• Wolf (unregistered) in reply to Jerry Steinberg, Founding Non-Father of NO KIDDING!
    Jerry Steinberg:
    Jerry Steinberg Founding Non-Father of NO KIDDING! The international social club for childless and childfree couples and singles www.nokidding.net; [email protected]

    Normally I'm not one to flame or abuse without cause, but ... you twat. I hope you die alone.

    Back on topic - I don't have any stories like this myself. On the one occasion that I took my daughter to work, she sat at an empty desk doing some drawing and sticking with office supplies, and was pandered to by one of the admin staff (who was inexplicably also in work on a weekend) while I got on with installing a backup server. The job ran late and we stayed over in a local B&B, which she thought was possibly the coolest thing ever.

    However, a local company for whom I have done some support were burgled some time in the distant past and so installed wildly over-the-top security measures including a smoke-cloak (http://www.accontrols.co.uk/solutions/smokecloak.html). The control panel to this is up so high that you have to stand on a ladder to reach it. The manager was up there performing a routine test, and was just a little bit too slow putting in the deactivation code. The image of him standing on that ladder as the building around him quickly filled with completely opaque smoke, able to do absolutely nothing about it, still sends me into fits of giggles to this day.

  • DeadMan (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5

    Thanks, I just cut the traces to those buttons on my keyboard.

  • John Ridley (unregistered)

    Back in the early 90s I ran a BBS out of my attic. It was running on a 386, desqview, 2 modem lines. And yes, it had a big red reset button on it, a big white power button, and I had a toddler. It didn't take too long before the reset and the power button got disconnected; probably about 5 reboots of the machine with people online at the time.

  • Eru (unregistered)

    I work at IBM, back in the day in the Southbury, CT site, a... no longer employeed security guard pushed THE big red button. Not one for a server, or a VM with multiple virtual hosts. The one that cuts the electricity to the DC... yeah... He was a black guy when he walked in, and scared white when he walked out...

  • Button Man (unregistered)

    My story's about the Big White Button. When I was a teenager I worked at a restaurant in the kitchen. One day I discovered all the walk-in coolers had big white buttons on the inside just above the doors. I asked a manager what they were and he said they were nothing, they don't do anything. Well one day on a whim I decided to see if his story was really true. I just put my finger on it a little bit and applied only a teensy bit of pressure and click! After it was pressed I quickly realized it couldn't be reset. Suddenly I was nervous and wondering what I'd just done. About 20 minutes later some cops came into the kitchen and everyone's looking surprised. A few of the managers started skittering around the place. Then one of them asked loudly "who set off the alarm?" Nobody responded. Finally he asked "who hit the button in the cooler?" After a moments hesitation I owed up to it. We went to the office and I got yelled at. I said I didn't know what it was and when I asked I didn't get a straight answer. So his response what to point at an electrical outlet and say "well if you didn't know what that was, would you stick your finger in it?" To which I immediately responded "YES!" What the hell kind of question was that???? He realized his stupid reasoning and then told me to get back to work. Jeez, if only they'd been straight with me from the beginning, my temptation to hit the Big White Button might have been lost. But NOOOOO they had to be evasive when I asked about it the first time. Well now everyone knows what the Big White Button is for, don't they!

  • Andy Brown (unregistered)

    At one place I worked, we had a Big Red Button. We also had UPS and a massive generator in case the power went out. We also had an electronic key system that granted key owners access to only the rooms they were permitted to enter.

    needless to say, the Big Red Button was next to the manual exit button for the computer room door, and someone accidentally hit it on the way out of the computer room.

    This was where we found out the other flaws in the system.

    The Big Red Button did two things - it cut the power and triggered fire alarm system. The fire alarm started the 10-second timer on the Halon system in the computer room (which had its own battery backup). Everyone in there promptly dropped everything and got out in the few seconds before the system went off, at which point the system physically locked the computer room door and suspended all key access to that room. The manual button inside the door was the only override on the door locks.

    This was also when we found that the Big Red Button didn't just shut off power to the computer room, it cut the external power to the entire building. Of course, this just meant the recently-installed generator did as it was designed to and kicked in. However, the power sensor for the generator had been wired the wrong side of the generator. As soon as it fired up, it detected power and shut down again, then fired up and shut down again, and again, and again...

    A little under an hour later the UPS finally went flat and everything came down hard - including the nice electronic-key-controlled door access system. Of course, this was shortly after the fire officers had confirmed there was no fire and let everyone back in. The fire alarm had meant everyone getting cleared out, so we hadn't been able to shut any of the servers down either.

    This was also where we found the only terminals for the door control system were inside the secure computer room - now sealed shut by that very same system.

