A
sign we in the
IT industry see all the time - who hasn't walked past the
server room, with all its
monolithic racks
humming away to themselves, and then you spot the new piece of
equipment - it's soooooo shiny and new! And on it,
scrawled in tech handwriting, is the little
Post-it note saying "
DO NOT TURN OFF UNDER PAIN OF DEATH"
Go on.
You know you want to.
It's so innocent - an untested piece of machinery, some unknown introduced in to YOUR network - you are the network administrator, aren't you? Why would someone put something in that you didn't know about? And how did they get it ON the network in the first place without downtime?
It can't POSSIBLY be a critical piece of equipment.
CLICK
Whhirrrr-rrr-...-rrr-rr-r........
*Silence.......................* (exactly one millisecond longer than the "there can't possibly be an error - someone would have called by now" safety threshold...
*Mobile phone* RING RING RING RING (incessantly and without remorse)
"Uh, IT Services..."
"What happened to the network - we have interbuilding connectivity, but why can't we access the internet... blah blah losing money blah blah 24-hour service level agreement blah blah international company blah blah customers blah bloody blah...."
*Mobile phone* - *Click* (off)
"Oh. Shit. Double shit. Double shit and a half. No, wait, triple shit."
Jokes aside, this has happened too many times to be funny. Invariably at the worst possible time. As a perpetrator of the system failure, you get something akin to That Icky Feeling When A Client Calls With A Downed Server And You Have No Clue How To Fix It. Because you did it.
Personally, to fix something essential, I crack open the appropriate boxen and REMOVE the power button or connectors TO said power button. Fuck the warranty. Cisco don't care that you've tampered with it - that's what the retail chain is for - go to your dealer - uh, I mean supplier.