We know it's hard to get your kicks at work – just do it away from a wall switch powering anything important
- Reference: 1613117707
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/02/12/on_call/
- Source link:
The tale, from "Chris", takes us back 30 years to a helpdesk tasked with supporting the mainframes and PCs for an unnamed air traffic control centre.
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On the day in question, he received a call from "En-route Charges". This department was a big deal – it dealt with understanding flight movements and the associated charges. "Very important," emphasised Chris, "as this is how we made our income."
The problem was a PC that randomly powered itself off and on. There was no pattern to it, and it was affecting the smooth running of operations. "Work was backing up," said Chris.
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"We went through all the normal checks to understand if we could cross-correlate the issue to any specific fault, be that with the PC or power to the room."
No joy. An in-person visit was needed.
Once on site, though, there was still no clue about what was causing the mysterious reboot. Chris opted to swap out the PC for a known good unit and planned to test the seemingly possessed box back at base. However, he'd barely reached for his screwdriver when the phone rang again. The new PC was exhibiting the same behaviour.
Cutting to the chase, Chris decided to sit with the user until the fault recurred. He didn't have to wait long; the new PC repeated the mystery off-and-on trick. He checked all the logs and inspected the connections. Everything was in order.
An hour later, it happened again. But this time Chris heard something. A click. From the wall.
"The penny dropped."
The user in question was not tall. Certainly not reaching more than five feet in stature. What the user lacked in inches was made up for in enthusiasm when it came to singing to herself.
Mumbling along to some ditty or other is a sin committed by many of us over the years.
However, during a particularly exuberant bit of soloing, the user would swing her legs enthusiastically. The table had no back (unlike the ones she'd sat at before). Her legs would go quite high...
You can guess the rest.
"This meant that she could reach (just) the switch in the wall, switching it off on the way up and turning it back on the way down."
The user, having insisted that the IT team was not up to snuff, was left somewhat red-faced.
And the fix? "To move the desk slightly away and to the side, allowing the swinging of legs (and singing) without upsetting the power."
[5]
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Got any recordings of said announcements??
Perhaps for the train from Penistone to Scunthorpe?
Reminds me of an odd thing I came across many years ago with the PC for one of the office admins. It was a HP Vectra running NT4 Desktop with a 17" CRT sat on top, both of which were plugged into a power strip on the back of the desk. The admin would turn the PC on every morning and shut it down every night, just like everyone else in the office.
Every couple of months though, the PC would refuse to power on and appear completely dead. Swap the power plugs over at the back of the PC and monitor and the monitor would power on but the PC would remain completely dead. However, unplug the power cables at the power strip at the back of the desk and swap them over there and the PC would power on, boot up and run fine with the monitor also working fine! And it would do this every two months or so. People thought I was joking when I told them, until it happened the next time and I'd let them swap the power cables over and see for themselves. No-one could explain it.
She should have been sacked
But users never get sacked for IT crapitude do they?
Re: She should have been sacked
In her defense, that switch should have been above the desk (within easy manual reach just in case) and out of reach of her foot.
I've actually suffered this myself in the past: accidentally kicking the wall-socket switch and powering down the pc right in the middle of writing fiddly code. (or, more likely, browsing El Reg, I don't remember completely, boss).
Obviously: it only happened the once because a piece of duct tape was duly commandeered to serve as a switch movement prevention device, because I knew that:
a) the desk was never going to be moved, and the plug never removed, (at least while I sat there)
b) I'd not be able to remember to not kick my leg out occasionally, and
c) Duct tape holds the universe together.
Ah, the home made molly-guard. Bravo!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard
https://www.google.com/search?q=molly+guard
Dodgy power strip
Finally got to the bonus level in bubble bobble, stamp feet in joy. All goes off. Never did get there again.
I have duct tape (or gaffer tape) over a switch under my desk for the very same reason. That only got applied after the third unexpected power off incident, as I overestimated my ability to not kick my feet around under my desk when I read some stupid email that's arrived!
Why have the switch ?
I often wondered why UK sockets sometimes come without a switch. Seemed a bit cheapskate, until I lobbed a lightweight holdall under the counter into a space beside the freezer. Two days later I noticed a puddle on the floor in front of the freezer. Yup, complete de-frost. Had managed to hit the rocker with the holdall: so then I "cheapskated" and went for a switchless socket.
NoNo! You can't do that.
Never let the users think anything they do is justified. They will take it to mean everything they do is!
I used to work at a rather large airport.
I remember talking to someone not long after they joined and they complained about the phones having some weird interference. I smiled, asked them to pick up the phone and I would 'predict' when it would buzz for them. They picked up the phone, and I just said "buzz......buzz......buzz.....buzz" as I watched the very large radar dish spin round not far from the office window......
Maybe that's why I turned out the way I am now. :)
This could only happen in the UK I suppose with power switches for each socket :)
Confession
My home office desk* has an open back. When stretching my legs the other week I did succeed in unplugging the power cable from the back of the docking station! Fortunately no work was harmed during this incident as the laptop was still running OK. I must get to work with the cable ties sometime.
*A huge corner desk and drawer units combo that I bought from MFI** around 30 years ago. It's amazingly solid and has had a hand made (by me) monitor stand come bookshelf added more recently. Good that I was ready for the pandemic!
**Commonly known as Made For Idiots, for youngsters and non-UK residents they were a seller of cheap melamine-and-chipboard furniture before we'd ever heard of Ikea.
My favourite one....
A staff member who suspended herself at the login stage and couldn't understand why.....until we discovered that her nice electric rise/fall desk was pushing her keyboard (particularly the enter key far right) into the underside of her bosom. The embarrased IT person explained....the lady in question fell about laughing!
There is also a special level of hell reserved for whoever thought that Ethernet sockets at skirting board level were a good idea, when they are exactly the same height as the ends of the legs on a standard office chair........so many broken/pushed into the socket box :((((((
One of my earliest IT gigs as a contractor, involved a lady repeatedly, killing the power for a line of dumb terminals by puling on the lead & pulling the plug out by extension (Pun intended).
A year or so later another gig, there was this lady lets call her Paris (Icon) that liked to give out train timetable information, with one of her feet tucked up under her lady parts & rubbing\bouncing herself off on it as she gave out the required info.