I have a similar story from back in the early 80's, and I still laugh about it.
I was a network admin for a very-small (4 PC) business. I also did other work for them. Short story is one day I left because they owed me overtime and refused to pay. I wrote down all the passwords on a piece of paper before I left. What can I say, I'm a boy scout. On top of this, I was making nothing (about $6/hour).
Two days later, their lawyer calls me. I knew him because my boss was suing his sons for copyright infringement and he was around a lot. Long story, gold-digger new wife half his age involved.
Lawyer: We need you to come back and show us how to use the passwords. Me: Sure, that'll be $25/hr. Lawyer: Well, that sounds fair, let me get back to you.
A couple days later, same lawyer.
Lawyer: We need you to come and fix the system you intentionally broke before you left. We'll pay you the $6/hr you were making when you worked for us. Me: Broke? Nah, you just don't have anyone else that knows about PC's and the boss is too stingy to hire someone. Let me guess the quote was high? Lawyer: Yes. But you really need to help them out. Me: Sure, if they pay me the back-overtime plus $50/hour. Also, the boss can't be there. I'll show anyone he wants how to login to the network and database. Lawyer: Let me get back to you.
A couple days later, you guessed it.
Lawyer: If you don't arrive at the office in 2 days we're filing suit against you. Me: Go ahead. Oh, and by the way, the price is $250/hr now, about what you make right?
The office manager had the hots for me, so I was getting the inside scoop during the whole incident. They also never lost the paper but really didn't know how to login to Novell and the database. I found out they hired a 'consultant' that charged them $150/hr to reset the passwords. It's funny that he worked 40 hours to reset 3 passwords, 1 Novell, 1 PC, and 1 database, when they were written down in front of him. It's a shame when they just owed me $4000 in overtime, they instead paid some con-man $6000 to do 10 minutes of work. Oh, and the problem with the overtime is that they said it was a verbal agreement (with the gold-digger wife) and the boss never agreed to pay me overtime. The only good thing to come out of here is that I learned to require a signed piece of paper if you want me to do something.
Oh, and the lawsuit...well, my cousin (a lawyer) sent a nicely worded letter to the lawyer and the lawsuit never happened. Come to think of it, the lawyer made out quite nicely too with that incident.
Although, as an ethical IT guy, I would never purposely harm a computer system or network. I just think about what would happen if someone left me in that pickle and how I would feel about cleaning up the mess.
I'm another who had those two manuals for my Vic-20. I didn't get the datasette at first because they were out when we stood in line for the Vic-20. For a month, I manually typed in any and all programs I wanted to run. I learned to type rather fast back in the day. The datasette and 1541 disk drive were a God-send.
Anyone else remember typing in those MLX programs (machine language) from the magazine they had back then? I can't remember the name of it. Amazing I still remember that with all the C++ and Visual Basic stuff crammed in my skull these days.
I moved up to the C-64 too and it's still in my old bedroom closet at my parent's house. I think it's time for a road trip to see if she fires up still!
Duane.
M$ is scared that people will try to copy their documents to another computer before reverting back to XP.
Smart, very smart Micro$oft!
On a tech note, what kind of number is 14,600? I would have thought 16,384 would be better.
Management is usually exempt from these things. Our old IT manager wanted his surfing taken out of the firewall logs so I happy obeyed.
Last year we get a call from our ISP that SPAM is coming from our site. I searched the logs to no avail, we found the PC doing the most surfing and my boss accused them of doing it on purpose. In the meantime, I kept looking at current packets going out....you've guessed it by now....the IT manager had the spam producer on his PC. He never noticed his anti-spyware/virus was out of date.
Lucky for me, I had in writing, his policy of exempting himself so it wasn't my problem. Always get this weird stuff from your boss in writing because it will always come back to get you if you don't.
If management had to obey the rules of the lowly workers, the Internet would be free for all to use (as it is at my company now).
Unfortunately, this would require a lot of convincing. These servers run our mission critical 24/7 operations. They use Marathon solution for high availability and re-configuring them would be an big task. The last time we did a change (reconfiguring hard drive arrays), we had 2 hours of down time during the backup and restore and the Operations dept wasn't very happy. I'm going to try and talk him into replacing the servers with a single one next time we have a major software release, usually every 2-4 years. Hopefully virtualization will be even better by then.
"Write up a paper/memo/whatever and send it to the guys who pay for the power over the possible cost reductions in power."
We did just that a few years ago. It was justification for switching from CRT to LCD monitors. In one year we saved enough in electricity to pay for the difference in price. Like many businesses, our electricity costs are based on our highest month's bill. By reducing that we ended up saving for the whole year.
We're regretting our move from a single IBM pSeries to 10 HP rack-mount servers because of the extra A/C we had to install to keep the temperature level. Engineering took a couple of months to install it. Southern Louisiana in the summer without enough A/C...not a pretty sight.
You are right about idiots in the company. Our 'old' IT director kept shooting us down when we wanted to move to LCD's. The new guy took a real look and did it. Now he's getting attaboys for saving the company some real money.
