I had taken a job as the ``Data Processing Supervisor'' for a division office of a financial services company. Despite my excessively lame title, I actually got to perpetrate some fun hacks while there.
The division office where I worked was a small one, a satellite office of the company's primary place of presence in southern California. I was the only technical person in the office, so any time I needed to know something technical about our environment, local system software, etc., needed to be directed to someone from the central processing center.
This, naturally, was The Help DeskTM.
About 7:30 a.m. on the second Monday of my employment there, I arrived to find our AIX system's Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) claiming to be running low on backup power. Long before I arrived, someone decided that the correct behavior in this case would be to blast a message across the screen of every terminal in the office.
The documentation on how all of this worked was nonexistent, but there's no reason to worry, because I can always call the help desk. Even though it was only 4:30 a.m. in California.
So I dial the ``1-800'' toll-free number for the help desk.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
walling every terminal in the office. I need
someone to tell me how this infernal thing works so I can fix
the problem.
I remember pulling the receiver to about a foot away from my head and staring at it.
Blink.
Blink.
Another satisfied customer.