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SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!Allow me to explain...
I work for a service company. A 24/7 service company. This week I'm the one on-call. As readers of my OTHER THREAD know, I'm on-call every two weeks because my former co-irker is an immature feeb who got himself fired.
Last night SUCKED... One of my responsibilities is to inspect and maintain the CCTV and access control hardware/software for the Airport. Well.. It's lightning season.. To make a long story short, at 4am we got the last gate working and everything up and running. 19 hour days aren't so tough.. right??
They called me at 6:45 am and I slept right through it. I usually sleep an hour or two longer when they abuse me like that the night before. Elstupido leaves his phone in the truck... Luckily the wife put the alarm on and I had thought to find out why it was 830 am and no-one was complaining to me.. 3 frantic voicemail listens later...
Another panel had gone offline in the wee hours of the morning and NONE of the doors were working. This being post-911, the customer was INSISTANT that I get this all working ... NOW..Problem was... I used all my replacement parts, cobbled together a few temporaries from scraps and outright STOLE every last thing I could find LAST night.. So there I am, waiting on hold for tech support, in the DUMBASS hope that they'd have something intelligent to say (other than "replace the unit and send it to us.. oh.. we don't cover lightning damage.. so sorry..")
It was a LONG.. LONG day...
This is all to set the tone for my mood and physical exaustion when I get a service call tonight. One of our whinier clients had called for service, saying they had "camera outages and grinding noises from the DVR"
(Think $10,000 a pop!!!)Now this hospital doesn't exactly... uh.. hire the brightest bulbs... er.. choose from a particularly deep gene
the door still had a handle to turn... they said they were.. Yes.. I'm Quoting....
AFRAID OF IT!!!!
AFRAID OF IT!!!!
These winners are in charge of people's HEALTH!!
So..
So...
SO...
You can understand why I wanted to call before driving out there.
As soon as I call up, the person who answered dashed all my hopes of dealing with this over the phone. They spent 2 minutes "umm"ing and "ahh"ing while trying to describe the sounds the DVR was making, talking to their coworker across the room, speak on ANOTHER PHONE and ... of course... EAT!!!
C: Moi -Crazeyal - Handsome devil - Abused Technician - One tired Mofo
I: Inbred paint huffing idiot with beeswax and confetti for brains
C: Can you access the cameras at all? Is it one DVR or the Matrix that's down?
I: Whuh?
C:*surpresses sigh* The monitors you have on the desk in front of you..
I: Ohhhh Dem!! Yeah.. dey's fine!
C: *almost lets a sigh slip out* Uh.. the call was specific saying that there were cameras down... you can see all of them, control all the DVR?
I: Wh-urgh?? (yes.. she made that sound!! She was trying to say "What?" and the thought had a catostrophic Dylithium crystal failure CAP'N!! That thought.. it blew up GOOOooOOooOD!!)
C: *gives up and lets out a sigh like I was wearing a corset three sizes too small.. er.. *aheh.. erase erase..
* I.. I'm on my way...I get to within 2 miles of the place (having been slightly diverted to go rescue a stranded family member who locked their keys in their car) and the on-call manager calls me up and tells me that they CANCELLED THE CALL! Nuh - UH!! I tell him I'm going anyway, these idiots have been known to call later on for FIXED problems, because no-one told the new shift that we'd taken care of it already. I wasn't driving out AGAIN...
I: They diden' callz you??
C: Yeah.. they did.. but I wanted to make sure it's fixed.
I: Well it's not doin' it no mo...
I surpress the sigh (again) and aks her to point out which DVR was making noise BEFORE. I figured telling her that just because it stopped making noise did NOT mean whatever it was had magically become HEALED HALLELUHAH!!!... She seemed more like the "Kick it until it works" type...
But...
She was pointing AWAY from our equiptment, over to the middle of her desk. Now this place is a LOT of things.. Cheap set-up.. it AINT!! (5) 16 camera Digital video recorders (in a rack behind her) $56,000 (12) LCD high res flat screen monitors $9500 (???)(3) Flat screen 78" Plasma screens ($8-12,000 I dunno) Network stations for CCTV and Access control (a whooooole bunch and $$$$$$$$$$$$)
Now where SHE was pointing was the middle of the wall, or right under the bigass tv screen. Looking at the metal desk, I see there is no easy way to actuallGET to where she's pointing. The desk was built in place and it takes up literally 1/2 the room. The only way to get there is to either deconstruct the desk or stupidly climb ontop of something holding up more $$ worth of tech than I make in a YEAR...
Yeah.. I'm an idiot...
After gingerly and carefully finding out the table could hold far more than my weight, I made my way behind the desk. What I saw behind there was simply just a power supply. More power than most villages pull in... but basically a fancy plug housing for 220 volts. Now what's directly in BACK of this mass of high power cables is a simple PC computer. Everyone who's not lived under a bridge for the last 30 years knows what the back of these are supposed to contain...
Black power cord.. check
Mouse wire.. check
Monitor cable.. check
Network cable.. check
Waaaaaaaaaaay too much accumulated dust and hair in the fan.. check
Spoon sitting directly on the fan.. che-WURGH?! (CAPN SHE'S CANNAE TAKE NO MORE!!!!!)
They got me ALL the way out here...
THIS ISN'T EVEN ONE OF OUR COMPUTERS
AND IT's A FRIGGEN SPOON MAKING THE NOISE?!?!?
I lost it...
I busted out laughing.
Hopped over the table in one leap (missed the $12,000 Plasma monitor by THAT MUCH!!)
Handed her the spoon with a flourish and skipped out the door backwards singing "I can fix annnnything..."
Now whenever they call me to go to the Hospital I am going to give out the OTHER well known battle cry..
NOT IN THE FACE!!!
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