Don't shoot, I'm only the system administrator!
- Reference: 1751009346
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/27/on_call/
- Source link:
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Nigel" who shared a story from 2004 when the office he worked in found itself in the path of [1]Hurricane Ivan , the superstorm that rampaged its way across the Caribbean and the USA for almost three weeks.
"At the time I worked in my company's main office in the computer room keeping all the phone, network, and server systems online," Nigel told On Call.
[2]
Nigel's employer installed a substantial diesel generator and uninterruptible power supplies but hadn't tested them before Hurricane Ivan rolled into town.
[3]
[4]
"We all agreed that power outages lasting days were possible, and that it was far from certain it would be possible to refuel the generator," Nigel told On Call.
The company therefore devised a plan to save generator fuel by shutting down its systems at night, when nobody needed them, and then restart them in the morning.
[5]
Nigel got the job of staying in the office to carefully shut things down, then wake early to restore service.
On the first night of this plan, all went well. At around 9:00 PM, Nigel shut systems down without incident, used the eerie glow of emergency lighting to navigate into a small room that housed a couch, changed into his pajamas, and went to sleep.
His slumber was brief because at some horribly early hour alarms started blaring. Nigel sprang off the couch and ran to the alarm panel to turn them off.
[6]Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it
[7]User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died
[8]Techie traced cables from basement to maternity ward and onto a roof, before a car crash revealed the problem
[9]Techie fixed a 'brown monitor' by closing a door for a doctor
En route, he encountered "a couple of firefighters and a policeman who were totally startled to see me."
Another officer soon appeared behind him, and the first responders started asking why Nigel was alone at night in an empty, dark office building during a hurricane.
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"After I explained, the cop behind me laughed and said, 'Good thing you were fast – I heard your feet, but I couldn't get a bead on you.'"
In case you're not familiar with the term, "get a bead on" means to take aim at something. With a gun.
Nigel escaped unharmed.
"The alarm system's emergency battery had gone bad and started sending spurious calls for paramedics," he told On Call. "In the morning, after I brought everything back online, everyone got a good chuckle."
Nigel recalls his employer paid a bonus for working during the storm – danger money, though perhaps for the wrong sort of danger!
Has delivering tech support put your life in peril? If so, take the very safe step of [11]clicking here to send On Call an email so we can tell your story on a future Friday. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2005/08/05/hurricane_prompts_wave_rethink/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aF5rtK53UzcoDL8_mnXENwAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aF5rtK53UzcoDL8_mnXENwAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aF5rtK53UzcoDL8_mnXENwAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aF5rtK53UzcoDL8_mnXENwAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/20/on_call/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/on_call/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/06/on_call/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/30/on_call/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aF5rtK53UzcoDL8_mnXENwAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] mailto:oncall@theregister.com
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Land of the Free - to be shot
Blessed be His Noodly Appendages!
Re: Land of the Free - to be shot
RAMEN!
Re: Land of the Free - to be shot
You can kinda see the appeal - would you rather be out in the hurricane trying to persuade some idiot to go home or sitting in a nice warm station house, filling in the paperwork after discharging your firearm?
Re: Land of the Free - to be shot
I'd rather not have to kill people in the course of my duty...
Re: Land of the Free - to be shot
Yeah, me too! :-)
That kind of danger ...
is definitely beyond my pay grade
I remember reading a blog from a systems admin team during Hurricane Katrina. Truly scary stuff, especially the tale of moving a couple of barrels of fuel for the generator from the car park to the roof with heavily armed gangs of looters roaming the city...
It's lucky they didn't need to troubleshoot the problem
In the US, the Police shoot the trouble - that's the Problem...
Just remember, you don't hear about the vast majority of police calls, just the abnormal ones. That's what makes them "news". Try reading the police blotter from a randomly chosen US city. You'll probably be bored to tears. I know cops who have retired after decades of police work without ever drawing their gun. You never hear about this kind of thing on the "news", but it's more normal than not.
The stats suggest that on average about half the cops in the US will shoot at someone in their career. Of course the mean isn't entirely helpful, because depending on where they work, some will be much more likely to never shoot anyone, and some will shoot several people (each). There are roughly 0.2% as many fatal shootings per year as the number of police, so over a 40 year career about 1 in 10-12 police will kill someone. Since it is heavily skewed towards cops in cities doing the shootings, it suggests the actual rate for those in cities is as high as 1 in 3-4 _killing people_ on the job.
Don't try to normalise that. It's _insane_.
US cops kill people at a rate of 33 per million population. In the UK it's 0.5/M. ( [1]src )
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_rates_and_counts_for_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers
Everyone got a good chuckle
Gales of laughter swept over them.
Land of the Free - to be shot
Every time I read an account like this, I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I don't live in a country where the first instinct of emergency responders is to try and kill anything slightly out of the ordinary