Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Computers is way too easy to break

1986.  A sergeant is telling a room full of proto-grunts at ITS [1] "Don't horse f*ck the radio."

This is what he was talking about:  The PRC-77 radio was designed so that you could cram in it's battery only one way - so the prongs on the radio would mate with the hole in the battery.

Except that you could - if you tried really, really, hard - push the battery in wrong.  And then if you kept on pushing really, really hard you could shove the battery in and mash the prongs and break your radio.  And then, if you were far, far, into the woods without a radio, you were up the proverbial waterway without sufficient means of mobilization.

In other words - 'Don't horse f*ck the radio'.

Guess what I did at work today?  Just replace 'radio' with 'server' and 'woods' with 'data center'.

[1] Infantry Training School.

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