🚀 go-pugleaf

Our sign says:

		ATTENTION

	Do not tease, annoy or bother the computer
	      or it will eat your paycheck.

=====
Related story:

Up until recently, all of the University's administrative work was done
on one of two Tops-20s [the last Tops-20 is to be phased out next month
(*sniff*)].  Anyway, one day, about three years ago, we had an
airconditioning failure.  When the temperature reached 85 degrees, the
supervisor on duty did the proper thing: she shutdown the machines as
politely as possible and then spun down the disks.

At the time, the payroll people had their databases and programs on an
RP20, which, if you've never seen one, looks like a giant two-spindled
dishwasher.  I'm not sure, but I think that that RP20 had been with the
system just about from the start.

Well, after the temperature came back down, the systems were restarted. 
However, the RP20 refused to spin back up.  The hardware people tried
everything, probably including begging, pleading and voodoo rituals.  It
never spun up.

It was a disaster, but not un-recoverable.  The data that had been on
the RP20 was restored from backup tape onto different drives.

When the Supervisor received her next paycheck, it was for $4.76 [if I
remember right].

The payroll folks found out a reason that this happened [I have no idea
what it was].  There are still those who aren't sure that it wasn't
TopsA, getting revenge....

--------------------------------------------------------------
Esther C. Filderman             ef...@andrew.cmu.edu
Andrew Specialist		Computing Services
Computer Operations	Carnegie Mellon University