Things you hope you don't hear...

[tatus1969]

The thing where you stick the pen in the hole and such?".

You can be glad that she didn't report you for sexual harassment

[Avacee]

Once had a clearly nervous support tech ask "How do you undelete the database?" 
The idiot had managed to run "rm -rf /" on a client's server whilst logged in as root. 
It was a doctor's surgery and 2 months medical and financial records vanished as the person who did the backups was on maternity leave   
I had them pull the plug and ship it. The idiot then turned up with it and proudly said "I re-installed the OS to save you some time" - Yep, some of the database's disk sectors had been overwritten  .
At least I never had to work with that particular idiot again.

At the other end of the scale was an incident where I wanted to hear something.
I was working late in the server room when two firemen in breathing apparatus came in.
Turns out there was a fire and they were checking all the rooms and there wasn't a siren in the server room and the servers drowned out the ones outside
A lot of brown stuff hit the whirly thing 

[grumpydoc]

Once had a clearly nervous support tech ask "How do you undelete the database?" 
The idiot had managed to run "rm -rf /" on a client's server whilst logged in as root. 

There's a story from the 80's about doing this to a running server and recovering  everything without powering the system down.

http://www.lug.wsu.edu/node/414

[Avacee]

That's an impressive recovery - thanks for the link. 
Confess that would have been beyond me then and definitely is now :p
Moral: You can never have too many backups - only too few.

[SeanB]

Reminds me of the time I heard a muffled bang outside. Open the door, and see the bomb squad outside, looking at the cloud of cement dust wafting up. Our plumber had offloaded the bag of cement mix to dix a leaking pipe and reinstate the wall, and left it outside while he went off to park the van away from there. In the 15 minute interim some paranoid called the bomb squad and reported this suspicious parcel, and the bomb squad came and blew it up. Plumber arrived around 5 minutes later, to find he had to walk to the hardware around the corner and buy yet more cement again.

Ah well, better than watching a policeman shoot a bus that tried to run him over, while i was on the phone to his office, saying they really needed more than one officer there to enforce the road closure.  I did bring him a cup of tea afterwards, reckon he needed it. Bus driver arrested for failing to obey, officer went for stress leave for a while.

[CJay]

Once had a clearly nervous support tech ask "How do you undelete the database?" 
The idiot had managed to run "rm -rf /" on a client's server whilst logged in as root. 

There's a story from the 80's about doing this to a running server and recovering  everything without powering the system down.

http://www.lug.wsu.edu/node/414

When I first got involved with SCO Unix/Xenix, I was sent on some training in Birmingham, the first couple of days were configuration, administration etc, then a week of management/admin etc, the last couple of days were spent trying to think of ways to break the system and how to recover it, one of the things we discussed was rm -rf / and how you'd recover from it, we worked out (and tried) that you can recover it relatively easily as long as you don't reboot, it's arse clenching to do but it's not as disasterous as it seems at first glance.

I count myself very lucky to have never had to do it for real though.

[moz]

I used to work in freezing works/abbatoirs, back when automation was moving from giant boards of discrete components to new 8 bit microprocessors. It was very exciting.

Worst call ever from from a pelting machine that wasn't working properly. Those machines pull the skins off cattle, they're not bothered if people get in the way. This particular unit had started occasionally pausing mid-stroke and they decided it was probably my hardware causing the problem. So they rang me, and after a bit of talking to the electrician and taking things apart we decided to cycle the machine (with some of the guards off and no cow inserted). The electrician was supposed to be next to the control panel and phone, not within touching distance of the moving bits:

"ok, it's running... {crunch}"
(silence)
"hello? Dave?"
(more silence)
"shit, mate, there was a big bone jammed down the back and it fell in front of the ram".

Shit, all right.

[boffin]

I had a computer "Technician" try to tell me that my sound card didn't work because my powered speakers were not impedance matched with the card .

I remember a salesman telling me I needed a "Bi-directional" printer cable.  I asked him if they specifically put diodes in the cheaper uni-directional ones.  He didn't get it..

[CJay]

I had a computer "Technician" try to tell me that my sound card didn't work because my powered speakers were not impedance matched with the card .

I remember a salesman telling me I needed a "Bi-directional" printer cable.  I asked him if they specifically put diodes in the cheaper uni-directional ones.  He didn't get it..

Some parallel cables didn't have all the status lines wired, thus preventing full duplex bi-directional communication within the definition of the IEEE1284 bidirectional standard. A parallel host should be able to 'fall back' to compatible mode if that's the case and still work but will be slower.

