News: 1614586513

Sad to see that even back then burnout was common in IT...

I'm not sure that is something we should be joking about really, so I'll downvote myself...

Shouldn't have put that HCF instruction in...

As the youngest of 4 i always got the blame for everything when i was growing up.

I still do now of course.

funny incident a few months back, something broke on a project i was on, suspicions flying that it was something i had done, bosses checking my change controls, what systems i had logged into and what commands i had run etc. The fact was, other than log in & run commands to take a look around, i had made no changes so should probably have got into some trouble for not doing any changes, but i could hardly of got into trouble for breaking the project as i hadn't made any changes at all to anything anywhere for about 2 weeks.

I think i dodged a bullet there!!

Nah - the eldest is always the one held responsible, the youngest can't possibly be expected to be aware of the consequences yet....

(eldest of 3 here)

Good old Unix printer error lp0...

Did they confirm if it was the server or office printer that immolated first?

I was working in an office that overlooked the roof of the computer hall. I was demonstrating a new piece of code that did useful things to an Oracle database. As I pressed the button to do the business, there was a rumble as the emergency generators kicked into action, the flap on the exhaust of the generator engines flipped up and dark smoke started belching out while the lights dimmed briefly as the power supply switched over. I had to spend 5 minutes convincing the assembled management that the loss of external power had nothing to do with me running a script on the Oracle server.

My favourite perfect timing/just coincidence/did that really happen moment was about 3 decades ago. Walking through the pedestrian shopping precinct in the middle of Portsmouth with my ex-SWMBO. the problem being that the ex-SWMBO had a near phobia about animals (ALL animals) so avoiding the flying rats (eons of pigs!) was her prime concern. And trying to pull my arm out at the shoulder when one got too close.

For a bit of fun, I quietly said that all you needed to do was say the magic words, and when asked what they were I said "Pigeon Pie! Pigeon Pie! Pigeon Pie!". And just as I finished EVERY flying rat decided as one to leave as quickly as possible! The look on ex-SWMBOs face was priceless! (And no! There were no dogs running around, or stamping sprogs, or firecrackers going off. I really didn't see anyone or anything that set them off.)

The story was repeated by the ex-SWMBO to friends and family, and years later I would occasionally catch various relatives repeating the magic words hoping for a repeat performance.

We were having to shut all the kit down so some electrical work could be done. I had done a cron job on my SUN boxes to take them to init 0 which left them at the OK prompt. I duly entered the power-off command and with a clunk everything turned off in the room well before the Windows mob had got half way through their order shutdown process. A moment of bowel loosening panic ensued where I wondered how the test payroll server could switch everything off when the facilities guy came in and said "Good, all off then." The language from the Windows guys was not fit for the delicate ears of Register commentards.

...one place I worked at fired a sales drone.

I am foggy on the details but it was some kind of inappropriate behaviour.

Apparently whilst being frogmarched off the premises (remote sales office in Bristol, I think) he was apparently furious and screamed out that he would return that night and "burn this place to the ground".

Oddly, it turned out, he kept his promise.

It didn't take long to track the genius down, either, unsurprisingly.

We had one guy who left the head office under a bit of a cloud. Nothing sackable just a clash of personalities.

The weekend after he left, someone was caught on CCTV that Saturday night filling every accessible external lock with superglue. The hoody and poor quality of the night vision made it impossible to tell who it was, of course, and no one was stupid enough to admit to it.

Made a fun Monday morning when no one could get in until a locksmith could arrive.

Oh and whilst I remember - there was a time when one French company I worked for, who had a plant in Birmingham that built trains, had said facility broken into by armed gunmen.

Nothing was taken of exceptional value but they did take a set of master keys and some IT access badges.

For some reason management thought that was ok and did nothing.

A few weeks later they returned and emptied the server room as well as a few other high value locations (most definitely inside knowledge). Management response "Well we didn't expect them to know which keys they took but we do at least know whose access cards were used..."

I started work at a site the same week that some incompetent in the Finance department was put on gardening leave for allegedly covering up some expensive cockup he'd made in a finance spreadsheet; it was my job to do a bit of basic forensic work (IT, not the accounting type) on his PC and the server share hosting some of the spreadsheets. I also searched the office for floppy disks (this was in the time of Windows 95) and found some unofficial backups tucked away which contained incriminating versions of the covered-up files.

There was a suspicion that Mr Incompetent would have wanted to get rid of those floppies if he hadn't been frogmarched out by Security, so it wasn't a surprise to hear the following day that he'd been spotted on camera trying to break into his office in the middle of the night. His office window was hidden from the main walk by bushes and they found jemmy marks in the woodwork, plus burn marks where he'd attempted to start a fire once he failed to break in (presumably he chose not to break the glass because it would have made too much noise). He'd clearly given up and walked away, because he was on two of the security cameras, with a hoody and baseball cap obscuring his face. Mr Incompetent lived up to his name by pulling down his hood and taking off his cap the moment he stepped off the property, providing an absolutely perfect mugshot to the camera across the road watching the gate.

Get into work, check that the lines to the subsidiary offices are OK. Nope, one of the cards is dead, no lights showing.

Phone that office, ask the switchboard to put me through to the computer room.

"Sorry, we can't transfer calls at the moment, we've had a power cut"

"Ah thanks, that answers the question I was about to ask!"

One place I worked, when we all came in on Monday morning, the build server was down. They tried for an hour to contact it, until some bright spark had the idea to actually go into the server room.

He found an open window (the glass variation), an opened server, and all the RAM in the server had gone missing.