🚀 go-pugleaf

A regular feature of the USENIX LISA conferences (Large Installations
and Systems Administration) is the Horror Story contest.  I'm ashamed
to admit I recall only two stories, but with any luck other LISA attendees
can fill in.

The 1988 Winner (reporter unknown):

The owner of a DEC laser printer (LN03? whatever...) had grown increasingly
frustrated with his particular machine, which he considered a lemon.
Finally he decided to do something.  He carefully removed all the covers
from the printer, then put the innards in his car.  He took them to a
local firing range, and pumped a few rounds into it with a rifle.  Then
he put the innards back into his car, returned it to work, and replaced
the covers.

Then he called DEC service.


The 1989 Winner (reported by me):

A consultant who shall remain nameless went to a customer site.  The
customer wanted his Sun file servers upgraded from Sun OS 3.5 to 4.0,
which required reformatting the disk and a lot of rearranging.  In a
meeting, everyone agreed the format was ready to go -- users had been
informed of coming downtime, files backed up, configurations recorded,
etc, etc.  So they proceed to the machine room -- operations mgr,
consultant, and operator.  The consultant starts the reformat/rebuild
on all the disks, which takes quite a while.  The ops manager eventually
becomes bored standing there, and leaves.  As soon as he's gone, the
operator turns to the consultant and says "Can you stop now?  I haven't
really backed up the disks."