Computerworld - January 23, 2012

TANKSHARK
TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE AS TOLD TO SHARKY

V HAL MAYFORTH
says fish. “One afternoon, we were
both working on projects. I went to
my RJE station to submit my last job
of the day and saw a job pop up on
the screen with my husband’s name
on it. Realizing that he was probably
standing at his RJE station, I used the
message command to send, ‘Last
run — be ready to go in half
an hour.’ He responded,
‘Got a couple more
hours — come on over.’
The next day I was
gently reprimanded
by my manager for
my use of university
resources. He told
me, ‘You know,
they don’t build
major data networks
just so folks can send
personal messages back
and forth!’ ”

1& 1 Internet . . . . . . . . . 5, 11 1and1.com

Brocade ............... 3 brocade.com/everywhere

CommVault . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 commvault.com/registerme

dtSearch ............. 29 dtsearch.com

Hewlett-Packard . . . . . . . 7 hp.com/storage/5CI

IBM Intel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2 ibm.com/systems/reliability

IBM Non-Intel . . . . . . . . . . . C4 ibm.com/cloudsolutions

Microsoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 microsoft.com/readynow

Mystery Guest Inc.. . . . . 29

Numara Software . . . . . C3 numarasoftware.com

Sybase ................ 9 computerworld.com/sapsybase ADVERTISERS’ INDEX This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions.

Guess He’s Just Not a Key Employee

Pilot fish takes a job as a network support technician at a company that’s very strict in its security policies. How strict? “They refused to give me access to the server room unless I expressly needed it,” says fish. “After six months of working there, I had still not gotten a key. Then I was tasked with rewiring the whole building myself, so of course I was in and out of the server room dozens of times a day. Each time, I was required to have my boss open the door again because the door automatically locked. After about two days of this, I asked him, ‘ Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just give me access than to come open it every day?’ He said that they were maintaining security by limiting the number of keys. When he came and opened the door once again, I asked, ‘Can I just prop the door open with this box?’ He said, ‘ Yes, that’s fine,’ so that’s what I’ve been doing ever since — leaving the door open all day.

I guess that’s more secure than giving me a key.”

Living in the Future It’s 1975, and this pilot fish and her husband work for a state university — fish in IT and her husband in the chemistry department. “To run jobs on the university mainframe, we each had access to a remote job entry (RJE) station in our respective buildings, across campus from each other,”

Bad Luck, Defined This small company has 12 regional locations scattered around the U. S., and it’s about to open another one. “Each location had to have a unique number in the company’s central computer system,” says a pilot fish in the two-man IT department. “This would make the next location number 13. The other IT guy was the one who got to put the new locations into the system. As he was working on it, he turned to me and asked, ‘Should I make the new location 14, since 13 is bad luck?’ And I said, ‘Let me tell you what’s bad luck — giving a computer an out-of-sequence number for a sequential numbering system.’ He used 13.”

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