Maybe the lab is a little too future-ready. Credit: Computerworld / IDG Back around the turn of the millennium, this university’s computer department upgrades several computer labs, working with the Facilities people to get things done right, according to a pilot fish on the scene. “They put in raised floors in the all the labs and even the halls, to run cables effortlessly and make future changes,” says fish. “And several whole-room UPSes, one for each student lab, and a line conditioner. Even the air-conditioning units were sized correctly and had future capacity. It seemed a dream come true — until the first week of class.” Almost immediately, students using one of the labs discover that their floppy disks are being scrambled or wiped. No one can figure out why, and since no one wants to lose his work, the lab is a virtual ghost town a month into the semester. Skip ahead a month or two: A professor whose office is across the hall from the lab o’ doom decides he wants his office hooked into the lab’s UPS. And because the lab is hardly used, he has no trouble getting the department head to sign off on the project. The day comes for Facilities to wire the office into the UPS — under the raised floor, of course. A few floor tiles come up, power conduit is pulled, and the job is almost done. That’s when one student employee looks again at what’s under the raised floor, remembers what he just learned in a physics class, and then goes looking for his boss. “It seems that when Facilities wired the labs, they misjudged how much wire they would need to run from the outside transformer to the line conditioner inside,” fish sighs. “The wires were too long. “Rather than trim them to length, they just coiled the excess under the floor, in case they ever needed it in the future: several loops of three-phase, 400-volt, 400-amp cables, right under the doorway into the lab, producing a large, directed magnetic field that happily scrambled the data of every passerby.” Sharky’s always scrambling to find true tales of IT life. Send me yours at sharky@computerworld.com. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter. Related content opinion Flashback Friday: You’re welcome There’s no winning this one. By Sharky Sharky Sep 25, 2020 3 mins IT Leadership opinion Wayback Wednesday: No good deed goes unpunished Self-serve is not our thing. By Sharky Sharky Sep 23, 2020 2 mins Databases IT Leadership opinion Maybe it’s therapeutic As for pilot fish, very little shocks them. By Sharky Sharky Sep 22, 2020 2 mins Computers and Peripherals opinion Memory-Lane Monday: An ounce of prevention is worth a pounding headache Not the greatest decision ever made. By Sharky Sharky Sep 21, 2020 2 mins Backup and Recovery Data Center Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe