* Posts by Binwah Le Bof

2 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2017

Vibrating walls shafted servers at a time the SUN couldn't shine

Binwah Le Bof

Back in the day

I used to work as a flight simulator engineer and the company had a new 3-axis flight sim installed. Commissioning of the whole setup had gone well and we started to get pilots coming in for training. Then after a while we would keep getting alarms that the flight sim had crashed and the only thing that could be done was to reboot the real time mainframe (yes it was that long ago). This would take about 15 minutes as we would do a thorough check that all was OK onboard the flight sim before handing it back to the crew.

The random crashes would occur at various times and try as we could we were unable to work out why this was happening until one day someone was updating something on the mainframe whilst the flight sim was being tested during the maintenance window and opened the rack door. Suddenly the flight sim dropped down to its rest position. Some further testing traced the fault to faulty cable connectors from the IO board to the mainframe. Needless to say, a new cable loom was ordered and fitted with all wiring tie wrapped to the rack posts and the problem went away.

User filed fake trouble tickets to take helpful sysadmin to lunches

Binwah Le Bof

Thank You gifts

I've had quite a few thank you gifts over the years for helping customers out. The most memorable ones have been the customer who sent me a bottle of quite good whiskey wrapped in an unused baby's nappy and a bottle of Absolut Citron Vodka from a grateful PA when I helped her set up the stand at a show when all I was asked to do was set up a laptop for her to show a looping PPT presentation.

Them were the days, alas I don't get such get thank you gifts anymore however they do let my manager know which helps with my end of year review .. and salary uplift conversations.