InfoWorld's Off the Record blog takes a look back at its most popular posts to announce bigger payoffs and a nifty T-shirt for new submissions
What are we looking for? Here's a sample of the blog posts that stimulated the most interest. Tell us your real-world IT tale (or horror story) and you could generate some interest, too. --Eds.
The ghost who sabotaged the mainframe
The story really starts back in December of 1971. I had just started as the new Director of Data Processing for a large nonprofit in New York City. My predecessor, Ernie (I've changed his name), had held the position for many years, and only his wife's insistence that he retire had convinced him to leave. It was an extremely difficult decision for him. The mainframe we were running at the time was a Honeywell Model 120 with 64K of main memory, three 1200 BPI tape drives, a printer and a card reader -- all of which, by the way, needed a room the size of two large offices to hold it. This was Ernie's baby. He wrote all the programs (in COBOL), designed all the systems, and ran the department exactly the way he wanted to. He loved that machine.
One week after Ernie retired, he was killed in a car crash on the Long Island Expressway. Everyone was devastated. We couldn't grasp that Ernie was gone. As it turned out, we weren't given much time to grasp it at all.
Almost immediately, strange things began to happen in the office. Cards and papers would fall unassisted. Lights flickered and went out. Things were not found in the places that we thought we'd left them. We came up with rational explanations for all the weirdness ... until the day the door to the computer room, a heavy insulated metal door, began opening and closing on its own.
Access to the computer room was strictly limited to my staff -- and all eight of us were in a meeting down the hall when we heard that door close.
... We all grabbed our coats and were heading down the hall when we heard the door knob to the computer room click. The door opened. By itself. It closed by itself too. Nothing went in, nothing came out. But we all felt that eerie breeze move over us.
Gradually, we began to accept the fact that somehow Ernie was still with us. In a strange way, it felt nice. He seemed fairly harmless, and gradually his intrusions into our world faded away. Life continued normally at the office -- at least until eight years later, the day the HP 3000 arrived...
VGA blues
I started my career as MIS Manager in a very small shop. We manufactured, sold, and installed demountable, reconfigurable partition walls. We also sold all of the related products including lock sets, art glass, electrical outlets, and a variety of magnetic accessories like coat hooks and picture hooks.
...My undoing came in the form of a blue monitor...
After months of perfectly ordinary days, the receptionist called me, frantic. When she started her system that morning, the monitor had a horrible blue tinge to it. I immediately came down to reception to investigate. The monitor was indeed a sickly blue. These were relatively new CRT monitors; I was certainly aware of their basic construction and realized that one of the electron guns most probably was shooting blanks.
I called the manufacturer and described the problem in detail. We ran through all of the possible operating system settings and reloaded the driver, all to no avail. The technician then had me download a small utility program that displayed a color test pattern. I described the colors it displayed in detail. Everything was tinged a very vivid blue color. The technician said he had never seen this particular failure mode before but authorized a replacement monitor to be sent out next day air.
The new monitor powered up and you can imagine my surprise when I see exactly the same shade of vivid blue. ... Two monitors plugged into the same PC exhibit the exact same problem. It's not the OS or Drivers and it's not the monitor. It must be the video card!
The replacement video card arrived and I had the computer torn down and the card installed in record time. This time a small crowd had gathered around to see the results. Unfortunately the result was still a blue tinged monitor! ... What else could it be? ...
IT in the days before computers
Years ago, in the mist of the primeval past before computers were standard office equipment, I worked for a Fortune 500 company where "office automation" consisted of two IBM Selectric typewriters with 7,500-character memories. We had acquired these devices so we could avoid retyping boilerplate, but their limited memories rendered them useless for any real work.
... I acquired an Osborne computer which came bundled with WordStar (an early word processor), a SuperCalc spreadsheet, and Personal Pearl, a crude database manager. As an experiment, I put the department's budget into SuperCalc, and when revisions arrived on my desk, I went home and cranked them into the spreadsheet. When I returned the revised budget to the office within two hours (it usually took all day), I was expecting a pat on the back for my timely innovation. Instead, Charlie, my boss, shot me a glance of withering disapproval, and scolded me for not having given the numbers sufficient care.
I explained to him how a spreadsheet worked. To my amazement, he caved. Sort of. Charlie agreed to let me use my computer at home to update the budget, just as long as I checked the spreadsheet calculations manually. Sheesh....
How many techs does it take to turn on a computer?
...It was a Monday morning. A user called in unable to get his computer to boot up. After spending almost 45 minutes trying to troubleshoot the problem, I had resolved that it sounded like either: a) the user didn't know what he was doing and didn't know how to turn on his computer, or b) the power supply was dead and would require a floor tech to verify it was indeed dead, and order the replacement.
... (The junior tech I sent out) verified that indeed the PC would not power up, and had no power indicators lit. I walked (him) through checking the LEDs on the motherboard and checking the wall outlet (using the light in the cubicle) was good. After spending a little more than 15 minutes trouble shooting tech-to-tech, I headed out to see if I could find the problem, figuring either the junior tech didn't know what he was doing, or there was a real problem.
... We even tried swapping out the power strip, ensuring that every plug was securely seated in the power strip. The dead PC remained dead....
After about another half hour, we received a call asking for a status update. We replied that it was still unknown what the problem was, and the PC was still not working.
The IT Support Manager sent out the senior tech to check, and if necessary, order any required parts, or replace the whole system on the spot. The senior tech arrived on the scene, asked what we had checked and found out. He began to unhook all power cables both from the wall and the power strip and the back of the machines...