REALLY bad day...

Professionally.

Flew out to a site that was supposed to install the week after Memorial Day. Wanted to oversee some drive migrations and check the site to insure that we were ready to move 25 users and associated equipment the following week. Well not so much. The site supervisor was spending his days fighting with his wife in another State, the lead was passed out drunk by noon, none of the interior was complete, electricity wasn't in so neither was my circuit, and the cable was not fully pulled. So much for flying home that day!

Before this fiasco was over, we could add one heart attack, two missing network engineers, and a hotel fire at 4:00 in the morning... just in case we weren't having enough fun. When I did finally get out of Newark, I sat on the tarmac for 6 hours before they let us take off. As I had a meeting in Chicago that I completely missed, I was a tad on the miffed side.

You are having a really crappy day and I know that you are not a happy camper. You are very likely contemplating the wonderfuly horrible things you will do to the next person that walk into your office with more bad news. I get it.

Consider this option. In the midst of the worst things in your life, you can't really see it. But I have always been of the opinion that if you will laugh about it later- start now. Later it will be amusing because it is over. Right now is when you need the laugh. :)

Good luck, Mae. Your day sucks.

P.S. If that didn't work, I will tell you all about my first surgery. You'll laugh. I do.

the air-conditioning in our office has gone on the fritz so they've opened the only big window to let in some air. As it is immediately opposite the extractor for Pizza Express's kitchens we are drawing in the smell of cooking mozzarella and pepperoni. I AM ON A BLOODY DIET and it is crippling me.

As I type this, I have taken off one of my socks and wrapped it around my nose so that the smell of Mozzarella, Pepperoni, Ham slices, Chicken, Spicy beef, Spicy pork, Cajun chicken, Green peppers, Red onions, Black olives, Tomato chunks, Pineapple, Mushrooms, Sweetcorn, Tuna, Anchovies, Green chillies, Jalape?os...

Bugger. I've just eaten the sock...

We are moving our offices from our current location to a renovated Roman Catholic Church.

They've basically gutted the building, and renovated it. Kept the stained glass windows, and done a really nice job of designing the interior- andding a second floor, etc. The unique thing is the second floor is built so it stops about 4 feet from the wall, so the full length stained glass windows are not covered up.

That's the good news.

2 weeks ago, I did a walk through of the building, to check the wiring. They neglected to add 4 communication ports (phone/network). Those were, of course, where the Receptionist sits, where our fax machine AND printer are, and my new office. I did get that fixed.

We have both a full T-1 connection and DSL. Our servers use the T-1, and what workstations need internet access use the DSL. Find out last week, that the company handling the telephone install and wiring forgot to order the T1 connection to the new building. It's gonna be 4 - 6 weeks before we can get that installed.

So, this week we have put in an emergency back up plan, to run thw websites off the DSL (that will be live tommorrow at the new building... but cut off at our current location...TONIGHT). Not to worry, we revamp our plans for that occurrance.

Sunday, we are coming in to move all the workstations, the network server, etc. to the new location. Everything's gonna run off the DSL for a while. We've now redone our NS1 and NS2 3 times, and the IP's for the servers twice.

Uh... except the local phone company notices there is nowhere externally to run the telephone lines. Seems like the wiring company neglected to run wires from the inside of the building to the demarc spot.

Oh, and the telephone company has run the 3 lines to the building. Except we needed 9 lines. They haven't heard that we want a T-1 line. Or DSL. So, of course nothing has been run for that. We might be able to get DSL by Tuesday. Or not.

We have a very pretty, renovated building that has absolutely no freaking way of comunicating with the outside world.

::sighs::

I feel for you mae. And for the others who have had similar rotten days. Whew! I've never had a rotten [b]day[/b] only horrible incidents, but maybe that's because I'm an eternal (infernal by some people's view i'm sure) optimist. Thankfully I have a sweet enough demeanor that even when I [b]do[/b] have something go wrong, I'm quickly forgiven.

Like when I ran a dolly into a glass office wall which meant the whole sheet of glass had to be replaced.

I was a program manager at a billion dollar a year company. One of the projects I WASN'T involved in included a migration of the core business apps from an old Honeywell system to a newer HP system. The cutover was to happen on a long weekened, and there were considerable delays. The migration work itself was outsourced, while the internal groups were responsible for testing the ported code.

I was up to speed on the project because every friday I sat in front of the CEO and reported my progress, as did the project manager of the migration project. I had bad feelings about it - my boss had been in IT audit and knew enough, but for the most part the IT group in charge of the project tried to hush us up.

So finally, over the three days of thanksgiving weekend, the migration happened. I came in my usual time on Tuesday morning to find total bedlam. Seems that no one tested our ability to generate invoices on the new system. Ooops. Suddenly there were many closed door conferences, and my boss and her boss (CFO) were tied up in fire fighting mode.