    Fortunately, the fire service were still on hand. They had to break down most of the internal doors with fire axes to rescue people. We then had to get an engineer in with a cutting torch to get back into the computer room itself.

  • NP (unregistered)

    Co-op this summer will be with a utilities company. If I were to hit the point of delivery disconnect...

    CAPTCHA: alarm - the mental state I'd be would be in if I hit the POD disconnect.

  • Jay (unregistered)

    Once worked for a very large landline telecom corp at a time when they still used mainframes and hard drive memory was in megabytes. The disk drives were all washing machine sized enclosures. Picture a truely massive data center containing all the computing equipment needed to run AT&T or GTE, all packed cheek to jowl in one place. As a backup everything was exactly duplicated in a second setup next door. The big red button (emergency shutoff incase of fire, etc.) killed both datacenters. It was days before everything was working again. They narrowed it down to three possible people but could never prove which one did it.

  • IGI (unregistered)

    When on a skiing holiday, my little nephew managed to press one of the Big Red Buttons in the elevator station.
    Result, the main elevator of that skiing area was stuck for 20 minutes, the people at the lower station thought something went wrong at the upper station and vice versa :). They didn't see hime doing it and didn't find out though.

  • Alex DeWolf (unregistered)

    I have to agree that cubes and data rooms are not what children's dreams are made of. It's a quick way to show them how NOT to live.

  • Knoman (unregistered)

    Number 9 on the Evil Overlord List:

    I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

  • John (unregistered) in reply to Brian

    Around 20 years ago when I worked at an engineering facility in upstate NY, I was talking with one of the other engineers, who had been a lieutenant at a depot in NY that stored nuclear weapons (they don't store them there any more). He told me a story about when he and another lieutenant noted a unmarked switch high up on a wall in a truly out of the way place. They wondered what the switch did, so they flipped it. Alarms started going off and the base commander appeared at a run. They had triggered a high level alarm. They didn't lauch anything, but they had certainly caused a portion of the command chain some alarm.

  • Anonymous guy in NJ (unregistered)

    I work for a medical school. All MD students participate in a progrma that matches them to their residencies...it's a very big deal because it invests 3-8 years of their lives and for once they get PAID instead of paying! So we have 55 students and their guests (let's say about 150 people total) and then everybody else in the building (let's say 250). That's almost 500 people, right?

    Our Occupational Health and Safety person (from another campus) smells something funny in the hall (it's a autoclave that is sterilizing glassware!) and decides top pull the fire alarm.

    Hilarity ensues. I'm dragging her up the stairs to explain to the Dean why she pulled a fire alarm for a normal event (she didn't know..she says..but was on our campus for over three years?!?!? WTF?!?!?) I have to talk to our campus police, the city fire department, get the bells turned off, keep people from leaving the building so we don't have to do a re-entry procedure..and keep the studnets and guests calm.

    Even today anyone going near the fire alarm pull stations during big events is quietly and real-friendly like escorted AWAY from them, even if they are just leaning on the wall!

    Big red button indeed! She almost set the sprinklers off!

  • Soup (unregistered)

    When a company that I was working for in Orlando moved, one of the new toys that we got was a big whiz-bang UPS that ran the entire datacenter. One day, the new Director of I.T. was showing off the datacenter to one of the executives and wanted to demonstrate how, even if Mains power was killed to the UPS, everything would continue running as usual. To do this, he reached over and pushed the Big Red Button. The problem, of course, is that the Mains kill switch is on the back of the UPS unit, and is beige. The Big Red Button on the front kills power FROM the UPS to everything plugged into it. When the entire room went dark and silent, he looked at me in a panic and ordered me to get it back online and tell nobody what happened. He spent most of the rest of the day hiding in his office. I'm not sure if he was able to convince the executive to keep the secret, though. I moved on shortly after that happened.

  • CCin (unregistered) in reply to Kev

    At my school, seniors decided they had the right to reboot the Sun servers to gain CPU cycles for their processes. It worked since many 3D rendering where constantly hogging CPU for days. Instead of removing keys, the techs placed a timer. Any shut-down would keep the system off for 4 hours. People where really careful after that.

  • Martin (unregistered)

    Let's see how this measures up:

    I accidentally tripped the Halon system in our cold room. Big mistake and I got to the "un-kill" button before the dump killed me. It seems that when I dropped a big box of moldering system manuals, apparently there was enough dust stirred up from the contents inside that it tripped the system. I did not notice this as I was hurriedly digging into a closet to find a power cable.

    Nothing was damaged and the amount released did not warrant any large hazmat cleanup.

    Q) How did so much dust get in there in the first place?

    A) That box had apparently been left out in the garage area for years and then brought in by someone else thinking such items should not be left out to molder and gather dust.

    Conclusion: neither the instigator or perpetrator work there anymore for differing reasons.

