Re: Consultants who have to work on junk equipment

Local legends, (meaning I've heard these stories and know the companies but
wasn't directly involved)

Company had a disk crash, lost data, had no backup.  Recreated data from
paper trail at great expense.  Approximately 1 year later, disk crash, lost
data.

Again, No backup.

Another story...
Company had just dismissed IS manager.  Week later, there was a fire,
destroying the offices. (No, not related to the IS manager leaving).  The
AS/400 itself fell through the floor, landing in the basement.  Completely
destroyed.  No backup existed.  However...

IS manager had taken a full copy of the system with him when he left.  In a
private arrangement, the company agreed to purchase this copy from him.  No
details on what this cost, one can only imagine.  No comment on the ethics
here! 

IT Happens.

Kathleen Kostuck
___________________
(414) 402-0820       fax (414) 495-4986
kkostuck@execpc.com
AS/400 Solutions
Secretary - Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professionals Association   
___________________
----------
> From: Krys Theodore <ktheodore@marksbros.com>
> To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
> Subject: RE: Consultants who have to work on junk equipment
> Date: Thursday, November 19, 1998 10:39 AM
> 
> Actually, he left the firm.  I left the firm when they permanently closed
their doors.  No, it was not due to a system crash!
> 
> ----------
> From:         Chuck Lewis[SMTP:CLEWIS@IQUEST.NET]
> Reply To:     MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Sent:         Wednesday, November 18, 1998 8:12 PM
> To:   MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject:      Re: Consultants who have to work on junk equipment
> 
> It's good to vent Krys !
> 
> It's REALLY incredible (and frustrating), some of the numb nuts out there
eh ?
> 
> What's your function now ? Sounds like this guy was "promoted" because he
was
> there rather than because he has a clue ?
> 
> Hang in there !!
> 
> Chuck
> 
> Krys Theodore wrote:
> 
> > I took over as the Director of IT at a company which had not had a
backup
> > in about a year.  God help them if they had a hardware failure.  I was
only
> > able to convince them to allow one save because they were a 24/7 shop
and
> > they weren't willing to be off for an hour.  I made it a full
sys/nonsys
> > which took all of 3 hours just so that they would have something to go
back
> > to.  This company was almost totally paperless.
> >
> > Judging by those decisions made by upper management, is it any surprise
> > that some of the other decisions caused the company to close?
> >
> > ----------
> > From:   Evan Harris[SMTP:spanner@ihug.co.nz]
> > Reply To:       MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> > Sent:   Tuesday, November 17, 1998 11:18 PM
> > To:     MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> > Subject:        Re: Consultants who have to work on junk equipment
> >
> > Chuck Wrote:
> >
> > <SNIP>
> >
> > >The other REAL brain-dead deal was "GRTOBJAUT *ALL *ALL, etc."
> > >to solve their compile and authority problems rather than figuring out
the
> > REAL
> > >reasons. Believe it or not, I LOST this argument. Needless to say, any
of
> > you out
> > >there that know your stuff could have a FIELD day with this system...
> >
> > <SNIP>
> >
> > I believe it.
> >
> > Right now I'm working on a system where the "development manager" who
> > spends most of his time coding, will buy the argument that developers
> > should have Secofr class profiles on the production machine, because
> > authorities "stop them from doing their jobs".
> >
> > This is the same guy that agrees that job logging can cause users
> > inconvenience when working with spool files because the programmers
don't
> > know the difference between a WRKSBMJOB *JOB and a WRKSBMJOB *USER, so
> > nothing is logged.
> >
> > This is the same guy who can't work out how I changed the QSECOFR
password
> > from a generic publicly known password, by submitting a job under his
job
> > description - which has his user profile in the USRPRF parameter and is
> > publicly accessible.
> >
> > This is the same guy that turned journalling off on a 40 million record
> > file that was not backed up, but the journals were, because it was
"doing
> > something funny to logical files". And also forgot to tell me he had
turned
> > it off.
> >
> > Thi is the same guy that doesn't really see the problem with users
having
> > JOBCTL and SPLCTL authorities.
> >
> > I could go on for hours about the other stupidities perpertrated on a
> > machine that has 200 gig of disk, like the fact that they didnt have
any
> > kind of backup to speak of when I got there... but I won't.
> >
> > What has this got to do with the thread ? hmm not a lot.. but Chuck
touched
> > a nerve I guess...
> >
> > Cheers.
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