Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
I remember reading about a guy whose job it was to make tape backups once a week and then place them in a fireproof box. He did his job dutifully for a few months, but when a drive crashed they found out that none of the tapes had anything on them. To solve the mystery, the boss had the guy go through his backup routine to see if he was doing it wrong, but it all looked fine. When they were done, the guy figured he'd have his usual post-backup cup of tea, so he filled the electric kettle with water, plugged it into the wall socket and placed it on the nearest flat surface, the top of the fireproof box. The boss then saw that the AC coil in the kettle was bulk erasing all the tapes underneath.
The lesson is: test your backups!
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I also heard about a odd problem that a customer of American TV had once. His TV kept on changing channels by itself. They tested the unit and couldn't find the problem so they replaced the keypad on the TV set and sent it back home figuring it was something wrong there. It did it again! Finally they found out what the problem was. The man lived in the country and his screen door had a hole in the screen. A fly would fly in, land on the TV keypad and change the station. The keypad was set to be too sensitive. And there was the case of a photocopier not working one morning. So they called the repair man. He looked things over and then reached out and plugged it in. Turned out the janitors had unplugged the unit so they could use the floor buffer and had forgotten to plug it back in again when they were done. Always look for the simplest reason for a problem 1st.