  • Moi (unregistered)

    I left a mobile phone on a large UPS once. Right over the little control panel .... Have you ever noticed how the mobile phone can affect electronic equipment just before it rings ? (i.e Radios, phones, monitors ....)

    Suffice to say, the mobile rang, and three servers went down hard...

    Exchange server, domain controller & sql serve.

    Whoda thunkit !

  • kybudman (unregistered)

    Every designer on the planet should have seen that one comin'. Hilarious.

  • Evilwumpus (unregistered) in reply to kybudman

    What Big Red Buttons should do. http://exterminatusnow.comicgenesis.com/d/20050909.html

  • Say_Oy (unregistered)

    I thought they automatically came encased in a plexiglass cover.

    GE in Maryland did their Bring Your Child To Work Day right. They had pre-registration and a whole staff dedicated to age appropriate entertainment. From paper boat building and sailing on the foyer fountain to story telling in the conference room.... so the kids were kept busy for 8 hrs and never actually saw what dad did all day in his little cubicle forest.

  • Jerome (unregistered)

    Actually, my big red button story is a bit different. We had just returned from the winter holidays. Oddly enough, this was the first time we'd ever shut down the "Integrated Automated Test Equipment" data center. Not a business critical system but a very busy one and now a week behind schedule. Picture half of a Target store full of 72" cabinets all working together to test avionics systems.

    Just before lunch my Technical Lead came to my desk and asked for help. I was a Cooperative Work Experience student so I dubiously agreed to help him. Back in the data center he pointed to a 3270 terminal and lamented that he could not get it out of CHR mode. There was nothing I could say. I reached up and pressed the Big Red Button on the nearest cabinet and the entire data center came to life. The 3270 blinked and beeped then began displaying the boot sequence status messages.

    As I left, all I could think of was how could he spend three and a half hours back there and not find the power switch; clearly labeled with one inch high letters, bordered in yellow and black tape, protected behind a molly-guard and less than a meter from him at eye level.

  • max (unregistered)

    Is there a club for folks who legitimately got to push the big red button? Back during my undergraduate days I worked my way through school running the university computer center mainframes on the weekends. Very early one saturday morning the other computer operator and I were up at the front desk talking to the one loser programming at 7:30am when I caught a whiff of something. I looked at rich and said "Do you smell something?" We both turned around and walked back into the computer area and lo and behold one of the 7 foot tall tape drives was on fire! You could literally have roasted wienies and marshamallows on the top of it - flames two feet high!. I said "you go for the fire extnguisher and I'll go for the fire department." Rich tried to open the back of the drive to hit it with the extinguisher but he yelled out that the cabinent was eletrically charged (he found out the hard way...). So I thought to my self I've always wanted to flip up the plastic cage and punch the big red button and this is God giving me my one and only chance. So I did - and it got really quiet after one big thump! The field engineer was really pissed he had to come in on a Saturday but the center staff backed me up and I never heard grief about it again...

  • Mick (unregistered)

    lol, Kids will be Kids no matter where they are! Stupid of the C.E.O. and the company not to see it coming! a little bit of thankyou Captain obvoius would apply here!

  • Roland Jeffries (unregistered)

    If I had a kid I wouldn't bring him to my work, because it would crush his fledgling spirit. Also, I could never get him to do chores after that, because he would say, "isn't crap work YOUR specialty?"

    I'm such a loser.

    http://loserville.typepad.com/loserville/

  • Hubudi (unregistered)

    When I was a child of about 6, I was being watched by my mother, who was a secretary for my grandfather, an insurance agent for State Farm. I had to play in the back room and keep myself entertained. I saw this neat looking big box. I asked my grandpa, and he told me it was a printer. I asked him if I could turn it off - this was during a summer when the media was awash with messages requesting people to conserve energy, and I simply thought I would help out. My grandfather told me not to, but I decided that if it was only a printer, there would be no harm... so I turned it off anyway once I was by myself! Come to find out, it was apparently the server, or the hard disk or something (this was in the late 70's / early 80's). My grandfather lost the entire day's work and had to do it all from scratch... he was fuming!

    Of course, apparently, my mom once had to run outside when I was 2 years old because I was trying to lift a running lawn mower to see how it worked. My grandpa should have known I'd naturally try something if it wasn't adequately explained! :)

  • Strocky (unregistered) in reply to Wolf

    I think that's Jerry's idea lol

  • sara (unregistered)

    so it doesn't matter...i very excited for my mom to take me to work. its a time where you spend time together and she shows you whant she does. if you don't agree thats sad.

  • will (unregistered)

    please make more please

  • ME NO TELL BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT (unregistered)

    What the heck. The Button Don't do crap

  • Bloopy (unregistered) in reply to Scoldog
    Scoldog:
    I got told this second hand, so it could be incorrect.