The business I was in relied on steady cashflow - we had many cash customers and many corporate customers paid on a net 10 basis. It was those corporate customers who could not be billed.

I was there late working on other projects when the CFO stopped by to chat. We talked about software testing approaches and where things went wrong. He was just heading out to the airport. Last minute call to go to a New York bank (we were in Toronto). I wished him well though I wasn't sure what he was doing.

He came back the next afternoon with a $40 million dollar loan to cover our cashflow problems. And very shortly thereafter the CIO, 2 of 4 directors and the project manager were shown to HR and shown the door.

I can't say I was sad to see the CIO gone. Personally I'd had some negative encounters with him including an in office yelling match.

Another bad day was when the city was working on the water mains and accidentally boosted the pressure which burst the connection to our water system in the building that housed the data center. I stood there in ankle deep muddy water that was uncomfortably close to power mains lifting stuff off the floor. It came within 2 inches of our phone system.

James

(This is true)

I did my first NW4 install and it went so well that IT Admin and I (an old friend) went over the pub before returning to finish the job.

To make some minor amendments without mounting all of the disks, I brought the server up "-NA" which, in earlier NetWare versions prompted for a server name, which could be anything as it's lost on reboot.

NW4 does the same - nearly!.

The IT Admin was p:ssed and was annoying me so much that when the "Enter Server Name" prompt came up I type FVCK_OFF_YOU_BASTARD (with a 'U') to give him a laugh, edited the config and restarted the server. It all tested OK, came up "MERIDIAN_01" and all of the IT container users were able to log in. Alas, we were all in the Server Context...

"OK, everyone. You can log in now"

Login: Mavisp
Cannot find server object FVCK_OFF_YOU_BASTARD
F:>

There were around 100 users logging in. The MD's PA threw the biggest wobbly and the FD nearly choked laughing.

I'm in London, so after troubleshooting for a while (after I've hidden for an hour, calmed down and overdosed on tranks), I called Novell Tech in Germany but he couldn't seem to grasp what was going on. I called Provo and told my sorry tale and I thought that the Tech was going to explode. When he'd told everyone in the building and they'd all had a good laugh, he gave me the fix.

I came into start the first day of my swing shift and wished I'd gotten into an accident on the way. IT WAS THAT BAD. We're attempting to clean up 6 high radiation hot cells, and some other clean up in the building. Now normally I can walk in the building, do surveys throughout with just plastic booties and latex gloves. Not today, the building is crapped up (contaminated) everywhere and anyone who enters has to be fully dressed (coveralls, rubber gloves and boots with full face mask). We are out of coveralls, and none will arrive until tomorrow AM. I ordered all work to a halt, and those who were dressed and in the building were pressed to do cleanup. More grumbling and cussing ensured, but after 6 hours it was clean enough to do my surveys and at least prep the place for the gaveyard shift to finish a full cleanup and await more coveralls. The day shift was really upset that nothing had been done since they went off shift the day before. They were fully breifed and admonished for letting it get as messed up as it was and directed that any work done must be cleaned up right away or thay'd be back in the same boat tomorrow. 90 Degrees plus, no air conditioning, and dressed like the Michelin Man. A dieters delight, gauranteed to make you lose 10 pounds a day. I don't want to hear about it, I can't afford to lose that weight, it took a week of beer and pretzels to get there and it's gone in a flash.

in the last 4 and a bit weeks we?ve had 3 disaster recoveries 2 blackouts and 1 laptop HDD break beyond repair, which of course the user [b]didn?t[/b] backup any of his work (source code).

OK, DR's first, 2 on the PDC (which is an SBS server so it handles exchange and ISA). the first time the onboard RAID controller died so the MB needed to be replaced which of course took our valued suppliers a week to get in, the second was another RAID failure which managed to fix itself one day later (after franticly trying to get backup exch and ISA working). The third was when our file server threw a disk, fortunately it was RAIDed and we just operated with no redundancy until it we got a replacement disk.

2 blackouts, on of which took a HP proliant with it, (damaging the MB and PSU) which fortunately for us were replaced under warranty (another week when a production server was MIA).

Finally, our laptop supplier came to replace a faulty laptop (screen) by simply swapping the disk into another laptop of the same model. Of course the user, given plenty of notice mind you didn?t back up any of the source code he was working on. so when the supplier accidentally dropped the disk which managed to kill it completely losing all the data which was so well not backed up.

I suppose the moral of my story is never, never trust suppliers.

And to add insult to injury, all of this (except the file server throwing a disk) happened between 2PM and 5PM on a Tuesday (four consecutive Tuesdays). On Wednesday morning I have a programming (Java) class.

At least its over, I hope you haven?t inherited my level of bad luck.

Mike

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There'll be sun!
Just thinkin' about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
'Til there's none!

