..... but I do need to get some w**k done this week!

I seem to have spent much of my w**king life w**king for businesses that would prefer not to spend money on a proper solution. But are willing to accept a cobbled together 'temporary' bodge that only ends up costing them more in the long run.

Don't w**k too hard....

I always w**k furiously!

Short term fixes rarely are.

As the old mantra goes, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix...

"...that's *load bearing* technical debt"

So relatable, I remember cobbling together a firewall and FTP server (FTP! ... so a very long time ago)

This was also an old desktop PC, spare NIC and good ole Linux

This was a "stop gap" solution, only for a few weeks. ha!

My story ended up happier though, after 6 months I was able to convince the then MD that this had become "mission critical" and in fairness they invested in a hardware based firewall and a rack mount server for the FTP services

This was a medium sized business turning over nothing like a bank, I guess the larger the organisation the harder it is to speak to someone with the hope of changing things

Of the time I built a quick and dirty Oracle DB server for the devs on a project (story I've told before, but bears repeating...) to get them out of a delivery delay bind. Making it extremely clear, in writing, that the Fujitsu desktop PC with a single PII-350 (it was quite a while ago), 4 GB RAM and non-resilient IDE hard drive (and no backups) was for development of their stuff only, I let them get on with it. As you would already have guessed time passed, I forgot all about the PC, and about a year later I was contacted by the programme manager wanting me to look into improving the performance of the "production database server as it was just so horribly slow".

This is an odd machine. Pentium II with 4GB of RAM?

I never have heard of such a thing. Is there even a chipset that supports that combination?

It would have been in any case, unbelievable, and I refuse to believe that any desktop PC could have had space for the number of RAM slots/sticks needed.

Wasn't it something like 512MB max for a PII? I know some chipsets could address 4GB in a server config but only 'see' 512MB of it at any given time - or something like that. Was a long time ago...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#Pentium_Pro/II/III_chipsets would suggest the 450GX and 450NX supported up to 8GB. Granted, it would probably be a special kind of desktop PC to use one.

I once worked as the IT manager at a tourist attraction, and was given a miniscule budget to keep the back office and point of sale systems working. After several staff losses, I also took on the reponsibility of keeeping the Audio visua systems running for the punters. I did this on the cheap, scrapping obsolete VHS machines and replacing them with 20 quid DVD players from ASDA.

I used several old PCs from home for vital tasks, and an old Epson dot matrix of mine was used to print everyone's payslips. One day I was called in to see the boss to be told that I was being made redundant and should pack up my things and leave the building, serving out my notice on gardening leave.

At this point I requested the return of all of my equipment, with the exception of a 22inch Dell CRT monitor that I personally gifted to a lovely colleague with very poor eyesight.

Panic ensued and I cared not a jot - most of the kit I dropped off at the tip on my way home.

Why didn't you either resell the equipment to your employer or contract yourself as a service to them? As IT manager you shouldn't have exposed them to that concentration of risk.

Because at that point he was no longer the IT manager, and couldn't reasonably be expected to give a toss

I've done that. "You're no longer needed". Ok, uninstalls all my software, removes all my data, loads car with all my equipment, locks up, pops key through letterbox.

"how I don't miss LILO and needing to rerun it for kernel upgrades"

Because it was such a chore?

MAybe a dozen or so keystrokes ... you must have been typing your fingers to the bone, poor thing.

Without having any further knowledge of his config, you're not qualified to make that statement.

There’s always sellotape involved in any project. I don’t even see it as a bad thing anymore. First you get it to work, then you come back and fix…

…ideally you fix in a controlled fashion, but sometimes the system makes the decisions for you.

Let’s face it: this was just the hack that failed. I’m sure there are dozens of other hacks in that deployment that never caused an issue and were never fixed.

"There’s always sellotape involved in any project."

Please, we're professionals, we use duct tape.

Gaffer tape ... don't leave home without it.

I think the big mistake here is offering his former colleagues help on the phone call, other than just a bit of fake sympathy. All this has served to do is reinforce to the company that employed him that you can extract useful work from people and then kick them out, knowing that they'll still help out for nothing if it all goes tits up.

Wrote a quick and dirty in 1991 specced to run on Intel 286 machines that did all the things its mission critical bigger brother did and a lot more. I was made redundant in 2003, and heard that it was only decommissioned in 2018 along with mission critical big brother.

When I took on the role of Network Manager at a large university hospital just beforeY2K. Amongst the other horrors i discovered was an old (even then) 386 desktop with no monitor or keyboard sitting on a desk in the main comms room. I was told that it was the DNS - I knew this to be wrong as there was another - rack mounted - box which was. No one knew the password for this box so there it sat, until my curiosity got the better of me.

I disconnected it and waited for the call! - Didn't wait too long before I heard that people were complaing about not being able to access from the Uni with whom we had links. I connected a monitor and keyboard and found it was running some ancient version of RedHat (nothing but the best here!) , Not having the password, I rebooted the box in maintenance mode and set a new root password to get in.

It was running Bind but it's sole purpoose was to act as a reverse lookup - i.e.provide the name from a given IP. I assume that this was someone's idea of security!

A new zone file on the "real" DNS provided some extra space on the desk:)

A packet sniffer on the wire would have been a better way of getting info on what it was doing

Some executive assistance, such as hourly phone calls about a critical problem is not welcome. You spend more time on the call or the pre-call call (to make sure you did not say the wrong things to the executive).

We had an executive planning to come to the UK and wanted to see a demo of our bright new shiny software. We were stuck trying to get two products to talk to each other, and could not fix it. In our call with the executive assistant who was setting up the visit, we mentioned the problem. Within 10 minutes of the end of the call we had a phone call from the top guru of the other product. Within another 10 minutes we were told which fix we needed, and what the bypass was.

The executive visit was a success!

If you are reading this, you're probably using the hack that I put together in 4.1BSD (now called 4.1aBSD) for part of the TCP/IP stack to be included in 4.2BSD[0]. It was supposed to be one of those "just get us through the demo, dammit" hacks. I got 'er done over Christmas/NewYears break in 1981. Virtually every version of TCP/IP since has used it. Not too bad for a quick hack ...

[0] Just to cut the usual pack of idiots putting words into my mouth off at the socks, no, I didn't write the whole stack. That's why I said "part of". It was only about 120 lines of C in total.

Not just in software. Many years ago a local bigwig had expanded his office into the adjoining garage. As a sparks I was roped in to wire it up. However, his office shared the leccy with the plumbers next door, and they would only agree to the power being off for a prior arranged 30 minutes at some weird time of day.

So, wired up the extension, tested everything in situe, and prepared to patch into the supply. The 30 minute window opened, I patched in and tested, and everything passed. However, the linking cables passed over an area where a shelving unit was to be inserted, so I had to leave the cables and a temporary junction box which was to be replaced with a socket outlet, exposed there waiting for the shopfitter to finish off so I could then finish off.

So I waited for an opportunity for the power to be off. and trim that last cable and put in the last socket box. And waited. And waited. About five years or so later I popped in for something and the temporary connection point was *still* there. The next time I passed the office it had been demolished!