Lara Croft is not a role model for backup adminstrators • The Register

Who, Me? Wait, what? Is it that point once more? Time for Who, Me? during which we invite readers to share tales of the less-brilliant moments of their office lives, and the way they have been caught out – or narrowly escaped.

This week we hear as soon as once more from a previous contributor we Regomized as “Guillermo” when he instructed us a couple of lesson he’d realized relating to the knowledge of locking doors.

Guillermo, it appears, continues to be on the market studying classes. Training is a life-long pursuit, Guillermo – you simply maintain proper on going. You are an inspiration.

Nicely, form of.

On this story, Guillermo was working for a plastic extrusion firm and was handed the superior duty of doing the weekly backup. This concerned “a extremely thick and unnecessarily complicated 80-page lengthy handbook, a few caddy-only DVD burners and 4 100-disc desserts of Memorex 4x DVD-RAMs.” As properly, in fact as three disc caddies.

Keep in mind disc caddies? Ah, good occasions, good occasions.

Anyway, the primary time by way of Guillermo did the backup with the boss watching like a hawk. He adopted the handbook “to the dot” – formatting every disc, writing every disc, verifying every disc, eradicating every disc and labelling every disc earlier than repeating the method. All up it took ten discs and a number of other hours.

Nicely, as you’ll be able to think about a go-getter like Guillermo did not like losing hours doing backups when he could possibly be “consuming pastries and ingesting espresso” (his phrases, we swear).

So Guillermo discovered some methods to cut back the time. A month later, he was doing the backup on his personal, unsupervised, and put his corner-cutting plan into motion. Handbook? What handbook?

For one, he pre-formatted the discs in one other machine whereas the backup field was engaged on the primary one. Then as quickly as that disc was accomplished, the subsequent went in. As quickly because the machine spat out one disc, in went the subsequent. It was wonderful.

It was, as Guillermo places it, “the backup velocity run”!

Guillermo’s off-books backup routine was so speedy he saved sufficient time to industriously … chill out and play Tomb Raider on his PlayStation Transportable (PSP).

And that pile of unlabelled discs that amassed on the bottom as Guillermo guided Lara Croft by way of her adventures?

He was fairly positive the backup handbook talked about these someplace … he simply wanted to place every disc in a machine, verify the index quantity, and label them.

Besides that, at that very second, a rattle on the doorknob indicated the arrival of the boss.

Fast as a flash, Guillermo collected up the DVDs in no matter order that they had hit the ground, stacked them on a spindle, hid his PSP, and acted pure.

The boss congratulated him on executing his job so dutifully and sat at his personal workstation. Guillermo completed the backup, pondering he might return and label the clean discs after the boss left.

However the boss had different plans. Because the machine introduced the ultimate disc had been burned, the boss introduced that as he was heading to the overall supervisor’s workplace anyway, he’d drop off the backup.

OK, thought Guillermo, fingers crossed nothing occurs that requires this particular backup for use. Subsequent week, he’d do the backup by the e-book and no-one can be any the wiser.

However the boss had different plans. The next week, he introduced that he wished to do the weekly backup himself. By the e-book. The e-book that claims earlier than you do the backup you confirm the earlier week’s disks. Guillermo crossed his fingers actually laborious.

After which, salvation. The boss needed to reply a telephone name, and left Guillermo to do the backup himself.

Which he did. By the e-book. No extra velocity runs.

Have you ever ever had a slender escape like Guillermo? Minimize a nook and needed to want like loopy no-one would discover out? Inform us about it in an email to Who, Me? and we’ll (anonymously) elevate your exploits to the stuff of legend.