More Tales from the Computer Room

More relentlessly technical stories from my 40 years in the computer industry.

We had a number of UNIX machines in the basement at Fair, Isaac in CA, connected to computer terminals in offices all over the building on three floors. They weren’t always the most reliable, alas. Sometimes one would go down and I’d have to run down and get it going again.

I had my head inside a rack of machinery down there, fiddling with cables when I got a phone call—not on my cellphone, those hadn’t been invented yet—but on a nearby phone.

It was a Vice President calling from one of the exalted C-suites up on the third floor, and he was upset. “We’ve got a bunch of salespeople here just sitting on their thumbs because the computers are down. We’re losing a fscking fortune up here.”

A little UNIX joke there: “fsck” is a UNIX command for checking the file system. He did not use the word “fscking,” as you might have guessed.

“Yeah, I get you,” I told him. “I’m working on the problem now.”

Then I added, “Well, I was working on it until I got this phone call, and as soon as this phone call is over, I’ll be working on it again.”

Yeah, I can be kind of a brat sometimes. I really am sorry about that.

“Message received,” he responded and hung up.

My boss reprimanded him for using abusive language to one of his employees, which I appreciated, but that really hadn’t upset me at all; it seemed perfectly reasonable given the frustration he was feeling.

The terminals were connected to the basement computers via a rat’s nest of wiring in a dark, cramped room that I was in charge of. When a new employee was hired, they needed a computer terminal and new wiring for that terminal—a very arduous procedure.

The various department heads seemed to think that was the work of a moment and often neglected to tell me about that until the day their new hire first showed up for work and discovered their terminal didn’t work.

So I’d get a phone call demanding I drop everything and hook them up pronto.

My boss decided that wasn’t good planning, so he mandated that I be given two weeks notice via a request form for wiring changes.

One of the bigwigs once popped into my office to inform me of a new hire arriving that day, and could I run right over and get that going?

I politely informed him of the request policy. He… did not take it well.

“A form? I have to fill out a form?” he sneered. “Do I have to fill out a form to get this form?”

“Oh, all right, I’ll bow to the great administrative gods,” he relented gracelessly, angrily flouncing out of my office.

I would have been okay with my boss reprimanding him for that one.

We used the “vi” text editor, the only game in town at the time; it wasn’t always reliable either. One day I had yet another Vice President come to my office with an urgent plea.

“I’ve been working on this letter to send out all day, and the editor just locked up! Please, you’ve got to save it, it’s very important!”

I couldn’t think of anything that could be done.

Had he saved his work at any point during the day? Of course not, don’t be silly.

He was glumly slouching back to his office when I had a sudden inspiration.

I ran down the hall to intercept him before he could abort his session, losing the file irrevocably.

“Wait, I have an idea. It’s a long shot, but I want to give it a try.”

I went back to my desk and sent the process running his editing session a special signal that said, “Oh dear, you need to quit: the modem you are connected to has disconnected.”

There was no modem involved but never mind that. Call it a little white electronic lie.

Lo and behold, the editor quit as expected, but not before helpfully saving his document.

Huzzah! I was a hero! High fives all around!

I cautioned him to save his work more frequently in the future: “At least every five minutes,” I advised him.

The very next day he was back at my office with the same desperate situation.

Had he saved his work at any point? Of course not.

So I tried the same clever trick again and… it didn’t work. Ooh, he was pissed.

Too bad, so sad.