When I'm stuck a day
That's gray,
And lonely,
I just stick out my chin
And Grin,
And Say,
Oh

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
So ya gotta hang on
'Til tomorrow
Come what may

Tomorrow!
Tomorrow!
I love ya
Tomorrow!

You're always
A day
A way!

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
So ya gotta hang on
'Til tomorrow
Come what may

Tomorrow!
Tomorrow!
I love ya
Tomorrow!

You're always
A day
A way!

Tomorrow!
Tomorrow!
I love ya
Tomorrow!

You're always
A day
A way!

One of our plants, (the farthest one away) called that they had lost network connection to one of the remote buildings.

They call back, they had found a "break" in the wire [i](yeah, cat5 breaks all the friggen time...)[/i] but good luck! They are going to try to repair it!
[i]picture an electrician with electrical tape[/i]

This was all before I even got in today. I had to scream for them to stop, halt, cease and desist! As soon as I here back from them to get some first hand information, I will have the joy and pleasure of driving down to Grand Rapids to do a 15 minute splice.

Then I get to drive back home. Glad I have lots of CD's to listen to.

Oh, did I mention I slept like crap every night this week because it was finals week (back to school ya know!) and so have been back to averaging about four hours sleep.

Better stop and get a CASE of redbull.

Not nearly as bad as yours Mae, but I hope this minor misery of mine helps some?

Will be back in later on this afternoon so see if the nukes fell yet.

Hang in there! :x

The new site will be [b]Totally Secure[/b] so there will be no worries for some time about any form of Intrusion or Attack. :p

Col ]:)

I've HAD A [B]Bloody Fantastic Day![/B] It started at about 5.00 AM this mourning when some Id10T rang me up wanting his brand new Dell fixed yesterday.

He even insisted that I fix the stupid thing when I pointed out that I didn't deal in Dell's and it would void his warranty. He also didn't know what sort of Dell it was but insisted that it was a NB because he could sit it in his lap and type away. What's even better is I've never heard of this particular person previously so how they got my name is totally beyond me well at least it was at the time. When I got there the NB was actually a Full Workstation but because he could place the keyboard on his lap it was a Lap Top. Good thing that I carry around Power Supplies all the time as that fixed it quickly and I was almost out the door when he insisted that he couldn't get onto the Net. I thought that it would be something simple like a scrambled Cable modem but I found a very nice Netgear Router in place so I unplugged it left it for about 30 seconds and plugged it back in. Nothing! After mucking around for about 20 minutes he then quite politely informed me that it was new and had never actually worked but since I was there why not?

Naturally he had not bothered to keep any of the paper work from his ISP and they where not open or at least their Help Desk wasn't for another 2 hours so in the meantime I got to setting up the computer properly as it was a complete [b]Dogs Breakfast[/b] and during that time he was very nice to tell me that a friend of his had recommended me for the job and to make sure that he got me and not one of my techs as I was the [b]Best![/b] There is going to be one dead Surgeon latter tonight after I get the D 10 Cat floated down to his house I'm just going to push the entire building into the canal at the back of his house where he parks his boat. Hopefully the mongrel will drown slowly and I can keep throwing in SCUBA tanks with 5 minutes of air every 30 minutes or so.

Well eventually I got the Bloody Router working and he tried to charge me for the phone call to his ISP to get the settings that they use as well as his user name & Password which he didn't think where at all important. But I escaped just before Midday and only had a 52 KM drive home where I could get some sleep as I had got in at 3.30 AM this mourning after an overnight Service Call for a Dead Sever.

Just after I arrived home my soon to be dead son appeared and wanted his car worked on mind you this is my one day off this year so he thought that a bit of different work would suit me down to the ground. After all he only wanted a Power Amp wired into the [b]Bloody Car[/b] after he destroyed the previous one a few days ago. So a few more holes drilled into the car settled me down quite a bit knowing that someone was asking to me create rust spots in a new car always makes me happy for some strange reason.

After finishing that off I thought I would eventually get the sleep that I so much wanted but after 3 phone calls I gave up any idea of attempting to get some sleep and went to check my E-Mail which hasn't been looked at in about 18 hours so there was a little bit to wade through and then [b]My Wifes SON[/b] turned up again. I've got to the stage where [b]I want a DNA test to prove that I'm in no way related to him at all.[/b] He very politely told me that the tail lights where not working and it then got even better they where not working earlier in the day when he originally turned up but he didn't want to bother me with unnecessary things even though I had to pull off all the same plastic coverings to change 4 light bulbs. It could have been done in about 30 seconds when I had it all apart but no I had to put it all back together and then 6 hours latter pull it all apart again for a couple of light bulbs.

