[1211] in Humor
HUMOR: A Day In the Life of a Net Manager
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Fri Nov 17 14:18:06 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Cc: jleonard@MIT.EDU, chris@MIT.EDU, HOFFMANN@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 13:59:12 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Coming from MIT's Network Services originally, I can *really* appreciate this.
-Drew
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 16:58:13 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
From: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@SJ.Xenotropic.COM>
Forwarded-by: Chris LaFournaise <cjl@sequent.com>
This kind of thing would never happen here, and I can't imagine it
happening anywhere, but this came to me in a dream and I just had to post
it.
Jim McCarthy, lead sysadmin,
arrives at work ready for anything.
Maybe today won't be as bad as
yesterday. Any phone messages?
Hope not...
<BEEP BEEP...BEEP BEEP BEEP...BEEP>
YOU HAVE <click> TWENTY SEVEN <click> ARGH! Motherfffffff.....
MESSAGES. PRESS ONE TO <BEEP>
FIRST MESSAGE. "Hi... um.... this is
um.... George. I... um can't get to Last name, George, tell me your....
my server. Um... can you help? This is Server's name, George, what's....
very important. Um, please fix this as Tell me your phone number, George.
soon as you can." END OF FIRST MESSA Phone num- Son of a b* <BEEP>
SECOND MESSAGE. "Jim, this is Cameron
G. I just connected a few systems to Oh no.... If he's touched -
the building backbone, could you assign What? Where did you get access to
me IP addresses 200 through 205 for
them? I tried pinging those addresses Cretin, those are reserved -
and nothing was there, so they're Oh, wow, he must have found the hub
available, I've got my systems on those in the 1st floor lab and tapped -
addresses now. And one of the systems NO! Where are they?
will be a router to a couple of local
nets, could you assign me some subnet
numbers too? I figure I'll need two You SOB, what are you planning!?
subnet numbers, no, make that three. I'm gonna have a chat with your
Thank you." END OF SEC- boss.... <BEEP>
THIRD MESSAGE. "Hi, this is Madeline
in Mister Smith's office. We have
some very important customers coming in
for a demo in the old cafeteria, so I
guess we need network hookups for about What! There's no network hookup in
a dozen systems, I'm not sure exactly, the old caf- Damn. I can run a
and I guess wires and stuff, whatever fiber over the weekend.... I need a
they need to be on the network and talk hub, two fiber transceivers, um,
to our servers on the third floor and about fifty feet of....
to the customers' servers in Ohio, cause What? Ohio? The security firewall
they want to see a demo with live data. won't let.... I can write a proxy
The demo starts at 1:00, so please make Eh? What day, Madeline?
sure everything works by then. It'll
be over by 5:00 PM because the customers What day?
fly home tonight. Please let me know NO! NOT TODAY! I CAN'T GET -
when this is working so I can tell the YOU PROMISED ME A WEEK'S WARNING!
president. Thank you." END OF THIR- YOU SLUT! <BEEP>
FOURTH MESSAGE. "Hiya Mac, this is Don't call me Mac.
Paul. My brother has been telling his Uh oh, payroll.
third grade class, he teaches social
studies, about this Information Freeway Heh heh heh.
thing and they're all gung-ho about it
but, Mac, you know how schools can't get Don't call me Mac!
any money these days, so, Mac, I told my
brother that we could let them use the Uh oh.
systems here, right? No big deal. If Oh, no you don't.
you could set up a shared account for
his class, Mac, make the password Don't hyperventilate, don't hyperv-
'password', I'll give them the 800
number to dial in. Hey thanks a lot, Later. Can't call payroll person
Mac." END OF F raving imbecile. Call later.
<BEEP>
FIFTH MESSAGE. "Hello, this is...
*ahem* John.... Roberts? I work for
one of your customers? And I like just Who the heck is this
found a big security hole in one of your
company's programs? Could you send me a
list of the security holes that you Heh heh
already know about so I can tell you if
it's already in there? And if it's not Haaaaaahahahahaha
then I'll, you know, give you more of a
description? Mail the list to HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
bin@cs.umx.edu, that's an account I'm HAHAHA<choke> Brian will freak....
borrowing because, like, the systems at
work aren't configured all the way yet? Haaaaaahahahaha stop! stop!
