Is it Moral, or, Morale?
This was going to be entitled "The Missing Link", but after today, I feel that "morale" is more appropriate.
Chapter 1: I went to our Devon office on Monday for an "analyst meeting", it was in fact a shameless excuse for a free lunch and to say "bye" to the people who were leaving when the office shuts at the end of the month.
There were four of us in the company Skoda, plus luggage and laptops so I was quite irritated to be asked, "By the way, can you take back that Development AS400 that's sat in the hallway and those disks?". Humph. I went out and rearranged the boot and made space for the "office environment server", or "large-slab-of-useless-metal" as I fondly call AS400's.
It rained. I got soaked. I went back indoors.
"Oh, don't forget the tape drive and all the cables.". Humph. I went out and threw all the luggage into the back seats and wedged the drive next to the AS400. I then filled in all the gaps with the laptops and bags; very carefully placing the four 5" disk drives on the soft bags so they wouldn't get damaged. The tail gate just about shut.
It rained again. I got soaked. I went back indoors.
Chapter 2: We drove back from Devon, having to drop into second for all hills and began holding up lorry's and cyclists on the long ones. We got back and when I pulled my holdall from the boot to put it into my car all the disks nestling in the fabric of the bag fell out onto the concrete.
Chapter 3: The next day, I got "the boys" to carry the AS400 into the server room where I was left to plug it all in. I should at this point say that I didn't take it to pieces, but all I had were half a dozen pieces of cable, a monitor, keyboard, a tape drive, and, an AS400. All I had to do was to put it together. And, more importantly, I'm not an AS400 expert - at all.
How hard can it be?
I plugged everything in because none of it can go in wrong - thanks IBM. But, the monitor runs off "twinax" and that had to be plugged into some weird 8-way connector. There were some other ports on the back that looked like serial & parallel ones, so I assumed that the monitor could take almost any format.
That left me with the keyboard. It had a large round pin plug. I had filled up all the other ports on the AS400 and there was nowhere for it to go, I spent 10 minutes looking on the back of the 400 and still couldn't find anywhere for it to go. This was the first of many calls to Devon from my office, "where does the keyboard go?", "In the base unit of the monitor, on the side". Oh, obviously.
I hit the power switch. Nothing happened. I went back to the office. "Nothing's happened", "How long have you waited?", "Um, about 30 seconds", "Have a cup of tea for 20 minutes and then look". On my return the little green LCD panel said "01 A N V=H" and absolutely zip on the monitor, nothing, bugger all.
"There's nothing on the screen but it says 01 ANV=H."
"That means it's up OK. Are you sure there's no little line at the bottom? Are you in port 0?"
"No and Yes"
"Check the cables". Repeat this conversation a lot of times. Repeat me getting irritated a lot of times.
I replaced all the cables with all the other spares I had. I even plugged the spare big cream-coloured "D"-Type extender on to the twinax cable but that made no difference.
I went home.
Chapter 4: The next day. I thought that the monitor may have popped on its way back from Devon. "Can I pinch a monitor from the Production 400 please?", "Yes. Be careful, take the whole cabling loom right back from the backplane - don't disconnect anything else!" I went over to the main server room and traced the cable from the "big" box to the monitor.
"'Ello, what's that big cream-coloured "D"-Type extender doing connecting the monitor base unit and the back of the CRT?"
I plugged in "my" cable into the development box's monitor. This was the first time I laughed for two days as the little line appeared.
"Hello Devon, guess what? Now, how do I changed the IP address to match our LAN?"
This is another story.
Epilogue: The moral of the story is "if someone else takes something apart, then they can sodding well put it back together".
Morale? Well that's another thing.
Chapter 1: I went to our Devon office on Monday for an "analyst meeting", it was in fact a shameless excuse for a free lunch and to say "bye" to the people who were leaving when the office shuts at the end of the month.
There were four of us in the company Skoda, plus luggage and laptops so I was quite irritated to be asked, "By the way, can you take back that Development AS400 that's sat in the hallway and those disks?". Humph. I went out and rearranged the boot and made space for the "office environment server", or "large-slab-of-useless-metal" as I fondly call AS400's.
It rained. I got soaked. I went back indoors.
"Oh, don't forget the tape drive and all the cables.". Humph. I went out and threw all the luggage into the back seats and wedged the drive next to the AS400. I then filled in all the gaps with the laptops and bags; very carefully placing the four 5" disk drives on the soft bags so they wouldn't get damaged. The tail gate just about shut.
It rained again. I got soaked. I went back indoors.
Chapter 2: We drove back from Devon, having to drop into second for all hills and began holding up lorry's and cyclists on the long ones. We got back and when I pulled my holdall from the boot to put it into my car all the disks nestling in the fabric of the bag fell out onto the concrete.
Chapter 3: The next day, I got "the boys" to carry the AS400 into the server room where I was left to plug it all in. I should at this point say that I didn't take it to pieces, but all I had were half a dozen pieces of cable, a monitor, keyboard, a tape drive, and, an AS400. All I had to do was to put it together. And, more importantly, I'm not an AS400 expert - at all.
How hard can it be?
I plugged everything in because none of it can go in wrong - thanks IBM. But, the monitor runs off "twinax" and that had to be plugged into some weird 8-way connector. There were some other ports on the back that looked like serial & parallel ones, so I assumed that the monitor could take almost any format.
That left me with the keyboard. It had a large round pin plug. I had filled up all the other ports on the AS400 and there was nowhere for it to go, I spent 10 minutes looking on the back of the 400 and still couldn't find anywhere for it to go. This was the first of many calls to Devon from my office, "where does the keyboard go?", "In the base unit of the monitor, on the side". Oh, obviously.
I hit the power switch. Nothing happened. I went back to the office. "Nothing's happened", "How long have you waited?", "Um, about 30 seconds", "Have a cup of tea for 20 minutes and then look". On my return the little green LCD panel said "01 A N V=H" and absolutely zip on the monitor, nothing, bugger all.
"There's nothing on the screen but it says 01 ANV=H."
"That means it's up OK. Are you sure there's no little line at the bottom? Are you in port 0?"
"No and Yes"
"Check the cables". Repeat this conversation a lot of times. Repeat me getting irritated a lot of times.
I replaced all the cables with all the other spares I had. I even plugged the spare big cream-coloured "D"-Type extender on to the twinax cable but that made no difference.
I went home.
Chapter 4: The next day. I thought that the monitor may have popped on its way back from Devon. "Can I pinch a monitor from the Production 400 please?", "Yes. Be careful, take the whole cabling loom right back from the backplane - don't disconnect anything else!" I went over to the main server room and traced the cable from the "big" box to the monitor.
"'Ello, what's that big cream-coloured "D"-Type extender doing connecting the monitor base unit and the back of the CRT?"
I plugged in "my" cable into the development box's monitor. This was the first time I laughed for two days as the little line appeared.
"Hello Devon, guess what? Now, how do I changed the IP address to match our LAN?"
This is another story.
Epilogue: The moral of the story is "if someone else takes something apart, then they can sodding well put it back together".
Morale? Well that's another thing.
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