• Homonculus (unregistered) in reply to jimicus

    Actually this isn't so far-fetched. One day I went to the data center to install some new servers, and heard a constant "beep beep beep" coming from one of our racks. Go over to inspect, and one of the servers had a failed fan in the power supply.

    There were no temperature warnings because frankly all of the other cooling was keeping it below redline, and for some reason, even though the error lamp was on and the management controller beeping continuously, it never sent an SNMP alert.

    It was an old server, and we were unable to source a new fan, so we just left it there, in that condition. We repurposed it as a web server so there's no data on it to be lost, and it's been running for a year and a half now.

  • (cs)

    thank you your article is very google but more in the http://www.scooter-parts-manufacturer.com

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to bjolling
    bjolling:
    His money has been used to pay the pension of the generation before him and logically your money will be used to pay him.
    It's a government-run Ponzi scheme.
  • Clic (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    A better analogy might be: if a clerical worker in a hospital goes into your room and notices that the heart-lung machine to which you are connected is running, but doesn't understand that if IT stops, then YOU will stop shortly thereafter, and unplugs it anyway to save electricity, are you saying that though it was an honest mistake, that he should not be charged with murder?

    IANAL but I would say no, that would be manslaughter, surely?

  • (cs) in reply to Jason
    Jason:
    Wow - Really WTF. Early retirement, is that what they call getting canned for being an idiot in government lingo
    As another respondent noted, typically this means that the employee was given a choice between retiring immediately or being fired. The employer will prefer it if the employee chooses to retire, since that involves far less paperwork and administrative drama; the employee typically also prefers it because it is less of a blot on the résumé. But if the employee doesn't agree to retire, the next step is the termination process.
  • Lee K-T (unregistered) in reply to Homonculus
    Homonculus:
    Actually this isn't so far-fetched. One day I went to the data center to install some new servers, and heard a constant "beep beep beep" coming from one of our racks. Go over to inspect, and one of the servers had a failed fan in the power supply.

    There were no temperature warnings because frankly all of the other cooling was keeping it below redline, and for some reason, even though the error lamp was on and the management controller beeping continuously, it never sent an SNMP alert.

    It was an old server, and we were unable to source a new fan, so we just left it there, in that condition. We repurposed it as a web server so there's no data on it to be lost, and it's been running for a year and a half now.

    And it's been beeping 24/24 7/7 for a year and a half until someone finally shot it down with a rifle...

  • (cs) in reply to Lee K-T
    Lee K-T:
    Homonculus:
    [E]ven though the error lamp was on and the management controller beeping continuously, it never sent an SNMP alert. [...] We repurposed it as a web server so there's no data on it to be lost, and it's been running for a year and a half now.
    And it's been beeping 24/24 7/7 for a year and a half until someone finally shot it down with a rifle...
    And it didn't send an SNMP alert for that either.
  • draeath (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    OutlawProgrammer:
    snoofle:
    Fast Eddie:
    autoplonk:
    snoofle:
    Oh, btw, this guy now gets to sit at home and collect a pension as compensation for the damage he inflicted - wonderful!

    Right, because if you screw up, you should have the pension you paid into for years taken away from you, and have to die penniless under a bridge.

    I think you mean the pension that I and all the other taxpayers paid into, so yes.

    But I'm not completely heartless. He can start collecting right after the costs for the equipment, time lost, and labor have been repaid.

    Agreed - this wasn't an accident - it was an intentional act - stupidity doesn't excuse responsibility!

    It's one thing if the guy broke down the door and burned the tech lab to the ground with a flamethrower. This guy was just an idiot who made a big mistake while trying to do something good. I probably would have fired the guy but it doesn't invalidate everything else that he's done for the organization.

    I agree with your last sentence, but I'm not sure the rest of the analogy is appropriate.

    This guy was obviously not in charge of running the server room, ACs or servers; otherwise he surely would have known why the ACs were running and not to shut them down. He went someplace where he likely had no authority to make changes and shut down equipment when he obviously didn't understand why it was running the first place.

    Even though what he did was a mistake, it was a stupid intentional mistake (granted, access control and temp-alarms could have averted the damage, so there is blame to go around).

    A better analogy might be: if a clerical worker in a hospital goes into your room and notices that the heart-lung machine to which you are connected is running, but doesn't understand that if IT stops, then YOU will stop shortly thereafter, and unplugs it anyway to save electricity, are you saying that though it was an honest mistake, that he should not be charged with murder? In this case, ignorance of the law - or the purpose of the affected equipment - is no excuse.

    In a server room, ignorance of the purpose of the equipment is no excuse when you turn it off and cause damage.

    In other words, if you don't understand why something is doing [whatever], and you shut it off and that subsequently causes damage, then you are responsible and should suffer appropriate consequences.

    No, it's not murder. That would be manslaughter. At least over in this country.

  • Lee K-T (unregistered) in reply to draeath
    snoofle:
    In other words, if you don't understand why something is doing [whatever], and you shut it off and that subsequently causes damage, then you are responsible and should suffer appropriate consequences.

    But still it's a good way to know why it was doing it!

  • (cs) in reply to Ernie
    Ernie:
    The retirement systems of states are like any other pension funds--the employees pay in.

    The one big difference is that politicians find it convenient to "borrow" against the money, occasionally screwing the employees out of their retirement.

    Google "Robert Maxwell" to see if this really is a difference.

    Actually, it probably is. I think Maxwell just spent it outright.

  • (cs) in reply to Nick
    Nick:
    bjolling:
    His money has been used to pay the pension of the generation before him and logically your money will be used to pay him.
    It's a government-run Ponzi scheme.
    Almost but not entirely. I have always considered a pension as a kind of insurance. The insured risk is "reaching pension age". People who reach this age get paid. People who don't reach this age have contributed but never get paid.

    So if the government does a good job of assessing the correct pension age and calculates the appropriate monthly contributions and the payments the system will not implode like a Ponze scheme would.

  • (cs)

    A WTF for me is someone from NOT IT or maintanance simply gaining access to the server room/AC units.

  • notme (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Rob:
    If this story is true (Ha!) there is a lot more wrong here than someone not understanding the importance of ACs in a server room.

    First, the keycard to the server room was unsecured. The whole point of putting in a fancy lock system is so that people can't just 'get in' to the room. The facility manager screwed up big time.

    Second, nobody configured any sort of alerts for when the room was too hot? The servers weren't set to shut down at a certain point? It was just assumed that the AC units could never, ever, ever, in a million years, not be running as expected? That's a huge screw up.

    The way this should of played out is dumb eco-guy wouldn't be able to get into the room to begin with. If he could get in and shut off the AC units, long before any serious damage was caused, someone would have gotten an e-mail/text message/page and been able to turn the AC units back on. Short of that, the servers should have turned themselves off causes no physical damage - just some downtime when everyone gets back in the office and has to wait for the systems to come back up.

    Maybe that's why this story is featured on worsethanfailure.com rather than on we-had-a-problem-but-the-backup-kicked-in-and-everything-was-fine.com.

    I'm sure that every day there are thousands of incidents where something goes wrong but people take steps to correct it or have well-thought-out backup systems and so the situation is quickly handled. Nobody bothers to collect such stories because they are boring. "I was driving yesterday and the light turned red, so I put on the brakes but the car didn't stop, I went right through the light and ..." might well make the beginning of an interesting story -- perhaps amusing, perhaps horrifying, depending on how it ends. "... so I put on the brakes and the car stopped smoothly. Then the light turned green and I went on." makes a very boring story. If you know a web site that collects and publishes stories like that ... don't bother to post the URL, because I can't imagine wanting to read them.

    http://mylifeisaverage.com/

  • nibh (unregistered) in reply to Incredulous
    Incredulous:
    transverbero:
    ForeignStudent:
    The way this should of played out is dumb eco-guy

    should have...should HAVE!!! I still don't understand how it is that even if English is my 3rd language, you americans manage to fuck it up more than me.

    Its their language so they get to fuck it up as much as they want to?

    Wait. What? Their language? Riiiight.

    Considering they already sodomised it enough to warrant being called american english, yep. :) Soon enough it'll be known as american (or amerish?). :)
  • y0da (unregistered) in reply to CoderHero
    CoderHero:
    The real WTF is that they didn't have heat monitoring equipment that would: 1. Shut down servers if it got too hot 2. Notify somebody that the room had gotten to hot

    Recently a thunderstorm happened here at WTFU. Because a powersurge killed the external line the USV kicked in and provided power until the batteries died. The USV (and the overheating servers) sent alarms to the IT peoples offices to notify them of the pewer failure and the heating problem. This hapened on a weekend. Noone was there to get the messages. The external messaging system was shutdown a couple of years ago for financial reasons.