[grumpydoc]

I had a computer "Technician" try to tell me that my sound card didn't work because my powered speakers were not impedance matched with the card .

I remember a salesman telling me I needed a "Bi-directional" printer cable.  I asked him if they specifically put diodes in the cheaper uni-directional ones.  He didn't get it..

Ah, well, such things existed.

Originally the "Centronics" interface could only send data from the computer to the printer, it used 8 data lines, three handshake lines (STROBE, ACK and BUSY) and some status lines for signalling errors such as out of paper.

Crucially the status lines were often not connected on cheap cables.

When the interface was enhanced to include communication back from the printer (and faster data rates) I'm pretty sure it involved use of these lines so an older, cheap cable would not work (or would cause the computer to fall back to the original unidirectional mode).

So a "bi-directional" centronics cable is one with all the pins connected.

Not that would necessarily have been the fix to whatever problem you were having at the time.

EDIT: Rats CJay beat me to it.

[aargee]

Way back in the mid 80s, the company I worked for sold Aussie designed/built Unix boxes. Hard drives were fragile beasties back then.
One customer had written into their agreement as part of acceptance testing that the power be pulled at a random time from the box and it had to suffer nothing more than a reboot.
Some competitors replaced numerous drives in their offerings. We came pretty close to the desired result and were accepted.

Probably the worst is talking to someone calling from their car, hands free, and an ensuing accident. Thankfully minor injuries and not their fault.

[LaserSteve]

Non IT related post, so...

Dental Surgeon talks me into removing all four wisdom teeth in one day, with full anesthetic.  I note with exception of head nurse at his office, all nurses except one  are blond, petite, matched in height, weight etc... I was thinking, he hired them that way for a reason... And Chuckled...

When I wake up after surgery in the chair, I'm nearly suffocating as one nurse has her leg across my throat, one is setting on left arm, one on left leg, one on right arm, and one on right leg... Plus one I didn't see before was leaning on my chest, coming from a nearby Doctor's  office.  Being a single guy, and having a serious Geek gene, any other time in my life, that would have been quite a fantasy... 

"Hi Steve, we're done They are all out but half of the lower left one" .. UM, how much of that do you remember?" Gurggling against the weight of the combined nurses, I sputtuer  "Remember what Doc? I don't remember a thing"  "Good" With a huge look of relief on his strained face..

So my Mom and my neighbor go off and get the  post surgical prescriptions after picking me up, and go AWOL shopping for about four hours before bringing the meds back...  Twenty minutes after they leave, the shots wear off... ROFSIP is my new abbreviation after this.  means "Rolling on Floor Screaming in Pain". Shot was supposed to be good for four hours.. So I can only guess, but I'm thinking in-effective anesthesia.

To this day I don't know what happened, but all I do know is I had weeks of post surgical infections and a cluster of something gooey  the size of a golf ball rolling around in my left cheek, for about a month...

My normal dentist, asks me every time I visit, how much I remember, and how I feel about Doctor X... Then mutters something about how strong you are for a little guy...

Steve

[boffin]

I had a computer "Technician" try to tell me that my sound card didn't work because my powered speakers were not impedance matched with the card .

I remember a salesman telling me I needed a "Bi-directional" printer cable.  I asked him if they specifically put diodes in the cheaper uni-directional ones.  He didn't get it..

Ah, well, such things existed.

Originally the "Centronics" interface could only send data from the computer to the printer, it used 8 data lines, three handshake lines (STROBE, ACK and BUSY) and some status lines for signalling errors such as out of paper.

Crucially the status lines were often not connected on cheap cables.

When the interface was enhanced to include communication back from the printer (and faster data rates) I'm pretty sure it involved use of these lines so an older, cheap cable would not work (or would cause the computer to fall back to the original unidirectional mode).

So a "bi-directional" centronics cable is one with all the pins connected.

Not that would necessarily have been the fix to whatever problem you were having at the time.

EDIT: Rats CJay beat me to it.

Actually no, not quite.  Right from the beginning the port never changed much.  The difference were the cheap ass cables would simply skip a couple of wires.
A printer cable connecting from the DB25 to the 57-30360 (I remember the i/f well enough to remember the part number off the top of my head.  Could probably wire a printer cable in my head still) had 8 data lines (from the PC), plus a few lines (STB, AUTOFD, INIT, SLCTIN) that were bi directional, and a few more that went through the logic to be input only.  It was a weird design.  For a few pennies more they could have replaced the 244 with a 245 and made the main ( data lines bidirectional.  Probably they should have made the whole interface 2 or 3 LS245s, and had a bank of 8 and two banks of 4 bidirectional. That would have allowed everything they wanted.

