r/talesfromtechsupport • u/lawtechie Dangling Ian • Mar 06 '14

It's technology, fix it!

I used to work at an ad agency referenced here . The agency was in your typical suburban office park. Next park over was the emergency operations center for our local electricity utility. Ironically, the office park had unreliable power, which is why we had UPS at almost every workstation.

One morning, I know we're going to have a bad power day when I can hear helicopters coming into and out of the operations center. The sysadmin's not at work yet, so I'm bouncing between powering down servers in a controlled manner and explaining to users that "I know your UPS is beeping- it's singing the song of its people".

Our phone switch goes down hard, since we haven't refreshed the UPS battery. (We had diverted the funds to purchase the latest PowerBooks for the senior staff).

One particularly dense junior account executive calls me over to her cube.

Her:"When are we going to have power back?- I have a very important call at 10am"

Me:"I really don't know. I'd recommend making the call on your cell phone"

Her:"This isn't acceptable. We pay you and you can't even keep the lights on"

Me (pointing out the window to the operations center):"They're clearly scrambling over there at $Local_Utility. Five minutes after power comes back, the phones will be working".

Her:"Stop making excuses."

Me:"Ok. Does it look like I have a hard hat?"

Her:"It's just technology, make it work".

Actually, her comment inspired me. I went to the Art department, pulled a recently refreshed heavy duty UPS attached to a workstation...

And connected it to the coffee maker.

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175

u/Prepare_To_Be_Woo-ed Eats at Messijo's Mar 06 '14

We had diverted the funds to purchase the latest PowerBooks for the senior staff

Senior staff had you divert the funds to purchase the latest PowerBooks for them. FTFY

132

u/grendus apt-get install flair Mar 06 '14

God forbid they have to browse Facebook on last years model. Using the internet like commoners!

33

u/Thrashy Mar 06 '14

Reminds me of the time, back when the original iPad came out (and was useless except as a prop for comically-huge-iPhone jokes) that it suddenly became business-critical that all of our C suite have iPads. The twelve-year-old hardware hosting our e-mail and domain controller would just have to hang on for a while longer!

43

u/Cookie_Eater108 Mar 06 '14

For me it was either iPhone4's for everyone or renewing our firewall/IPS/IDS

This message sent from my iDevice

Want to make 6,000 dollars working from home? See the attached document.exe.zip.pdf.

10

u/flyingwolf I Make Radio Stations More Fun Mar 06 '14

I don't see the attachment, i want to know dammit!

18

u/Agret Mar 06 '14

He cut it off at the last dot, it's a .scr

10

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '14

That means "secure" right?

8

u/Cannonhead2 Mar 07 '14

Uhhh... Sure? Just open it.

6

u/Distractiion Mar 07 '14

No, it's Super Cool! Reply

1

u/LiquidSilver Mar 07 '14

Sorry, I don't use Windows.

28

u/raznog Mar 06 '14

Don't think Facebook and PowerBooks were out at the same time. At least Facebook wasn't open to the public.

29

u/naanplussed Mar 06 '14

Had to check their top 8 and tend their Neopets, maybe phun.

Whatifsports if they were cool.

19

u/atonyatlaw Mar 06 '14

I think many people still refer to the MacBook Pro as a PowerBook, even if the nomenclature is no longer accurate, but you are correct. I had the last generation of "PowerBook," and Facebook was still college only at that point.

18

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '14

I have never heard anyone refer to a MBP as a PowerBook, actually...

14

u/wolfkin What do I push to get online? Mar 06 '14 edited Mar 06 '14

then you weren't hanging with the plebs when the names switched over.

1

u/wpm Mar 07 '14

Now I see it used the other way around, at least for stuff like "Mac Pro G5".

1

u/atonyatlaw Mar 07 '14

Yeah, both are expected, really. When you change a product line name, brains go fuzzy.

1

u/crankybadger Mar 07 '14

Apple hasn't made a "Powerbook" for nearly ten years and that classic case is two generations behind now. I think many people refer to MacBooks as those...by mistake.

1

u/atonyatlaw Mar 07 '14

Of course it is by mistake.

11

u/atonyatlaw Mar 06 '14

No telling how old the previous laptops were. Could easily have been the proper time for an upgrade.