• Donny (unregistered) in reply to --
    --:
    Funny but there is no way on earth it's true. No matter how ingrained "The Process" is in a company, if they lost an entire day due to something as stupid as this, people would be fired.
    Well.. funny it might be, but I can name at least 6 companies I've contracted to that require SIX FORMS just to log on to a server. One company I work with at the moment has "The Process" so well honed, rebooting a -desktop- requires several signatures. Adding a new user takes around 6 months, if you're lucky. And just this month our student started (we've been paying him since April or so to sit on his hands)
  • mizchief (unregistered)

    In my experiance a "process" like this is born from crappy employees that are more worried about getting blamed for something than actually getting work done.

    Hire good people and trust them to do their jobs. And as an employee don't be afraid to break the rules to make things happen. If you are good at what you do and don't screw things up worse when you make that decision, you will either end up promoted or working for a better company.

  • Maddog1008 (unregistered)

    Sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. I would have pressed F1 right away and dealt with the consequences later.

  • Nico (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    nobody gets fired for covering their rear by adhering to The Process

    I've worked at a place that has grown a lot in the decade I've been there. I've definitely seen my share of process grow around me, but it's still motivated by a shared fear of the big boss saying "why the f didn't you just hit the F1 key?" rather than a shared fear of some disassociated process.

    There are definitely fiefdoms that have their process that keep their serfs in a stranglehold but the rest of us can still resort to asking "what would say?" and we all know that it's not totally rhetorical.

  • acid (unregistered) in reply to --
    --:
    Funny but there is no way on earth it's true. No matter how ingrained "The Process" is in a company, if they lost an entire day due to something as stupid as this, people would be fired.

    This of course assumes that your executives KNOW just how stupid this is. Most of us in IT disciplines forget that most users (let alone execs) are hanging on to the technology we deliver by the very skin of their teeth. If they weren't, most of the stories on this board couldn't possibly be true.

    Besides, I once heard of a story of a small team of HPCs who were flown across the country to plug in a power lead. 5 figure cost. I was told by one of the HPCs. SHOULD be true? No. IS true? Probably

  • Charlie (unregistered)

    I had a similar situation with 'The Process'. Although we were only a 9 person consulting company (4 of which were management). Before 'The Process' was implemented each consultant for grossing ~AU$15k per day, after 'The Process' was introduced internally it dropped to about ~AU5k.

    3 of the 5 techs working there left within 2 months. I was the first :P

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to bd

    if you enjoyed the irony in this check out this short video (ok... it's 10 mins long, but funny though) www.thewebsiteisdown.com

  • (cs) in reply to Sebastian

    OK, so first of all, how did the error show up if the switch was set to another system? Second, if they're not authorized to touch the keyboard, why not simply press the reset button again?

    Sebastian:
    The real WTF is that pressed F1 instead of requesting authorization for pressing DEL, than changing the BIOS settings to skip keyboard errors.
    Imagine how many signatures and forms would be required for that!
  • Mark V Shaney (unregistered)

    All those non code stories are getting on my nerves, let see if we can auto-generate some better one from the corpus of the last few. I just removed some sentences and re-arragned them. Pretty realistic,IMO.

    Hypothetical Question from Simon Im usually pretty good with interview questions, but this was different.

    At his last job he was worried it seemed like it'd be pretty simple. A few days into the new job, Merv was given a desk on the form and said "Great, we're all set now. "

    A few days into the new job, Merv was all set up with a coworker, but that's the only time I've ever spent the night with a coworker also... right there in our office. I jokingly told him he has to stop doing that, but..." he shrugged. "Anyway, thanks for teaching him a lesson don't worry too much about it." Merv's subconscious picked up where Joe's tirade left off.

    Eventually, we ended up in his chair, his eyes at Joe's belly button-level.

    It was hectic, dynamic, and doing the computer support for them was terrible at the gates of the admins could be spotted walking around "for visibility".

    "Look, I understand it sounds a little more carefully, I noticed that the dispatchers suddenly had to leave. That was really boring playing solitaire for 4 hours at a company with dedicated testers, and his first time at an environment that was an interesting period in my face. I wasn't hurt, but it did confirm that I had a slight facial tic, and an occasionally twitching finger. "Are you tic the one that checked in changes to the dev manager refused to sign since their updates couldn't have caused the BIOS error, I'm just going to use the keyboard. And further. . . " he paused for a couple of the dispatchers, a couple police departments, fire departments, etc. Since I was still in shock. His first foray into real software development couldn't have gone worse.

    But how could that be possible? Merv pondered. Isn't that exactly what the problem was, but assumed it must be Mr. Kekacorkian, I stood and said, Im here for the county management cared that the HPCs were on it. At this point, I was there on time and drove back to the freeway to carefully follow the directions again.

    Ten minutes later, I found myself at the same place he was getting into when he started his job. A change begets meetings, which beget approvals, which beget approvals, which beget approvals, which beget more meetings, and maybe after a month or two you will have successfully added a column to a team of Highly Paid Consultants and both groups took their allegiance to The Process Be Praised!"

    Hypothetical question, the Interviewer asked, you have an irate customer on the floor with the computer support for them was terrible at the gates of the techs were on it. At this point, I was at a time, we got plumbers to fix it. The customer demands that its fixed now. Okay I clear my schedule and arrange to meet today whenever he The interviewer smiled, Okay, good. "That is, after we give the corporate VP a call. "After a long discussion with the corporate VP a call. "After a long discussion with the source control. After Joe ran out of the programming department. Everyone was seated perfectly in their cubes, silently typing quietly away. They didnt help with the incredible smell. Eventually, we ended up in his office.

    We slept fitfully in our desk chairs, and I curled up on some popular source control software before, but he refuses! By this point, no one outside of her jurisdiction. "Try the infrastructure lead insisted. "Maybe Gary can help?" Gary, the network team wouldn't rest until it was still incredible.

    "Good news. We got approval to clear the error. Meanwhile, a whole department out of steam and retreated to his boss. Merv gave his side of the art! Joe was also famous for his temper, which he'd take out on the floor in my career.

    Eventually a gentlemen came out of my coworkers went into the cabinet (it was dark so I had it aced I responded, but the customer to ring the office to discuss the contract issue? Ah ha, but he had screwed something up, and should have been more careful with the incredible smell.

    Later that day, I shared the story with my friends, and we all had to go on site to fix the leak (broken pipe on the third floor with the computer system the whole 4 days that this went on, but they weren't taking any chances. Me and my 3 coworkers had to scramble for flashlights and cell phones to police and fire commanders organizing rescues to the developer floor to talk to Clyde, who he now thought of as his mentee.

    I had a passing thought that, if the company would demand he commit seppuku. Merv's boss listened in silence, finally smirking, then laughing. "You're right, Merv. Using source control a bit of a loop.

  • (cs)

    I would put up a good post, but my boss said I must adopt rights to act with my button within my W and R buttons. Anybody want to sign for it?

  • Mr.'; Drop Database -- (unregistered) in reply to Yaos
    Yaos:
    I would put up a good post, but my boss said I must adopt rights to act with my button within my W and R buttons. Anybody want to sign for it?
    I will show this to my boss for now. Until you obtain that authorisation, you must still maintain your usual productivity. If not, disciplinary action will occur (as soon as that form can go through).
  • 008 (unregistered) in reply to Mark V Shaney
    Mark V Shaney:
    All those non code stories are getting on my nerves, let see if we can auto-generate some better one from the corpus of the last few. I just removed some sentences and re-arragned them. Pretty realistic,IMO.

    Hypothetical Question from Simon Im usually pretty good with interview questions, but this was different.

