On Name As Friday rolls round it is pure to really feel a little bit low on vitality. However this week’s On-Name – The Register‘s weekly story of tech assist trauma – is positively crackling with electrical energy to pep you up earlier than the weekend!
This story got here from a reader we’ll Regomize as “Charlie” as a result of it comes from his time working for a chocolate firm.
“I might turn into the go-to individual for something that was not strictly operations or programming,” Charlie advised The Register. That meant something from {hardware} points to cabling to OS patching landed on his to-do listing.
Charlie’s chores usually noticed him work with a colleague he prompt we name “Stan” whose sole duty was {hardware}.
Charlie and Stan didn’t get on.
“He had a regular response of ‘that have to be a software program situation’ when his tried fixes failed,” Charlie advised On-Name.
That pat response emerged on such events as when a printer hooked up to a terminal in a newly refurbished warehouse refused to work.
Stan glanced on the printer and, with out proof, identified a software program situation.
Charlie requested to swap out some elements simply to ensure the {hardware} was not at fault, and as he did so felt “a little bit of a tingle of the stray voltage selection.”
Stan dismissed that as a phantom shock attributable to stray shielding that felt prickly to the contact, and the pair continued to work.
Then got here a correct jolt. Charlie reckons his tingling was about 20V. Stan copped 100V or extra – and nonetheless insisted it was a software program drawback as a result of an app hadn’t acknowledged the {hardware} and subsequently in some way failed to control present. Or some such malarkey.
Charlie and Stan survived that incident and had been nonetheless working collectively a few years after. Further duties had come Charlie’s manner within the interim such that he was in control of a group putting in a colossal disk array hooked up to a mainframe.
Sadly, that job went badly: the system couldn’t see its newly hooked up storage.
Stan turned concerned, and naturally prompt it was a software program drawback.
A wager was then proposed. The 100-volt jolt meant Charlie had gained the final spherical of the bug identification battle. This time across the two resolved that the supply of the proper prognosis would purchase a case of one thing tasty for the loser.
Debugging progressed to the “pulling off the duvet and searching round inside” stage.
At which level a ribbon cable fell to the ground.
Somebody had forgotten to plug it in. Certainly that made the storage issues incontrovertibly a {hardware} fault?
No. Stan caught to his prognosis of a software program drawback: the array labored positive, it was simply that software program could not configure it!
Charlie ended his mail to On-Name with a query about the best way to calculate curiosity on the case of beer he feels he is been owed for 40 years.
Would it not be impolite of us to recommend there’s software program to determine that out?
Has a colleague who denies actuality made it arduous to do your job? Or are you nonetheless ready for a office wager to settled? Share both form of story in an email to On-Call and we could use it to energise readers on a future Friday. ®
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