Portal
Forum
Devolutions Force
Hub Business
Hub Personal
Devolutions Send
Devolutions Academy
RDM
Workspace
Launcher
In places around the world that mark Halloween, many kids trek across their neighborhood to collect candy and many adults deposit themselves in front of their TV to watch scary movies (only because they’d get weird looks if they went out to collect candy).
But sometimes, what happens in real life is even more frightful than what is depicted in scary movies — especially for IT pros, who often work alone…late at night…during storms…
And that brings us to October’s poll question, which asked you to share your scariest IT horror story. We’ll get to some of the chilling tales in a moment. First, let’s go to the other end of the emotional spectrum.
Confirmed: IT pros are hilarious
If there is one thing that unifies IT pros around the world, it’s that they have a brilliant sense of humor, tinged with a dry, caustic wit that is almost an entirely separate language. Maybe we can call it “ITglish,” and it’s a dialect that only IT pros speak fluently — often to the confusion of non-IT pros who don’t quite know what is being said (but usually just smile, nod, and hope for the best).
Why are we bringing this up? Because a few of you demonstrated how hilarious IT pros are by saying that your scariest IT story is an implementation or migration — such as introducing a new CMDB or ERP, or moving to Azure. In addition, community member Igor Svetek’s lament about the evil Account Manager who could “not say no to the client,” and Scott Bowling’s admission that he is haunted by “the ghosts of ITIL past, present, and future” were perfect.
We just wanted you to know that you made us laugh, which surprised us, since we expected all of the responses to be chilling instead of comical. Well done you wacky, witty, wonderful IT pros — very well done!
Get your freak on
Now for the scary stuff.
There were also several stories that sent a chill up and down our spines, and a few that made us gasp (what’s the deal with cockroaches living in machines!?).
We asked some Devolutions staff to pick the IT horror story that freaked them out the most. These three received the most votes:
From community member Rick Hensley: “A while ago I worked at a place where a recently fired individual tailgated through security and made their way into the IT area with a gun yelling and screaming about the method of their discharge. They ended up firing one shot which went through the wall into the data center and lodged in the frame of a (thankfully) decommissioned Sun E450.”
From community member Wontollaz: “When I was head of IT, in a women's store chain, I received a call in the middle of the night from the CEO. He angrily told me has no new emails since four hours, something very strange. I connected to the server and found it was a up & running but the DB clusters was missing. I reached my bike, and a heavy rainstorm started… So, I arrived fully soaked, went down to the server's room and checked the storage array. That was my biggest mistake, at the moment I opened the storage array hundreds of cockroaches ran away from inside the server... I run to the cleaning room and grabbed a couple of cans of insecticide… I killed lots of them… emptied both cans and cleaned as much as possible… I had to power off the rack, clean and change the storage wires before powering up again… I stayed in the shower for more than one hour before going back to bed.”
From community member cryptoman: “Many years ago, when floppy disks were a thing (circa '90) and software was provided FREE of charge on magazines, I worked for a software distributor, which developed and sold their own software, they struck a marketing deal with a monthly magazine, and we supplied over 20,000 3.5" floppy disks to the magazine for distribution! After the disks left us, we noticed that our disk duplicators had been infected with the STONED virus! Nothing was ever said!”
Special recognition
We also wanted to send a special thank you to community member Brent Quick, who is obviously not only a seasoned IT expert, but also a very gifted storyteller! His epic tale “Three Hundred was One Fifty Too Far” was equal parts fascinating, frustrating and frightening. Thank you for putting in so much thought and effort in your contribution, Brent. We loved it!
We encourage all of you to check out Brent’s saga of misery and mayhem (courtesy of a legendary “PITA” boss!). You will find it in the comment section of the poll question blog here.
And the winners are!
Now, let’s reveal the two poll participants who have been randomly selected to each win a $25 Amazon gift card. Congratulations Brent Quick and Wontollaz! Please email asguerin@devolutions.net to claim your prize.
Thank you again to everyone who participated in the October poll, and making it one of the most fun — and the most frightening — ever (yes, we are still thinking about those cockroaches….).