Then the [b]Cat[/b] turned up some out of control cat that insists on camping out on [b]SHMBO[/b] car and urinating down the front windscreen and activating the security lights so it can see where it is Urinating. Well I grabbed the [b]Water Gun[/b] suitably loaded with red food dye and lemon juice and chased the thing away giving it a really good soaking. The juice of 1 Lemon half a bottle of red food dye and half a litre of water makes a lovely red mix and it smells clean as well [b]So over all I've had a GREAT DAY![/b] B-)

Now all I need is that D 10 Cat to show up and I'll have gotten rid of my worst nightmare. I'm still looking for a way to say [b]NO[/b] to a surgeon standing over you with a scalpel in their hand after making the first cut then hitting me for a computer repair.

I haven't worked that one out quite yet but that [b]Bright Red P_U_S_S_Y CAT[/b] makes the day feel sooooooo good that I'm not overly worried about the rest of the day. I've even refilled the water pistol for the next time the cat shows up. :^0

Col ]:)

I woke up yesterday morning, and got up on the wrong side of the bed. I stubbed my toe on my way to the kitchen, only to discover I was out of coffee. I had to use yesterday's grounds, which were still in the basket of the coffee maker, but the filter broke and the grounds all flowed into the pot. As I opened the front door to walk out and get my paper from the driveway, my dog saw the neighbor's cat and darted out the door to chase it. Of course, he refused my screaming orders to come back, so I had to chase him all the way down the street while still in my bathrobe and slippers. Of course, since my toe hurt so damned bad, I was limping as I was running, and ended up sprawled out on the ground after tripping on the stupid Barney doll the neighbor kid left on the sidewalk. (Yes, it was purple.) I never did catch my dog, but the Animal Control people kindly let me know later in the day that they found him, and I could come on down to their office and pick him up -- if I left them a $100 fine, of course, for allowing my dog to run loose. They didn't care about the stupid cat running loose; and they never pay any attention to cats anyway, or so I was told.

As I was walking back home, the old lady that lives across the street yelled at me to close my robe. It was closed, I yelled back. But she quickly pointed out that when I fell down, the whole neighborhood became privy to the fact that I slept in the buff. I sure hope her threat to call the police wasn't serious! Anyway, after I got back home I didn't see my paper anywhere -- until, that is, I looked up into the seven foot tall bush next to my driveway. How in the hell did that delivery guy get my paper perfectly balanced on the top of that stupid bush? Being the obsessively informed person that I am, I just had to get that paper. It was only about 20 inches away from my reach, so I decided to stand on top of the 36 inch tall trash can that was along the side of the house. I guess I should have secured the can a little better because down I went -- and, of course, the old lady across the street was STILL watching my every move and my every ..... well, you know.

The hell with it, I thought. I'll just get dressed and buy a coffee and a paper on the way to the office. Of course, I forgot to pick up my laundry the day before, so I had to go rummaging through the hamper looking for my cleanest dirty shirt (due credit given to Kris and Johnny). I did find one that didn't smell -- well, it didn't smell that bad, or so I thought. (The receptionist at my office thought otherwise; and she's not one to hold back what she thinks.) Half way to the overpriced and always busy Starbucks, I also "remembered" that I not only forgot to pick up my laundry, but I forgot to buy gas the day before as well. I guess it was the "sputter sputter" sound my car was making that reminded me. The gas station was only about a half mile away, and the walk wouldn't have been too bad, except my damned toe really hurt like hell! I was beginning to think I broke it!

It only took me twenty minutes to limp the half-mile to the gas station, but when I got there .........

Oh hell, you probably don't care to hear about MY bad day. Besides, it went downhill from there and I don't know if I can bear to live through it again.

The very first paying job I got was as a dishwasher at a nice restaurant when I was 15. What I was unaware of, was that it was also the first night of the summer dinner theater tent series. From that day onward, I've HATED Perry Como.

Well because of the HUGE draw of Mr. Como, the traffic outside was jammed and my father didn't want to battle it, so he dropped me off a good 15 minute walk from the restaurant. I was late and had my a$$ handed to me by the manager (who later turned out to be a great guy).

I was put in front of the dishwashing contraption which included a trough with water running to a garbage collection strainer basket and told to simply pull the dishes exiting from the machine, stack them, reload the rack and send it back through. Simple, a chimp could do it. The dishes from that first rack exiting were really hot, but if I let them sit a minute, they cooled down and I could handle them. Easy.

Fast forward an hour and there's no time to allow the dishes to cool, the friggin garbage collection thingy fills up with 50 lbs of stinky, dripping, swilly GARBAGE about every 10 minutes and it's the new guy's job to bring it outside to emtpy it, the floor's wicked slippery, and the bitchy dining room prima donnas are screaming that there are no clean saucers.

Fast forward another hour and I have horrendous blisters on all my fingers from the hot dishes, nobody told me about the goddamned silverware, I'm soaking wet from the waist down, I smell like the garbage, the 50 lb collection thingy is now filling up every 6 minutes and for some reason the dining room staff is no happier.

