Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The System Administrator!

On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's Friday column that celebrates the frolicsome fun that readers have experienced when asked to deliver tech support.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Nigel" who shared a story from 2004 when the office he worked in found itself in the path of Hurricane Ivan, the superstorm that rampaged its way across the Caribbean and the USA for almost three weeks.

"At the time I worked in my company's main office in the computer room keeping all the phone, network, and server systems online," Nigel told On Call.

Nigel's employer installed a substantial diesel generator and uninterruptible power supplies but hadn't tested them before Hurricane Ivan rolled into town.

"We all agreed that power outages lasting days were possible, and that it was far from certain it would be possible to refuel the generator," Nigel told On Call.

The company therefore devised a plan to save generator fuel by shutting down its systems at night, when nobody needed them, and then restart them in the morning.

Nigel got the job of staying in the office to carefully shut things down, then wake early to restore service.

On the first night of this plan, all went well. At around 9:00 PM, Nigel shut systems down without incident, used the eerie glow of emergency lighting to navigate into a small room that housed a couch, changed into his pajamas, and went to sleep.

His slumber was brief because at some horribly early hour alarms started blaring. Nigel sprang off the couch and ran to the alarm panel to turn them off.

• Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it
• User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died
• Techie traced cables from basement to maternity ward and onto a roof, before a car crash revealed the problem
• Techie fixed a 'brown monitor' by closing a door for a doctor

En route, he encountered "a couple of firefighters and a policeman who were totally startled to see me."

Another officer soon appeared behind him, and the first responders started asking why Nigel was alone at night in an empty, dark office building during a hurricane.

"After I explained, the cop behind me laughed and said, 'Good thing you were fast – I heard your feet, but I couldn't get a bead on you.'"

In case you're not familiar with the term, "get a bead on" means to take aim at something. With a gun.

Nigel escaped unharmed.

"The alarm system's emergency battery had gone bad and started sending spurious calls for paramedics," he told On Call. "In the morning, after I brought everything back online, everyone got a good chuckle."

Nigel recalls his employer paid a bonus for working during the storm – danger money, though perhaps for the wrong sort of danger!

Has delivering tech support put your life in peril? If so, take the very safe step of clicking here to send On Call an email so we can tell your story on a future Friday. ®