You can see a full schematic here: http://www.baltissen.org/images/lpt.gif

[SeanB]

Non IT related post, so...

Dental Surgeon talks me into removing all four wisdom teeth in one day, with full anesthetic.  I note with exception of head nurse at his office, all nurses except one  are blond, petite, matched in height, weight etc... I was thinking, he hired them that way for a reason... And Chuckled...

When I wake up after surgery in the chair, I'm nearly suffocating as one nurse has her leg across my throat, one is setting on left arm, one on left leg, one on right arm, and one on right leg... Plus one I didn't see before was leaning on my chest, coming from a nearby Doctor's  office.  Being a single guy, and having a serious Geek gene, any other time in my life, that would have been quite a fantasy... 

"Hi Steve, we're done They are all out but half of the lower left one" .. UM, how much of that do you remember?" Gurggling against the weight of the combined nurses, I sputtuer  "Remember what Doc? I don't remember a thing"  "Good" With a huge look of relief on his strained face..

So my Mom and my neighbor go off and get the  post surgical prescriptions after picking me up, and go AWOL shopping for about four hours before bringing the meds back...  Twenty minutes after they leave, the shots wear off... ROFSIP is my new abbreviation after this.  means "Rolling on Floor Screaming in Pain". Shot was supposed to be good for four hours.. So I can only guess, but I'm thinking in-effective anesthesia.

To this day I don't know what happened, but all I do know is I had weeks of post surgical infections and a cluster of something gooey  the size of a golf ball rolling around in my left cheek, for about a month...

My normal dentist, asks me every time I visit, how much I remember, and how I feel about Doctor X... Then mutters something about how strong you are for a little guy...

Steve

I had the left side removed by a dentist, who in his spare time was a Springbok rugby player. He lifted me out of the dental chair by the tooth each time, despite having a nurse ( built like a tank) holding me to the chair, each time the only parts touching the chair were the back of my head and my feet. Those 2 out under local, he put in 2 dissolving stitches on each hole, he proceeded to pack my mouth with swabs, and wrote out a prescription for some generic pain tablets, basically the mildest Tylenol you can get. Then said, in his very broken english, that he would see me in 3 months, after the holes had healed, to take the other 2 out. Vowed never to go back to him.

When you have a pair of hands, where the fingers are thicker than some peoples forearms, shoved into your mouth, you tend to worry, especially when there already is a suction tube, a scalpel, a tooth vice and sundry other metal parts in there as well.

Went to my current dentist around 20 years later for the one on the other side, and the last around 2 years ago, but for that I needed to go to a maxillofacial surgeon to have it cut out, as the roots were bent.

[LaserSteve]

Sean,

Yikes,

 After reading your post, this might be the first time in my life I can really type "I feel your pain" and mean it.
  My guy was supposedly the best in North Ohio..  I'm not so sure now. He too, was "all thumbs" with big hands.

Going back to have the infected area drained  on was equally scary, a quick shot to numb it, which he never gave time to work, and then stabbed with a horse sized suction needle to remove the infectious material.

I now tell people one tooth at a time and check the Doctor's references...

Steve

[timb]

Non IT related post, so...

Dental Surgeon talks me into removing all four wisdom teeth in one day, with full anesthetic.  I note with exception of head nurse at his office, all nurses except one  are blond, petite, matched in height, weight etc... I was thinking, he hired them that way for a reason... And Chuckled...

When I wake up after surgery in the chair, I'm nearly suffocating as one nurse has her leg across my throat, one is setting on left arm, one on left leg, one on right arm, and one on right leg... Plus one I didn't see before was leaning on my chest, coming from a nearby Doctor's  office.  Being a single guy, and having a serious Geek gene, any other time in my life, that would have been quite a fantasy... 

"Hi Steve, we're done They are all out but half of the lower left one" .. UM, how much of that do you remember?" Gurggling against the weight of the combined nurses, I sputtuer  "Remember what Doc? I don't remember a thing"  "Good" With a huge look of relief on his strained face..

So my Mom and my neighbor go off and get the  post surgical prescriptions after picking me up, and go AWOL shopping for about four hours before bringing the meds back...  Twenty minutes after they leave, the shots wear off... ROFSIP is my new abbreviation after this.  means "Rolling on Floor Screaming in Pain". Shot was supposed to be good for four hours.. So I can only guess, but I'm thinking in-effective anesthesia.