  • K2TheX (unregistered) in reply to Fast Eddie

    Just like you can start collecting your paycheck after all the time you wasted posting comments has been repaid?

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    if a clerical worker in a hospital goes into your room and notices that the heart-lung machine to which you are connected is running, but doesn't understand that if IT stops, then YOU will stop shortly thereafter, and unplugs it anyway to save electricity, are you saying that though it was an honest mistake, that he should not be charged with murder? In this case, ignorance of the law - or the purpose of the affected equipment - is no excuse.

    It would be foolish to charge him with murder. Murder requires intent, so ignorance of the affected equipement (if well-known) is a valid excuse.

    Also, the hospital should share some liability. All heart-lung machines (IIRC) are supposed to have integrated UPS's for at least 15 minutes, and scream bloody murder in that time.

    Also, to respond to a different point made in your post by another user:

    Fast Eddie:
    autoplonk:
    Right, because if you screw up, you should have the pension you paid into for years taken away from you, and have to die penniless under a bridge.
    I think you mean the pension that I and all the other taxpayers paid into, so yes.
    Who pays into a pension system is pretty irrelevent. The total compensation was agreed to when the person signed a contract. If the taxpayers hadn't agreed to provide a pension based on experience, presumably the wages would have been higher by a computable amount.
  • (cs) in reply to ih8u
    ih8u:
    Yeah, I never got that "Fun Sized" bullcrap they try to pull with candy. Twice as big as regular would be fun. Eight times the caramel or chocolate or whatever would be fun.

    Just big enough that you can taste it is not a fun size. It should be called "Bullcrap Size".

    The "fun" part is that you get a two-pound bag of them, and it's not all the same kind so you don't have to buy five regular-sized bars to mix and match flavors.

  • Hatterson (unregistered)

    I fail to see why people are imply that this guy (assuming that everything is true) should have to pay back the cost of the equipment before receiving his pension.

    An employer cannot force an employee to pay for damages unless it's explicitly stated in a signed contract (even those are open to court overview) or the employee agrees to be docked pay or the employer has obtained a court judgement against you An employer cannot withhold money from an employees pension unless the employee agrees to it or has obtained a court judgement against you.

    Assuming the employee is due his pension even if fired with cause (again goes back to the employment contract), then the government (or a private company) would have to take this retired employee to court, specifically quantify the loss, prove this employee was to fault. This fault has to be due to theft, dishonesty, fraud or misconduct. Misconduct would mean the employee, either through intention or negligence, did something which is fundamentally outside the realm of his duties that damaged the company financially.

    In this case you also have to account for negligence on the account of the building manager for leaving his card open and possible negligence on the part of the IT staff for not having temperature monitors/warning. The company must show exactly how much of the damage can be attributed to this specific employee's negligence and how much would be pinned on other employees. Likely this would mean a very long internal investigation followed by lengthy court cases and appeals.

    Long story short, it was likely cheaper for the government to just let this guy go on his merry way than to try and drain his pension.

  • Anon again (unregistered) in reply to Kermos

    Early retirement doesn't mean you qualify for retirement benefits. It means you leave "voluntarily" rather than being fired. If you have racked up whatever is required for benefits (age reached, years worked), you get just what you were promised when you signed on to work there. Of course, if you are an executive in a big corporation and you ran it into bankruptcy, you get a golden parachute. Couldn't resist writing that.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to transverbero
    transverbero:
    ForeignStudent:
    The way this should of played out is dumb eco-guy

    should have...should HAVE!!! I still don't understand how it is that even if English is my 3rd language, you americans manage to fuck it up more than me.

    Its their language so they get to fuck it up as much as they want to?

    Surely you mean: Its there language so they get to fuck it up as much as they want to?

  • Hatterson (unregistered) in reply to ForeignStudent
    ForeignStudent:
    The way this should of played out is dumb eco-guy

    should have...should HAVE!!! I still don't understand how it is that even if English is my 3rd language, you americans manage to fuck it up more than me.

    You're a terrible Grammar Nazi.

