used to be a Greggs Surplus shop in Birmingham (near Perry Barr station) which sold Greggs sausage rolls, slices, pizzas and cakes that had been cooked the day before in the local proper Greggs. I used to be able to get a pack of 4 sausage rolls for £0.50 instead of £1.80 for the fresh ones in the main shop. Put the day old ones in the microwave for 30 seconds and you couldn't spot the difference.
A distillery in Dunedin, New Zealand uses bread that is surplus to requirements (that the food banks can't use) to make the mash for the fermentation process that they then distill to make gin (and a few other things). Best recycling ever!
Icon for obvious reasons - though that's not what they are brewing for....
When I was a student I used to bunk off some of the later lectures and go the the local Fruit and Veg market to pick up end of day bargains (it was so long ago that one Gary Linaker regularly served me) and then over to the Bakery as it was shutting down to get their self clearance stock, also for a few pennies. Finefair also used to sell off cans without labels for a penny each, but which made for interesting meals!
The supermarkets round here have arrangements with local charities to send nearly-out-of-date food to them for use in soup kitchens, etc.
I am not against that but, if product is being shipped-off before it would have been sold publicly at reduced price; that can become a problem for those who would buy it cheap but now can't and aren't entitled to the services charities may offer.
One thing I have noticed in the UK are supermarkets no longer keep shelves stocked, will let stock run down or out to avoid expiry dates being reached.
I volunteer at the local food pantry weekly, and I can say that the amount of food we get from many local grocers is large, very large on some days. Some stuff goes right to the dumpster. We also get donations from local farmers and other gardeners. As volunteers, we're allowed first pick of what comes in for our to go box. I scored about 15kg of Jalapeños recently, about 100kg came in, and in the end about 20kg met the dumpster. I've gotten full boxes of oranges and grapefruits, back in 2024, I scored a full wheel of blue cheese, about 15lbs, I had to trim some off, but we had blue cheese for our salads for over a year. At a buck an ounce at the store, that saved some cash. I once scored a 15kg box of pork loins because the pantry didn't have enough freezer space, I had to throw out about 10 of those boxes because they were thawing. If there's a next time they will all fall into the back of my truck, I'm sure I can find relatives with freezer space!
As I'm unemployed ATM, I'm more than happy to help out for the bit of relief I get with rescued food. Sell by \ better used before dates are a joke... Food prices are arbitrary, and meaningless, kind of like our American laws, poorly written and randomly enforced. In the big picture, this is how the haves keep the have-nots from having enough.
One of my buddies, in the early 2000's, caught the guys delivering new computers to where he worked tossing them 10' from the back of their delivery truck, trying to get them to land on the loading dock and often missing or hitting the corner.
I guess they didn't back up far enough and were too lazy to do a second attempt.
>come in looking like it had been run over or was smashed up in transit
Often both. Once worked at a computer supplier (Research Machines) that would get returns from schools. One came in that clearly had been run over. It still had the dual rear wheel marks and tyre tread of a Ford Transit on the box... slightly deformed case inside.
Boss asks an intern to do something and doesn't check they know how? Boss's problem
at some point common sense has to come into play. if a component doesn't fit right away two people at full pelt is probably wrong. a work experience supervisor can help by anticipating most things but his job isn't to hover and teach them to suck eggs
When something ALMOST fits it isn't totally unreasonable to believe it is supposed to fit but perhaps slightly less than perfect tolerances somewhere is why it falls just short of fitting.
Based on the description I bet they were supposed to install the drives from the back, and it would have easily fit. How else can you explain the application of that much force trying to get it in from the front causing it to fly out the back? It went from "partially inserted from the front" all the way to slides easily out the back. The only way that happens without it being designed to insert from the back is if they bent the rack enough to "create space", which seems unlikely to me unless it was made of aluminum which seems unlikely for the era.
You'd think he would have tried sliding it in from the back, but I've observed sometimes people don't try other options before they employ muscle power. Sometimes I've been guilty of that myself, thinking some particular process is quite difficult and wondering how people who aren't as strong as I am can manage at all, only to later learn it is actually quite easy when done correctly.
