(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Hey, remember the user responsible for this incident, and this one?

I've got another one. We've got a bunch of a certain kind of desktop case, where the sides go on vertically without screws, then the top of the case slides in horizontally to lock them in place and you close *that* with screws. I'm looking at an unrelated computer and I notice the top piece, which is a rectangular piece of reasonably sturdy flat metal, is missing. So I ask the user where it is, and he said "Oh, $Engineer borrowed it a few months back. It's just part of the case so I figured I didn't really need it."

($Engineer being, of course, the user responsible for the two incidents up top.)

I go and ask him why he borrowed A PIECE OF A COMPUTER CASE and where it is, and can I please get it back.

His answer: "Oh, yeah, that's in my car. I can bring it in any time."

Okay, but WHY does he have it in his car? To my eternal regret, I asked him.

"Well, you remember all that snow we had? I needed a shovel."

Comments

[hazelchaz]

Both "this incident" and "this one" link to the same post.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ooops. Fixing that.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

I believe you are now allowed to beat him with the part in question, up to desired level of injury.(*

(* I believe lots of things. Check with legal first.

[frith]

I suppose that shoveling snow with a piece of desktop housing is an upgrade from shoveling snow with a spoon borrowed from the cafeteria. Did you suggest he try a cafeteria tray? How about garden furniture? Lots of good shoveling potential in those plastic chairs.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The office has neither a cafeteria nor plastic furniture.

I suggested he go to Canadian Tire and buy a collapsing shovel to keep in his trunk.

[matgb]

I mean, I live in a part of the world where there's a danger of being snowed in once every 20 years or so, having a snow shovel is a bit excessive, but I've seen Canadian weather reports.

How is that not just a normal thing for people?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

To be fair, most people don't need to shovel out their cars more than once in an average year, and most cases where you WOULD need a shovel can be avoided by saying "Uh, there's supposed to be a meter of snow falling today, fuckit, I'm working from home today."

And your HOME has a snow shovel or two because duh.

And, I mean, I know this office. I know if I walked around for 1 minute saying "Hey, can I borrow a shovel to dig my car out?" I'd get at least three offers from people who DO keep shovels, and I also know that the building has shovels.

But this guy. He took a piece of computer hardware and used it as a shovel, then kept it in his car for the next time he'd need it instead of getting a fucking shovel.

[adam-0oo.livejournal.com]

Amazing

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

Sometimes (but only sometimes!) I wish I had such .. creative .. users. Instead of the usual "I'll just disable the firewall" (the main one, not just on one box) "because I can't be arsed to look at netstat to figure out which port my application needs", "I'll just code a postgres-proxy so my application can connect to the DB without those pesky credentials" (that everyone else on the whole Intertubeweb can, too, is not of interest), "I'll just change the root-pw on this Dom0 to my personal one because I don't wanna look stuff up in KeePass, oh, and I'll just overwrite ~root/.ssh/authorized_keys, too" (and then complain because "you dumbasses can't even do security upgrades") etc.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

"Piece of CPU case" isn't a good shovel. I find it very difficult to believe there wasn't anything around that would serve the purpose better with less effort. If you're going to the effort of asking someone else to disassemble a piece of equipment, there has to have been an easier path-- ask janitorial/groundskeeping staff for some piece of gear that would work as shovel, etc. Pattern of behavior suggests $Engineer has bizarre Freudian issues related to computers.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

We've got similar cases at my work. The screws are usually big chunky thumb screws - it takes literally less than 20 seconds to get the top piece off the case.

Put yourself in the mindset of an engineer who is extremely focused, somewhat lazy and above all unconcerned with the welfare of computer hardware that isn't measured in μm.
Now imagine you need something to move some snow. Something readily to hand. Something reasonably large, flattish, and solid...

I'm not saying I'd do this. But in this case (NPI), I can kinda see how he got there.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Special snowflakes are special. I do check-in at a large health center, and the strange requests I get should be written down and put in a book.