It is 1989. I'm a newly minted ops whelp, granted the task of maintaining the thousands of miles of RS232 spread around the campus of this particular establishment, about 2000 terminals in all. Lots and lots of terminal boards, lots and lots of tone debugging in the wee hours.
My boss calls me in, tells me I'm getting upgraded to the PC team. PC's are these new-fangled terminals that we will, eventually, get everyone switched over to .. but first we start with the execs. Take their terminals, set up their new PC's, get them logged in for the first time.
I proceed to the nastiest exec first - even then, I knew one had to solve the gnarly problems first - as there'd be hell if some other underling got the upgrade first, of course. At least, I thought.
20 minutes of burned fingers amid measured cussing at the prior install teams lack of proper stripping methodology, and I get the PC booted up, the TERM.EXE started, and everything configured to take over the old Hazeltines job, which sits by the door ready to be carted away into an amber fugue ..
In comes Mr. Nasty Exec, who immediately recoils at the PC blob on his desk. "What's that? I'm not getting that yet. Do everyone else first!"
Oh, crap, I'd already sort of changed the connectors.
Under the desk I go, off he storms across the barren cubical wasteland, his hoffs and guffaws somehow visible in the khaki haze.
Alright, I get it all re-Hazeltined, PC sits on the cart. What to do...
In comes Mr Nasty, who has by now seen what the new PC can do. "I want both the old and the new, you can do that can't you Computer Genius Kid?"
Meh.
Always get your boss involved when the work order changes, kids.
Nice story. I feel, there are times for taking initiative, being a go-getter. Then there are times when work is work, and if anything l, you train your fine motor skills and be content with that.
I've got muscle-memory for DB9 and DB25, I can twist pairs for RJ45 in my dawn hours, I have scars with many more tales behind them, but I'm so happy to have put it all behind me now ... ;)
(Now I'm the grumpy guy who doesn't wanna change web frameworks every gronk season..)
If you were doing this during the Ethernet transition (to thinnet) you probably remember the AUIs also had DE connectors though I don't remember how many pins -- perhaps a dozen.
Yeah, I totally grok the fastidious corrective path upon which you sit, its just .. as a person .. I know absolutely nobody who used the proper terminology for these things, we'd also often just call them a "9'er" (DE9) or a "chunky" (DB25), which could be a cunt or a fuck, depending on sex.
Especially, rather late at night, deeply embedded in the A/C ducts and 'services tunnels' of the various hospitals, skyscrapers and other locations of this particular company, for whom I rashed my knuckles, bent my noggin', thrashed the chiclets and hacked mad code for long enough to know, that as long as someone else knows what you mean, it doesn't matter what word you use... as long as they fucking don't drop the thing into the abyss before you can embed burn tracks in your flesh and get it secured in place, to be left for the next damn junior fool who dons the overalls and climbs into the hell of it all, to upgrade things.
The whole point of the PC ugprade was so that we could stop draping wire everywhere we wanted a terminal to go, and just use 10Base-T, i.e. "one cable to rule them all" (lol, kthxbai...)
So yes, he did get both, but it did require me to pull one last strand of RS232 a week before we had to do it all again for the 10Base-T, and my manager was not amused at how I'd multiplied the work for myself; and especially wasn't stunned by my smart-ass quip that, "if only he'd demo'ed the PC thing to Mr. Nasty Exec in the first place, things would've gone smoo .. oh, okay, I'll be on my way to pull that last strand, then .."
Yeah, wasn't really a great idea, it was only a week later that I saw that old Hazeltine, forlorn once again, sitting on the cart to be carried away.. oh how I wish I'd kept a few of those, myself ..
My boss calls me in, tells me I'm getting upgraded to the PC team. PC's are these new-fangled terminals that we will, eventually, get everyone switched over to .. but first we start with the execs. Take their terminals, set up their new PC's, get them logged in for the first time.
I proceed to the nastiest exec first - even then, I knew one had to solve the gnarly problems first - as there'd be hell if some other underling got the upgrade first, of course. At least, I thought.
20 minutes of burned fingers amid measured cussing at the prior install teams lack of proper stripping methodology, and I get the PC booted up, the TERM.EXE started, and everything configured to take over the old Hazeltines job, which sits by the door ready to be carted away into an amber fugue ..
In comes Mr. Nasty Exec, who immediately recoils at the PC blob on his desk. "What's that? I'm not getting that yet. Do everyone else first!"
Oh, crap, I'd already sort of changed the connectors.
Under the desk I go, off he storms across the barren cubical wasteland, his hoffs and guffaws somehow visible in the khaki haze.
Alright, I get it all re-Hazeltined, PC sits on the cart. What to do...
In comes Mr Nasty, who has by now seen what the new PC can do. "I want both the old and the new, you can do that can't you Computer Genius Kid?"
Meh.
Always get your boss involved when the work order changes, kids.