On-Call sucks

I once had a very important military client urgently ring my cell phone around 2:10am, waking me from a very nice, shall we say, warm and cozy sleep. Nudge nudge wink wink

Anyhoo, dragged myself to their location, walked up to the misbehaving equipment, and asked what had happened. They claimed it just wouldn't boot up.

I poked the Reset button and it promptly booted up. I usually have a simpatico with electronics and most machinery. My contract allowed me to bill 4 hours minimum call time, for about 20 seconds worth of actual work (Around 32 minutes if you count dragging myself out of bed, driving down there, walking to the blasted thing, etc)

Unfortunately, when I returned to my bed, it was no longer warm and cozy. Well, another love lost ....

 

So you have that effect on electronics too. Despite your label of me as a "malfunction magnet", I do a lot of healing with the laying-on of hands: Push the button, the thing starts up. I've lost count of the number of times clients have said "Well, it didn't do that for me."

In the days of TV repairmen, my great great aunt called a repairman to her house to have him plug in her TV. They work better with power.

Do you ever downplay the level of stupidity that you sometimes see with clients? I do this when they are basically good people, pay well, but are technically hopeless. I will double talk a bit, talk about how computers can be very tricky, and then assure them it's not at all uncommon to have trouble with cut and paste...

Tom

 

Yes, it does suck! Ah, on-call memories ... I've been out of IT since 2000, but those memories don't get any warmer with time! Hang in there, Dave_PH!

:ranger:

Jim

 

The knot in your gut as you drive to the site, wondering if it will be an easy fix, or if the entire house of cards has collapsed...

Tom

 

Unemployment sucks even more.

 

Another client, an industrial one, had just completed a new installation of a Honeywell TDC 3000 with their Multifunction Controller II cards on Hiway Gateway.

They only had UPS's on the actual LCN side of the control network. A transformer went kaboom, and the surge knocked out half the plant. When the power was restored, they restarted the LCN and Universal Stations. That installation was mid 80's, so they had to mount the Operator personality off of 5 1/4 floppies (Remember those?)

When they went to reload the point database into the MC II cards, neither Hiway would communicate with the LCN. Around 3am the phone went dingaling (Remember when phones had little bells in them?) at the motel, and I quickly went in

The shift supervisor wasn't an engineer, but he was a decent enough guy. The Hiway process boxes were in the control room as well, instead of in the MCC so that made my job easier. I opened up the doors, and both the Hiway cards and processor cards had red LEDs on them.

They were very well designed and protected against surges, but the kind of power problem they had when power was repeatedly flickering, would "stun" the node. On the processor card was two little buttons, one to test the backup battery (A green LED would blink on next to that test button) and a reset button

When the supervisor thought he was poking the reset button, he was actually poking the battery test button. So I poked the reset button, and mounted the Engineer personality on one of the US consoles.

I made sure all the nodes and points were properly loaded and qualified, then let the operator on shift restart the process. I explained to the nice supervisor that sometimes you had to just keep trying to reboot the system

You do know that I just tease you because I like you? In other words, I laugh *with* you, never *at* you.

I don't believe in mystical magical beings, but I am a FIRM believer in electronics laying-on-of-hands. I've had clients actually refer to me with awe, hence the complete ease of contracts.

I'm also a FIRM believer that some folks are just natural Malfunction Magnets. They're not sinister about it. Just seems whatever they touch, they fubar.

I can't explain it

Ah, I didn't know that. Here I've been sitting at the blank screen, drinking heavily, and pushing the buttons on the remote, while screaming the F Bomb at it. Poor tv, probably terrified of me

Like that funny little R rated clip I sent you of the fake Sony product, and the Sony guy repeatedly poking buttons on the remote while screaming the F Bomb at it

Yep, I recently related one such event to you. Clients who are nice, good people, but Neaderthal in understanding of anything more complex than a wind up alarm clock, I have sympathy for.

This is the same client who didn't want to "bother me" on my day off, called "tech support" at the ISP, and in no time flat were marched right into the middle of the nuclear minefield

After I got the alarming Pin-to-Pin on my BlackBerry and rushed back, everything was working smoothly within 2 hours. Most of that was un-fubaring what the ISP had done. I made gentle poo-poo and shushing noises to my client

However, a few days after that, I ripped 10 brand new fecal outlet orifaces on the ISP rep who had been summoned by Yours Truly

Yeah, up till now I haven't met anybody who had the astounding ability to outright bulls*** like I can ....

 

Oh, that's always a distinct possibility. When it finally does happen, I'll be sitting there with a drink in my hand, cackling at the stupid SOB's who told me it "wasn't necessary" to ensure reliability

 

Hang in there buddy, something will come along

 

unemployment does suck and working on contract for 3rd party clients sucks even more. just got news of new contract terms. looks to be a 30% cut in pay (bonus structure as of yet unknown so estimated pay cut is if bonus structure is the same)

this is in additional to company stopping 401K contribution Jan 1. but we still have unlimited overtime available...whoopee

 

No, my contracts are directly with large engineering firms, government, and military clients. I'm transitioning primarily to government and military clients now

I just *knew* it was a good idea to keep my security classification clean and up to date!

 

Somedays it is my turn to entertain the "evil spirits". When my stuff works I know it is someone else's turn. When I show up, the malfunctioning computer usually starts working--because it knows better. So many times it's an id-10-t code.

 

Or, in my case, the evil spirits look at me with suspicion, and I tell them "you owe me one"

 

Hey, what are you doing on here? I thought this forum was only for Prius owners?

Tom

 

Funny man ....