It's a few years ago, and this netadmin pilot fish works with a PC technician who is, well, quirky. "This guy could fix anything from printers down to the circuit-board level, or build a server from spare parts," says fish. "Problem was, he was prone to sudden odd actions."
One day fish is in the data center's repair area when he hears the server room doors open. In comes the PC tech, pushing a server -- the kind that's the size of a piece of furniture, complete with four wheels underneath.
The tech is whistling a tune as the server's wheels click across the tile floor.
But as fish walks out of the repair area to greet him, the tech suddenly gives a sharp whistle -- and gives a sharp push to the server, sending it spinning wildly toward fish.
"To my horror, the server box shot across the room whirling like a Tasmanian devil," fish says. "The doors of the server box flew open, and it slammed into a server rack. The first server on the rack was knocked over, which caused two more servers to pull on their network cables, which caused a router to slide out of its cabinet.
"As alarms began going off and the phone began ringing, another technician fell helplessly to the ground laughing while Mr. Destructo said, '@#$%!, I didn't expect that to happen!'
"I resisted strangling him and began explaining to irate users that we had a sudden network outage that we were working to fix.
"To this day, the tech can't explain why he did this."
Sharky doesn't explain 'em -- I just report 'em. Shove your true tale of IT life my way at sharky@computerworld.com. I'll send a Shark shirt spinning back to you if I use it.