Keeping a log of brainless activity

WARNING: This blog entry contains shameless pity milking on the part of the author. While reading, remember that the story has a happy ending this time. The author cannot vouch for next time's IT tragedy.

*** Story below ***

My first week on the IT job, I thought I'd fried a computer. Remember? The Blue Screen of Death? I was upset and worried, and certain that I'd absolutely destroyed the computer. Boss Man told me that unless I saw smoke, things were fine. He assured me that we had simply used the wrong system disks, and that when we redid it using the right disks, all would be well. And it was.

This is the end of my second week on the IT job. And my subconscious self seems hell-bent on destroying a computer. Thursday was not a good day. Not really. I couldn't sleep that night, and my alarm screwed up and woke me an hour early. I was exhausted. That, however, does not excuse my brainless activity of the day. See title. Our job was to install neato DVDR drives into the computers down in the UWC. No problem. You just open up the tower, fiddle around for a while, screw things back in place, and close her up. Easy. Just make sure you disconnect the power first.

Because when you don't, you get to stomp on sparks as they hit the carpet. And you get to fan at smoke. And wipe scorch marks off of the equipment. Oh, and your hand will tingle something fierce, and twitch a little on occasion. But that's just a natural thing, when you jam a screwdriver into a live machine. Something to be expected. You know.

Now, in my defense, I thought the thing had been unplugged. I told my partner to pull the power, and he must have thought I had said that I would pull it. But I thought his nod and "yeah" meant something more akin to "mission accomplished" than "ok, go ahead and do that." Why would I have asked if it was okay, if he was standing by the power outlet?

In any case, the machine died. We pulled the power, put her together, and then plugged her back in. She was still grave-bound. And the monitor was shot, too. Bad move, huh? Well, while after something like this, I'd have liked to nod to myself, pack up my bags and head home in defeat, I instead called Boss Man and asked him to come and look at our mechanical corpse. After a description of recent activity, and a demo of the on button's lack of ability, he concluded that we'd call Dell the next morning. Today.

We didn't, however, call Dell. Instead, we started playing with the brand new, spiffy printer/scanner we got in for the UWC. It's like Christmas down there, with all the boxes, and wrapping paper, and shiny new toys. And with our new T-shirt uniforms (the flame-red ones), we'll be like little Santas, spreading joy and Ethernet connections.

Well, as we fiddled with it, we decided to move it to a desk adjacent to the flamed-out computer. We plugged it in, and ... no power. We thought for a bit, found a switch, flipped it, and ... no power. At this point, I was thinking, and please excuse my language, "Awh, shit, I went and blew the whole wall out. Good going, genius!" Well, Boss Man plugged in a power strip to indicate whether there was any power to be had at the outlet, and we came to the conclusion that all the outlets on the wall were shot. So we called building maintenance, and they fixed it. In the meantime, we hooked the printer up to a different set of outlets, and it worked fine. On a whim, we also hooked up our casualty, and let me tell you, when the green lights came on and the system booted up, relief swept through my body as tangibly as the despair I'd felt when the thing blew in the first place.

So, in summary, I once again, have not screwed up as badly as I supposed, and the only thing I ruined was the power source from the wall. Since that got fixed, I think, technically, I'm cleared of all charges. Hurrah!

There are two questions remaining at this time: 1. What will my subconscious mind think of next in its unending quest to deal fatal damage to a computer? and 2. Is there enough training time between now and start of term?

Oh, and sr, we each get three flame-red Santa suits, so there will be time to launder them between work shifts, no problem.

On that kinda happy note,

End.