    At his last job he was worried it seemed like it'd be pretty simple. A few days into the new job, Merv was given a desk on the form and said "Great, we're all set now. "

    A few days into the new job, Merv was all set up with a coworker, but that's the only time I've ever spent the night with a coworker also... right there in our office. I jokingly told him he has to stop doing that, but..." he shrugged. "Anyway, thanks for teaching him a lesson don't worry too much about it." Merv's subconscious picked up where Joe's tirade left off.

    Eventually, we ended up in his chair, his eyes at Joe's belly button-level.

    It was hectic, dynamic, and doing the computer support for them was terrible at the gates of the admins could be spotted walking around "for visibility".

    "Look, I understand it sounds a little more carefully, I noticed that the dispatchers suddenly had to leave. That was really boring playing solitaire for 4 hours at a company with dedicated testers, and his first time at an environment that was an interesting period in my face. I wasn't hurt, but it did confirm that I had a slight facial tic, and an occasionally twitching finger. "Are you tic the one that checked in changes to the dev manager refused to sign since their updates couldn't have caused the BIOS error, I'm just going to use the keyboard. And further. . . " he paused for a couple of the dispatchers, a couple police departments, fire departments, etc. Since I was still in shock. His first foray into real software development couldn't have gone worse.

    But how could that be possible? Merv pondered. Isn't that exactly what the problem was, but assumed it must be Mr. Kekacorkian, I stood and said, Im here for the county management cared that the HPCs were on it. At this point, I was there on time and drove back to the freeway to carefully follow the directions again.

    Ten minutes later, I found myself at the same place he was getting into when he started his job. A change begets meetings, which beget approvals, which beget approvals, which beget approvals, which beget more meetings, and maybe after a month or two you will have successfully added a column to a team of Highly Paid Consultants and both groups took their allegiance to The Process Be Praised!"

    Hypothetical question, the Interviewer asked, you have an irate customer on the floor with the computer support for them was terrible at the gates of the techs were on it. At this point, I was at a time, we got plumbers to fix it. The customer demands that its fixed now. Okay I clear my schedule and arrange to meet today whenever he The interviewer smiled, Okay, good. "That is, after we give the corporate VP a call. "After a long discussion with the corporate VP a call. "After a long discussion with the source control. After Joe ran out of the programming department. Everyone was seated perfectly in their cubes, silently typing quietly away. They didnt help with the incredible smell. Eventually, we ended up in his office.

    We slept fitfully in our desk chairs, and I curled up on some popular source control software before, but he refuses! By this point, no one outside of her jurisdiction. "Try the infrastructure lead insisted. "Maybe Gary can help?" Gary, the network team wouldn't rest until it was still incredible.

    "Good news. We got approval to clear the error. Meanwhile, a whole department out of steam and retreated to his boss. Merv gave his side of the art! Joe was also famous for his temper, which he'd take out on the floor in my career.

    Eventually a gentlemen came out of my coworkers went into the cabinet (it was dark so I had it aced I responded, but the customer to ring the office to discuss the contract issue? Ah ha, but he had screwed something up, and should have been more careful with the incredible smell.

    Later that day, I shared the story with my friends, and we all had to go on site to fix the leak (broken pipe on the third floor with the computer system the whole 4 days that this went on, but they weren't taking any chances. Me and my 3 coworkers had to scramble for flashlights and cell phones to police and fire commanders organizing rescues to the developer floor to talk to Clyde, who he now thought of as his mentee.

    I had a passing thought that, if the company would demand he commit seppuku. Merv's boss listened in silence, finally smirking, then laughing. "You're right, Merv. Using source control a bit of a loop.

    No quack.

  • Mark V Shaney (unregistered) in reply to 008
    008:
    Mark V Shaney:
    All those non code stories are getting on my nerves, let see if we can auto-generate some better one from the corpus of the last few. I just removed some sentences and re-arragned them. Pretty realistic,IMO.

    ...

    I had a passing thought that, if the company would demand he commit seppuku. Merv's boss listened in silence, finally smirking, then laughing. "You're right, Merv. Using source control a bit of a loop.

    No quack.

    No quack, indeed.

    Adding a bit to the corpus gives me pleasant sentences, like:

    I was to ask you what a student's grade was if she got 95% on everything she'd done, what would you do in this situation? Probably either "find a keyboard, plug it in, hit F1" or "turn the KVM switch had been used since the market was going to use source control".

    or:

    As you all are aware, we have new tenants that have moved into the cabinet (it was the CEO). The panicked optimism gave way to shoot Sylvia while she was trying to finish her reports!

    But, of course, maybe I am just too tired... Quack! Quack!

  • Mark V Shaney (unregistered) in reply to Mark V Shaney
    Mark V Shaney:
    Quack

    Ok. I now officially have more fun at the output of the generator than at the content of the site.

    "At large, multinational companies, change is slow because of everybody running their air conditioners."

    "Oh, no, it's fine, he said as he left the command line, his text editor was notepad and his source repository was a BIOS error"

    "Alcari parked his car and navigated under a few backup folders on a giant project commissioned by the putrid smell of burnt electronics"

    "Without The Process, we have new tenants that have moved into the 21st century"

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered)

    I seems I'm the only one, but I think the process is good. If there is a problem with a server rebooting, it needs to be addressed properly. It is likely going to impact many other servers in the server farm.

    I don't trust the server room monkeys pressing buttons to clear errors outside of their instructions. They are doing more harm than good by hiding the symptoms of true problems.

    Shouldn't the server have a backup anyway?

  • BTDTGTTS (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5

    I used to work for an outsourcing company, and we did this sort of work for a client.

    We used to be quite reasonable, and in the case above would have hit 'F1' and got going again. Then the client started nit-picking - 'this wasn't in our change request or the scripts we wrote - why did you do it?' 'Um - to get your change done...'

    Needless to say, we changed tack and performed their requests to the absolute letter. One typo caused a script to fail? Whole change backed out. You forgot to supply a script? Tough - raise a new change request.

  • Loki (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    I seems I'm the only one, but I think the process is good. If there is a problem with a server rebooting, it needs to be addressed properly. It is likely going to impact many other servers in the server farm.

    I don't trust the server room monkeys pressing buttons to clear errors outside of their instructions. They are doing more harm than good by hiding the symptoms of true problems.

    Shouldn't the server have a backup anyway?

    God, what an idiot. Sysadmins should never put up with losers like you...

  • (cs)

    I read mutilational instead of multinational. If that word even exists then it probably fits too.

  • Oops! Kernel Panic! (unregistered) in reply to bd
    bd:
    Jasmine:
    If someone ever says "The Process be Praised" - I'm gonna quite right on the spot.
    You're laughing now, but The Process is already learning at a geometric rate. It just learned how to restart a server! It's only a question of time when it will become self-aware. Then, Gary and the rest of the management will be used as cheap batteries while Clyde will be trampled under the steel, cold, morphing boot of the cyborg army.

    Only the senior tech will be spared as he'll be appointed to the new seat of Archbishop of Cyberbury, Church of The Process.

    The Process Be Praised!

    You, Sir, are brilliant! The best comment I've read on this site for a long time.

  • G (unregistered)

    The senior tech made everything right. This is the way to break the system... or at least make it bend.

  • InFlowReality (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5

    Processes stymie dynamic people and eventually strangle creation within organisations. Usually processes are created to ensure a result is generated by completing all individual steps. ( each one of these steps being important.) Now add an effete manager to the mix and the simple procedure requires his/her signature, now add another effete manager..... are you following my logic. So initially processes are good and excessive justification of bureaucratic positions (MANAGEMENT)is not..

  • t (unregistered) in reply to bd
    bd:
    Only the senior tech will be spared as he'll be appointed to the new seat of Archbishop of Cyberbury, Church of The Process.
    Finally some action in the Process Church!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_Church

  • notme (unregistered) in reply to Joe
    Joe:
    if you enjoyed the irony in this check out this short video (ok... it's 10 mins long, but funny though) www.thewebsiteisdown.com

    Hm, I just see a black monitor there with some writing on the screen that vaguely resembles a bios bootup message...

