• DerButtcheeken (unregistered)

    Maintenance sounds like they were brought over from the former East Germany

  • JimmyCrackedCorn (unregistered)

    I could almost hear the theme to Law and Order..'These are his stories'...bonk bonk...

    And what is done to the servers are almost criminal, to be sure.

  • QJo (unregistered)

    A bit thin.

    "Under-educated maintenance man moves an ill-serviced and ill-supported server rack and by doing so disconnects the internet. Suggestions from the IT department that the servers need to be housed somewhere less prone to disruption appear to be falling upon deaf ears."

    Move along there, nothing to see.

  • (cs)

    This post is brought to you by Rackspace.

  • incassum (unregistered)

    Internet access for the entire campus can't have been that important. If it were, then that gateway server would have been in a locked rack in a locked room.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to incassum
    incassum:
    Internet access for the entire campus can't have been that important. If it were, then that gateway server would have been in a locked rack in a locked room.

    To which Maintenance would have the master key, natch.

    Rule 1: In case of outage, look for the ladder and open ceiling tile.

  • Pista (unregistered)

    Today we've got a new "record" in lousy writeup... Attaboy!

  • (cs) in reply to Pista
    Pista:
    Today we've got a new "record" in lousy writeup... Attaboy!

    Agreed. This is one of the worst written articles I've ever seen here. Not only is the story bland (yet another "Maintenance staff screws up" story) but it had the random Ninja/Five Rings (which by the way is SAMURAI, not Ninja. And Ninjas didn't use Katanas either) theme that's thrown in there for no reason.

    Where do we get these people?

  • ANON (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    A bit thin.

    "Under-educated maintenance man moves an ill-serviced and ill-supported server rack and by doing so disconnects the internet. Suggestions from the IT department that the servers need to be housed somewhere less prone to disruption appear to be falling upon deaf ears."

    Move along there, nothing to see.

    Agree. So much to read for such a lousy WTF. And a NSFW picture.

  • drake (unregistered)

    I sense a lot of butthurt weeaboos a-coming

  • moz (unregistered)

    All that text without ever revealing if Hanzo fixed the problem, or if the gateway died again after half an hour because of the heat.

  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to DerButtcheeken
    DerButtcheeken:
    Maintenance sounds like they were brought over from the former East Germany
    Dresden is in former East Germany.
  • anonymous (unregistered)

    So the maintaince guy fixed the most important problem (broken AC) but doing so caused a minor problem? Well, next time they're gonna make the IT fix their own damn AC.

  • Anonymous Will (unregistered)
    his eyes met a more unpleasant site: bare buttcheeks
    Couldn't even write "sight" correctly.
  • Kevin (unregistered)

    So someone accidentally unplugged a gateway that was obviously positioned poorly? It sounds like TRWTF is an IT department that cares so little that they don't insist on being the one's to move 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars worth of equipment themselves.

    CAPTCHA: nobis... someone finally combined the words noob and novice.

  • (cs)
    What the article said:
    These are his stories.
    What the article should have said:
    This is his story.
    Sigh.
  • TheDawgLives (unregistered)

    They didn't even answer the most important question... WHY was the presidents' daughter sick?

  • Krunt (unregistered)

    I see we're scraping the barrel somewhat lately, eh DailyWTF?

  • Don (unregistered) in reply to incassum
    incassum:
    Internet access for the entire campus can't have been that important. If it were, then that gateway server would have been in a locked rack in a locked room.
    Clearly you've never worked on campus .. or even in some of the more "established" companies who believe maintenance are as good as IT when it comes to implementing servers or systems.

    A while back I left a dinosaur of a company that believed, once they "managed out" their then-CIO for doing his job, that the company could do better.

    Cue the CIO finding another job (better paid, better hours, better everything pretty much), and the CEO through his brilliance putting the IT department under first the Engineering department reporting to a geriatric mechanical engineering manager who still called computers "those flashy pinball things" (lets just say that didn't work well), then under maintenance (hey they crawl around in vents too right). Competent IT leadership? Pah! Who needs it?!

    In fact, both the CEO and CFO were so adamant that IT didn't need leadership, they went ahead and cancelled all ongoing recruitment for another CIO, simply spreading out the CIO's job to his remaining managers and team leads.

    I think they fell over a few years after I left, during a multi-million pound IT project that just kinda.. fizzled. They're owned by their competitors now.

    So yeah, in short, I can well believe this happened as presented. Been there, burned my own ass, and happily employed by a company that recognizes the need for competent IT leadership

  • dutop (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    DerButtcheeken:
    Maintenance sounds like they were brought over from the former East Germany
    Dresden is in former East Germany.
    Dresden is in current East Germany.
  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    What the article said:
    These are his stories.
    What the article should have said:
    This is his story.
    Sigh.

