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Admin
Sorry, but it don't work that way out here in the real werrrld.
Admin
Well then you must be fresh to the whole internets thing then, because I know people who read things on the internet and believe them without any reasearch. (needles ungaspump handles, payphones, ... etc) I guess if some clown has a fake email it must be real! No verification needed! Nope, not for you!
/Moron //Snopes.com
Admin
Perhaps the manager who left the access keys on his desk should be disciplined.
Admin
2 things - number one this is to perfect to be real. It likely is a story someone thought up to try to frame environmental concerns (such as using power for A/C over a weekend) as being stupid. Indeed it can be quite annoying to see the lengths people will go to be environmentally friendly - such as driving across town in heavy traffic during an ozone alert to deposit 3 plastic bottles in a recycling bin.
On the automated alert issue I am a systems administrator and if the IT guys referenced were govie hacks well those are worth exactly nothing. I have seen govies ignore dire warnings on their blackberries because it's a weekend and union rules say that it isn't my problem - etc. Realize that firing a govie is basically impossible so nobody fears getting canned over incompetence. If they were contractors however all bets are off.
Admin
initials JJN - I knew a guy like the comic book guy in the Simpsons, Jeff Nonken with those initials. I think he had the balls to report something like that - he had little patience for the teeming morons
Admin
True.
However, as someone who used to manage [physical] access control for a government agency, I can tell you that if someone is high enough in the chain of command, they WILL get access to whatever they want. And that someone may not have been hired; they were probably elected.
(Call me bitter but it happens on both sides of the political spectrum;-)
Admin
I'm thinking fake on grounds of people don't just not show up and run the government on the weekends so somebody would've noticed, but I'm sure this has happened before but caught before there was much trouble...
Admin
Admin
50 cent temperature sensor is unreliable, you say? like the LM75 temperature sensor used in, I dunno, every SMART-aware disk drive, ACPI motherboard, video card, and HP inkjet printer since the mid to late 90s?
believe it or not, things like this actually are reliable, and can be had for a lot less when your order quantity is on the order of ten thousand a month.
Admin
At least the employee had the courtesy to email. I used to work somewhere, where my first Monday morning task was to go and turn back on the aircon. I never found out who it was, or I'd be writing this from a high security cell.
Admin
Must... kill... loser.
Admin
Servers I worked on had it built in Enter my pager / phone number, hit enter Send a test page Done, for as long as the server runs Going back over 10 years ago thsi was available & free & easy & did not cost anything
Could this happen? Oh Yeah!!! I've had employees unplug routers & DSL/lines to plug in their gameboys or phone chargers Had an employee type in "disable login" on a Novell server He was training himself, learning what commands did Didn't know hot to re-enable login...that was another chapter Started getting calls - people can't login
Admin
I worked at a place where non-technical management did something similar...
They set the AC to turn off on week-ends if the server room was unoccupied. Heat alarms go off, IT is notified, IT goes into the server room and the AC kicked on. IT goes home, room is unoccupied, AC goes off, heat rises, IT is notified.
Lather rinse repeat.
I think the same manager set a block on dialing long distance numbers... including the fax machines and the modem pool.
So, is this story fake or an embellishment? Probably. Is there a grain of truth? Ja Joo Betcha!
Admin
you're an idiot if you think this happened IRL.
Admin
This has actually happened to one of our clients, too. They kept calling and complaining that their system wasn't performing a nightly backup. We'd check the logs, and sure enough, it wasn't finishing. In fact, everything would stop at about 11pm, and the server would boot up again about 3:15am each morning.
After several days of us saying 'There's something cutting power to the server, there's really nothing we can do' our client asked and found out that the custodians were turning the power off everything at the breaker!
Admin
Don't believe it. Which state? Which 'local media'? Sure someone could be so stupid but why the vagueness? I understand deleting the details from someones personal email but if it's been in local media then the name of the state and the department is supposedly in the public domain. And there's a bunch of sucker around the web who copy this crap for their blogs and websites.
Admin
A perfect case of if it is not your sphere of expertise......... keep your fingers to yourself! Or to put it in the vernacular. If you are not sure of things don't F%$k with them!
Admin
Um, this sounds way too much like an Urban Legend to be accurate. Can you give me some information to confirm -- like, what state? Which department? This century or last century?
Admin
Fake or not, I found the story entertaining. I suppose it could happen. Hell, I work with a guy that only orders crimp fittings for hydraulic hoses in odd numbers. Eventho' we all tell him not to, since one fitting is as useless as having none. Three fittings is great for one hose, except that you are left with one fitting left that collects dust for months on end. He's the kind of guy that would think about turning off A/C units in a server room just to save some $$$ on electricity.
Admin
So wucking fhut! Pass the beer nutts!
Admin
So wucking fhat! Pass the beer nutts!
Admin
Admin
While the story might be fake, it surely causes havoc !
5 of our servers in a single rack went offline at around the same time. Upon investigation, we realised that our Data center operator had shut off the air con over the weekend !!
Admin
Our only Y2K was that the management had a party on the roof, and turned the aircondition off because of the noise.
They would probably have remembered to turn it on again, when they went inside, if it weren't that one of the guests put his head in front of the fireworks.
I was alerted by SMS from the monitoring system, around 3pm when some servers started to be invisible.
The graphs showed a nice textbook exponential T=Tmax-k*(e^-t) curve...
Actually the servers were fine, it was the routers, which were going dysfunctional.
Once the temperature started to drop, everything went green again.
Admin
There is a security breach in that department.
How can someone just get the keycard from the facility manager's desk just like that?
That facility manager needs to have his security reviewed.
Admin
And scientists still wonder where all that global warming is coming from? I really wonder when people don't stop and think "someone must have come up with a solution for this?". You know how 'much' server monitoring costs?
Admin
I'm sure this will never be seen since it's so old (landed on it as 'Random Article') but of all the reason people have pointed out as this being fake I think the most glaring would be this...
How did they not get the email until after everything was brought back up? I assume he would have sent it pretty soon after shutting the A/C units off and it would have taken several hours for the servers to start shutting down. Many people would have seen the email before anything went down (and everyone would have at least received it). I mean, it's not like he shut off the A/C and the servers went down seconds later.