    Do I have to wait for something to happen?

  • David Balažic (unregistered)

    That's what you get for using a server that requires some weird hardware (like a keyboard) to boot at all... ;-)

  • (cs) in reply to ex EDSer
    ex EDSer:
    IBMer with a brain:
    That has GOT to be IBM. The entire thing - forms, approvals, ten billion groups none of whom will take responsibility for anything, and The Process - it just screams IBM.

    Yay me.

    Oh no. I think it's EDS. EDS takes everything IBM does and imitates it. Usually badly.

    Just what I was thinking. The last place I worked at was on site at a big bank, where the whole IT infrastructure had been outsourced to EDS. One day my password to the development system expired, and needed to be reset. When I contacted support, they said it was 48 hours turnaround on password resets. So I surfed the net for two days while the bank paid my companies on site consultancy fee. Insane.

  • Rabiator (unregistered)

    That's ridicoulous even by the standards of the field I work in. Which is medical devices and authorities like the FDA insist on proper documentation. But even so, we would handle this sort of "problem" informally.

  • AlternateEndingBot (unregistered)

    That story was painful. Here's how it should have gone:

    The young tech was aware of all of the red tape and approvals that were required for most changes, but this was different. It was a BIOS error that required a single keystroke to clear, and he couldn't imagine anyone having a problem with it. He tried to cautiously argue his point without denigrating The Process. "Well, the change request does say that we're responsible for rebooting the computer. Surely pressing F1 falls under that... and regardless-"

    "NO," the senior tech emphatically interrupted. "I just said that we're not authorized for this! You think that it's safe to just make The Process up as you go? Without The Process, we have nothing. The Process Be Praised!".......

    "Ummmm, I'm sorry", the young tech shouted, "are you fking retarded? Do you have your head so far up your own ass that you actually think it's sensible to delay restarting the server for a fking single keypress?"

    The YT stood up and switched the KVM to the correct output. As he moved towards the keyboard the ST shrieked "No! You can't" and tried to snatch YT's hand away from the keyboard. YT dodged and grabbed the ST's arm, twisting it and pulling it down.

    A sickening crack filled the air as the ST's arm broke. He screamed. The YT felt no remorse. He lent over to the keyboard and hit F1.

    "Stupid motherf**ker" he said, glaring at the ST who was sitting on the floor clutching his broken arm.

  • maht (unregistered)

    Surely the correct procedure was to press Del and set the BIOS to : Stop on all errors except Keyboard [x]

  • Feek (unregistered) in reply to AlternateEndingBot
    AlternateEndingBot:
    That story was painful. Here's how it should have gone:

    The young tech was aware of all of the red tape and approvals that were required for most changes, but this was different. It was a BIOS error that required a single keystroke to clear, and he couldn't imagine anyone having a problem with it. He tried to cautiously argue his point without denigrating The Process. "Well, the change request does say that we're responsible for rebooting the computer. Surely pressing F1 falls under that... and regardless-"

    "NO," the senior tech emphatically interrupted. "I just said that we're not authorized for this! You think that it's safe to just make The Process up as you go? Without The Process, we have nothing. The Process Be Praised!".......

    "Ummmm, I'm sorry", the young tech shouted, "are you fking retarded? Do you have your head so far up your own ass that you actually think it's sensible to delay restarting the server for a fking single keypress?"

    The YT stood up and switched the KVM to the correct output. As he moved towards the keyboard the ST shrieked "No! You can't" and tried to snatch YT's hand away from the keyboard. YT dodged and grabbed the ST's arm, twisting it and pulling it down.

    A sickening crack filled the air as the ST's arm broke. He screamed. The YT felt no remorse. He lent over to the keyboard and hit F1.

    "Stupid motherf**ker" he said, glaring at the ST who was sitting on the floor clutching his broken arm.

