[rescue] Oh no! This poor Origin server.....

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 2, 2004, at 8:52 AM, William Enestvedt wrote:
>    BUT...letting someone else work on your systems cuts both ways. I 
> had
> a 420R go down this week, and Sun's $Outsourced_Support_Contractor
> dispatched an elf with a couple of RAM sticks.
>    The tech opened up the case and moaned softly: the last field tech
> had used a regular screwdriver to tighten down the Memory Riser Board's
> retaining screws instead of the Sun-supplied official 420R Torque 
> Wrench
> Wire-Loop-Thing -- and both of the plastic ears into which those screws
> go were stripped off. (We even found a scrap of plastic lying on the
> motherboard, as well as the threaded metal barrel that the plastic had
> been cast around...one of the *two* on the Riser Board.) Also, the full
> weight of the Riser Board & RAM had been borne by the loong edge
> connector on the motherboard. That system never came up again that day.
> :7(
>    A day later, he'd replaced the Memory Riser Card, the motherboard, a
> couple of disposable plastic housings, and a CPU module (and used three
> couriers to get it all here!), all at no cost to me. (Sure, the 
> downtime
> could have been expensive, but this was a server used for training and
> there were no classes this week.)
>    If I'd busted up a system like that, it would have cost a freakin'
> fortune to get the parts, plus the time they spent in transit, and I
> would probably have been fired as soon as the system came back on line
> -- justifiably.

   ...but you WOULDN'T have busted up a system like that, because you 
Have A Clue.  Hence my argument for having clueful staff.

   People don't buy support contracts for things like cars or drill 
presses, and they're tools just like computers are.  The vendors have 
our industry very well-trained to believe that support contracts are 
both necessary and of great value...because it makes them a shit-ton of 
money.

   People learn how to operate and maintain their new drill press so 
they don't need to buy a support contract from the manufacturer...but 
they refuse to do the same with their computer hardware.

   Of course many (most?) people here will take a very dim view of my 
opinions on this matter, but then, I did say the vendors have most of 
us very well-trained. ;)

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke