Under Development from Issue 187 of Computer Shopper Magazine
We’ve had several experiences with the “emergency services” this month. Police and Fire but, fortunately, no-one was hurt and no Ambulance was needed.
Firstly, on Spring Bank Holiday Monday I got a call from the fuzz. Apparently a patrol car had stopped some yoofs pushing a cart through a local housing estate – the cart bearing, amongst other things, a “computer system” (which could mean a multitude of things) and some computer parts. When questioned they admitted that the stuff had come from our premises. Which was strange ‘coz the burglar alarm hadn’t gone off, otherwise we’d have had a call from the security monitoring company. This is the point at which the panic sets in. Which machine did the nick ? A server ? Wilma, Barney, Homer, Kenny (killed off twice already) or Bart ? Please God, not Bart. There’s so much development code on Bart and, despite daily backups I’d rather not have to put their fidelity to the test.
The police had been down to the office to investigate and had also found that the engineer’s pool car had been broken into (smashed window) – please could I meet them there to investigate and identify the stuff. The car doesn’t get used out of hours as, if they take it home, the staff get taxed on the “benefit in kind” so it gets left in out (locked) car park. Fortunately the weather was too crap (as usual) for a BBQ and I wasn’t full of beer or sangria so off I went.
Inspection revealed that the office building was completely intact which was why the alarm hadn’t gone off. That left the mystery as to why there would be a system inside the pool car. I vowed to disembowel whoever had been so careless.
After covering the broken window to keep the weather out I accompanied PC Crook (great name for a copper, huh ?) to the station where I was presented with the stolen “system” to identify.
“What’s so funny ?” asked Crook
What was funny was that the “system” consisted of an old (very) Wyse 50 dumb terminal and an 8 port RS232 multiplexor (mixes multiple signals into one for transmission down a leased line) which we’d kindly part exchanged for a client when they’d upgraded from Unix to Windows Terminal Services some five years ago. We gave them £50 for it. Oh and three small packets each which, supposedly, contained a 256Mb DIMM memory module. I say supposedly as I wasn’t allowed to touch any of the “valuables” ‘coz the fingerprint man hadn’t worked his magic on them yet.
The “system” hadn’t come from the car at all but from a small shed at the back of the office which we use to keep packaging & stuff in before it goes to the recyclers. We don’t even have a lock on the door. The “system” had been stuck at the back there rather than have it cluttering up the workshop.
“Can you put a value on it sir ?” said Crook, writing it all down for me to sign as a statement.
“About fourpence” I said pointing to the Wyse 50.
“And the multiplexor ?” “Another fourpence”
Given that memory is pretty cheap these days I estimated that the memory might amount to as much as £150. Engineer Garry was having a few days off so I vowed to have a word with him about leaving valuables in the car.
I have to say that the fuzz were pretty good. You hear so many stories about them not being bothered with “property crime” yet they’d identified the problem, caught the miscreants and followed up all in the space of a couple of hours. What’s absolutely appalling is not just that some useless oafs cause so much waste of time and unnecessary expense (fixing broken windows, court time, police time, my time etc etc) but that they’re so thick as to risk their liberty (OK, 30 minutes community service and a £10 fine) for stuff worth so little (my estimate of 8p may be over the top) and, even worse, to so stupid as to be marching about in public with stolen goods in full view. So much for Education, Education, Education.
Fire Fire
A couple of days later Keef arrived at work his usual 30 minutes after everybody else – in his defence he does work late too.
“Have you seen that ?” he asked. THAT being a huge plume of black smoke.
Firstly, on Spring Bank Holiday Monday I got a call from the fuzz. Apparently a patrol car had stopped some yoofs pushing a cart through a local housing estate – the cart bearing, amongst other things, a “computer system” (which could mean a multitude of things) and some computer parts. When questioned they admitted that the stuff had come from our premises. Which was strange ‘coz the burglar alarm hadn’t gone off, otherwise we’d have had a call from the security monitoring company. This is the point at which the panic sets in. Which machine did the nick ? A server ? Wilma, Barney, Homer, Kenny (killed off twice already) or Bart ? Please God, not Bart. There’s so much development code on Bart and, despite daily backups I’d rather not have to put their fidelity to the test.
The police had been down to the office to investigate and had also found that the engineer’s pool car had been broken into (smashed window) – please could I meet them there to investigate and identify the stuff. The car doesn’t get used out of hours as, if they take it home, the staff get taxed on the “benefit in kind” so it gets left in out (locked) car park. Fortunately the weather was too crap (as usual) for a BBQ and I wasn’t full of beer or sangria so off I went.
Inspection revealed that the office building was completely intact which was why the alarm hadn’t gone off. That left the mystery as to why there would be a system inside the pool car. I vowed to disembowel whoever had been so careless.
After covering the broken window to keep the weather out I accompanied PC Crook (great name for a copper, huh ?) to the station where I was presented with the stolen “system” to identify.