Thanks.... Good bye...." END O <BEEP BEEP BEEP ... BEEP>
MESSAGE SAVED. PRESS ONE T <BEEP>
SIXTH MESSAGE. "Hello, uh, this is
Bert. I tried sending a message to the
Internet and it came back with, uh, an You're not going to tell me the
error. Can you tell me how I can get address, or the error message, are
this through? Uh, thanks. The error you, Bert.
was 'something unknown'. Or 'unknown
something', I forget. I deleted the, $ mail bert < /dev/clue
uh, message. Anyway, please let me know
what I should do." END OF S- Yeah, I'll do that. <BEEP>
SEVENTH MESSAGE. "Howdy, Mr. McCarthy,
this is Dave in Southwest regional
support. One of our customers, a big
military site, has been having trouble
sending e-mail to us. They say they Milnet. Not milnet.
need a list of all our system names and
IP addresses for their hosts file. I What? For their *what*?
couldn't find that list anywhere, but
the customer says we must have one
somewhere because our mail wouldn't work What? I deleted that file, years-
without it. Can y'all send me a copy of
the list, or tell me who I should
contact to get it? Thank you." Oh lord. <BEEP>
EIGHTH MESSAGE. "Jim, this is Cameron
G. again. We upgraded our Wellfleet You bastard, if you've -
router and for some reason we started
having problems with some of our TCP/IP You reversed the interfaces again,
clients. I figured it was a nameserver Cameron, you jerk. You did the
thing at first, so I replaced the same thing the last time -
resolver file on all the clients with a
hosts file, but that didn't help so I NO!
figured it was a netmask problem so I
changed the netmask on all the clients
to the default 16 bits, but that didn't NO! DAMN YOU! I'LL BREAK YOUR
help so I figured it was a wiring FINGERS!
problem so I ran a piece of thinnet from
from our net into the lab net, but that YOU ANENCEPHALIC SLIME! I'LL KILL
didn't help either. I'm going on YOU! I'LL KILL YOU!
vacation for two weeks and I'm about to
leave, so could you contact Darryl and
help him get it straightened out? He's ARGGGGGGGGHH!
out today but will be in tomorrow.
Thanks." END O*F EIG*TH M* <BE* B* Hold still! BEEP>
NINTH MESSAGE. "Hi, this is Terry. Can
you tell me how I can have two mailboxes
on my account with different mail Eh? I'll give her a second accoun-
addresses? I'm letting my boyfriend use
my account so he can read news and stuff Oh, no.
on USENET. But it's a problem because No. He can use a public access
he doesn't want me reading his mail so
when something comes in I have to call
him so he can tell me if it's mine so I What in hell?
can read it. He's not allowed to get an
account on a public site 'cause of some
kind of probation thing. Thanks!" END *gasp* AIIIEEEE! <BEEP>
TENTH MESSAGE. "Jim, this is Bernard in
finance. I've got this purchase order
in front of me, for twelve thousand What!? I sent that in two months-
dollars for this connection to Inter Net
for a year. This kind of money is a
problem right now, so could we look at
doing without this temporarily, or Doing *WITHOUT*? This is a software
getting another vendor for this, who company, what kind of reputation -
doesn't cost so much? My brother-in-law Doesn't cost - ???
says he connects to Inter Net for just
twelve dollars a month, and gets all
kinds of shopping services besides, and That's PRODIGY!
he says you can even get to Inter Net
over cable TV now. Could you write up
an evaluation of all our options,
cost-wise, and get back to me with it? What! I haven't got time to write-
I'll hold off on the PO until I hear No! They'll cut us off again!
from you." END OF TE*** *** <BEEEEEEEEEE>CRASH Damn phone!
PRESS ONE T <BEEP>
YOU HAVE <click> SEVENTEEN <click>
MESSAGES REMAINING. PRESS <SLAM!>