Fast forward another hour and there's no more hot water so the dishes coming off will not dry and were mostly dirty. But other than that, nothing else has changed.

Fast forward 3 more hours and the rush is over, but the room is a sh!thouse mess and all I can hear is friggin' Perry Como crooning his gay songs and my crotch is itchy from being wet all night.

Fast forward 3 more hours and I'm asleep in bed after taking a shower because the second I walked into the house, my mother hollers from upstairs that she can smell me and I better not go to bed with that stink on me, and I'm dreaming of the dishes from the clean dish rack tumbling on me and the stacks of falling dishes never run out.

It was the hardest $2.35/hr I ever earned, and I'll never forget that dream.

....so just Surrender and Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes.

the latter half even, the "member" was the man in the eyes of the law. :p

so my description was correct. ]:)

be any different than any other day?

"I am not sitting around dirty, sweaty, and smelly for the rest of the day."

Oh man, I'm funny! :D

FIRST OF ALL: tell you remployee to stop drinking caffeine, Coke, Chocolate, The Dew, The Bull, 20 cups of coffe etc. She will be 110% better in no time. They will trty and rock her world with Ativan but it doesn't help the problem, just the symptoms. She is experiencing one of the most common side effects of IT and caffeine.

Anyway, reposted from Monday

[b]Having a bad day?[/b]
In a hospital's Intensive Care Unit, patients always died in the same bed, on Sunday morning, at about 11:00 a.m., regardless of their medical condition.
This puzzled the doctors and some even thought it had something to do with the supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths occurred around 11:00 a.m. on; Sunday, so a worldwide team of experts was assembled to investigate the cause of the incidents.

The next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11:00 a.m., all of the doctors and nurses nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books, and other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits.

Just when the clock struck 11:00, Pookie Johnson, the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system so he could use the vacuum cleaner.

[b]Having a Bad Day????[/b]

The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez Oil spill in Alaska was $80,000.00. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were being released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers.

A minute later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both.

[b]Still think you are having a Bad Day????[/b]

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically, almost in a dancing frenzy, with some kind of wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm two places. Up to that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.

[b]STILL think you're having Bad Day????[/b]

Two animal rights defenders were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany. Suddenly, all two thousand pigs broke loose and escaped through a broken fence, stampeding madly.
The two helpless protesters were trampled to death.

[b]What?? STILL having a Bad Day????[/b]

Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "Return to Sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.

There now, feeling better??

Sorry to rehash an old post, but it fit your title too well to ignore.

Mr. D 'Annie' Mambo..you have no room to talk. :)

that could be taken a couple of different ways.. :)

it's only funny until I get fired! :)

Hiya, yesterday 6/22/06 at around 3pm, a tornado ripped through this region. This morning on the front page of our local paper, is a picture of a woman (idiot) walking across a street... a street littered with 40 (FORTY!!!) downed power utility poles. I just recently (two minutes ago) found out, that "idiot" is one of my co-workers. Now, this lady is nice, and very religious, but also... very naive, and apparently stupid. Now the entire workplace knows that fact as well.... she's had a terrible day of heckling and chop busting, but better to be embarrassed than dead. What was she thinking!!!!???? I'd say for the amount of abuse I know my fellow co-workers can dish out, this is probably her "REALLY BAD DAY". She should be thankful she lived to SEE this day.

Peace

that the field technician from the phone company is on his way (he's an hour away). This means if he can fix the problem quickly, we should be back in business just as everyone is leaving for the day..

That sounds like a really good idea. Perhaps it would even work. It might be difficult for me to let go of my job, which is making sure everything works for everyone all the time. This includes emotional well-being, physical health, etc. It's a REALLY hard job.

It should cheer you to see that you are so popular. Everybody wants to give you a bit of comfort. :)

Welcome home. It's nice to know that's all over for the next 3 days, anyway. I hope your weekend is relaxing and traffic-free.

This weekend I have a total of 26 training miles to walk- on top of the ten I did through the week.

So last weekend- 25 miles- 85+ and HUMID! We prayed for rain but rain ignored us. So we went home, burned a cow on the grill, had a martini, and generally got over it.

Tomorrow it is supposed to rain. T-Showers off and on. We call this "environmental training". Right. 15 miles, potentially in the rain. I call this a pain in the tail.

Then it is also supposed to rain Sunday. Oh good- only 11 miles.

Yes, I know. Self-inflicted. But maybe worth some comfort to you???

I know this bites. I hope it is getting better!