“What’s so funny ?” asked Crook
What was funny was that the “system” consisted of an old (very) Wyse 50 dumb terminal and an 8 port RS232 multiplexor (mixes multiple signals into one for transmission down a leased line) which we’d kindly part exchanged for a client when they’d upgraded from Unix to Windows Terminal Services some five years ago. We gave them £50 for it. Oh and three small packets each which, supposedly, contained a 256Mb DIMM memory module. I say supposedly as I wasn’t allowed to touch any of the “valuables” ‘coz the fingerprint man hadn’t worked his magic on them yet.
The “system” hadn’t come from the car at all but from a small shed at the back of the office which we use to keep packaging & stuff in before it goes to the recyclers. We don’t even have a lock on the door. The “system” had been stuck at the back there rather than have it cluttering up the workshop.
“Can you put a value on it sir ?” said Crook, writing it all down for me to sign as a statement.
“About fourpence” I said pointing to the Wyse 50.
“And the multiplexor ?” “Another fourpence”
Given that memory is pretty cheap these days I estimated that the memory might amount to as much as £150. Engineer Garry was having a few days off so I vowed to have a word with him about leaving valuables in the car.
I have to say that the fuzz were pretty good. You hear so many stories about them not being bothered with “property crime” yet they’d identified the problem, caught the miscreants and followed up all in the space of a couple of hours. What’s absolutely appalling is not just that some useless oafs cause so much waste of time and unnecessary expense (fixing broken windows, court time, police time, my time etc etc) but that they’re so thick as to risk their liberty (OK, 30 minutes community service and a £10 fine) for stuff worth so little (my estimate of 8p may be over the top) and, even worse, to so stupid as to be marching about in public with stolen goods in full view. So much for Education, Education, Education.
Fire Fire
A couple of days later Keef arrived at work his usual 30 minutes after everybody else – in his defence he does work late too.
“Have you seen that ?” he asked. THAT being a huge plume of black smoke.
“Looks like it’s coming from near Nathan’s” I said – Nathan’s being a long standing client with a warehouse and transport yard on another industrial estate about half a mile away as the crow flies. We phoned Nathan’s to see if all was well. No reply. We tried logging on to their server using the VPN. Nothing. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
Then the local radio news broadcast an item about “our” fire. It wasn’t Nathan’s but the factory right next door. We had consulted with that business to replace their network a few years ago but had lost out on price to someone else. What did they do ? Manufacture oil based products and lubricants and rumour had it that they had recently picked up a contract to manufacture BBQ firelighters. Arghhhhhhhh.
Even though there were several buildings at least 50ft high between us and the fire you could still see the flames quite clearly so intense was the blaze. Luckily for Nathan’s there was a strong breeze blowing – directly away from their office (and the town) so the fire didn’t spread their way nor was there much smoke damage. It took 32 fire engines and all day to get the conflagration under control and, looking at the remains, there was clearly no chance the computers would survive and someone will have a huge disaster recovery job to do on their system. I just hope they didn’t keep their main backups on the premises as even a good fireproof safe wouldn’t have survived that.
Several days later Nathan’s called us in a bit of a panic. “We can smell burning” they said “we think it’s YOUR network switch”. Funny that isn’t it how people ascribe ownership according to how well things are going – a bit like the wife when she says something like “Hasn’t my son done well” but, if he’s been bad it’s “Look what your son’s done now”.
So, Garry hot footed it round (should that be firewalked ? J) and pronounced that the pong wasn’t OUR switch but an adjacent PC (bought direct from a well known mail order supplier) that was frying its power supply. So, thankfully, we were off the hook, but it could see why they would be a bit twitchy.
The Heat is On
Recently we had to introduce a new server as a replacement for Bart. The new one is called Barney and I guess it doesn’t take a genius to work out the way we choose server names. The basic problem was that both of Bart’s CPU cooling fans failed within a short timespan and the chips overheated. Which caused the operating system to screw up some important files. Which meant we were in danger of losing a lot of development code. Mrs R religiously backs up the systems to DAT tape every night but, nevertheless, getting everything back the way it was takes more than pushing a few buttons and there’s a lot of stress involved until you know it’s all working properly.
Initially, after cooling down and restoring the damaged system files Bart seemed OK but, sadly, was never quite his former self and would crash several times a day causing frayed tempers when programmers lost even a few lines of work. Hence the rise of Barney who sports dual Xeon processors, 80Gb RAID 5 hard disk array and 2Gb RAM.
At this time of year a lot of the hardware failures we have to deal with are related to excessive heat so it’s worthwhile you opening up your system cases and checking that both the CPU fan is working and that it’s not getting clogged up with fluff and dust. You can clean out any muck either with a soft paintbrush (turn the computer off first) or with an air duster (known in Holland as a spuitbus met lucht om stof weg te blazen). Either way, a stitch in time and all that may save you a load of time, effort, grief and, of course, money.
If you’re not sure how to identify the CPU inside your machine then the book of the month has an illustration on page 498.
Finale
When Garry returned after his short break I asked him about the memory being left in the car. “’Sno problem” he said casually “It was worthless”. Apparently the packets had been empty – just left over from an upgrade he’d performed the week previously. Amazing the effort some people will go to to get money the “easy” way – it would be simpler just to get a job.