Honey! It was Awful!

Published on January 31, 2007 By Dr Guy In Internet

The computer was down, and we had to think for ourselves!

Remember that old joke? I still get a chuckle out of it. Back in the early 90s, I networked a 400 person state agency (we used 10Base2 and LanManger - yea, dont ask!) with a couple of other engineers. And of course after they were connected, if something happened (with LAN Manager and ThinNet? When did it not!), the users would stomp their feet and state "I cant do my work! The LAND system is down". Not even realizing that just a couple of months earlier, there was NO LAND system! Still, it was a good experience as it taught me what to expect.

Fast forward to 2007. No, the LAND system did not go down, but Verizon pulled the plug on our DS3. About 10am (and it is still down), and promised it would be fixed in 2 hours (want to buy a bridge?).

While work did not grind to a halt, it did put a big crimp in a lot of work. 15 years ago, the LAND system had to be working, or the secretaries were not. Today, the Internet has to be working, or the engineers are not! Seriously, I could not get answers to a couple of tech questions, nor configure the iSCSI for a Cluster of servers because silly me, thought I could pull up the manual on line at any time!

My LAND system is down, and I cant Work!

Now I know how the secretaries felt 15 years ago.

Comments

just john

on Jan 31, 2007

A few years ago our IT Director was let go. When he left there were many bills that we had to figure out what they were for. The former manager had a bad habit of changing things and waiting months to disconnect a service. One of them happened to be a long haul T1 circuit between two of our offices. The guy who picked up the bill paying responsibility couldn't figure out what this $2500 a month circuit was so he had it disconnected.

Flash forward 10 months when the company finally got around to processing the disconnect. Lights out! Of course this event inspired a "wtf" moment followed later that day by a "stfu, we really got this circuit for free for 10 months?".

We couldn't call the original company to have them turn it back up because we didn't wan't to spend $25k. Besides if it took 10 months to turn it off, how long was it going to take to turn back on.

Gideon MacLeish

on Jan 31, 2007

John,

How's everything going at your end? How are the babies doing?

(sorry for the hijack, dr. But I didn't see any updates since the last set of pics).

just john

on Jan 31, 2007

How's everything going at your end? How are the babies doing?

Everything is still ... well .. everything. The babies are doing fine. We have two at 5 pounds and one trailing right behind. They are starting to get taking the bottle down better with each feeding. With any luck we should have them home in a couple of weeks

Dr Guy

on Jan 31, 2007

We couldn't call the original company to have them turn it back up because we didn't wan't to spend $25k. Besides if it took 10 months to turn it off, how long was it going to take to turn back on.

! You know, with the crap going on between the Agency, the IT clowns, and the Outsourcing company, they may have pulled the plug intentionally! Boy would I love that!

Dr Guy

on Jan 31, 2007

Being the older brother of premie twins, that is great news! Trust me! And just what the doctored ordered!

TheSnowbear

on Jan 31, 2007

Dr...

Try this senereo.. I work at a very very large corp that handles credit cards..(don't hit me.. I don't call anyone) a year ago... some tech forgot to do the updates. Thus the checkdrafts couldn't post, the corrections, etc. They discovered this at 6:30 a.m. When the work day was to start. *should have been done at midnight obviously. So... over 1,000 employees were sitting around, at 4 different sites... *roughtly 4,000 totaly* gettting paid, to : talk, watch tv, watch movies, call friends, play cards..etc. heeheh.. The system was finally up about 3:30. That night... lol same thing....*roflmbo.....We were down until about 2:30 that day.. that night.. forgot to update everything but the checkdrafts.... We came up about noon that day. They did a quick calculations.... It cost the company 3.5 million easy. loss income, + salary, etc. We did find out 6 IT personal were requested to vacate their desks. So... look at the bright side..lol it could be worse...

Dr Guy

on Jan 31, 2007

We did find out 6 IT personal were requested to vacate their desks.

Great story and a just reward. Now if we could get Verizon to do that (8pm, and still off line.)

Jythier

on Jan 31, 2007

Ever read the book by Max Barry, Company? In one part of it, the network goes down, and nobody can do any work for days... but then they start working anyway, without the network... it's a really funny read.

MasonM

on Jan 31, 2007

Technology is great...when it works

Dr Guy

on Feb 01, 2007

Yea, maybe we need to re-invent the pen and paper.

Dr Guy

on Feb 01, 2007

Technology is great...when it works

It is fixed, but they still dont know how or why. I have seen that before, and I think I know where the skunk is.

M-Post

on Feb 03, 2007

Hehe, I've seen stuff like this when the Lan goes down on the ship. Since alot of work is now done on comps, mostly via the ships own server.. when it goes down work almost crawls to a dead stop..

Is fun though when we have those nice long down times

Dr Guy

on Feb 03, 2007

Reply By: M-Post

I imagine it is a more serious problem on a ship than in an office.

How have you been? Just get back to port? Or just getting re-acquainted with your land legs?

foreverserenity

on Feb 04, 2007

Yea, maybe we need to re-invent the pen and paper.

! What's those again?!

The same thing happened to us the other day, our Lan system went down, because of an upgrade, took the whole day. Needless to say, some people walked around totally lost, others decided to do other things, including me - work of course!

Dr Guy

on Feb 04, 2007

including me - work of course!!

Work? I would have worked on my tan!

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