Or I suppose they could have looked at the connectors on the drive and the receptacles on the rackmount system and figured out what went (and didn’t go) where. But I guess that’s the sort of thing that some fraction (guessing ~ 80% for males in their maximum testosterone years) are only capable of learning the hard way.
Can only agree - I've lost count of the amount of times I've reworked or repaired someone else's clueless bodge since I got into repair work - even more fun when it's a bad lash up of something mains powered running at 230v and the engineer just thought they knew better...
That said there's a limit to how many times you can ask the same question.
I did a few years in a company making lens polymers and we had a new guy start in the production labs who had to be shown how to use a mop and bucket. Apparently he couldn't figure out how to work the wringer, and normally ended up slopping water everywhere across the floor.
Him asking "how do you do this?" to the team lead whenever it was his turn on the rota (in this case every other day) wore thin after about two weeks, and he was sent to ask the production manager the same question. I believe it was quietly but firmly suggested that he find another job.
Many moons ago, we were packing an American fridge-sized piece of equipment for transport. It was secured by rachet straps that laced through the crate. Because it was complex, we messed up the first attempt and went in search of a wire hanger to pull it through the correct way.
Unfortunately, the forklift driver saw the crate with straps in place and tried to move it to the truck. The equipment toppled on the first bump and the twisted mess of steel, PCBs and wood had to be swept up into boxes for the manufacturer who insisted on the return of every speck.
" is how little some most companies care about training"
FTFY
Training is expensive. It is based on the idea that the emplyee is going to stick around and benefit the company from the training.
Interns are not really expected to stick around.
Especially in the days of low-capacity (compared to today) hard disks whose fragility was easily demonstrated, they should not have been in charge of testing that disk without supervision.
Failure on the part of the manager. He didn't do his job. So it's normal that he deals with a replacement.
"Nothing more dangerous than a teenager with unearned confidence."
I would beg to differ. The overconfident teen is a minor hazard compared with the catastrophic consequences of a middle aged manager that was booted very early into manglement from a technical role on the basis of his total lack of competence and his overweening confidence in his own abilities.
Most organisations, public and private, are liberally laced with these clueless career incompetents.
My boss hadn't been elevated due to incompetence, but his technical skills hadn't kept up with newer technology. I didn't mind - he could do all the boring management sh*t and I did all the fun stuff.
His worst one was trying to be helpful and manging to jam a DIMM into the socket the wrong way round! He then wondered why the magic smoke appeared when he turned the PC back on.
In my younger days as a Neanderthal I somehow managed to force a Molex connector onto a splitter the wrong way...with expected results
Hangs head in shame and stares at shoes.
I honestly didn't feel like I was pushing on it that hard and thought it just got bound because it wasn't in going straight or it was just very snug, which had happened to me before a few times...I wish I was still that strong haha.
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Groping blindly behind a large, heavy -- and expensive -- device that was close to a wall, I somehow convinced an IEC connector to mate with a Cinch-Jones connector (it was a variant of this, but without the round pin that would have prevented my blunder).
The Cinch-Jones was expecting something like 15 VDC. The IEC was providing ... rather more that that. Magic smoke was released.
"Hangs head in shame and stares at shoes."
Ohhh, yeah.
If something is resistant to being fitted then STOP and use your eyeballs to work out why. Yet still, to this day, I'll occasionally give in to instinct and just push a bit harder because that's what any great ape would do first ;)
One Yaris brake caliper was my last victim, because I didn't think in the half a second it took between a bolt becoming tight before it was properly home and stripping a thread out.
WD-40 and a lighter combine to make a great makeshift flamethrower. I used it many times to heat up a rusted nut (no jokes about rusty nuts please!) when doing car maintenance. The trick is to use the plastic straw to narrow the flame & stop it reaching the canister. It seems a bit risky in hindsight though.
> use the plastic straw to narrow the flame & stop it reaching the canister
Nah. The flame hardly ever back-flashes to the can. The fluid-flow is faster than the speed of fame-spread. IAC, there is no oxygen in the can. And WD-40 is not THAT flammable (it is deluxe kerosene). I've done this with ether (diethyl ether) starting-fluid to light-off an old cold Diesel engine. Pyroil (which is mostly naphtha, rude gasoline).
