Power off, power on

IT manager is being shown the hardware for a system recently deployed on time and under budget. Has it been thoroughly tested in every aspect? he asks. "The development team all nodded in the affirmative," says a pilot fish on the scene. "At which point, he bent over and pulled the power plug on the UPS. Almost instantly, pagers were going off as the UPS and the server shut down. The problem: No one thought to purchase a battery for the UPS!"

Never mind

Truck hits a power pole down the street, and pilot fish is working feverishly to shut down all the servers in the darkened building before the UPSs run down. As fish heads for the main computer room, a user from accounting asks, "Is the network still down?" Fish figures she"s kidding, but she"s not. Don"t you know we just had a power outage? he asks. "Yes," she says, "but my laptop is still on. Why isn"t the network? Don"t you have it on battery?"

Net loss

Power goes out and returns at this political campaign office, and now none of the PCs -- which are usually on all the time -- will boot. The error message: "Boot from network or quit. Searching for server (DHCP)." "It turns out the nephew of one volunteer set up the server and network," says an insider pilot fish. "When he couldn"t fix the server, he removed it without setting the PCs to boot on their own. Now no one has access to the network, and there"s no extra money in the campaign fund to fix the systems."

The other part

User tells help desk pilot fish that her PC is totally locked up. Power the PC off and then back on, fish advises. Minutes later, user calls back: "It"s right back where it was before and is still hung." Fish makes the trip to user"s desk. Power it down again, fish suggests. User turns off the monitor and turns it back on. Fish sighs and shows user how to turn off the PC sitting beneath her desk. Says user: "I didn"t even know there was another part under there!"

It"s all in your head

IT pilot fish gets a new PC monitor and notices a high-pitched sound. He calls a tech over, but the tech can"t figure it out because he can"t hear it. They call in the vendor"s tech, who can"t hear it either. "It kept bothering me until one day our building had an electricity failure," fish says. "All went dead. We sat in a very quiet and dark building. That was when I realized I continued hearing the ringing sound -- and I went for a hearing test."

-- Sharky"s listening. Tell me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You"ll score a sharp Shark shirt if I use it. And check out the daily feed, browse the Sharkives and sign up for Shark Tank home delivery at computerworld.com/sharky.