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I fought Darwin, and won.

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  • I fought Darwin, and won.

    (Just a note: At the time of this story, i was working the hell desk for a large chain of bookstores.)


    *BEEEP*

    I stared down at the phone, trying my hardest to produce lasers from my eyes and turn said beepy thing into a melted, gooey plastic piece of art. Sadly, i failed, and finally relented to picking it up while making a mental note to throw away all of my "How to shoot lasers from your eyes" cassette tapes.

    "Help desk, Bobsentme speaking. Please state the nature of your computational emergency." I said, with all gusto of a fictional medical hologram.

    As I wait for somewhere between 1-3 brain cells that my users generally have to kick in, i could hear the sounds of a busy store in the background. Then, from a voice that could easily make a killing from a phone sex line, i hear:

    "My rack is wet."

    I tried to reach for the mute button, but a sudden growth involving blood moving south slowed me down enough where the user heard the start of my giggling fit. She then goes into a spiel of how it's not like THAT, she's got a serious issue.

    I take her off mute long enough to ask her to go on, then fall back into my giggling fit. Until I finally understand what she's getting at:
    The room that her store's servers and networking equipment reside in, has suffered a collapsed roof. During a rain storm that would have impressed Noah, apparently.
    This immediately caused me to stop giggling like a school girl.

    As I ask her to go back there so I can get a clearer assessment of the damages, i start trying to ping her...er...the store's equipment. I am able to get to the router, and one out of 3 servers, but nothing else.

    I hear her making her way past customers who obviously don't understand she's on the phone, cashiers who are having to ring things up manually, and so forth, until finally she says she's near the room.
    As asked, she opens the doors to what bascially amounts to a closet, and I can make out the faintest sound of rushing water.

    At this point, water is still flowing somewhere into and out of the closet. But not before running over (or through) certain equipment. Also, there appears to be at least an inch of water on the floor, and large...buzzing sound coming from the room. At least, this is what's being described to me.
    As I'm telling her that 2 out of her 3 servers are down
    and will be that way until the main problem (rain/roof) can be taken care of, we're going to leave the other server alone and not touch it. Partially for her safety, but mostly because the equipment is expensive.

    Now, as I'm asking about the equipment in the rack room to find out it's state (ie, is it on, is it off, or is it leaking water at all?) so I know what to order for her, Darwin tries to strike.
    I ask her about the little server that's off the network.
    She responds she isn't sure.

    I then ask her to tell me, from where she's standing, about the big server on the rack. (Yes, the giant metal rack, that has water flowing over it and into equipment, AND is sitting in an inch of water).
    She tells me it's off.
    She then proceeds to tell me:

    "Oh, I know how to turn that back on!!!"

    And she takes 1 step into the closet to turn the server back on.
    At which point, all I hear is a loud BZZZZT and the line dies.

    I start freaking out.
    I immediately dial the store back, and tell the first person who answers the phone that i think someone at their store just died.

    I get hung up on.

    I call back, explain who I am, and THEN tell them the person helping me in the back might have just died.
    This time they laugh.

    Apparently, what happened is this:
    The person who called apparently leaned over the water to press the power button on the server, that was sitting on the rack. But, first, to do this, she had to put the phone on the rack. Well, when she turned the power on, the magic smoke was released, and a large surge of power traveled from the server, through the water running inside, out onto the metal rack, and up the contacts for the cordless phone (those two metal pieces that help it charge).

    She effectively fried the phone, and the server, but not herself.

    I told her to quarentine that room, while somebody at the store flipped the breakers and called a local construction company to fix their damages.

    For the record, I still haven't killed a user yet.
    That any of YOU know of.
    "Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is." - Steve Martin

  • #2
    I do wonder what the thought process was.

    Hmmm, water, isn't that a conductor, or an insulator, damn if I'd payed attention to science rather than snogging Dan, that fabulous quarterback I might remember, oh yer, water, uhhhhhh?

    What about metal, does that, y'know, do that thing with electric.

    Bloody hell, this tech is asking me all these silly questions, I'll just turn it back on because like, y'know, these people are, y'know, at the till like and I need to get their money from them yeah?


    Maybe something like that?
    A PSA, if I may, as well as another.

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    • #3
      I am now fighting both naughty mental pictures and a case of the giggles.

      Comment


      • #4
        In my pain killer deadened (due to an oral surgery) mind, I have this mental picture of the lights dimming in the store, and a low bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz sound with every customer looking up wondering what the heck just happened. The clerk, I picture making a puddle of her own.
        Learn wisdom by the follies of others.

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        • #5
          This is exactly why when a call mentions water and computer in the same sentence, I tell them to get away from it until maintenance can turn of the electric to the room. People don't have enough self preservation instinct left to know when something is a bad idea. If we could climb half as well as squirrels, I think half my co-workers would be chewing on transformer lines.

          *BANG!* There goes Mavis...
          The Rich keep getting richer because they keep doing what it was that made them rich. Ditto the Poor.
          "Hy kan tell dey is schmot qvestions, dey is makink my head hurt."
          Hoc spatio locantur.

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          • #6
            So water and electricity don't mis? who knew. /sarc

            Comment


            • #7
              Quoth mattm04 View Post
              So water and electricity don't mis? who knew. /sarc
              You know, I can never figure out why people say that water and electricity don't mix. They mix great! It's when organisms are involved that's there's a problem.
              I AM the evil bastard!
              A+ Certified IT Technician

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              • #8
                OK, so now I have playing in my head, on infinite loop, Frank & Moon Unit Zappa singing "Valley Girls"... OhmahGaaad, fer sure, like, ya know, Grody!

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                • #9
                  Floating

                  One of the other techs related having a customer yelling at him because he shut down the server and refuse to power it back up.

                  Server was still in the base made of foam that it was shipped in, and was floating in the water flooding the basement where the server normally sat on the floor. Tech say only the network cables were holding it up-right!

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                  • #10
                    That must be some foam!
                    SC: “Yeah, Bob’s Company. I'm Bob. It's my company.” - GK
                    SuperHotelWorker made my Avi!!

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                    • #11
                      You may have beat Darwin, but Murphy and Karma will be waiting in the shadows for you.
                      "Oh, by the way..." All of my HATE

                      Ou kata nomon = Not according to the accepted norm

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                      • #12
                        Cheap customer

                        I just realized that when I say 'server' too many techs think the real thing! Gobs of hard disk space, powerful power supply, tape backs.

                        Nope, we have the pleasure having some of the cheapest customers on the face of the earth (did not matter that the companies were making good money). This like too many other companies we serviced, setup in a house with 4-10 people on computers, the server's main purpose would be printer-sharing, e-mail or other light duties. It would be the cheapest computer sold at the time that could support the network duties and not crash.

                        PS. Of-course, this meant any expansion in the number of computers on the network means the 'server' needed replacement, and you should just hear the excuses why they did not want to pay the costs of a true server.

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                        • #13
                          Heh, when I hear server, I think rack-mounted, as that's what our shop has.
                          SC: “Yeah, Bob’s Company. I'm Bob. It's my company.” - GK
                          SuperHotelWorker made my Avi!!

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                          • #14
                            Aww, I'm not a techie. I heard server and just thought cheap-ass PC set up to do stuff just well enough to justify the cost.
                            Ba'al: I'm a god. Gods are all-knowing.

                            http://unrelatedcaptions.com/45147

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