BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine
- Reference: 1632472207
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/24/bofh_2021_episode_17/
- Source link:
A fire that in all likelihood never happened.
"What was it?" the Boss asks, no doubt fearing a discovery of the charred remains of a Beancounter in a closet somewhere on the third or fourth floor.
[1]
"No idea," I say, "but the fire was on our floor apparently."
[2]
[3]
"It'll be a toaster," the PFY opines.
"More likely a sandwich press," I counter.
[4]
"What are you talking about?" the Boss asks.
"What caused the fire. It'll be a toaster or a sandwich press..." the PFY replies.
"OR," I interrupt, "maybe there's a new sort of toasty cooker which only makes organic, vegan, gluten-free bread rolls."
[5]
"For CrossFit people," the PFY adds, finishing the virtue-signalling quadfecta.
"I'm not with you," the Boss says. "Surely it's a piece of equipment that caught fire?"
"Nah, that doesn't happen much anymore," I say. "Back in the day you'd see smoke from a paper jam in the fuser unit of a laser printer or maybe some carpet burns from a power cable mashed too many times by a wheelie chair, but kit's fairly robust now. If it's going to catch fire it usually does it early in the morning when it's first turned on or later in the afternoon when it's been running too long – but not mid-morning.
"This is the time of day when those people who like to run to work are having their post-shower grilled bagel with nut butter and ethically produced free-range honey."
"Followed by a stove-top espresso cooked on a camp sto... It's the camp stove!" the PFY says.
In the end we were both wrong, but at least we got the genre correct. A "YouTube Content Creator" from the coloured pencil office was giving his workmates a practical demonstration on how to roast coffee beans in a popcorn maker – a process which gives off roughly the same amount of smoke as a dumpster fire.
And the rest is history.
The Boss isn't pleased because he was in the middle of some conference call and lacked the technical wherewithal to find the link and continue the call on his mobile.
An edict comes from above about unapproved electrical appliances in the building, which is never going to go down well. About one in five desks has a pod coffee maker of some description which the owner treasures more than any family member, and the number of illicit heaters in winter is truly astounding.
In situations like this there's always one steaming turd in the office that's ready and willing to float to the top of the cess pond and volunteer for the position of appliance-finder general – given the breath-taking amount of power to search and seize that the role has to offer. In our case it's Steve, a bloke from the coloured pencil office with a solid reputation for work avoidance.
[6]BOFH : Pass the sugar, Asmodeus, and let the meeting of the Fellowship of Bastards... commence
[7]BOFH : 'What's an NFT?' the Boss asks. In this case, 'not financially thoughtful'
[8]BOFH : They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it
[9]BOFH : You say goodbye and I say halon
It doesn't take him long to ooze over to Mission Control – no doubt sensing some low hanging fruit in an office crammed with electrical gear.
"So none of this is personal stuff?" he asks.
"Nope, all company equipment," I respond, hand on heart.
"So that expresso machine?"
"The ESPRESSO machine is company property," I nod.
"So why's it here and not out in the main office?" he asks.
"It's the long hours we work," the PFY lies. "When you're pulling an all-nighter to recover some hysteresis data from the redundant database shadow journal you're not going to want to pause the backwriting of the log buffers just so you can pop down to Soho for a ristretto."
"I... see. But what about that huge home theatre system," he points.
"That's a huge system monitoring interface."
"It's got a... 1,500 watt amplifier!" Steve counters.
"So we can hear system alerts without them being drowned out by office noise."
"There's two electric armchairs and a small fridge in front of it!"
"We need to sit somewhere when we're monitoring the systems!" I blurt. "We can't be standing all day!"
"What about THAT?" he asks. "Is that a company appliance?"
He's gesturing at the Defender arcade machine that the PFY bought several years ago, played twice then lost interest after it turned itself off in the middle of a game.
"Yes," the PFY lies. "It's from the cafeteria. It... uh... broke down a few years back and I... offered to fix it. I'm waiting on parts, but you know, with COVID and supply chains and everything."
"I don't think it is a company appliance. In fact, I don't think anything I've asked about is a company appliance – and I'm willing to bet that if I asked the Finance department about it they'd say none of this stuff is even on the asset register!"
"And that's where you're wrong," the PFY says triumphantly, standing up and pointing to the bottom corner of the arcade machine. "Behold, a genuine company asset tag."
"Where?" Steve asks, stooping to inspect the aforementioned tag.