And push them into the rock crusher. It looks really impressive. ;)

But if you want to hear something really funny at a Government job here the Local Member and Minister showed up for some celebration and insisted on parking their Government owned car close to a 40 ton excavator which required it to be slewed so they could get the car in, a nice new [b]Range Rover.[/b] Unfortunately after about a hour of doing speeches the excavator with it's bucked parked on the ground straighten up and went straight through the guts of the Range Rover. It made a fantastic photo on the front cover of the newspaper. They only needed 2 tow trucks to take the wreckage away. :D

Col ]:)

If you are a [b]Good Little Girl[/b] I'll introduce you to him one day. :p

Are you working at NEC? I know several Techs there who continually have [b]Nervous Breakdowns[/b] so I try to avoid that company at any cost what little of my sanity that is left I'm trying to keep. After all I have to keep [b]SHMBO[/b] cars running.

Now many years ago I used to work as State Service Manager for one of the bigger Computer Organisations and I wasn't considered as Responsible for everything that went wrong just when the Mainframes started giving problems I was to blame. ;)

You'll love this one s it really did happen. Many years ago in a [b]Galaxy Far Far Away[/b] I got a call out to a company who's 2 month old Mainframe wasn't working. My initial thoughts was a software problem so I packed up my box of tricks and headed out there. When I arrived I was faced with a total lack of anything working at all, I've never heard such silence in a Mainframe room/floor. Well being the good little tech that I am I started at the Power Supply thinking that something serious had gone wrong there and started working my way forward from there. Then I opened one of the frames and found what can only be described as [b]Total Destruction[/b] what remained of the main board had a big hole in the middle of it though that is a bit misleading there was only about an inch of circuit board left with bits of wire and all sorts of other mess hanging down and a pile a charcoal in the bottom of the case. Well I was slightly put off by this so I went to another frame and opened that up with the same results.

By this time I was feeling [b]Really Great[/b] I was looking at several Million $ of destroyed hardware and thinking that I would have to replace the entire thing at our cost. So with a [b]Spring in My Step[/b] I approached the Manager and asked could I make a phone call to get some spares delivered, Here I was thinking of several Semi Trailers of new hardware and a long explanation to the Upper Management about why I was giving away so much stuff it felt [b]Soooooooo Gooooooood![/b]

Then I heard the words that made my heart jump for joy No I couldn't use the phone as Lighting had struck the box out front and destroyed the phone system. It didn't take much to work out what had happened they had a Modem in the place and every night uploaded the entire days transactions to the head office needless to say that was happening when the upload stopped and sure enough the modem was worse that destroyed and luckily for them the computers had taken the brunt of the hit if it had of just been the phones I think that the building would have burnt down but the Mainframe room would have been OK because it had a Halon Fire Suppression system in place.

I just told them that maybe it might be a good idea to call their insurance company and tell them that they had a slight problem and that they needed to give us the go ahead to replace the entire system. I had already mentally worked out that I would need a team of Fitters and at least 6 techs to do the work and who I was going to pull off what.

I went back to the office and started ordering the required bits and started pulling the necessary people off other jobs and juggling the workload round. Well about 4.50 PM I got a phone call from their insurance company and was given the go ahead and asked just how soon I could have the place running again. I said something like 2 weeks which really freaked the guy out but it was about right as we had to remove everything and junk it and then clean up the mess and start installing the new stuff. Every wire in the place had to be replaced and the mess in the cable trenches had to be seen to be believed. But we had them up & running in 12 days and as the insurance company was paying I loaded on the overtime and weekend work which we normally wouldn't have done on a new installation.

Even when the entire thing was finished and running they still didn't have any working phones but they had a working computer system. :D

But the worst thing was we had to keep the wreckage so it could be inspected by the Assessor and we got a real bright one for this as he insisted that the Modem should be decoupled from the system and it the unit wasn't designed to AU Standards only the modem should have been destroyed. Talk about a [b]Little Knowledge being Dangerous[/b] so I pointed out what was the modem and told him to take it away to be inspected by an [b]Independent Authority[/b] it only weighed about 2 hundred weight. :D

I never heard another word from him and I believe that the bill was paid quite quickly but as I was only a tech there I wasn't supposed to worry about little things like payment for jobs. :^0

Col ]:)

750 of the "Super Dozers" are used in the large mines in Canada, US and Australia.

that 750 is every model, of every brand, these are not high volume sales items :D

Germany has the largest landbound machine in the world though, a bucketwheel excavator being used in the open pit coal mines. moves 8 tonnes of coal in each bucket..and there are something like 36 buckets on the wheel..or is it 18 buckets?...

not very mobile though 50 meters per hour is it's top travelling speed.

[Reply to All] when pressed in Outlook should pop up a warning message:

"This may be a life-changing email resulting in loss of friends, job and, possibly, legal action being taken against you. You may never work again. Do you REALLY want to send it to everyone?"

[Yes] [Sh:t! No! They'd crucify me!]

This is an ugly flooded Day. Friday was worse.

Friday Uncle Pat (4th Mardiv Company E) 3 stripes up twl down with crossed rifles was laid to rest with 4 hash marks on his sleeves. I drove the 120 miles through a mix of thunderstorms and tornadoes to Columbus.

