[173] in Humor
HUMOR: Buffer Problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Sat Apr 2 08:18:27 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 94 08:16:51 EST
This story has been floating around for a *long* time.
-Drew
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 19:14:07 -0700
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <matossian@aries.colorado.edu>
...
Forwarded-by: John Miller <miller@lclark.edu>
Major at an army base was put in charge of a brand new mainframe
computer system. Got it all installed, brand new section of the
building to house it, spent huge moolah on it. Supposed to automate
everything and make everybody's life blissful and reduce costs (yeah,
right).
Problem is, the computer keeps crashing. Every third or fourth night,
it goes down in a pile, and has to be cold-booted. Analysts are called
in, specialists, consultants, etc., and nobody can find anything wrong.
Colonel is getting lotsa heat from his superiors, cause he approved the
$$$, and it's causing more problems, not solving existing ones, and
costing more money in consultants who can't fix it. Like all good
bosses, he immediately dumps on the major/threatens his family, etc.
Major, in deep fear of the colonel, decides to commit himself to solving
this problem, and camps out in the computer room, watching the system
console in hopes of spotting what's going wrong.
Three days go by, and nothing. Just bored. System stays up. On the
fourth night, the screen goes nuts, and the system craps out. Nothing
obvious in front on him, so he goes through the various rooms looking
for a clue.
In one of the rooms, he hears a buzzing noise from the back. He goes
back, finds the janitor polishing the floors with a floor buffer.
Follows the power cord INTO one of the disk drive cabinets, where it's
plugged into a spare socket that's probably not designed to take the
megawatts of juice that the polisher is sucking....figures out it's
making the disk pack burp.
He asks the janitor, "So, how often do you buff the floors?"
"Every 3 or 4 days, sir" the janitor replies.
"And do you always plug it in right here? the major asks.
"Yessir, it's the only spot where I can reach the whole floor." If he
tells the colonel that the thousands of dollars in fees and weeks of
crashing systems are caused by the janitor, he's going to be whipped,
thrashed, beaten, and demoted by the colonel...he needs a good story.
He tells his buddy what's happened, and his buddy wishes him luck as he
heads off to tell the colonel.
Minutes later, the major is coming back down the hall, smiling.
Buddy asks, "Well, didn't you tell the colonel?"
"Yep"
"Well, wasn't he furious?"
"Nope"
"Ok, then, what did you tell him?"
"I told him it was a buffer problem."
