Hmmm, there have been so many... Let's see... Fair warning, nothing I have done is as funny as the ITAppMonRobot solution.
Okay, here's one. Back in the mid-late 90s, during the y2k Days Of Desperation, I had a commercial client that retained me to perform data extractions from their client machines in different parts of the country. They were on a real tight schedule to get machines swapped out before 2000 hit them in the eyeballs, so there was no delays allowed. They would often have me do two client locations at a time, usually within a few miles of each other, but at times further apart. They did not want me to bill for my time plus travel or overnight costs. They wanted me to give a flat fee that would cover all expenses, and I was to handle the travel costs from that. After a few months of traveling I started to get smart about how to do this without traveling. I set up some slimline PCs I would ship to different parts of the country to do some automated DataExtractions from legacy UNIX minicomputers. I was using DOS with ProComm v-2.01 for the automated data extractions. I would normally have the PCs set up with the office or parts manager connecting one serial cable between a minicomputer RS232 printer port to the PC's Com1 Serial Port, and a 2nd cable running from a terminal port to the Com2 PC Serial Port. I would also have the FAX machine's telco cable run into the internal modem card that was configured to Com3, but using a IRQ that did not conflict with Com1. The PC was set to boot into DOS pcAnywhere Host Mode automatically, so I could call the PC fom my home and go through all the setups and fire up the automated DataExtraction processes. Once the extractions were done I would Zip the files and download them to my home, then copy the files to a Colorado tape and FedEx the tape out to my client the following Monday morning. No more travel costs (there was equipment costs and licenses for pcAnywhere and ProComm). No more flying all over the country. It proved to be a very cost and time effective way for me to get the data my commercial client needed, and normally quite stable. But, once in a while a PC would get hung, for whatever reason, and I would need it to be rebooted. I tried to get all this work at night so nobody would be disrupted at the business location, often over a weekend at that. And the data was needed in a timely manner due to client process scheduling. Sor for the first year or so I would get the office manager or parts manager to give me their home #, and have them go in a reboot the PC if it hung. Finally I did some digging and found one company that made a surge suppressor that had circuitry that allowed a person to call it, and after 4 or 5 rings it would kill the power to the devices plugged into it, and after a minute it would let power go to the devices again. Perfect. My pcAnywhere was set to respond on the 1st or 2nd ring, so if I called the modem and it did not answer due to the PC being hung, the continued ringing would reset the power through this surge suppressor. A few minutes later the PCs would be up and running again, and nobody was the wiser. I could get the rest of the work done and things were golden, so to say. My client never did figure out how I could do all that work so quickly. They assumed I was flying to all these places, and eating the airfare and hotel fees, driving like a madman between two (or more) locations each weekend, etc.. Actually in the beginning I was doing that, but they are the ones who did not want to reimburse me travel expenses separately. So when I figured out how to change IRQ setting on a modem, and how to remotely manage the units, I simply retained the saved travel costs as an offset to the equipment and software costs. All they know is I was doing these data extractions on weekends, and near the end they would ask me to do more than two extractions with the different locations being several hundred miles apart. "Now, how is he doing that?" Or more likely, "He is crazy to be doing this for a flat fee. He must be going broke." heh-heh... Fun Days indeed. Gil > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Matthew Jarvis > Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 1:18 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [NF] Server up-time - this story is better than all of > yourstogether > > > mrgmhale wrote: > > Gawd, what a funny story! Amongst the best I have seen in many > years. Ah, > > what a clever lot we are, eh? > > > > Gil > > > It's Friday and xmas approaches... let's have a bit of fun... > > What's the whackiest thing you've ever had to do to "just make it work" > or solve a problem? > > Matthew S. Jarvis > IT Manager > Bike Friday - "Performance that Packs." > www.bikefriday.com > 541/687-0487 x140 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
