War Stories - Personal anecdotes from our past

[corvair61]

In my introduction I mentioned a couple of programming war stories. It was mentioned it might be fun to start a thread on some of the funny or painful stories from our past. I?ll start with another one??..


I was doing a 3-4 week job up on the Maine coast in the late 90?s. It was a hospital.

I?d come in and did good work for them. They liked what I?d done and were quite pleased.

On my last day on the contract I was fixing something simple and had put in a simple loop.

I submitted the job and it was taking a while so I figured I?d give it some juice and bring down the priority.

Whatever I planned to change it to , well, I fat fingered it and got nothing but a 5.

I realized it as I was past the point of stopping the Enter. Off it went.

Well I?d screwed up that simple loop. It started churning?I forget the inside details?.but I do remember..?It couldn?t be stopped even from the console.

This hospital had to IPL in the middle of the day. Not a good thing.

As I sat in the IT managers office she thanked me for my hard work then said ?it might be best if you skedaddle. It is going to get hot around here.?

I can laugh today. Not so much that day as I drove down the coast.


I'd love to read some of your best.

Corvair

[chrisr]

Re: War Stories - Personal anecdotes from our past

This is one from my early days. I needed to add a modem to the AS/400 (as it was at this time). Not recommended to let a keyboard jockey loose in the machine room but I was.
The room had false flooring to allow cables to run beneath the hardware and racks. I had the modem plumbed in at one end in the comms rack and just had to get the other to the back of the 400.

Pleased with myself so far, this is child's play. I needed to lift the floor panel directly behind the 400 to get the cable up, however the machine was sat just an inch over the panel. I thought if I just push it forward a fraction it'll be good. Stood there with the fans blowing my trouser legs I gently pushed, bit more, bit more.. there.

It struck me first that the thrum of the fan and rush of air had gone. With it the machine, our production finance system out like a light. The rush of IT staff at the door sealed my fate.

What had happened was the power cable in the back had pulled out, despite having a safety cage to prevent such an accident. Finance took the rest of the afternoon off whilst the machine IPL'd and rebuilt. I was of course admonished by management, and yet appreciated by a few accountants happy for early doors Friday.

[DeadManWalks]

Re: War Stories - Personal anecdotes from our past

I was in the computer room putting new drives in and I was on my knees. I got up and bumped in Ed, the ops guy. The power then went off to all the gear in the room. All servers, all network. It runs out the the emergency shut off button did not have a cover on it and Ed bumped into it. Fun times.

[GLS400]

Re: War Stories - Personal anecdotes from our past

Back in the 36 days I had to walk a user thru backing up a file to diskette....
After he completed the task I asked him to mail me a copy of the diskette.

Sure enough 2 days later I received a photo-copy of the diskette he just created in the mail....