In the morning I had to undisable the Thursday SOX meetings work, but in the middle of the disable one of our root drive mirrors got corrupted.

At that time, we had to reboot. Disaster. I am now going to bed.It is 7:30 Sunday. My Friday is over... Have a good weekend...

I think I'll leave that one alone as I don't want to upset anyone. :^0

But the last time [b]SWMBO[/b] meet a Darwin Stubbie she went to bed in a bunch of leaves in the back yard and was most well UM not to be trifled with when we tried to move her [b]NASTY ONE THERE.[/b] B-)

But it got even worse when she eventually woke up the following morning she was on the [b]War Path[/b] insisting to know how had put the leaves in her hair and after blood. [b]Thank God for Photographic evidence.[/b] :0

I actually gave up playing in the rain in 1986 when I walked away from racing Classic Motorcycles the rain played Havoc with the leathers. :D

Col ]:)

:)

I was driving 18-wheelers for a living at that point in time. I was pressured into picking up and delivering a "hot" load, even though I was long overdue for some hometime.

For starters, I didn't have a chance to get anything to eat all day. When I arrived at the plant where the freight was supposedly ready and waiting, I was informed that the load wouldn't be ready for several hours. I asked the shipper about vending machines. He replied that there were no vending machines, but that I was welcome to leftover pizza in the lunchroom. When I discovered that several large roaches had claimed the pizza, I decided to pass on that offer.

After finally getting my trailer loaded, I started towards my destination--wondering where I could find something to eat late at night. About ten miles later, a "four-wheeling" idiot decided to cut across four lanes of traffic to get to a left exit ramp. It kinda felt like hitting a pothole or a speed bump when the right front corner of my truck nearly broke the car in half.

When I stopped the truck, I ran back to the car, fully expecting to find at least one lifeless mangled body. Someone was already flagging down traffic with a flashlight. (I found out later that he was the driver of the mangled car--he never got a single scratch!)

I never had a chance to look inside the car. Another car zoomed through the accident scene, ran over me, and kept on going. Great! Two serious accidents in less than five minutes.

After orthopedic surgery and four years of recovery time, I finally reported back for work. It didn't take long for a Teamster rep. to inform me that I'd have to pay four years of back dues because I didn't file a withdrawal card after my accident. One phone call later, I had a job with a non-union trucking company.

On the upside, though, I used my recovery time to earn my BS degree. It was probably the only possible opportunity for this long-haul trucker to find time for college.

it is literally the largest land bound machine in the world.

even the komatsu super dozer is small beside that thing :D

have you ever heard a D8 start up over water?
some boats use the D8 engine and it sounds like the boat just blew up. :)

edited for typo

Used to run D8's at a Sand Mine on Stradbroke Island and when the mine closed down they had to float all the D8's back to the mainland. They came over on special barges and had to be started well before the barge was docked it's an unbelievable noise that they make when started on water.

That crowd is now using a combination of Cat's and Daewoo's which are identical and have interchangeable parts as Daewoo is making the CAT motors and the Hydraulic Pumps that CAT use so the Daewoo is effectively a cheaper CAT.

Even a D8 has to have the blade removed to move it between construction sites and they are by no means a [b]Big Dozer[/b] but they are certainly heavy I saw a secondhand one for sale sitting on specially reinforced concrete to carry this type of machinery and it was sinking into the concrete. Admittedly slowly but it was making a [b]Lasting Impression[/b] where it was sitting. :D

One person who sells these things wanted to sell the [b]COW[/b] one of those Kone's for Afghanistan to remove the mountains where the enemy was supposedly hiding out. If they could have moved one there it would have been unstoppable and removed even the tiniest hill in the way. He's totally [b]Insane[/b] as to get a new computer at one place he parked a 40 ton excavator on top of his existing computer and asked me to repair it. It was the same machine that ate my NB about 18 months ago so he had a good idea of what would happen when one of those tracks is placed on top of a computer. :^0

But I'm actually wondering how the driver of the D8 was treated when they extracted it from that thing. It really would have been a [b]Wild Ride[/b] and put any amusement park to shame. :p

But the fact that the Cabin wasn't really badly crushed between the Bucket Wheel and the arm shows just how big that those things actually are. :0

Col ]:)

"I" am going to stand there and watch the maintance guys climb up and run new cable. :D

I already told the head guy this is what WILL need to happen, as I explained the work around that I did to get them live. He was very grateful I was able to just get them up and remembered the REASON the other line was bad as well. Fork truck knocked the network box off the wall. oops? I had them put un cement pillars in front of it so THAT won't happen again.

But this is all for another day, because it will take a week to get the cable I want. Will probably spend the night and make it a two day deal. On second thought it will be the week after that, because I have the boys next week. Nice to set my own schedule. B-)

All that and you still had the time to post your tale of woe online.