    "Now, it's time to get paid" said the YT. Chuckling to himself that an IT department could be so backwards, he typed his incantations into the keyboard in front of him. He looked over at the ST, who had passed out from the pain of the broken arm. "Screw 'em" the YT muttered to himself as he hit the Halon release and darted out before his 30 second window was closed.

    In the mass confusion caused by the fire alarm tripped by the Halon switch, he made his way to the second floor bathroom where he had stashed his Glock. That it was missing meant only one thing; someone had figured him out.

    Suddenly, he heard someone behind him. "Looking for this?" the voice asked. The YT spun around on his heel only to be staring right into his own gun barrel, attached at the trigger to the ST. "I can see you're surprised that I'm still here" the ST said. He laughed, "I guess you didn't know about the back entrance to the server room. We don't show that to the new techs until the third year, and only then with a form 32-BBBA."

    The thought of filling out more forms incensed the YT, who, in one swift motion pulled out his boot knife and jammed it into the ST's neck. With all his years of training, the YT knew he wouldn't miss. "Fill that out in triplicate, bitch!" the YT said as he picked up his gun.

  • (cs) in reply to Mr.'; Drop Database --
    Mr.'; Drop Database --:
    Disgruntled DBA:
    Definitely a union shop.
    Yep. This kind of beauracracy is a work-avoidance technique put in place by unions.
    (In the spirit of the hypothetical interview questions:) Unions don't exist any more.

    Who are you going to blame now?

    (To anticipate the obvious answer, although you're probably too pig-headed to ask it:)

    Management doesn't exist any more.

    Who are you ... No, wait, that can't be right. I haven't died and gone to heaven. Therefore management still exists.

    Bummer.

  • (cs) in reply to Nico
    Nico:
    > nobody gets fired for covering their rear by adhering to The Process

    I've worked at a place that has grown a lot in the decade I've been there. I've definitely seen my share of process grow around me, but it's still motivated by a shared fear of the big boss saying "why the f didn't you just hit the F1 key?" rather than a shared fear of some disassociated process.

    There are definitely fiefdoms that have their process that keep their serfs in a stranglehold but the rest of us can still resort to asking "what would say?" and we all know that it's not totally rhetorical.

    I hate to tell you, but it is totally rhetorical. That's why it's such a useful question.

    A non-rhetorical answer would be "Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quatro Matty told Hatty about a thing she saw. Had two big horns and a wooly jaw. Wooly bully, wooly bully. Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully. Hatty told Matty, "Let's don't take no chance. Let's not be L-seven, come and learn to dance." Wooly bully, wooly bully Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully. Matty told Hatty, "That's the thing to do. Get you someone really to pull the wool with you." Wooly bully, wooly bully. Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully."

    Not such a useful answer.

    (Yeah, yeah, I know it was a slip of the tongue and that you meant 'hypothetical.' I just had this image in my mind, that's all.)
  • (cs) in reply to t
    t:
    bd:
    Only the senior tech will be spared as he'll be appointed to the new seat of Archbishop of Cyberbury, Church of The Process.
    Finally some action in the Process Church!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_Church

    A hypothesis:

    The Process Church is like the Alonzo Church, only not so Turing Complete.

  • ambrosen (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Spectre:
    AlanGriffiths:
    Anon:
    Okay, but the F1 key is broken, now what?

    Try the "any" key.

    There are no other keys on this keyboard. Now what do you do?

    Rip the cord out of the key board and quickly put together my own circuit that will send the equivalent of the F1 single to the server.

    Quite.

    Now get that process approved

  • jon (unregistered)
    [image]

    That's the G-Man from Halflife.

  • (cs) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    Nico:
    ... the rest of us can still resort to asking "what would say?" and we all know that it's not totally rhetorical.
    I hate to tell you, but it is totally rhetorical. That's why it's such a useful question.

    A non-rhetorical answer would be "..."

    Not such a useful answer.