    I was debating that exact line, but it's part of a series of WTFs sent in by the same guy. It'll make sense in future articles where there'll be a link to other stories.

  • Mike (unregistered)

    I liked the story, but there is no WTF here

  • My Name (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    DerButtcheeken:
    Maintenance sounds like they were brought over from the former East Germany
    Dresden is in former East Germany.

    True, which also means it NOT in Hesse, but in Saxony (Sachsen).

    Hesse is a former western State of Germany

  • m (unregistered)

    "Hesse University’s Dresden" oO There are in fact two universities called TUD: Technische Universität Darmstadt (Hesse) Technische Universität Dresden (Saxony)

    They might have been mixed up in the text.

  • (cs) in reply to dutop
    dutop:
    Dresden is in current East Germany.
    Technically, Dresden is in the part of Germany that used to be labeled somewhat-inaccurately East Germany. (“DDR” would be far more accurate.) Now it is in the part that you might label eastern Germany, but it is also where it has always been: in Saxony (though “Sachsen” would definitely be most completely correct).

    Not that being in Dresden is necessary for this story to work. Many universities have this sort of situation festering in a backroom somewhere, as its all too common for them to want to focus on what they think is their main concerns (teaching, research, etc.) without realising that communications are a key part of them…

  • F (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    DerButtcheeken:
    Maintenance sounds like they were brought over from the former East Germany
    Dresden is in former East Germany.

    Not any more. Maintenance moved it.

  • ® (unregistered) in reply to F

    ... moved it where, exactly?

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    dutop:
    Dresden is in current East Germany.
    Technically, Dresden is in the part of Germany that used to be labeled somewhat-inaccurately East Germany. (“DDR” would be far more accurate.) Now it is in the part that you might label eastern Germany, but it is also where it has always been: in Saxony (though “Sachsen” would definitely be most completely correct).

    Not that being in Dresden is necessary for this story to work. Many universities have this sort of situation festering in a backroom somewhere, as its all too common for them to want to focus on what they think is their main concerns (teaching, research, etc.) without realising that communications are a key part of them…

    You'd be surprised (or perhaps not) how much major companies in the real world skimp on communications. It is of course a false economy, as it does not take much for your potential client to lose patience with you if you can't get the telemeeting software to work.

  • (cs) in reply to ®
    ®:
    ... moved it where, exactly?
    Unregistered user "®" deserves blue just for the username.
  • RFoxmich (unregistered) in reply to incassum
    incassum:
    Internet access for the entire campus can't have been that important. If it were, then that gateway server would have been in a locked rack in a locked room.

    LMFAO

  • (cs) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    You'd be surprised (or perhaps not) how much major companies in the real world skimp on communications. It is of course a false economy, as it does not take much for your potential client to lose patience with you if you can't get the telemeeting software to work.
    It's weird. People say things like this, and I have no doubt that it's true, at least some of the time. However, the largest single company(*) that I ever worked for (8000 people world-wide when I joined, 10000 when I left) had the most closely-managed IT systems I've ever seen. Then again, *everything* that company does relies on IT in some way or other (usually a MAJOR way, and when it's not MAJOR it is TOTAL), so it wouldn't have got to that size without competent IT management.

    (*) I currently work for a much smaller company that recently became a sub-subsidiary of EADS^WAirbus, but that doesn't count because it's a legally-separate company

  • (cs) in reply to Mark Bowytz
    Mark Bowytz:
    Steve The Cynic:
    What the article said:
    These are his stories.
    What the article should have said:
    This is his story.
    Sigh.

    I was debating that exact line, but it's part of a series of WTFs sent in by the same guy. It'll make sense in future articles where there'll be a link to other stories.

    "one of his stories", then?

  • Chaos215bar2 (unregistered)

    Was that picture really necessary?

  • neminem (unregistered)

    Yeah, article would have been much improved without a picture I had to block for my own not-puking. It still would've sucked, though. "Maintenance person disconnects an important wire while doing something" is a pretty common story, that definitely doesn't need multiple paragraphs to describe it.

    Anyway, at least he just unplugged it. A couple years ago, our whole office lost internet for much of a day, which it turned out was because they were doing some remodeling, and an electrician drilled a hole through a wall and accidentally drilled a whole right through an important wire and didn't notice. That would have made a much more amusing (but still one sentence) story.

  • (cs) in reply to Krunt
    Krunt:
    I see we're scraping the barrel somewhat lately, eh DailyWTF?
    Maybe people are learning not to screw up.

    I'll be here all week.

  • German (unregistered) in reply to My Name
    My Name:
    faoileag:
    DerButtcheeken:
    Maintenance sounds like they were brought over from the former East Germany
    Dresden is in former East Germany.

