Polishing off a printer with a flourish revealed not to be best practice
- Reference: 1693207748
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/08/28/who_me/
- Source link:
This particular Monday we are once again hearing from "Edgar" who has regaled us before with tales of his time working for a well-known purveyor of adding machines. Evidently the devices are a rich vein of entertaining stories – or perhaps Edgar is a bit of a klutz. Little from column A, little from column B …
At any rate, this particular anecdote comes from a time when Edgar had been with the firm for about four years. At the time, a number of big banks were upgrading from standard adding machines and installing specialized banking terminals.
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These were complicated beasts bolted to punch card readers and line printers, and were built tough to handle the demanding applications of the time. As with much of what counted as "big tech" back then (we're talking mid-1970s) they were also rather well-designed and could even be described as beautiful to look at.
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So Edgar took a certain degree of pride in the way he handled and installed these machines, as well he might.
Edgar was sent to one of the big banks which had installed 20 of the banking terminals, but was frustrated by struggles when asking the machines to print. He described the staffing of the room where the machines were located as containing "20 odd women" though tragically he did not specify in his email exactly how odd they were. We are left to our imaginations.
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Our hero set about his work under the women's watchful gaze, and was proud of himself when he quickly diagnosed the problem as originating with the decoder – "an electro-mechanical contrivance which drove the print head."
[5]Lesson 1: Keep your mind on the ... why aren't the servers making any noise?
[6]The price of freedom turned out to be an afternoon of tech panic
[7]Techie's quick cure for a curious conflict caused a huge headache
[8]Nobody would ever work on the live server, right? Not intentionally, anyway
He removed the cover on the machine and repaired the fault. All that remained was to give it a bit of a polish with the cloth he had handy, run a test print, and replace the cover.
The test print went well – "sounded as crisp as a pound note," says Edgar – and that was when delusions of grandeur took over.
"There," he said to the operator, "a brilliant job well done" – and tossed his polishing cloth with a flourish into his toolbag.
Except that he missed the toolbag, and sent the cloth flying into the teeth of the printer, where it got caught in a belt and pulley, making "an awful screech," and destroyed the decoder he had just repaired.
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Rather sheepishly, then, he had to call back to HQ and report that no, the decoder could not be fixed, and a new one would have to be supplied.
Presumably he also needed a new polishing cloth.
Have you ever let your pride in a job well done get the better of you? Shown off for an appreciative audience, only to have it all go wrong? Tell us about it in an [10]email to Who, Me? and we'll make you (anonymously) famous. ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/21/who_me/
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My guess is that he said “Fuck” quietly under his breath
Not so clean now, Izzy?
Maybe not. I've been saying "dadGUMMIT!" instead, since my daughter was born.
Although she's been slowly re-programming me these last nearly 40 years.
Stories from Grandad
Is this some kind of time machine publication? Are we getting stories from bygone days of the yester years due to ElReg Time machine??? :'D
Re: Stories from Grandad
I think it's more a statute of limitations thing...
Also;
> ...containing "20 odd women" though tragically he did not specify in his email exactly how odd they were.
Gorgeous twist!
Re: Stories from Grandad
It's stories from the future that need a time machine.
Re: Stories from Grandad
It's stories from the future that need a time machine.
This week's submission comes telepathically from a reader we shall Regomise as Tony. Cast your minds back to the 2130s. It was 25pm and Tony had barely started his weekend of being on space-call, when the fluxcaller rang. "Oh Belgium!" he cursed as he threw his moonbeer to the floor, only to see it miss and float away. His space boss gave him the bad news that the space printer was on the blink again and he would have to go there in his space rocket...
Re: Stories from Grandad
You think he maced his racing pace at the spacious space bar Spacebar for a trace of space pint? I hear they're might a few drops faint of a Mynt pint, and fright on the space spice that's oh so nice.
Re: Stories from Grandad
Machines were more interesting back then, leading to better stories.
How many times can you read "windows barfed" or "the cloud evaporated"?
Or, I could talk about the IBM field service engineer who, back in '87 or so, got his tie stuck in a Cisco AGS router's cooling fans. Three times. In under three hours.
Or a similar IBM FSE that managed similar, but with an IBM 1403 printer in 1970ish.
Re: Stories from Grandad
Machines were more dangerous back then...
...oh... and ties.. everyone came fitted with a noose, it seems odd looking back.
...actually... thinking about it... maybe it's just the more interesting machines are more dangerous?
(but still.. the tie thing.... crazy!!)
Re: Stories from Grandad
They sure were...
Especially if you're a loathed middle mangler everyone despises and you happen to use the shredder.... and then you lean over it to flick the socket switch to 'on' and the shredder starts shredding the paper in its maw and your tie happens to get caught too.
Gave everyone in the office that day a jolly good laugh.
PS we did turn the shredder off to release him......... eventually
PPS there were a couple of votes to leave him there ... see icon
I bet he'd love to wipe that incident from his memory.
I wonder if his boss made him Pledge not to do it again, or did he have to polish up his CV?
Does it matter?
He'd glide into any job he applied for, having sheen off the competition.
It was a shining example of how not to add a sparkling finish to a job.
we are once again hearing from "Edgar" who has regaled us before with tales
"Hegel says somewhere that great historic facts and personages recur twice. He forgot to add: “Once as tragedy, and again as farce.”
Karl Marx - The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
And, apparently, he made a clean getaway.