Hello All, Over the past 25+ years working in Information Technology, I’ve had my fair share of amusing—and sometimes nerve-wracking—experiences. Most of my career has been rooted in public safety infrastructure, supporting 911 systems, backbone networks, and local government. I even spent some time at Clemson University’s Network Operations Center, where I learned a valuable lesson… the hard way. When I was hired, they joked that it was a rite of passage to take down the university’s network at least once in your first year. I managed to make it just past that one-year mark—then it happened. Their environment was a complex one: mostly Cisco Catalyst 9000 series switches in stacked configurations, along with a healthy mix of Brocade and Juniper gear, all supporting three major data centers. One day, a ticket came in reporting network access issues across several campus buildings. Doing what any diligent Sr. Network Technician would do, I started tracing the issue from the affected buildings back to our core infrastructure. It turned out some critical VLANs had gone missing due to an overnight change made by the separate (and very siloed) Network Group. It was our job in the NOC to clean up the aftermath. I identified the missing VLANs, built out my commands… and in the rush of things, forgot one crucial detail. I executed the changes. Boom. The entire main campus went down. My manager, rather than panicking, just laughed and said, “I knew it would happen to you eventually.” Needless to say, I was stressed but took it in stride and began troubleshooting. Out-of-band management was down. That’s when it hit me—I had overwritten the ACL, adding the VLANs I needed but removing all others. This wasn’t early in my career either—just a reminder that even seasoned pros can trip up. It was a perfect example of an accidental “scream test.” Fortunately, no one was upset, and the Network Group sent someone to reboot the core. We got everything restored and fixed the config. Then there was another unforgettable moment while working for a law enforcement agency. We received a helpdesk ticket that read something like: “Can you send someone to replace a monitor in one of the conference rooms? An officer accidentally shot it.” Sure enough, the attached image showed a massive bullet hole through a 32” monitor. Without skipping a beat, one of our techs replied, “Be right over—please ask Barney Fife to keep his one bullet in his pocket next time.” Apparently, the officer was clearing an old weapon he wasn’t familiar with. Fortunately, no one was injured—except maybe his pride. We all had a good laugh about it later, once the shock wore off. If I’ve learned anything in this field, it’s the importance of being able to laugh at yourself. We’re all human, and mistakes are inevitable. What matters is learning from them, having a sense of humor, and moving forward. I think that mindset is one of the reasons I still love what I do—and why I continue working on tech projects outside my day job. Thanks for reading this far—I hope it gave someone a laugh or two. Best, Billy -----Original Message----- From: John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Sunday, June 8, 2025 8:48 PM To: Mailing list for blind system administrators <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Cc: John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: A Saturday Night in June Story Well, if we're going to tell stories about goofy tech support clients,I have to mention the time I told a client to put a diskette in the computer and he slid it into an air vent on the back. So after he did that, I said, "Well now we are going to have to make a on site visit. I can't fix that over the phone." On 6/8/25 10:55 AM, Steve Matzura via Blind-sysadmins wrote:
When I was working help desk at the Bank of New York, I got a call, nothing out of the ordinary, from a secretary somewhere in the building who said her machine was dead. Power button? Nothing. Plugged in? Yes. Into a power strip? No. Mains controlled by possibly malfunctioning wall switch? No. OK, looks like you'll need a service call--let me have the tag number on the side of the machine. "OK," said said secretary, "and I might as well tell you, the printer isn't working either." H'mm. What's the probability of that? I wondered. "... and neither is the coffeepot." What? No coffee? "Never mind that tag number, ma'am, you need building maintenance. Sounds like you blew a circuit breaker."
On 6/7/2025 8:47 PM, Jackie McBride via Blind-sysadmins wrote:
John, when you know you gotta do those types of commands, wearing brown pants is always best.
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On Sat, Jun 7, 2025 at 5:36 PM John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins < blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> wrote:
It's a beautiful Saturday evening in June -- time for a story. Today i was messing around with computers and I remembered something that happened years ago. I was working for the Math Dept at the University Of Wisconsin and I had to type in a command that, if I typed it in wrong, could really do a lot of damage. If I did it wrong, I would have to reinstall stuff, restore from backups, etc. It might take days. So I checked and double checked what I had typed. Then I stopped and checked it again, just in case. Finally, I hit the enter key and ... my machine went down. I could hear the hard drive and the fan spin to a stop. Worse, all the machines in the room were going down. And then I realized that even the lights had gone off! It was only a split second before it hit me -- this was just a coincidence. The building had suffered a power outage and it had nothing to do with what I had typed. But for that split second, I came pretty close to filling my pants.
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