Re: Less than reassuring!
Plus a qualified (often certified) technician is required per regulations.
Posts by Shooter
259 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jul 2009
‘I nearly died after flying thousands of miles to install a power cord for the NSA’
Saturday 19th July 2025 16:36 GMT
Re: Two possibilities
I've come across both issues with dispiriting frequency in my working career. Probably twice as many missing pins as pins stuck in sockets.
Extra scary when it's a live or neutral pin missing! Once had to have the facility sparky remove a power pin from a socket, as the electricity had to be shut off first and I had no way of knowing what was on the same circuit.
'Trained monkey' from tech support saved know-it-all manager's mistake with a single keypress
US Army signs up Band of Tech Bros with a suitably nerdy name
Field support chap got married – which took down a mainframe
Monday 9th June 2025 16:48 GMT
Re: VAX field service engineers
Before I was married, I was subjected to quite a few graphic safety posters featuring degloved fingers due to rings. After I was married I always kept my wedding ring in my pocket or the truck when I was working.
Also only wore cheap plastic watches for the same reason.
Nowadays you can get a silicone wedding band that's non-conductive, breaks easily, and still keeps the missus happy. (Or mister - my wife often works with power tools and wears one.)
Ex-NASA Admin pick blames Musk ties for pulled nomination
Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call
Saturday 12th April 2025 18:11 GMT
Some years ago I was assigned a job as on-site support to a customer a good two hours away from my office. A day-long safety course was required before I could be allowed on-site (hazardous chemical manufacturing plant).
Awoke extra early to drive to the address I was given for the training, through a blizzard or next best thing to. Reported to reception, who seemed very confused. An hour later it was determined that the safety training was supposed to be conducted at the *plant*. Which was on the complete opposite side of the state, at least three hours away even in good weather. Also, that particular contractor safety class was only given every two weeks...
I've had more than a few assignments where dispatch confused the *billing* address with the physical job site, but this was the only one where they confused the training department for the entire company with the plant in question.
US military grounds entire Osprey tiltrotor fleet over safety concerns
Network engineer chose humiliation over a night on the datacenter floor
We know what Musk will probably dress up as this year: A victim
Friday 1st November 2024 16:21 GMT
Re: It’s amazing…
You're a little low on the ambulance costs.
A few years back I started having sporadic bouts of vertigo - not neurological, something to do with the crystals in my ears. Two years ago it made me fall over as I was getting ready for work. Managed to drag myself to the bedroom and bang on the door until I woke my wife. I just wanted help getting into a chair or bed, but she freaked out and called an ambulance, afraid that I'd had a stroke (fair enough).
The bill was $1730 for a ten minute ride, with no extras. Insurance haggled them down to $1085. Fortunately it happened at the very end of the year and all my co-pays had already kicked in, so nothing out of pocket. At least for the ride...
Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused
BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him
BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies
Saturday 24th August 2024 16:24 GMT
Re: So true to life
In army marksmanship training, I was taught the difference between precision and accuracy.
Precision is five holes in the target, each an eighth of an inch apart but the group 6 inches from the bullseye.
Accuracy is five holes in the target, centered around the bullseye but 6 inches from each other.
We were to strive for both precision AND accuracy!
Client tells techie: You're not leaving the country until this printer is working
Saturday 17th August 2024 17:07 GMT
Re: Closest experience I had
During that blackout I was several hundred miles north of you - backpacking the mountains of Michigan's western upper peninsula with my brand-new bride. No cell signal at that place and time of course.
Got back to some sort of civilization and all the locals could talk about was how badly the trolls (lower Michigan - "under the bridge") had messed up the power!
By the time I was able to contact my boss, all was well. At least for us.
There is no honor among RAM thieves – but sometimes there is karma
Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station
BOFH: An 'AI PC' for an Acutely Ignorant user
Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not
Monday 3rd June 2024 20:39 GMT
Re: Not screwdrivers but...
I learned early on, working in, er, "challenging" industrial environments, that if one dropped a small part it was best to just watch it fall. If one attempted to catch said part, it would invariably go careening through space and immediately be lost to view. Likely winding up in a high-temp or high-RPM or high-voltage location (or all three).
BOFH: Come on down to the dunge– erm … basement
Do not touch that computer. Not even while wearing gloves. It is a biohazard
Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks
Please install that patch – but don't you dare actually run it
You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused
Control Altman delete: OpenAI fires CEO, chairman quits
BOFH: Monitor mount moans end in Beancounter beatdown
How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer
Saturday 23rd September 2023 19:11 GMT
Re: Nasty IT places
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!
BOFH: Ah. Company-branded merch. So much better than a bonus
Florida folks dragged out of bed by false emergency texts
Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?
Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss
Cop warrant orders Ring to cough up footage from inside this guy's home
What's up with IT, Doc? Rabbit hole reveals cause of outage
Canadian owes bosses for 'time theft' after work-tracking app sinks tribunal bid
BOFH: The Boss has a new watch – move readiness to DEFCON 2
Saturday 15th October 2022 18:09 GMT
Re: Savages, savages I say!
Puts my OCD into overdrive!
I compromise by leaving the switches that I see most frequently in the DOWN position when off. Then I try to avoid looking at the switch that's UP when off. Works well for the cellar lights, and acceptably for the outside lights (controlled from the front door and the garage entryway).
Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler
Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable
Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof
Saturday 24th September 2022 14:19 GMT
Re: worse yet
This is actually the origin of my handle on El Reg. I was widely known as the guy who would "shoot down" idiotic management ideas before they were implemented.
Nowadays, those same types of plans are thought up several management layers (and often several states) away from where us lowly plebs have to implement them.
BOFH: You want presentation layer, but we're physical layer
Keeping printers quiet broke disk drives, thanks to very fuzzy logic
Saturday 17th September 2022 15:34 GMT
Re: Carpets are nothing compared to tobacco smoke.
I think I've told this story before...
About 25 years ago - back in the days when we still had such luxuries as in-office admin people - we had a PC with a CD drive for our office gal, who was a fairly heavy smoker (the smoking was heavy, not the gal herself). Eventually the CD drive stopped working, and the IT department was consulted (at that point I was industrial service, not IT).
In due course, a new drive arrived at our office. No IT tech, no instructions, just a drive in a cardboard box. The office gal was aware that in a previous life I had "done something with computers", so asked me for help. No problem! Until I opened up the PC's case.
I could barely make out any of the innards, as everything was coated in a nasty mixture of carpet fibers and sticky nicotine residue. The computer was unplugged, taken out the back door and cleaned with compressed air before being (carefully) vacuumed. That at least made it possible to replace the CD drive. Everything else was wiped as clean as could be while in place, the PC was buttoned up and returned to service.
A short time later the law was changed to forbid smoking indoors, and sometime after that the lady in question moved on to greener (or not, as the case may be) pastures.
Icon for required PPE -->
BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM
Saturday 10th September 2022 18:23 GMT
Re: This brought back nightmare memories ...
I remember reading about a young officer at his first posting who had written a report chock full of TLAs.
His superior promptly returned it to his desk with the letters "UNA" scrawled across every page.
Perplexed, the young officer asked what UNA stood for.
"Use No Abbreviations", came the reply!
Enough with the notifications! Focus Assist will shut them u… 'But I'm too important!'
Saturday 6th August 2022 16:00 GMT
Re: Does your neighbour have kids?
Makes a certain amount of sense in this particular use case - a battery too drained to power the car's drive motor would still have plenty of juice to operate a few LEDs and a speaker.
On the other hand, it's not like Junior is driving a Tesla through Death Valley. No big deal if the toy car just grinds to a halt.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
