I worked in a team which used a local server to store most of their working files. Generally 5 or 6 people in the team were using the disk on the machine at any one time (sometimes many more).
It sat on a table next to my desk.
While waiting for a system build process to complete my fingers, still wanting to be busy tended to fiddle (seemingly of their own accord) with things on my desk, perhaps cleaning the dust from my machine if the desk was too tidy.
One particular lunch time my desk happened to be tidy and my own machine free of dust (lots of building going on that day) so my hands started clearing dust from the front of the server (I really was just an innocent observer). While digging a particularly large dust bunny out of a crevice in the front of the machine my mind suddenly caught up with what my fingers were doing when it noted that I had just pressed the power switch to the server in.
There was a moment of blind panic during which I almost let go of the button but realised that the server still had power while I held the button in. The panic soon turned to acute embarrassment when I started to inform the people sitting next to me that they needed to close down any work they had open on the server as I had to perform a quick shutdown. They didn't buy it of course and I had to suffer hoots of laughter while they watched me try to shutdown the server one handed (b***ards refused to help me).
I used to provide over night support for a batch processing system.
Early one morning I got paged and dutifully stumbled half dressed
to the pay phone around the corner and called the operations staff.
Me (though yawns): What seems to be the problem.
Support: The whole systems ground to a halt, the link to America has gone down, we think some trawler's dragged the line up.
Me: I'll get my scuba gear and be right down.
Support: Really?
Me: Goodnight.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked in a team which used a local server to store most of their working files. Generally 5 or 6 people in the team were using the disk on the machine at any one time (sometimes many more).
It sat on a table next to my desk.
While waiting for a system build process to complete my fingers, still wanting to be busy tended to fiddle (seemingly of their own accord) with things on my desk, perhaps cleaning the dust from my machine if the desk was too tidy.
One particular lunch time my desk happened to be tidy and my own machine free of dust (lots of building going on that day) so my hands started clearing dust from the front of the server (I really was just an innocent observer). While digging a particularly large dust bunny out of a crevice in the front of the machine my mind suddenly caught up with what my fingers were doing when it noted that I had just pressed the power switch to the server in.
There was a moment of blind panic during which I almost let go of the button but realised that the server still had power while I held the button in. The panic soon turned to acute embarrassment when I started to inform the people sitting next to me that they needed to close down any work they had open on the server as I had to perform a quick shutdown. They didn't buy it of course and I had to suffer hoots of laughter while they watched me try to shutdown the server one handed (b***ards refused to help me).
I don't clean my desk to this day.
I used to provide over night support for a batch processing system. Early one morning I got paged and dutifully stumbled half dressed to the pay phone around the corner and called the operations staff. Me (though yawns): What seems to be the problem. Support: The whole systems ground to a halt, the link to America has gone down, we think some trawler's dragged the line up. Me: I'll get my scuba gear and be right down. Support: Really? Me: Goodnight.