tested at 70C
2007-07-19 14:42:28.855182+00 by
Dan Lyke
6 comments
Worse Than Failure: I'm Sure You Can Deal, talking about a disaster in an server room...
They worked day and night to order new equipment, build new servers, and restore everything from back-up. Countless overtime hours and nearly two hundred thousand dollars in equipment costs later, they managed to bring everything back online. When the Exchange servers were finally restored, the following email finally made its way to everyone's inbox, conveniently answering the “why”
Via Hack The Planet
[ related topics:
Humor Technology and Culture moron
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2007-07-19 15:13:37.128668+00 by:
John Anderson
[edit history]
Because I linked to a version of that same story on 31 May (in a now non-existant entry on somebody's LJ, via a Digg post), I call urban legend.
The version I linked to didn't have the "after we fixed everything, we got this mail" bit, but it also said that the luser responsible for the A/C shutdown was fired...
#Comment Re: made: 2007-07-19 15:24:33.603721+00 by:
Dan Lyke
Hmmm... This'd be fun to find the original source of.
I remember an air conditioner failure at Pixar that did completely scary things to the machine room back in the day, but that was straight mechanical failure.
#Comment Re: made: 2007-07-19 16:58:36.815222+00 by:
ebradway
Yep. there are a few more instances of this story out there. The fact that there are lots of technical details included but the major detail of what State is left out just screams urban legend.
#Comment Re: made: 2007-07-19 17:16:16.011757+00 by:
John Anderson
That's the Digg link where I originally saw the story...
#Comment Re: made: 2007-07-23 05:30:01.586702+00 by:
Shawn
...but the major detail of what State is left out just screams urban legend.
I just assumed that was to protect the State agency being written about.
#Comment Re: made: 2007-07-23 19:03:37.009635+00 by:
Dan Lyke
I think the skepticism comes from the slightly changing stories.
But, of course, this is what makes urban legends work: The core elements are plausible, there are some deep truths there, and we've probably all seen both the effects of air conditioner failure on machine rooms and could imagine that there is a bureaucrat dumb enough to stick their fingers in the wrong pies and unilaterally turn off air conditioning in the name of global warming.