    The Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in NSW, Australia used to have tours (I don't know if this is still happening, what with all the "heightened security threats" out there).

    Part of the tour would lead you past a Big Red Button on a wall with a whole bunch of threatening looking "Do not touch" buttons. However, the button was linked to a counter above the wall displaying the amount of times people had succumbed to temptation!

    I went on the tour at Lucas Heights just a week or so before this comment was posted. I don't remember any such button, but it's a fantastic idea, as long as the tour guide can keep a straight face and lie about what it does when someone inevitably asks. Maybe the button was in the building of the old reactor which we didn't get to see, as they were in the process of dismantling that.

  • Retread (unregistered)

    In 1959 I was new kid (instrumentation engineer) at the GE Vallecitos nuclear research facility just south-east of San Francisco. We had several small reactors, each with a big red button labeled "SCRAM" on their control consoles None had covers.

    As new kid, it fell my lot to conduct the tours of our facility. One of the tours went right by the control console of a 10kw research reactor. After the first tour, I always spoke from a position to the side of the button. Inevitably, eyes would glaze over and hands would start reaching for the button. I'd just step between them and the button, breaking the trance. I'd learned the hard way that my bosses were not happy when the reactor was crashed by a visitor.

    We had a small earthquake while I was working there. SCRAMMED all the reactors, including the 10Mw reactor that had rods under 2000 psi of air pressure. When it went, it was like a cannon going off. One of the technicians was on the missile shield when the reactor went; he had to be taken to the hospital.

    I've never known the etymology of SCRAM in this context. It may simply be slang for, "run away!"

  • PIercy (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5
    danixdefcon5:
    Ah ... thanks to Windows, you don't even need a Big Red Button.

    Some keyboards have three nifty keys added to them: "Sleep", "Suspend" and yes ... "Power".

    Some dude put one of those "smart" keyboards on our Primary Domain Controller (winbugs 2003 server) without thinking.

    So once I was working on some stuff, tried to press the "Del" key and pushed the "Power" button instead.

    Which starts a non-interactive, non-stopping forced shutdown.

    On a server.

    Good thing that POS button doesn't work on Linux... but what were the keyboard designers thinking when they set up that thing???

    I have had one of these keyboards. I tried covering the buttons but the cover kept moving. I then tried stabbing/ cutting them out. This didnt work either. I probably could of taken it apart and took them out however, pressing the button while angry meant i had a great time ripping it from the pc hammering it against the floor fifteen times then launching it out the 3rd floor window. Later that night i decided it wasnt quite dead and layed it down on paper with a bit of petrol and cremated it.

    Never ever buy one of these keyboards. they will drive you insane or will turn you into a raving pyromaniac :D

  • chelsey (unregistered)

    This game makes me laugh but oh wait i cant laugh anymore casue'i'm dead' and you cant be reading this cause im a sikko and blew up the whole world. u know what i dont get how cold a dead person be clicking the mouse to press The Big Red Button??? that doesnt make to much to much sense!

  • ur mama (unregistered) in reply to chelsey

    UR MAMA DIED

  • VOR (unregistered)

    I was in a data center servicing some of our company's equipment. Our gear happened to be right next to their IBM mainframe. On the side of the mainframe was a Big Red Button (actually a switch) on the aisle, about stomach-high. Perfect for someone to accidentally bump into. I commented to an operator about the poor placement.

    Next week I was back and there was a plastic shield velcroed over the Big Red Button. Apparently someone shut down the mainframe by accident.

  • Phoebe (unregistered)

    It gets boring!

  • l33t (unregistered)

    LOLOLOLOLOLLOLOLOL w3r3 th3r3 4ny 3xpl0si0ns? if no then fuck j00!

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  • grounded (unregistered)

    grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded 4life

  • grounded (unregistered) in reply to PIercy

    lol now ur grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded grounded 4ever no job no computers no life go to bed now!!!!!11!!1!!11 bitch

  • danixdefcon5 (unregistered)

    nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

  • eric bloedow (unregistered) in reply to PIercy

    my first computer, an Apple 2, had a "reset" button directly above the Return key, about where the Delete key is on PC keyboards.

  • Techiefurtler (unregistered)

    This sounds awfully familiar to the old Mainframe Programmer's story from the 80s about a kid called Molly who hit the big Red button twice and kept turning off a new (at the time) IBM 4341. This is why covers over important switches are sometimes called "Molly-Guards" http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/M/molly-guard.html

  • Bob Walsh (unregistered)

    A friend of mine worked for a company that made industrial sewing machines. The Big Red Switch on those machines triggered an explosive that drove a bolt into the sewing machine spindle. It stopped the machine FAST. Once

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