"Right at the bottom," the PFY points again.
"I can't see..."
>HEAVE<
>CRUNCH<
"Hey, look at that!" the PFY says, as the machine turns on. "It must have just been the thermal cut-out!"
"Speaking of thermal," I say, "can you smell smoke?"
"As it happens," the PFY says, watching a wisp of grey curl its way from Steve's location under the machine.
"Right – best slap an asset tag on it before the alarms go off then. I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though..." ®
[10]BOFH: The whole shebang
[11]The Compleat BOFH Archives 95-99
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/30/bofh_2021_episode_14/
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Re: Personal heaters
Ah ha - time for this one again. The image is gone from the news reports but the big G still has it:
"Space Heater Accident Destroys Entire Floor Of Credit Suisse"
https://images.app.goo.gl/QN2oBpFo2HRj3ajQ9
Re: Personal heaters
Ah the memories, the electrics in our building being quite old (building no longer exists) meant that when one of our colleagues turned on the heater under her desk the circuit breakers would pop if people were working in the studio and us geek running to check UPS and server, and/or circuit breaker. Many black outs, and informative lectures -- it should be noted she is a lovely, generous person and a fantastic cook so forgiveness would be extended,
Re: Personal heaters
My experience of this, twice at 2 different companies, both involved a fan heater (say 2kW) plugged into a roll up extension lead (say, 750W when rolled up) which of course acted as a 2nd heater when that amount of current was pulled though it's coils.
Also, both the people involved were the health and safety reps for each of the companies!
Re: Personal heaters
Before I started my PhD I had to attend the "electrical safety lecture". The lecturer had some kit where he could relatively safely demonstrate this sort of thing. i.e. all protected with big isolation switches and circuit breakers, RCDs, etc. However, the lecture was cut short when his demo of "coiled up extension lead under carpet tile happily drawing 20A without blowing the fuse in the plug" did eventually blow the fuse (when the cable melted) .... of the entire lecture theatre. So he had to turn it into a lesson on how rubbish fuses are. The plug fuse hadn't blown, his kit fuse/circuit breaker hadn't blown (around 50A or so, if I recall) but the lecture theatre fuse had blown at around 200A or so.
The video on "why you shouldn't put volatile chemicals in a fridge" was quite good though.
And his description of the "don't be the idiot who fitted an extension block but forgot to wire it up so made a double plug ended cable to energise the extension block" incident was pretty horrific.
Basically, when it comes to electricity, most people (including a lot of people who should know better) are pretty dumb. When RCDs were becoming a thing, I recall a PSA (or advert) where the point was made that if someone mows through their hose they would go and turn the water off before picking the hose up. But if someone mows through the cable for the mower they are much more likely just to pick the cable up straight away...
Re: Personal heaters
We were in a "temporary" building - 1 year max - and 20 years later if you forgot to turn your heater on before you left, (it was on a building timer) you would come in next morning and find ice >inside< the windows! Mind you in summer we were allowed shorts instead of suits etc, and management brought us ice-creams.
Re: Personal heaters
A colleague who was a graduate student in the 90s told me that when his research group heard that a bunch of MicroVAXs were being decommissioned from the machine room, they said the equipment would be useful research tools in their offices. A little loud, maybe, but they do generate a pleasant warm breeze.
Re: Personal heaters
I run an HP ProLiant server as a workstation in my home office. As you say, it's a little loud but I rarely need to put the radiator on in that room :D
Re: Personal heaters
I recall a time at a previous job when we lost access to a small kitchen area where we made coffee/tea because $SENIOR_MANAGER didn't like us plebs using it. Someone thought to bring in their own kettle and use on the sockets on the desk. While the sockets were perfectly adequate for running a PC/laptop, kettles drew a little more power than the fuses in the sockets allowed... After finding 3 sockets "not working", he finally stopped trying :) Property team weren't too happy about the multiple sockets failing for "no reason"...
A little power
often seems to go to the head of the recipient (preferably via insulated gloves).
As for the blooming asset tags - why oh why do they have to put the asset tag in the least convenient place so often? In this instance it's on the lid of the laptop, by the hinge but orientated to read with the lid closed. Shame that there are procedural reasons for me to know the asset tag id on a semi-regular basis so I end up having to try to shut the lid to read it, but not shut all the way or it'll turn off the machine. Literally anywhere else would have been more useful and no less convenient for asset management purposes. Inside next to the keyboard, where I can read it whilst using the machine, or even on the bottom next to the model and serial numbers where I could read them all easily enough with a little tilt. Gah!