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I have a similar story from back in the early 80's, and I still laugh about it. I was a network admin for a very-small (4 PC) business. I also did other work for them. Short story is one day I left because they owed me overtime and refused to pay. I wrote down all the passwords on a piece of paper before I left. What can I say, I'm a boy scout. On top of this, I was making nothing (about $6/hour).
Two days later, their lawyer calls me. I knew him because my boss was suing his sons for copyright infringement and he was around a lot. Long story, gold-digger new wife half his age involved.
Lawyer: We need you to come back and show us how to use the passwords.
Me: Sure, that'll be $25/hr.
Lawyer: Well, that sounds fair, let me get back to you.
A couple days later, same lawyer.
Lawyer: We need you to come and fix the system you intentionally broke before you left. We'll pay you the $6/hr you were making when you worked for us.
Me: Broke? Nah, you just don't have anyone else that knows about PC's and the boss is too stingy to hire someone. Let me guess the quote was high?
Lawyer: Yes. But you really need to help them out.
Me: Sure, if they pay me the back-overtime plus $50/hour. Also, the boss can't be there. I'll show anyone he wants how to login to the network and database.
Lawyer: Let me get back to you.
A couple days later, you guessed it.
Lawyer: If you don't arrive at the office in 2 days we're filing suit against you.
Me: Go ahead. Oh, and by the way, the price is $250/hr now, about what you make right?
The office manager had the hots for me, so I was getting the inside scoop during the whole incident. They also never lost the paper but really didn't know how to login to Novell and the database. I found out they hired a 'consultant' that charged them $150/hr to reset the passwords. It's funny that he worked 40 hours to reset 3 passwords, 1 Novell, 1 PC, and 1 database, when they were written down in front of him. It's a shame when they just owed me $4000 in overtime, they instead paid some con-man $6000 to do 10 minutes of work. Oh, and the problem with the overtime is that they said it was a verbal agreement (with the gold-digger wife) and the boss never agreed to pay me overtime. The only good thing to come out of here is that I learned to require a signed piece of paper if you want me to do something.
Oh, and the lawsuit...well, my cousin (a lawyer) sent a nicely worded letter to the lawyer and the lawsuit never happened. Come to think of it, the lawyer made out quite nicely too with that incident.
Although, as an ethical IT guy, I would never purposely harm a computer system or network. I just think about what would happen if someone left me in that pickle and how I would feel about cleaning up the mess.
-D
I'm another who had those two manuals for my Vic-20. I didn't get the datasette at first because they were out when we stood in line for the Vic-20. For a month, I manually typed in any and all programs I wanted to run. I learned to type rather fast back in the day. The datasette and 1541 disk drive were a God-send. Anyone else remember typing in those MLX programs (machine language) from the magazine they had back then? I can't remember the name of it. Amazing I still remember that with all the C++ and Visual Basic stuff crammed in my skull these days. I moved up to the C-64 too and it's still in my old bedroom closet at my parent's house. I think it's time for a road trip to see if she fires up still! Duane.
M$ is scared that people will try to copy their documents to another computer before reverting back to XP. Smart, very smart Micro$oft! On a tech note, what kind of number is 14,600? I would have thought 16,384 would be better.
Management is usually exempt from these things.
Our old IT manager wanted his surfing taken out of the firewall logs so I happy obeyed.
Last year we get a call from our ISP that SPAM is coming from our site. I searched the logs to no avail, we found the PC doing the most surfing and my boss accused them of doing it on purpose. In the meantime, I kept looking at current packets going out....you've guessed it by now....the IT manager had the spam producer on his PC. He never noticed his anti-spyware/virus was out of date.
Lucky for me, I had in writing, his policy of exempting himself so it wasn't my problem.
Always get this weird stuff from your boss in writing because it will always come back to get you if you don't.
If management had to obey the rules of the lowly workers, the Internet would be free for all to use (as it is at my company now).
Unfortunately, this would require a lot of convincing. These servers run our mission critical 24/7 operations. They use Marathon solution for high availability and re-configuring them would be an big task. The last time we did a change (reconfiguring hard drive arrays), we had 2 hours of down time during the backup and restore and the Operations dept wasn't very happy. I'm going to try and talk him into replacing the servers with a single one next time we have a major software release, usually every 2-4 years. Hopefully virtualization will be even better by then.
"Write up a paper/memo/whatever and send it to the guys who pay for the power over the possible cost reductions in power."
We did just that a few years ago. It was justification for switching from CRT to LCD monitors.
In one year we saved enough in electricity to pay for the difference in price. Like many businesses, our electricity costs are based on our highest month's bill. By reducing that we ended up saving for the whole year.
We're regretting our move from a single IBM pSeries to 10 HP rack-mount servers because of the extra A/C we had to install to keep the temperature level. Engineering took a couple of months to install it. Southern Louisiana in the summer without enough A/C...not a pretty sight.
You are right about idiots in the company. Our 'old' IT director kept shooting us down when we wanted to move to LCD's. The new guy took a real look and did it. Now he's getting attaboys for saving the company some real money.