    True, which also means it NOT in Hesse, but in Saxony (Sachsen).

    Hesse is a former western State of Germany

    Western state, eastern town, I think that's what you call covering your bases.

    Also, Hanz is not a usual German name, it's Hans. And Han[zs]o is not a common nickname; if anything, it would be Hansi. The name Gertrude at least exists, though it's a rather uncommon variant of Gertrud which itself it not exactly the most popular name ...

    Looking forward to Hansi's other stories (not).

  • Fred (unregistered)

    So, the IT department had their equipment moved and they never asked where it was going until everything went down?

    Then the IT guys barge in and berate some poor guy that is just trying to do his job and fix the air conditioning, belittling him because he didn't know that a single cord controlled the entire network connection?

    These IT guys sound like jerks to me, glad I don't have to work with them.

  • F (unregistered) in reply to Fred
    Fred:
    So, the IT department had their equipment moved and they never asked where it was going until everything went down?

    Then the IT guys barge in and berate some poor guy that is just trying to do his job and fix the air conditioning, belittling him because he didn't know that a single cord controlled the entire network connection?

    These IT guys sound like jerks to me, glad I don't have to work with them.

    In fact, if Maintenance managed to move the server racks and get everything including the Internet connection back up and running without IT's intervention, they did pretty well.

    Whereas if they needed IT's help (which certainly sounds likely), then why didn't "Gertrude" know where the kit had gone?

  • veniam (unregistered) in reply to Shoreline
    Shoreline:
    Krunt:
    I see we're scraping the barrel somewhat lately, eh DailyWTF?
    Maybe people are learning not to screw up.

    I'll be here all week.

    You win the thread; congratulations.

  • (cs) in reply to Mark Bowytz
    Mark Bowytz:
    I was debating that exact line, but it's part of a series of WTFs sent in by the same guy. It'll make sense in future articles where there'll be a link to other stories.
    When you say "a link" do you mean "a link" or "many links"?

    I'm sure I'm not the only one hoping you mean "a link", because today's story had about as much meat as a single Error'd item, and as much need for more than 50 words to describe it.

  • (cs)

    The story reminds me of an earlier day. We used punched cards for programming then, and I would get an occasional "I only changed one card and now it doesn't work". They would attempt to blame the machine for some malfunction, but I would reply "check that card". For some reason, I was usually right. Strange, but true.

  • (cs)
    Hanzo returned to the IT office and checked that the connection was back. Google pinged back, with no more than the usual dropped packets. "‘Pay attention even to trifles,’" Hanzo said, quoting The Book of Five Rings. "It’s full of useful advice for IT, you know."

    ...he says as he ignores the trifling nuisance of dropped packets. Occasional packet loss is part of the unavoidable lambda effect that plagues network programming, but having any positive non-zero percentage packet loss consistent enough to be deemed 'usual' suggests a fixable client-side problem; our network ninja should probably look into that

  • verto (unregistered) in reply to ccj
    ccj:
    but having any positive non-zero percentage packet loss
    As opposed to those nasty positive zeros?

    (If you're going to mention floating point, that is TRWTF.)

  • HowItWorks (unregistered)
    ... A single Ethernet cord dangled down the front of the metal rack.

    The gateway’s Ethernet port was empty.

    If the gateway PC has only a single Ethernet for connectivity, that would be a real WTF.

  • Anomaly (unregistered) in reply to ®
    ®:
    ... moved it where, exactly?

    Poland.

  • (cs) in reply to neminem

    One place I worked at had a location in Hong Kong. One day they decided to do some Feng Shui and just had to move the servers around because their current location wasn't harmonious. Needless to say, they dropped the machines and were down for a week while new servers were bought, configured, and installed (in the new proper Feng Shui location).

  • Pauller (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Will
    Anonymous Will:
    his eyes met a more unpleasant site: bare buttcheeks
    Couldn't even write "sight" correctly.

    If you take that line literally, his eyes were touching the butt cheeks (eyes were touching the site), which is an even grosser thought ... <shudder> ...

  • pinger (unregistered)

    Since when could you ping Google?

  • n_slash_a (unregistered) in reply to HowItWorks
    HowItWorks:
    ... A single Ethernet cord dangled down the front of the metal rack.

    The gateway’s Ethernet port was empty.

    If the gateway PC has only a single Ethernet for connectivity, that would be a real WTF.
    That is what I was thinking, the entire campus through a single computer and single ethernet cable?

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to Shoreline
    Shoreline:
    Krunt:
    I see we're scraping the barrel somewhat lately, eh DailyWTF?
    Maybe people are learning not to screw up.

    I'll be here all week.

    Ah, a slow learner.

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