Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends
- Reference: 1621582386
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/05/21/on_call/
- Source link:
Today's story comes from "Jack" and takes us back to the early 1990s, when chucking data around via satellite still had a certain novelty.
"My primary job," said Jack, "was maintaining the satellite distribution equipment for a major TV network. But after five or six years I'd managed to get things to the point that routine maintenance caught and fixed most potential problems before they became problems."
[2]
[3]
[4]
Routine maintenance is a wondrous joy and things ticked over nicely. However, it did mean that Jack's employer was paying rather a lot of money in order to keep him on standby. A bonzer wheeze was struck upon – setting up three metre satellite installations at automobile dealerships to allow them to connect to the factory for instantaneous inventory resolution.
No more iffy phone connections: the magic of satellite communications would mean a customer could order their new car and be immediately told when it would arrive. "Unfortunately for me," grumbled Jack, "the contract also called for me to be on site within 12 hours of any reported outage."
No good deed goes unpunished and all that.
[5]
On the day of the call, Jack was at a TV station, swapping out a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) for a six-metre dish when his pager went off.
"It was one of the dealerships reporting that their satellite upline was stone cold dead, with no sign of life."
Less than keen on the 150-mile drive to the site, Jack tried the usual troubleshooting: yes, it was turned on. Yes, OF COURSE it was plugged in. And so on.
[6]
There was nothing else for it. He and his tools would have to make the three-hour drive to the dealership to solve the problem.
Upon arriving, he was told that the only person that knew anything about the satellite system was the manager, who had helpfully gone for lunch. Not keen on spending the next half hour perusing the wares of the dealership, Jack decided to take a look at the equipment, solo. "Yes, it was stone cold dead," he confirmed, "not even the cooling fans operating."
He looked further and saw that the hardware had indeed been plugged in, just as he'd been told on the phone. A six-way adaptor had been used, and it looked a bit crooked. Jack crawled under the table for a closer look. He gave the adaptor a firm push…
"When I did," he said, "I heard the power supply fans above me spooling up…"
The manager arrived just as Jack emerged from under the desk, and the satellite system sprang to life.
"Oh, you've got it working!" was the exclamation, "What did you do?"
Jack could have said a variety of things at this point. Perhaps flung out some of the technobabble of which we in our industry are so fond. Or maybe played it cool, with no more than a conspiratorial wink to indicate that an act of extreme cleverness had taken place.
Sadly, he did none of these things.
"I plugged it in," he blurted.
The failure to look at the power outlet, coupled with the charges incurred through a wasted seven hour and 300-mile round trip cost the dealership nearly enough to pay for one of Detroit's finest autos. Hopefully there was enough budget left over to purchase a marker to write "give the plug a shove" on the routine maintenance list.
There is a special breed of user that prefers to pick up the phone rather than attempt even the simplest of resolutions. Tell us about your experience with the special ones via an email to [7]On Call . ®
Get our [8]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/on-call
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YKeEwOxwkMXkoHe39WwlsQAAAFU&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/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YKeEwOxwkMXkoHe39WwlsQAAAFU&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/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YKeEwOxwkMXkoHe39WwlsQAAAFU&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/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YKeEwOxwkMXkoHe39WwlsQAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YKeEwOxwkMXkoHe39WwlsQAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] mailto:oncall@theregister.com
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Users
There are (were?) a special breed of plugs/connectors that look and feel as if they are connected when they are not. Often the only way of telling they are connected is by the device working. I've found that some dead disk drives can often be brought back to life by putting a couple of loops of string around the connector and drive and tightening it gently by twisting a pencil round and round and sometimes the connector moves visibly and other times the drive just starts up with little if any noticeable movement. As for RF stuff I've found merely straightening the way of piece of coax approaches the connector can make it work, even though it worked the other way for years before failing. That could be because the core is fractured but I've never spent the time checking.
Dear Lord...
Please give me a chance to prove that winning the lotto won't spoil me. Pretty please? With bacon on top?
*Pure, Sweet, & Innocent(TM) cherubic smile*
Re: Dear Lord...
Euromillions is something like €73 milion tonight but it still won't be enough to guarantee you can employ someone who will push a plug in correctly every time.
Re: Dear Lord...
"Please give me a chance to prove that winning the lotto won't spoil me"
You've bought a ticket, right?
Just checking
Your Lord and Saviour
Sometimes though....
Sometimes though you just don't get a choice. You *know* the user has done something stupid - but they refuse to listen or own up to it.
Had it with a customer a 2 hour drive away. When he called in the fault I went through a trouble shooting process (it was a dial-up modem - this was some time ago) and I knew something wasn't right - I could still hear it warbling away when it should have gone quiet after connecting. Of course the user hadn't done anything....
So I prepare another unit (it had to be programmed for the job in hand), roll up, go to look at the modem, and I notice that there were wires hanging out of the phone socket.
The user: Oh yes, the modem was making a noise so I cut some of the wires, and now it makes a noise all the time...
Re: Sometimes though....
He should've tried that with the plug.
Re: Sometimes though....