    "even if" when you clearly mean "even though" "more than me" when it should be "more than I"

  • MP (unregistered) in reply to OutlawProgrammer
    OutlawProgrammer:
    snoofle:
    Fast Eddie:
    autoplonk:
    snoofle:
    Oh, btw, this guy now gets to sit at home and collect a pension as compensation for the damage he inflicted - wonderful!

    Right, because if you screw up, you should have the pension you paid into for years taken away from you, and have to die penniless under a bridge.

    I think you mean the pension that I and all the other taxpayers paid into, so yes.

    But I'm not completely heartless. He can start collecting right after the costs for the equipment, time lost, and labor have been repaid.

    Agreed - this wasn't an accident - it was an intentional act - stupidity doesn't excuse responsibility!

    It's one thing if the guy broke down the door and burned the tech lab to the ground with a flamethrower. This guy was just an idiot who made a big mistake while trying to do something good. I probably would have fired the guy but it doesn't invalidate everything else that he's done for the organization.

    Not really, he got to the A\C by swiping (excuse the pun) an access card from an empty desk, turned off the A\C, and then sent out a condescending email.

    He should be fired for taking the access card alone.

  • Jill (unregistered)

    This is one reason why Yahoo is building data centers in year-round cooler regions like Upstate New York. http://ycorpblog.com/2009/06/30/serving-up-greener-data-centers/

  • Anonymoose (unregistered)

    This sounds really funny and almost ironic.

    I came into my server room last Friday to a flood from our AC.

    Replaced with backup "Portable AC" unit and requested a new one.

    Answer ? "The hot weather is almost over..."

  • Tama (unregistered) in reply to Lee K-T
    Lee K-T:
    Homonculus:
    Actually this isn't so far-fetched. One day I went to the data center to install some new servers, and heard a constant "beep beep beep" coming from one of our racks. Go over to inspect, and one of the servers had a failed fan in the power supply.

    There were no temperature warnings because frankly all of the other cooling was keeping it below redline, and for some reason, even though the error lamp was on and the management controller beeping continuously, it never sent an SNMP alert.

    It was an old server, and we were unable to source a new fan, so we just left it there, in that condition. We repurposed it as a web server so there's no data on it to be lost, and it's been running for a year and a half now.

    And it's been beeping 24/24 7/7 for a year and a half until someone finally shot it down with a rifle...

    It's Sputnik!

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Jill
    Jill:
    This is one reason why Yahoo is building data centers in year-round cooler regions like Upstate New York. http://ycorpblog.com/2009/06/30/serving-up-greener-data-centers/

    Well, there's hydro, cooler temps, good network connectivity, and it's geographically stable. Why not?

  • (cs)

    When I was in the US Navy as an Electronics Tech I had a chronic problem with Radio Techs on one particular shift turning off the air conditioning in the radio room when they got cold. Being from southern states, their idea of 'cold' was 'under 80 degrees F'. I kept getting the classic 'I don't know who turned it off' run around from them until I threatened the senior radio tech on the problem shift with his personally getting written up as the 'guy in charge' if it didn't stop...

  • greg (unregistered) in reply to OutlawProgrammer
    OutlawProgrammer:
    snoofle:
    Fast Eddie:
    autoplonk:
    snoofle:
    Oh, btw, this guy now gets to sit at home and collect a pension as compensation for the damage he inflicted - wonderful!

    Right, because if you screw up, you should have the pension you paid into for years taken away from you, and have to die penniless under a bridge.

    I think you mean the pension that I and all the other taxpayers paid into, so yes.

    But I'm not completely heartless. He can start collecting right after the costs for the equipment, time lost, and labor have been repaid.

    Agreed - this wasn't an accident - it was an intentional act - stupidity doesn't excuse responsibility!

    It's one thing if the guy broke down the door and burned the tech lab to the ground with a flamethrower. This guy was just an idiot who made a big mistake while trying to do something good. I probably would have fired the guy but it doesn't invalidate everything else that he's done for the organization.

    He did break in. Did you miss the part about the key card? He obviously violated security policy to 'help'

  • Cotsios (unregistered) in reply to GCU Arbitrary

    Brittain is an island. Northern Ireland is on another island.

  • SomeName (unregistered)

    Only 100 F? My GPU has survived 110 C.

Leave a comment on “Classic WTF: I'm Sure You Can Deal”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article