Keep your chin up! Things will get fixed and you'll look back on it and see how you fought through the problems.

I do have a Story about a bad day... Saturday my wife and I drove from our home in South Carolina (in the foothills near Greenville) to Andrews North Carolina - MOUNTAINS... Picked up our PREGNANT dauthter who will be staying with us while her husband is in Iraq. ANYWAY... our car is an older car (yea, you know where this is going)... but a nice one. Its a 97 Bonneville..hasnt given us too many problems at all in 6 years. We pick her up...start back to South Carolina on US64. Just before Franklin NC there is a big mountain, 8 degree slope! About 300 yards from the top the car's engine start pinging loud - then steam comes out fromt the hood. A huge storm from is coming over the mountains behind us ... a few mintes later im under the hood getting soaked near the top of a mountain. I FINALLY get the car started and boogie up and then over...i see a town below..Franklin NC. i stop in a shopping center near an AutoZone store - THANK GOD. i spend 3 hours under the hood fixing stuff...bad thermostat which caused the overheating and the other vaccum lines that broke from age. I get it running better but still pinging... try to make a run for it... missed the turn onto US64 and head out toward woods... the car overheats again... a Franklin Police officer is behind us and turns on the blues. He comes up asks whats wrong and i tell him. He tells us about a hotel back the way we just came. He follows us there, asks if we need money for a room (we said no). The hotel had room, we finally got to lay down. Trista's (my pregnant) feet and legs were hurting. We got something to eat and then tried to find a rental car...NOBODY was open till Sunday (even called AAA). Finally called my Uncle in Spartanburg who came sunday morning to get us... forgot to add... we have 3 minature Greyhounds in the house with no extra food... a beagle in the bathroom with only a little dual disk for food & water. 7 new kitten's and a mommy kitten in our other bathroom who need food.... 2 dwarf goats with no food or water for more than a day...

Anyway...yea... we had to abandon the car.. too expensive to tow home or have a new motor put into it.. now im looking for a new car with 2 weeks until i get paid again!

But... the moral of the story is... God is always there. He got us up and over the mountain in a disabled car. He STOPPED us from trying to make a run for it and getting stranded further on down the road by missing the exit to get on the highway... and to someplace to stay and provided transportation home. I know he will help us get another car and it will be what we need...

Jim S.

are all back to normal. I'm really hoping for a mild Monday.

My employee is back at work today. She seems much better. Hopefully, she'll get it all worked out.

I got home about 3.30 AM and at 7.30 AM this morning I get a phone call from another of this Surgeons Fiends who wants me to have a look at his 2 year old Compaq NB. As it was working properly until a Web Browser was opened and then it would place a never ending row of lower case Y's My first reaction was some kind of Virus or other infection after first checking the keyboard for a stuck key.

Well silly me I didn't think to throw a Live Linux Disc into the DVD ROM drive and see what happened I just wiped the drive and then when I got to setting the Country I had a never ending choice between the 2 countries that begun with the letter Y. That really ruled out the idea that it was a infection so I put in an external Keyboard to no effect and then totally removed the existing keyboard and got exactly the same problem. Seems that about 2 months ago HP returned this unit after having it for about 5 months and as far as the owner could see it was working though one of the complaints was that the Modem didn't work and when I looked in the Computer Management no Modem. It would be so nice if I had of been told this and not actually seen the repair docket in the NB's Bag.

Seems that they where too tight to fit a new M'Board to the NB and now it's SH1T itself totally. Well I've only wasted about 12 hours on the Bloody Thing so what the Hell [b]You've Jinxed ME for all this week.[/b] :p

Col ]:)

so bad, I even remember the date. 7 September 1980.

Background: My cousin from Kent was staying with me, I was nine months pregnant and due in two days. I drove a mini, and was actually driving against medical advice, but her insurance didn't cover my car. My ex, IF, was running a Kawasaki K500.

Episode 1
Driving through the centre of town, my mini came to a set of traffic lights, and just died. No apparent reason, just died. Got loads of abuse from other drivers, till I got out and they saw the size of the bump. Had no transport to continue journey, nowhere to park car, raging hot day, and a grandmother waiting for cuz and I at the other end.

Episode 2
Got to grandmothers (age 88) to find the whole street up in arms and waiting for the ambulance to take her to hospital. Heart attack, combined with hypothermia (despite complaining of being too hot on a very warm day) Travelled in ambulance to local hospital due to lack of transport.

Episode 3
Got to hospital, told IF what had happened, and was asked how he was expected to get me home on the back of his bike. No mention of cuz. Told him where the car was abandoned, so he took a pal and went to fix it. Fixed it, and smashed his glasses taking them off to get into the phone box to let me know....

Finally remembered to pick cuz and I up from Ma and Pa's......three hours late..... with only one lense in the glasses.....

I could go on.......nuff said?

GG