On-Name The week, and certainly the 12 months, could also be ebbing away to their respective conclusions, however The Register continues to toil away at On-Name, our weekly reader-contributed story of techies triumphing below attempting circumstances.
This week, meet a chap we’ll Regomize as “Kris” who arrived at his desk one Monday morning to seek out the telephone ringing off the hook, a full voicemail inbox, and his pager pinging with pressing messages from his supervisor.
The reason for all that urgency was a useless server that powered an necessary utility.
Kris rapidly inspected the machine, which was related to energy and had working UPSes. No tell-tale scent instructed one thing inside had expired. Turning all the pieces and something on and off once more had no impact.
“The unit was useless as a doornail, as they are saying,” Kris wrote.
The one factor to do was subsequently to name the corporate’s service supplier for assist.
“This was a type of conditions the place I actually did not need to cope with them as a result of in most situations by the point they despatched over a tech, the issue was already resolved both by the consumer or on my own,” Kris advised us. However at this stage a second opinion was the one possibility.
“About 5 hours later the tech exhibits up smelling as if he lived in his automobile and slept in his ashtray,” Kris advised to On-Name. Inside 5 minutes he’d identified the server as damaged and new energy provides because the repair.
That {hardware} arrived two days later and – after Kris and the techie grunted and hefted the server to get it put in – failed to repair the useless field.
Kris confessed to The Register that a part of him did not thoughts this in any respect, as a result of seeing the smug techie introduced down a peg was fairly enjoyable.
Nevertheless by this time – three days into an incident that disadvantaged the corporate of an necessary utility – Kris was below greater than slightly stress.
So he concurred with the visiting tech’s blankly amused statement that the server remained damaged and that the motherboard should be the actual downside.
Three days later a brand new motherboard arrived and – after extra lifting and sweat – did nothing to revive the server to working order.
However all that work did set Kris on the best way to discovering a repair, as a result of dealing with the case set in practice one other thought: have been the interlock switches working?
Interlock switches, for the uninitiated, are security mechanisms that cease present flowing when instances are open. Which is a effective concept as a result of no one ought to be electrocuted whereas engaged on a server.
It transpired that one of many switches had damaged on this server, however the fault was invisible and undetectable.
“I would by no means opened up the server in my time at this job,” Kris stated. “I made a rapid journey over to R&D and one of many engineers pulled an identical swap out of their elements and gave one to me. The tech wired in a brand new swap and we have been good to go.”
This incident is just not a typical On-Name triumph.
That got here – or moderately, did not come – within the following weeks and months, when Kris’s inbox by no means contained an bill for the tried repair by his exterior service supplier. So whereas the incident was disagreeable, not less than it did not value Kris’s employer a cent!
On-Name will run in its ordinary Friday timeslot on the twenty third, then provide some seasonal specials. So you probably have any tales just like the one from Kris, or tales of vacation time tech help click on right here to ship On-Name an e mail. ®