Re: A little power
At least we've past the point where they stick it over the windows licence key on the sticker.
Now they go to put them over serial numbers...
Re: A little power
The laptop should be named after the tag,
people who give ,e.g, science dept computers hostnames like "IsaacNewton" are asking for trouble.
so a Echo %computername% or at a push a win+pause will sort you out.
Its be worse if the tag was visible when laptop open , because then when working normally - on a docking station with real screens you'd have to open it , and it would freak out when you closed it again.
...dont get me started on tagging mobile phones.
Re: A little power
I've always had to work with cheapy ones that would fall off it they were (eg) on the lid of a laptop. I usually try and position them next to the factory serial number.
"For CrossFit people," the PFY adds, finishing the virtue-signalling quadfecta.
"YouTube Content Creator" from the coloured pencil office
total genius Simon, but sadly so very true . . .
"For CrossFit people," the PFY adds, finishing the virtue-signalling quadfecta.
"YouTube Content Creator" from the coloured pencil office
total genius Simon, but sadly so very true . . .
Are they on their Peloton's?
When the heating system went down in our office during the winter, I sent one of the managers to rent a large space heater with sufficient output to warm the whole office. Instead of following instructions they went to Argos and bought 30 electric fan heaters and put one under each desk. I tried to explain that our office ring main would not handle 90kW of extra load, but they were too dumb to understand what I was talking about. They finally got the message when they switched on the 3rd heater, tripped the breaker and all the computers went off.
I was thinking " dont really have these problems now we're working from home"
Then read the description of the Mission Control / Bond Lair equipment and got jealous ....
What stops you from having a 1500W comms appliance and a coffee machine at home?
"I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""
When Central Ordnance Depot, Donnington went up in flames, there was a huge realignment in the armed forces as all manner of stuff that existed only on paper was found to have been immolated. Allegedly.
Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""
Makes a change from losing it in the floods of 1967?
"...some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967..." Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?"
"No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files."
Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""
Nothing like a good disaster/war to resolve those asset/paperwork discrepancies
Re: "I'm sure we'll lose the records of it in the fire, though...""
Do I remember right that when one ship was sunk in the Falklands war, it turned out that according to the paperwork it sunk with about four times it's carrying capacity in lost assets?
Sshh!
In a building that cannot be named for security reasons (my personal security among others), when it was built and we all moved in, we found that our new tea areas were few in number and had no 13 Amp power outlets beyond that for the fridge and the hot water not-quite-boiler-because-elf'n'safetee. But our nice new flexible-working desks had them in spades. So, with a desk wired for the developers' twin, Win + *nix, workstation setup but only a poxy little office PC allocated, the solution to our traditional round-table brew-ups was obvious.
However these sockets and wiring were only rated a few amps, you had to gang up four with a homebrew starfish to boil a standard 13 A kettle. Strictly against the rules. However, the sockets were thoughtfully and discreetly located under the desk, with plentiful ducting to hide the wiring - because-elf'n'safetee, funnily enough. But I have to admit, tee was not very safe for some weeks until all the Steves from the coloured-pencil department had brought in plastic binoculars and peered across the open-plan offices. You know, so many Steves, so few broken arcade machines, and for some reason those requisitions for carpet rolls and quicklime never came through....
Toaster Smoke Alarm
Ha, brings back memories.
Worked at a company that moved to a new building. During the pre-move tour and Q&A somebody asked "Can we have a toaster?" and was told firmly no.
First morning in, after just 20 minutes , the smoke alarm went off. Somebody had brought in an unuathorised toaster.
Re: Toaster Smoke Alarm
We hired a new researcher. 11am on the first day, 500 people evacuated because she'd jammed a bagel in the toaster and it started to burn. A bit embarrassing but these things happen. One week later - same person, same toaster, same bloody thing!!!
Personal heaters
Ahh the scourge of the personal fan heaters. Working previously in a university, they were quite popular when some staff work early/late and the building heating system wasn't running. Of course telling people they weren't permitted just resulted in most of them being locked in the bottom drawers of filing cabinets so they could get them out again once the H&S group had left.
For most other personal devices like coffee machines and kettles, we just found it easier to stick them into the asset register, perform a PAT test on them and then move on...