Posts by Kuang

Muppet broke the datacenter every day, in its own weighty way

Re: This kind of semi-random, intermittent error is such a pain to diagnose

Ah, the wonders of percussive maintenance :)

I worked at a college years ago that bought a shedload of those old Dell Optiplex machines - the ones with the curved front and the triple-expensive floppy drives that were just normal drives with the front panel removed and the eject button moved to the case.

The monitors that came with them had dodgy power switches that could be diagnosed with a sharp slap to the right hand side of the case. Talking people through tat on the phone was interesting:

'Put you palm flat on the right had side next to the switch. Now lift it off the surface by about two inches. Ok? Now smack it. No, really. It went off? Be there in a minute.'

Stop installing that software – you may have just died

Dicks, death dust & denial.

I was asked to run some Cat5 into a workshop because the occupants, who'd previously resisted any attempt to put computers in there, decided they now couldn't live without one and why hadn't I done it already? This was obviously a 'do it by this afternoon or your boss will hear about it' sort of deal.

As usual I diligently checked the asbestos register and discovered that the dividing wall between the workshop and the main corridor (easiest run back to the local switch) was plastered in the stuff. Fortunately the wall of the room adjacent to the lab was clear, so I could just swerve the cable in earlier and approach from the side. Sorted.

I climbed my steps, pushed aside a ceiling tile and poked my head in. A quick sweep of the torch revealed something akin to to the surface of the moon, with dust and rocks everywhere.

You know those moments when your reptilian hindbrain is way ahead of you? It held my breath on my behalf, as I swung the torch around to see a foot wide hole smashed through the asbestos-infested wall. A contractor had run a dust extraction pipe with all the finesse of a rodeo bull in a mosh pit, leaving the entire ceiling void peppered in death dust. No cable for you, workshop guys.*

That mess was still being swept under the carpet when I left six months later.

* yes, I could have come up with alternative runs, but they were being dicks about the whole thing and telling me precisely where and how things needed to happen, so I took them at their word :)

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

"I left a delighted station owner who was oblivious to how close he came to a big bill and delayed opening,"

Never leave ANYONE oblivious to how close they came to a big bill, or you'll be back again next week. Some people only learn when faced with a catastrophic walletectomy.

Of course, making sure they know can lead to the opposite of a delayed opening, so stand clear.

Science says death metal fans delightful and intelligent people, great at dinner parties

Re: Not surprising

He sang with Skyclad (folk-metal) where his tone often crept closer to some sort of creepy Dickensian Narrator :) 'Earth Mother, The Sun and the Furious Host' is a great example.

Midlands council laughs at zombie-apocalypse threat

I live in Leicester...

... and I guarantee that a zombie plan would be a waste of money; if any brain eating monsters chose to attack, they'd starve to death naturally in a few hours.

I can understand the concern though - visit the city centre on any given Saturday afternoon and you'd swear the first wave had already begun...