Optional background
My first story The New Guys, The Equipment, and the Felony which was received well enough I guess I have to post some more stories! I hope to keep you all entertained even if my stories aren't 100% tech support but do provide some interesting military humor with some semi-tech support mixed in.
Again Optional but worth reading
In my role as a programmer I have had numerous opportunities to travel to other bases and do some temporary work (TDY we call it) sometimes a few days sometimes months.
This story, takes place in one of those trips.
Main Story
My commander (think boss's boss's boss but still not the top of the chain) decided to send a small group of programmers on a trip to a base across the country to experience how our software was used on a different base. Overall, waste of time but we make a decent chunk of money going on TDY trips like this and we get to see different parts of the world or country in this case.
A group of 5 set out on a week trip via VAN and arrive a few days later nothing special during the drive just a lot of pranks and Airman being Airman. We arrive and in the morning following our arrival we report to the Intel squadron to get a walk through and "see" our software at work (oh boy). After a short tour we finally get to our equipment to find it powered off.
$Me: So hey guys, why is this powered off, I mean this is what we are here to see? $BaseGrunt1: Well the hard drive on it broke several months ago and we don't have spare parts.
Okay to be fair this equipment is OLD like older than I am and no one in the United States has spare parts, "parts" are made when needed by hand in machine shops. On our base we have a shop dedicated to this type of work.
$Me: Uhh okay well we aren't the people who deal with that but why didn't anyone say anything to us prior to us coming here.
$BaseGrunt2: Well we assumed you could fix it.
We didn't know it was broken why would we !?
$Me: Okay, $WarHammer any ideas?
$Warhammer, is a typical nerd but his biggest hobby is painting those little figures and does it at his desk in uniform like a crazy person.
$Warhammer: Well we can call the shop and see if they have any ideas how to fix it.
Now, to fill in the gap as to why we are discussing fixing a hard drive rather than replacing a hard drive. This equipment is old enough that it has 75 LB hard drives that are built into special drawers in the equipment tower itself which is roughly the size of a normal refrigerator. The drive itself is perfectly fine, some how these nutbags managed to break the drawer that holds it so it cannot make a connection. Fun right?
$Me: Well why not (Calls the machine shop back on our home base) hey $Machinist any clue what we can do to get them operational?
$Machinist: Yeah well short of us going out there with new equipment you can make a frame to hold the drive, it only has to be level and hold the drive in place.
At this point we feel we can totally do this except we have no tools, no parts, no scrap metal, not even a screwdriver minus a multi-tool or two some of us carry. My only thought is to talk to the base commander and see what he can offer.
$Me: $BaseCommander, any thoughts on us needing this stuff to fix this actually pretty needed equipment that has been neglected?
$BaseCommander: Well we have a credit card and an airplane hanger full of tools, can you make that work?
Uhhh F*** yeah we can!
Next morning we head down to the local hardware store and grab lots of metal to somehow build a frame.
By mid-day we are in a hanger working like crazy people with no idea what we are doing but we have something that kind of looks like a drawer and it holds the drive well enough so we put it in and sure enough it works, not only it is holding but the equipment powered on and our software loaded.
At this point my team (I am not actually in charge of these people just a senior member at this point in my career) are pretty pleased with ourselves and we do a quick run through of the software and give some quick tips etc. and we go on our way to rest for the night.
We at this point have several days left before our drive home with nothing really to do and no desire to do anything but we show up that morning and $BaseCommander is there waiting for us.
$BaseCommander: (Yelling) You all spent way too much money on this POS system why on Earth would you do that! Cue Laughter from $BaseCommander, Nah just joking you guys did a great job and I called your Base commander to let him know, please enjoy yourselves till your drive back you are released from work for a couple days and the beer is on me.
Best, worst, weirdest impromptu tech support ever which ended with 4 Airman and 1 Captain lost on base, drunk, unable to find their hotel.
Ending Note
Just like before I have many more coming just give me time, there seems to be enough interest so I'll keep passing on the stories!
Submitted July 18, 2015 at 09:37AM by MonkeyPushButtons http://ift.tt/1LsDuYD talesfromtechsupport
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