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Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

Locked

Nobody Told me…..
Once a server crashed and it was determined that the database had never been backed up (the file was never closed). ALL the department’s data was lost.

The server admin, in the meeting says “Nobody told me I supposed to backup that file….” The department manager was so angry she almost had to be physically restrained….

Unplug and Pray……
Another time I saw a tech remove a PCI SCSI controller from an online production server while it was running (she had to fix a tape drive at a remote site and did not have a spare controller). I was shocked that the server did not crash…she told me that she had removed PCI cards from servers before, when they were running, and it never caused a problem.

All fuser heaters are not created equal….
The funniest one was when a big laser printer was offline and the fuser-heater lamp was on order.

Assuming they are all the same, one tech took a fuser-heater from an IBM printer to put in this Xerox printer.

It worked for .0001 seconds. It initialized, displayed ‘fuser temperature’ on the display, then shut down with the unmistakable smell of burnt plastic/rubber. One fused fuser assembly, extra well done.

Topic

the worst I saw

In reply to Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

was a tech ship a system, PARCEL POST, with a loose hard drive in the case.

damage caused:
heat sink clip on cpu socket, broken off.
heat sink ripped of cpu. [ thermal pasted tocpu ]
cpu ripped out of CLOSED socket, every pin on cpu bent into spaghetti.
ram chip snapped.

the really nasty thing is, the tech in question is the one that ASSEMBLED the system shipped. he knew the hard drive wasn’t secured.

took me 4 hours to straighten the pins on the cpu.
system had to be on it’s side for the heat sink to stay in place, but it was working.

Ok, for servers

In reply to Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

We had a departmental share drive, with restricted access for each folder/sub-department. IT decided that having shares with differing permissions was a bad idea, and decided when migrating these shares to a new server, to reset permissions — to authenticated users — full control.
After about 2 weeks I found out that some people were able to access other groups folders (litigation strategies, new patent designs, Corporate secrets, Board meetings, etc.). However, this person should only have had access to a different area.
Anyway, after testing about I had found that everyone in the company, or with an account (contractors, outside council, etc.) had access to everything.
Then to top it off, IT would not reset the permissions, and it took several days for me to determine what the permissions should be and who needed access to what. Then I had to spend my weekend in remote access to set the permissions because IT wold not do it at the server.

Another instance (the same drive), we needed a restore for a file. The instructions drilled down to a single file, and asked for a restore of the file from 3 months prior (last known good). The restore team decided to restore the entire share for 3 months prior. Then it took over a week to get them to re-restore to the most current version, then re-started the process for the single file.

Server CPU swap with the system powered up

In reply to Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

I was the new guy with the company, riding with a “senior” tech. We were dispatched on a “CPU not active” call. (Some of you may be slightly familiar with “cpuonoff -c”. 🙂 ) The server was an old IBM Netfinity-series box and all we were supposed to be doing initially was reseating the inactive processor.

The senior tech told me he would demonstrate the CPU removal and I could reinstall. He popped the cover, removed the heat sink cover, clips, and the heat sink itself. Then he grabbed the CPU board and pried it from the still-locked socket!! Amazingly, the server didn’t crash. At that point, even as the new guy, I had to step in and point out that yes, it was a dual-processor server, but I didn’t think the CPUs were intended to be hot-swapped. We did the coordination, shut the server down, reinstalled the CPU, closed up the box, and rebooted.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more surprised to see a splash screen display “2 CPUs Installed” than I was that day.

Networking teacher

In reply to Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

opens covers to every PC in classroom.

Proceeds to try and force memory out on all of them without pushing back plastic latch clips. This was the kind that had the clips on ends, not DIMMs. you could not pull them straight out without breaking something.

(we were doubling memory so we could demo a netowrk install)

Install motherboard without lining up standoffs

In reply to Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

It is amazing the damage that ONE extra standoff he had forgot to remove could do.

This was a new system he was putting together, so “assumed” it was a bad MD. Took the board back, and they gave him a new one.

Gee, THAT one didn’t work either.

Took the whole thing back and they pointed out on the two toasted mother boards what he had done.

Did I mention, he is now the IT department head? I won’t go back there if they call without a HUGE raise. 😀

Of course there are the times he crashed the server…..

Tossing a baseball around at work…..

In reply to Install motherboard without lining up standoffs

a tech had just finished imaging a desktop PC and had the cover off.

A co-worker tossed him the baseball, he bobbled the baseball and dropped it….right on the hard drive of the PC.

Instantly it reported ‘not ready error reading drive C….abort/retry?’

2 T1 circuits to a remote site 20 miles away….

In reply to Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

One went down. By buddy wanted to bounce the remote side router interface for the bad circuit.

He sent the “shutdown” command to the remote router, turned white, and ran out of the shop. I knew what he had done without him saying a word.

The classic “saw off the limb you’re standing on” scenario. He set a land speed record to the remote site and got it back up in record time.

Always check twice before doing anything to a remote router without a backup connection…

Okay, so…

In reply to Dumb things you’ve seen a fellow tech do?

…this person has this old tower and is trying to remove the case to see what was installed in it, to see if we could use it, but isn’t really paying attention and just keeps removing screws…

I will never forget the sound the power supply made as it fell, or the havoc it wreaked on its way down.

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