When this user’s hard drive dies, pilot fish tells her it will take about 30 minutes to set her up with a new drive. “Maybe I should just drop this thing on the floor next time it doesn’t work,” user grumbles. “If you think that’ll help,” fish jokes. Fast-forward: “Today, I get a call,” says fish. “Her computer wouldn’t boot, so she dropped it on the floor. Somehow she managed to short out the power distribution for her whole line of 24 cubes. Now her supervisor wants to know why I would suggest something like this.”
Hot Idea
This computer room is served by two air conditioning units, a primary and a backup, reports a pilot fish who works there. But after more servers are added, the backup starts being run at the same time as the primary to handle the extra heat. Then summer arrives, and suddenly both cooling units are overheating. What’s wrong? “The compressors had been installed on the roof with their exhaust fans facing each other,” sighs fish after investigating. “They were blowing hot air on each other.”
So Helpful
Boss decides to upgrade his own hard drive one Friday to save sysadmin pilot fish the trouble. “Please leave your computer on over the weekend so the IT security office can push updates to your box,” fish tells him. But on Monday morning, boss is panic-stricken – nothing’s working, and the new 10GB hard drive is completely full. “Since he was so helpful in setting up his computer his way, by 8:00 a.m. Monday, helpful people on the Internet had posted and hosted over 9GB of MP3 files on his very own Napster server to share with the world,” groans exasperated fish. “His response? ‘See? I knew I needed a bigger hard drive!’ “
Anyone Listening?
Help desk pilot fish is troubleshooting a PC with a user and the PC vendor’s support line on a conference call. Fish explains that the PC is a fire hazard; when it was initially turned on, it started to smoke. Now it won’t turn on at all. Vendor’s tech: “OK, turn the machine on.” Fish: It will not turn on! Tech: “OK, turn the computer off.”
Not Normal
The Internet isn’t working on my new computer, sales guy tells IT pilot fish. Fish is puzzled; he just spent a day duplicating the sales guy’s old setup and testing connectivity. What message are you getting? fish asks. Sales guy: “I’m not getting an error message, just a page that says ‘Google.’ “Fish: What does the Internet normally look like? Sales guy: “It always says ‘MSN.’”
QuickLink 053608
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