Avoid the Weak Spot

I cycled into the parking lot bright and early that glorious summer Saturday. I was going to install and try my new code on the mainframe all by myself that day. If I was quick, I could spend the afternoon playing pickup basketball at the park with the usual gang.

Did you catch that word - Mainframe? The computer room was in the basement of this 7-story suburban office tower and had been built for our company. It had a raised floor so the air conditioners could blow cold up into the refrigerator sized computer and the laundry machine sized 500Megabyte(!) disk drives.

To get up to that raised floor there was a ramp from the door that rose 12 inches in 15 feet. bolted to the raised floor there was a handrail, to keep you from that precipitous drop.

I opened the door, reached to my right to flip on the light switch, and ascended the ramp.

There, in all its glory, sat an IBM mainframe computer, with its printer, tape drives, disk drives, keyboard, and new-fangled TV monitor. Imagine, no typewriter clicking all the time, no running out of rolls of paper... the words on a screen, in glorious vibrant green!

The OOPS!

I loaded my tape with my code and hit the commands to read and execute my program. This was using advanced queuing math to determine when a targeted system would need to be upgraded. Knowing that this would take 10-15 minutes to process, I walked over to that handrail, sat on it, and leaned back against the wall.

Several things happened at once:

• The lights turned off

• The AC turned off

• The computer and all peripherals powered down

• The room emergency lights glowed ominously

• My trousers got moist

Panicked, I whirled around. Right above where the handrail met the wall were the light switches. Right above the light switches was a giant red button. The Panic button. The "power down the servers and everything else in the room" button.

It was shoulder height above the handrail, and I had leaned back onto it and shut down the entire company.

This was about 1986, before internet, email, and cell phones. Paul, the Sysadmin, was visiting a friend in Connecticut, which was why I was by myself. Happily, Paul had given me a phone number so I was able to reach him and have him walk me thru rebooting the system.

30 minutes later, everything was humming again, the crises was not, and I had learned not one, but three invaluable lessons

The Lessons

• Know how to get help, ensure it will be there, and have that info at your fingertips.

• Do not put the panic button in a place where it can be pushed by accident. It was 1 foot above the light switch. I don't think I was the only person to ever accidentally hit it. At least, I hope so....

• And, above all .... Only sit in designated chairs.