I am holding a copy of a receipt for a Maxtor 2.0Gig HDD dated July of 1996. Bought at Fry's Electronics in Sunnyvale, California for a client of mine.
Total cost (including tax) just under $430. The drive was on sale, marked down 15%.
It was cheaper for the boss to RTS the obviously DOA part and get a replacement than it would be to raise an inquiry into what had gone wrong.
I remember the demo of changing an 18in single platter disk of a massive 10Mb... after the 3td or 4th victim made their try, there was a 'ping' as the disk spin up and the demo was over
(luckily it was only a test environment)
Me and a pal were stripping a motorcycle in my kitchen as part of a frame-up rebuild. Kitchen? Well, we were students, it had a back door and it was damn cold outside, okay?
When it came to removing the swing arm bolt (the bar that allows the whole rear end to pivot on its suspension) the Haynes manual mentioned that the bearings are a press fit. As any Haynes reader will know, this usually translates to 'you'll start thinking it's been welded in place'. Our biggest hammer was used to pound on the end. On this bike, it turns out things weren't as bad as all that and I now suspect the first couple of thumps freed the bar sufficiently for removal by hand with a bit of wriggling. The next one imparted enough energy to fire this seven inch long, three quarter inch diameter steel projectile out of the frame and into the kitchen oven. The glass in the oven door stood no chance against this enthusiastic escapee.
Lesson: before you employ excessive force to something to make it part company with another thing, make sure to setup soft landing zones.
I remember commenting about the neat black line a friend had drawn across his shed, and about 18 inches up each wall.
The friend then told me about forgetting to refit the fork oil drain screws on his (IIRC) CB250 wet-dream before he bumped it off the centre stand following a service!
If you have a fork leg emptied of hydraulic fluid and you drop it, the top part jams into the bumpstop valving at the bottom and becomes one solid piece, destroying the bumpstop and other pieces if you pull it apart, at least with an SV-650 fork.
Don't ask how I know...
I did that to a compressor paint sprayer after I forgot to lower the pressure after using an impact gun. The sides rounded out and the bottom was convex on the outside instead of concave.
I just hammered it back roughly into shape, it didn't leak paint all over the place, so I have been using it that way for the last 25 years or so.
Now I double check the air pressure before connecting anything.
In college, a friend and I trimmed expenses by building up and selling PC AT clones.
We had one with all the options for $5K including the huge hard disk. This was a full-height jobber with an equally large scale control board on the bottom.
I hooked it up and went to rest it on the corner of the open case. I didn't quite do it right and there was metal-to-PC-board contact, with a puff of magic smoke.
We inspected it, and apparently the only casualty was a beefy little 1/2 watt resistor that extended beyond the outline of the case "just enough". I got a replacement from Radio Shack, soldered it in place and the drive worked fine.
That's my ONLY soldering job in 35 years that's worked.
Ah, the good-ole-days when you could sometimes fix boards.
I used to do repairs at a place worked on dead industrial control boards that cost $$$ n the early 90's.
Mostly power regulators though, with the odd replacing a melted off trace with a jumper wire.
The boards were only traced on top and bottom and were fairly simple to troubleshoot compared to modern stuff, so it wasn't too bad to figure things out.
Had a similar case; a Priam 100MB full-height 5.24" ST412 jobbie.
Did some work with the disk not screwed in properly. Bang! and magic smoke came out.
Fortunately, a good friend owned an identcal disk and let me borrow the logic board so I could rescue the data.
At an IT trade show back in the last century, I remember coming out of one of the halls and turning round suddenly because of a loud noise. Someone a few metres behind me had dropped their plastic bag containing a brand new hard disk onto the concrete floor which had made a most impressive noise of steel case meets concrete floor. I can't remember if it rattled after they picked it up, but they did look mortified and I fear the drive didn't survive. Because of the loud noise it made hundreds of IT geeks looked at them, so they had no where to hide...
Your tale reminded me of an old TechTV episode where a rare phonograph cylinder broke during an interview.
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