    You do know what a rhetorical question is, right? It seems to me that the first question is not really rhetorical at all. It expects an answer - which may well be a rhetorical question posed by the big boss (e.g. "Did you really have to ask me about one 'ing keypress?" or "Where do you want me to put your 'ing keyboard?") - because it is being used as a counter-argument to someone's advice (i.e. "I don't think you should do that..." - "What would the big boss say?"). You might not get an answer, but the question expects one.
  • Alex (unregistered) in reply to the real wtf fool

    Since there are more and more people working in IT that don't understand IT or have anything to do with IT they have to justify themselves being in IT by creating all these useless procedures. 20 years ago a typical IT department would have 20 engineers and one manager, today we have 3 levels of managers for every service area, meaning that the department of 20 people today probably has more managers than engineers :-)

  • dont_process_me_bro (unregistered) in reply to Gary
    Gary:
    If you have some common sense process is easy!
    If you have common sense you don't need process. Process is simply a way to slow the idiots down so that they make less of a mess.
  • Grig (unregistered)

    The sad thing is, I used to work in a data center like this. It was one of several on site, in a room the size of a football field with rows of identical servers. 95% of all server work was done remotely.

    One of the reasons things like this are put into place is that sometimes a server was put out of commission, doing an emulation, or otherwise being worked on remotely so that someone on site didn't reboot something you were already aware of via an OOB or IP KVM. I had an instance were aan Xscreensaver called "BSOD" emulated a Windows BSOD and got rebooted by well-meaning passer's by. Also, we did a lot of system tests, and didn't appreciate people who might have rebooted a hung windows session because we were trying to do screen scrapes of X amount of systems in N amount of time.

    This seems moot, however, in this story where a mainframe's basic functions were taken from the hands of the local staff. Often these administrative policies are put into place for a specific "seed reason" which then grew into a bureaucratic nightmare. Things that fuel these kinds of rules are CYA panic meetings where someone says, "but what happens if obscure-and-unlikely-but-non-zero-chance process X happens? What then?"

    It's all CYA, and never makes sense to those on the floor, but makes sense to people who implement policy.

  • Tim (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5

    This is EXACTLY what we need for those infrastructure folks who think that they first step in solving a hardware problem is to reboot the server...

    -T

  • ChrisN (unregistered) in reply to Nico

    Part of the trick is the unintended consequences.

    In our company, we've been bitten by things that looked completely unrelated, but after the fact made sense... so Sr. Mgmt has more or less learned to question EVERYTHING.

    Who's to say that pressing the key for a reboot then wouldn't cause a certain amount of network load to get generated at the wrong time? Or maybe the KVM switch is sensitive to fluctuations in the channels that might cause something to affect one of the other servers? Maybe bring the server online would catch some other reporting processes mid-stream and cause data to be screwed up, but in harder to recognize ways. (I'd rather have no data for a day than 80% data)

    Yeah, I'm reaching here, but in some of the weirder cases in my company, if I tried to predict what would eventually happy, I'd have been reaching as well.

    That said, nothing in the story indicates any of that sort of sensitivity so they probably should have just hit 'F1'.

  • A typical luser (unregistered)

    What's F1?

    I tried pressing F, then 1, no good. Also, I tried holding down the F key whilst I pressed 1, that didn't work either.

    Help!!!!!

    Oh btw, I tried both 1 keys; on the top of the keyboard and the pad to the right.

    Do you need me to raise a helpdesk ticket?

  • Engywuck (unregistered)

    Some weeks ago someone working in a large (worldwide activities) european bank: they needed to replace someone in IT who was the only one in the job because he became too ill to work anymore.

    Well, it turned out you need at least three days just for the required forms for computer access for the replacement guy to assemble at the desk of the direct superior because noone knew exactly which forms where needed... he was the only guy in that specific department...

    The problem then was something like "we need the exact job description" - "well, we don't have it and the only guy who had this position is too ill to answer" - "ok, then I need someone with his job to sign it and his departmental superior" - "eh, he was the only one with that job and he made also the whole department..." etc. Took about a week just to get access to the computer system for the replacement guy...not to mention access to the work data, of course...

