Running a LAN on a Submarine is akin to running a LAN in a rural biker bar, that is on top of a fault line, leaks regularly and who’s power comes from an old diesel generator “out back” – except for that diesel generator in this case is a Nuclear Reactor and the bikers are the crew. I’ve described it in different ways before but the above seems most fitting for my next tale. Given these conditions, the environment already isn’t optimal for the physical (or data integrity) of computers. Things shake, things vibrate. Laptops get dropped, and grow wings when the ship takes angles or encounters rough sea state. Users are obviously the prime source of most of these issues, and admittedly the problems generated by them are usually pretty minor and easily fixed. Once in a while though, someone manages to impress me. There are a handful of ways laptops get damaged, most of which you can probably imagine. Getting dropped is one, coffee spilled into keyboards is another. My personal favorite is the “I accidentally left a pen on the keyboard and shut the lid”.
It was about 9 in the morning and I was just sitting down from getting my second cup of coffee (Boatbucks for those who are curious) when my phone rings. Usually when people have problems they just come see me, however when the phone rings it is usually somebody of some importance with a problem. (Officer of the Deck, Captain, etc.) It’s the XO (Executive officer (second in command after the Captain)) calling, saying when he tries to log into his laptop, it tells him that “No Logon servers are available”. No sweat. I get up from my leaky hobbit hole and head to the XO’s stateroom. On the way I am thinking of what his problem could be. “His cable is unplugged. No, his port on the switch died. Oh, maybe his local switch got unplugged.” When I got there the XO was working on some paperwork and told me to hang tight and he would get out of my way so I could get in and work. The staterooms on submarines even for the CO and XO are hardly larger than a couple of refrigerator boxes standing side by side.
I get in and sit down. I verify the issue by attempting to login myself and get the same message ruling out PEBKAC error, so I thought. The XO comes back in and sits down on his rack, and we start chatting a bit while I restart the computer to check a couple of possibilities. He’s new on board so the crew doesn’t really know him yet, so I am sure he’s telling me things just so it will percolate to the little people. He tells me he has a Masters in Computer Science and was into programming in College. “Cool” I think, “not another computer illiterate person I will have to coddle”. After a few minutes of niceties, he says he is going to go do some things and come back in a bit. He walks out. I shut the lid of the computer to disconnect it and take it elsewhere, to verify that the NIC was working and to prove/disprove that his drop was bad. This was when I realized that on this day, the bar for interesting ways to damage a computer had been raised.
At first glance everything looked right, except for the RJ45 connector looked a bit strange. I pull the laptop out from the hutch a little bit more and take a good look at it. It’s plugged in upside down. “No” I think at first, “that’s silly”. After all, they’re keyed so they can’t be plugged in upside down. Then I realize that the connector is in fact plugged in upside down. I pull out my multitool and proceed to pull the connector out of the NIC.
Everything was broken. The tab on the connector had been broken off. The contacts inside the NIC were bent all over the place, some smashed at a bizarre angle. The icing on the cake was the body of the NIC itself though. Usually when NIC’s get damaged, the pins/tracks/contacts/whatever get bent. Typically I can just straighten them out and all is well. Today was not that day. On the laptops I have the NIC’s are this strange plastic encapsulation with a metal reinforcement around the unit. At the base though there is a small plastic strip that prevents you from inserting a connector upside down, and locks the tab into the NIC. This plastic piece was broken.
As I picked this thing apart I found all the missing pieces buried inside the NIC. About then is when the Captain showed up looking for the XO, and finding me in his place. CO: “Hey have you seen the, woahhhh.” Seeing what I was doing (pliars down in the NIC) he steps in to watch me. Asking me what happened I told him “I don’t know, Sir. The XO couldn’t log in so I came to see what was the matter and found this.” Grabbing the end of the cable he looks at the connector and says “How do you plug this in upside down? It’s not even the same shape.” Me: “I dunno, I’ve seen a lot of broken things but this is the first one of these that I’ve seen. The XO had just finished telling me that he had a Masters in Computer Sci when he walked out and I found this.” The skipper shrugs and says “If it fits I sits” and walked out.
He went full internet on me. The Captain of this warship. The man who has probably been around since the Continental Navy dropped a gem of the interwebs in my lap. He goes and sits down in his stateroom, which is only separated from the XO’s by a pair of sliding doors, in between of which is the Head (bathroom) they share. I lean back in the chair and call through the head “Sir, I have to know. How do you know about If it fits I sits?” He sighs and turns his head to look at me. “F****** Cat memes, my daughter loves those f****** cat memes.”
I put my head down on the hutch and laughed for a good minute. After I had regained some of my composure, he went on to tell me that his daughter prints them out and puts them into his briefcase for him to find at work sometimes. About then is when I gave up on the XO’s laptop. I pulled the Hard Drive out, swapped in into another chassis and re-terminated his cable. About then the XO came back and asked me how it was going. I asked how he had managed to plug his cable in upside down and he said that he just plugged it in the way he always does. “I reached back there and just plugged it in. There is that annoying flap there that covers the connection so it’s always a pain.” (There is a little spring loaded cover for the network adaptor and USB ports on these computers.) “It felt a little harder than usual to plug in but I heard it click.” In my mind I’m thinking “a little harder than usual. Maybe if you have like super human Hulk strength or something.”
I walked away from that trouble call humored, and with a slightly deeper level of knowledge of the lives of those I work for. The more you know.
TL;dr – Someone plugged a cable in upside down and the Captain knows about Cat memes.
Submitted May 26, 2015 at 10:31PM by Viper370SS http://ift.tt/1Aw3Eai talesfromtechsupport
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