To this day I don't know what happened, but all I do know is I had weeks of post surgical infections and a cluster of something gooey  the size of a golf ball rolling around in my left cheek, for about a month...

My normal dentist, asks me every time I visit, how much I remember, and how I feel about Doctor X... Then mutters something about how strong you are for a little guy...

Steve

I had the left side removed by a dentist, who in his spare time was a Springbok rugby player. He lifted me out of the dental chair by the tooth each time, despite having a nurse ( built like a tank) holding me to the chair, each time the only parts touching the chair were the back of my head and my feet. Those 2 out under local, he put in 2 dissolving stitches on each hole, he proceeded to pack my mouth with swabs, and wrote out a prescription for some generic pain tablets, basically the mildest Tylenol you can get. Then said, in his very broken english, that he would see me in 3 months, after the holes had healed, to take the other 2 out. Vowed never to go back to him.

When you have a pair of hands, where the fingers are thicker than some peoples forearms, shoved into your mouth, you tend to worry, especially when there already is a suction tube, a scalpel, a tooth vice and sundry other metal parts in there as well.

Went to my current dentist around 20 years later for the one on the other side, and the last around 2 years ago, but for that I needed to go to a maxillofacial surgeon to have it cut out, as the roots were bent.

Yeah, seeing an oral surgeon to have the wisdom teeth removed is the way to go. I finally did it (all four at once, bottom ones were impacted) about 8 years ago. It was a piece of cake. He called in a prescription for 3 Xanax the day before, I took one in the morning and two more when I got to the office. By the time I was in the chair I was already *very* pliable. Then came the injection of what I assume was some stronger benzo and something else. The next thing I remember is being in the car on the ride home and picking up the Vicodin from the pharmacy. The next 24 hours were spent basically nodding in and out of sleep with headphones on, in my recliner.

I can honestly say I felt nothing. He really knew what he was doing and everything went very smoothly. I had been putting it off for *years* because of all the horror stories you hear, but I had a good dentist who knew his limits and sent me to a good oral surgeon instead.

[tautech]

When I had a few out some years ago the first thing I did was express my anxiety to my dentist....why he asked ?
While I might go home bearing less fangs I was worried about long lasting imprints from his boots on my forehead from him obtaining the purchase required. We got on well after that. 

The post match prescribed pain relief was of concern though.....Ibuprofen, that I wouldn't consider as it's bloody useless for the odd headache that I might have but he assured me that it was magic for postoperative dental pain relief and much to my surprise it damn well was excellent. No misery at all. 

[German_EE]

"Have you been saved by Jesus?"

[tautech]

"Have you been saved by Jesus?"

Easily neutralised with: I'm sorry but I'm already a practising heathen....try it some time. 

[TerraHertz]

The crunch of a largish piece breaking off a molar tooth. My first experience of this was a couple of nights ago. Such are the trials of getting old.

[Rerouter]

when i was a small child, still on my first set of teeth, went to the dentist to remove one he didnt like (about a year before they where meant to come out),

He yanks, and yanks, and that tooth and the 2 next to it come out in his recoil, turns out the roots where hooked around each other, dentist then says, "well shit" to 5 year old me. kinda funny in retrospect as i cannot remember if it hurt anymore.

Kinda put me off dentists for a while

Then in my 20's, had a wisdom tooth removed, had the dentist walk off after 5 minutes of yanking the tooth every which way with no change, says "just going to find my bigger pliers", leaves the room, 4 minutes later walks back in carrying what i can best describe as multi-grip pliers, which he steralises, and has another go at, about 30 seconds in i hear (and felt) a loud crack, and out came the tooth, (crack was from him pressing so hard with the pliers that a chip shot off)

[LaserSteve]

"Welcome to the Apple store."

WINNER!

Steve

[timb]

"Have you been saved by Jesus?"

Unfortunately, like most people, Jesus saves but doesn't perform backups. I'd hate to be his IT guy in heaven!

[GreyWoolfe]

"Have you been saved by Jesus?"

Unfortunately, like most people, Jesus saves but doesn't perform backups. I'd hate to be his IT guy in heaven!

His hard drives have a MTBF of 100,000 years instead of hours. 

[rdl]

I distinctly remember being "saved by Jesus" when I was 12 years old. It doesn't come with Lifetime Warranty?