RE: Dumb Things People Do -- MIDRANGE-L

I don't think that this falls in the category of dumb things people do. But, I
was only an observer of this nightmare:

At 11:15 AM, an IBM CE arrived at the technical school to service the selectric
console printer of the IBM 1130. Really simple repair, the left margin was
erratic. He needed to stop the moving parts inside the printer, for safety. Lifted the printer mechanism from the console unit, reached down inside to flip
the power switch to the selectric printer. About two seconds later, lots of
relays shut down, and te IBM 1130 was dead. This was NOT the intent of the CE.
First things first, though. He made the adjustment and reached back inside to
turn that switch back on. Of course, at this point, nothing happened as all
power was out.

He cycled the power switch. I can still hear the relays and fans as they
clicked on, spun up, and then immediately shut down.

Another CE was dispatched. They looked over the system, looking for breakers
that might have flipped. Around 12:30, the tripped breaker was located. The
CEs were preparing to leave.

But, there was another major problem. That computer used a card for cold start
when the Program Load button was pushed. That part worked properly. What did
not work, was the Program Start button. Once the card reader dropped out of
ready status, and was made ready for the last card, the usual practice was to
press the program start button and finish processing. But nothing happened. A
third CE arrived with an oscilloscope and the wiring diagrams. By 2:30, they
found the problem: one of the wires from the program start switch was not
quite attached to the terminal lug that was secured to the switch via a screw. The terminal lug was crimped down on the insulation, but the wires inside had
broken. Visual inspection never disclosed that.

Just a matter of bad things happening all at once.

John McKee

Quoting Jerry Adams <Jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

That reminds me not of a dumb user thing, really, but an April Fool's joke that I played on our CFO (his son-in-law had the idea, though). Anyway, George always left his terminal for the S/34 turned on, but logged off. I wrote a program that had a screen that looked exactly like the sign on screen. George signed on, but then I had a scroll list that slowly said, "FILEA Corrupt, FILEA Deleted, " etc. Looked just like the S/34 system messages activity.

George was cool, though. He ambled down the hall to our office where we were waiting for a panicked cry for help. Instead, he just said, "What the hell have you guys been doing now?"

Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email: jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Fleming, Greg (ED)
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 7:17 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Dumb Things People Do

One of my favorites was when an IT director I knew was poking around on
the AS/400 and discovered that the USERID for a manager he had
terminated a few months prior was still on the system.

So he went ahead and deleted the UserID, not realizing that this manager
had installed the ERP system under his own ID instead of QSECOFR, nor
that all objects owned by a user would be deleted along with the userID.

When he saw the list of deleted objects scrolling down his screen, he
just walked aimlessly around the office for about 10 minutes before he
got up the nerve to go tell Senior Management what had happened. Had to
send the reps home for the rest of the day while we restored from
backup.

|-----Original Message-----
|From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-
|bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Klement
|Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 2:32 PM
|To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
|Subject: Dumb Things People Do
|
|Hi Folks... I'm looking to compile a list of (hopefully humorous)
|"Dumb Things People Do" to be published in System iNEWS magazine.
|
|For example...
|
|---
|
|One day, several years ago, I was sitting at my desk at work when I
|received a call from one of our computer users who works in the same
|building that I do, but one floor down. She told me that Microsoft
Word
|was not working, and asked me if I could come down and take a look.
|
|Call me lazy, but I wanted to try a few simple things over the phone
|before going down. So I asked her what problem she was having, and she
|told me that the screen was blank. Now, usually when a user says that,
|the whole screen isn't actually blank, just the window they want to
use.
| So I asked her if the mouse worked when she moved it, she said no. I
|asked her if she had tried turning the computer off and back on again
to
|see if that would clear up the problem. She said she hadn't tried, but
|would try it while I was on the phone. A minute later, she said it
|wouldn't work. She pressed the power button, but nothing happened.
|Naturally, I thought the computer was locked up, and she just needed to
|hold the button in longer to make it power off. So I explained that,
|and she tried again, to no avail. Then, I suggested unplugging it, and
|that didn't work either!
|
|At that point, I said I'd be right down to look at it. I walked down
|the stairs to find that the floor was dark. The power was out, and
|that's why her computer's screen was blank.
|
|--
|
|So that's the sort of thing I'm looking for (it doesn't have to be as
|wordy as my description -- in fact, mine might be too wordy!) I'm
|looking for stories of dumb things that come up on the job. These
*do*
|need to be IT related things, but it can be either a "dumb user" or
just
|a "duh!" mistake made by an IT person. Any sort of amusing story
about
|IT would be useful.
|
|Thanks!
|--
|This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing
|list
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