Well...
There was the occasion when, arriving at work in the morning, everything was dead.
All servers down, no printers powered up... the works.
As people drifted in and found that even the kettles weren't working (the biggest disaster imaginable) there were growing murmurings of discontent.
This despite the company having 'acquired' a UPS system the size of 2 shipping containers and enough capacity to keep a small village going -- for a project of 3 servers and around 80 PCs sitting in some outbuildings on the edge of a main site.
Questions were asked. Fingers started to be pointed at facilities management and IT.
Finally, one of the less technical people [ie financial management], with no private life and a desire to come in hours before contracted time, owned up and said "That box in the corner was making a terrible racket so I switched it off" -- of course the 'terrible racket' was the audible alert on the management panel that showed that the UPS had kicked in.
On a separate power loss topic...
I also heard a story (possibly urban myth -- this wasn't from my personal experience) of a demo in the days of FDDI networking - early-mid 90s when people could still remember Sylvester Stallone making Rambo movies.
The vendor wanted to show resilience and 'keep going' features and had one of the fibre cables draped over a tree stump on stage. At a certain cue, an actor rushed on stage with a machete and severed the cable -- and everything kept going. One day however, the cable was not on the stump, so he picked up the nearest one and hacked that -- except it was the power cable, not fibre. Spectacular results, but not too great from a sales presentation point of view :)
Re: Sometimes though....
On Reddit somebody in r/sysadmin mentioned that he had an user with a dial-up modem.
Everything worked beautifully, but then the user got ADSL.
And ADSL doesn't warboe, beep or boop. User was most unhappy.
Cue brainstorm - every time user want to "connect" to the internet, a script is run playing a .WAV of a modem handshaking and connecting - and user was happy.
Pub o' clock time, will be gone the whole day to have a bout of nostalgia at those simpler times... --->
Re: Sometimes though....
I want that WAV file
Modem warbling WAV file
A friend of mine used that WAV file (or similar) as his mobile ringtone for many years.
Initially it got many smiles when his pockets chriped and warbled and he took out the phone to answer it.
Upto about 7 years ago, when all it got was "what is that dreadful racket on your phone?"
There's a whole generation of people out there nowadays who have no idea what a modem is or the sync noises they used to make......
Re: Sometimes though....
https://www.soundjay.com/dial-up-modem-sound-effect.html
Re: Sometimes though....
Thanks for the link. Will prank/terrorise SOME of my customers with these nostalgic sounds in the next few days...
An old boss used to tell the tale of a satellite system that would pack up on Friday afternoons around 4. It had all the techies scratching their heads. They would check every thing was correct but at 4 it would start to play up. One Friday he decided he'd had enough and popped outside for a cigarette... and noticed the drivers from the company next door had finished for the week and were sat outside drinking cans of beer - and throwing the empties at the satellite dish. I don't know how true it is, but it does make for a great troubleshooting anecdote.
not plugged in
Long ago in mid 1990s, I managed, among others, a server with mostly redundant build. Dual power supplies, dual mirrored disk array, 4 CPU. Every three months or so, one particular disk array would fail due to power loss. Turned out a power cord eased itself out of the power socket on power supply inside server. How and why, no idea. Bog standard power lead and socket. Even IBM used them.
Changing lead seemed to make no difference, at least in first year. Routine monthly maintenance just included reseat of power leads. Server was in cold airconditioned secured access data center with monitoring cameras. Very few had access, fewer used it. If it was a human, they were sneaky and utterly pointless.
Server went to new owners after 3 years and oddly, no further problems with the power lead sliding out were heard of. To best of my knowledge said server was sent to NZ and still running five years ago. It is plausible no-one noticed the mirroring failed as server burbled along happily and without log checking one would not know.
It's always DNS, I mean power
Most of my recent call outs have been for power issues... some users could have fixed, some our facilities team had to fix.
A Clanking of Chains
A customer reported that a machine we had serviced was now making an awful noise in operation. Although it had been reinstalled (by the customer), it must be the repairs that were at fault, and as it was protecting a large community it need to be sorted. The local 'Authority' were not happy and very vocal.
"What were we going to do about it?"
Could it be that it hadn't been installed correctly?
"Don't be silly." The fact that a visit would be chargeable if not our fault was laughingly dismissed "We'll see about that."
For 'Environmental reasons' it could only be run at night, so we arranged to meet that day, on a dark, if not stormy, night, out in the middle of Nowhere-on-Sea. Familiarity with these installations warned me to get there early (and in the light). With hours to spare we decided to carry out a visible check. Noticing that the support-chain was resting freely against the metal surround, a couple of cable-ties secured it neatly.
When eventually darkness fell, the machine ran sweetly and unobtrusively. The ghastly, ghostly noise had disappeared.
The customer knew that we we not exorcists and asked that the report and invoice be vague in the fault diagnosis.
Users
There is a special breed of user that prefers to pick up the phone rather than attempt even the simplest of resolutions.
It's the one that's been told if you try and fix it and you make it worse it's coming out of your budget / salary / bonus.