HAL MAYFORTH TANK SHARK TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE AS TOLD TO SHARKY
— except that she wasn’t escorted
out, says a pilot fish in the know. The
following Monday, a frantic call had to
be placed to a consultant because no
one but the terminated operator had
the password to start up a machine.
“When the operator was contacted,
she said they’d have to sue her to get
it,” says Fish. “After several hours and
many machine dumps, the consultant
was able to reconstruct the password
and get the machine up and running.
From that point on, more than one
person always knew the password —
and no one was let go without being
carefully watched on their way out.”
1& 1 Internet . . . . . . . . . 7, 13
APC ................... 17
Brocade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Cisco ................. 29
Dell ................... 15
dtSearch ............. 35
Hewlett-Packard . . . . . . C4
IBM Non-Intel . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
IBM Intel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
I-Lek Technologies . . . . 35
IT Roadmap Conference
& Expo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3
Microsoft Cloud . . . . . . . . . 21
Numara Software
Now Part of BMC.......... 27
Quest Software . . . . . . . . 11
VMWare . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2-1
ADVERTISERS INDEX
This index is provided as an
additional service. The publisher
does not assume any liability for
errors or omissions.
Why Me?
It’s been two weeks since this server problem was reported at a remote site, and
with a dozen people already working on the problem, this pilot fish is glad he’s not.
But eventually the site’s manager asks that fish be allowed to help out. I don’t know
what I can bring to the table, fish tells his boss. All these people have done it before.
But the boss sends him anyway, saying, “I don’t expect you to find anything, but if
anybody can fix it, you can.” Fish ar-
rives on site, is shown to the computer
— and promptly spots the problem.
Team is suitably embarrassed, but fish
points out that he’ll have to apologize
to his boss. And the problem? Sighs
fish, “They had been working on the
wrong machine for the last two weeks.
The first person who went to look at it
went to the wrong server, and the rest
followed him like lemmings.”
Frog-March Fail
This boss has a habit of firing people
at 4:45 on Friday afternoons and frog-marching them out of the building under close supervision. And that’s how
one system operator was pink-slipped
Urgent, Redefined
Pilot fish at an engineering firm gets a
message from a manager in another
country: He needs an urgent change
to the company’s testing software. “I
for warded the email to my boss, who
stayed late to talk to the manager over
the phone — there’s a six-hour time
di;erence between our locations,” fish
says. “The next day, I was told to go
ahead and make the urgent change,
so I rushed the fix out and asked the
manager to test his change. A week
went by: No feedback. Two weeks
went by: The manager promised to
test the change. Fast-forward six
months: The manager has not tested
this urgent change. I mentioned this to
my boss, who stayed late to talk to the
manager on the phone. After a total
of nine months, the manager tested
the change and informed us that it all
worked — but he urgently needed the
report modified. Apparently we are
having a communication problem over
what urgent means.”
» Sharky urgently needs your
true tale of IT life, so send it to me at
sharky@computerworld.com. You’ll
score a sharp Shark shirt if I use it.
CHECK OUT Sharky’s blog, browse the Sharkives and sign up for home delivery at computer world.com/sharky.
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