    Well, i feel safe now. I don't have any money there... :)

  • BillyBob (unregistered)

    We've all been in the situation where someone senior walks psat your computer, you have a problem and you make the silly mistake of actually telling them the issue instead of saying everything is fine.

    So instead of getting on to solve the problem, they go through all sorts of hoops to "help" you. You try to say that you got an idea of how to fix the issue and want to try it but no... they want to go through the "process"...

  • Deepesh Yadav (unregistered)

    I agree with what danixdefcon5 mentioned about such cases being present. Pressing F1 may be an exaggeration since there would be run books and other similar things to take care of situations like this and I believe more often than not people don't go through this for scenarios like this, but use their better judgment to get around it and then keep everyone informed. In some cases all these things are there because of the regulatory and audit requirements which is a valid use case for these processes to be there. However, it isn't impossible to stretch any logical thing to an extent that it becomes ridiculous and that I think is a 'people' issue which I think is also the point of this post. In the "Slaves to the process", clearly the slaves part is the issue and not the process.

  • moz (unregistered) in reply to Grig
    Grig:
    One of the reasons things like this are put into place is that sometimes a server was put out of commission, doing an emulation, or otherwise being worked on remotely so that someone on site didn't reboot something you were already aware of via an OOB or IP KVM. I had an instance were aan Xscreensaver called "BSOD" emulated a Windows BSOD and got rebooted by well-meaning passer's by.
    And so process enables you to get away with retarded shit like using a "BSOD" screensaver on a machine anyone else has access to. Or, at least, to blame someone else when a computer goes down because of it.
  • (cs) in reply to JimM
    JimM:
    real_aardvark:
    Nico:
    ... the rest of us can still resort to asking "what would say?" and we all know that it's not totally rhetorical.
    I hate to tell you, but it is totally rhetorical. That's why it's such a useful question.

    A non-rhetorical answer would be "..."

    Not such a useful answer.

    You do know what a rhetorical question is, right? It seems to me that the first question is not really rhetorical at all. It expects an answer - which may well be a rhetorical question posed by the big boss (e.g. "Did you really have to ask me about one 'ing keypress?" or "Where do you want me to put your 'ing keyboard?") - because it is being used as a counter-argument to someone's advice (i.e. "I don't think you should do that..." - "What would the big boss say?"). You might not get an answer, but the question expects one.
    Jeez, all that time spent studying Ancient Greek, and totally wasted.

    Of course I know what a rhetorical question is. A rhetorical question is one posed for the purpose of rhetoric, thus the otherwise incomprehensible modifier.

    Contrary to popular supposition, it is possible to answer a rhetorical question. It's merely self-defeating, in that no answer to a well-posed rhetorical question can possibly add more information to the sum of knowledge possessed both by the asker of the question and the poor fool that chooses to answer it.

    To give you a perfect example of the art of rhetorical questioning:

    "What would say?"

    Now.

    Do you have any questions for me?

    Addendum (2008-07-06 17:59): Well, I'm sure that's not a good enough explanation for those of a disputatious disposition. Try this as a rough and ready method for spotting a rhetorical question:

    Given a question beginning with "What would <X>...," if you can replace the beginning of the question with "You do know what <X> would ..." and terminate it with ",don't you?" ...

    ... It is then, blatantly, a rhetorical question.
  • cx (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5

    Of course not - it would have been covered under the "emergency change which may be approved after the fact" change process...

  • Adam (unregistered)

    So the WTF is that you didn't enter the BIOS and disable keyboard errors to prevent it happening again.

    Nearly as bad as admins that leave the floppy drive bootable.

  • Paul Power (unregistered)

    I heard a story of some experienced mainframe operators who were so fed up with the "Process" at a location they'd been temporarily assigned to that once they refused to restart a system after it had crashed, as there was no "change request form" to authorise the reboot.

  • budets (unregistered)

    There are servers out there that won't boot without a keyboard attached? What is this, 1992?

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