Good use of a fire escape

We live in one of the oldest cities in America. Non profit organizations are often located in buildings that were built waaaaaaay before electricity (although Ben Franklin flew his famous kite right here) and before these things called computers were invented. Our team comes across all types of challenges related to these old buildings: wet basements (where the DSL comes into the building), bad electrical wiring, bugs - yuck, and really small doorways. I recently learned that the small doorways in the historic buildings are not an indication of short founding fathers (in fact George Washington was well over 6 foot tall) but rather a result of structural shortcomings of the available building supplies of the day. Anyway, what does this have to do with technology and/or a fire escape?

We were recently called by a non profit theater company to secure their server. We helped them procure a low cost server cabinet that would support the need.

Thankfully for all of us, the city insists that these buildings have a proper fire escape. I don't have photos to support this, but our guys recently installed a server cabinet at an old theater by hauling it up the outside fire escape and shoving it through a second story window.

Good use of a thread on a PC

So, I wanted to show you photos of a creative client site, but I took the photos with my cell phone, then traded that phone in. Anyway our clients are really innovative when working with technology (seriously, not sarcastically). I recently visited a client site and noticed bright pink signage taped to the server. The sign read: "Remember the thread taped to the back. If it is not blowing in the wind it means that THE SERVER IS TURNED OFF!"

Obviously, the photo showed the string blowing in the wind.

I swear this is one of the most innovative things that I've seen in a long time. Kudos to the person who taped that sign on the server.

Good use of a hammer on a PC

Don't make me say it again. True story:



We recently had a client that needed us to transfer her e-mailbox from one system to another. Again, not to be too technical, this becomes difficult if the mailbox is really big. We usually start by asking the user to delete unneccesary items and empty the junk mail folder to reduce the size.

I got a call from the technician to say that he was unsure how to delete the 19,000 spam messages from the user's inbox. 19,000 spam messages. The inbox would barely open. The ability to scroll through the messages was impossible.

Q: How could he delete the messages?

A: Set a hammer on the delete key and come back the next day.



It worked! I have photos to prove it.

OK, I'm back with another story

Remember, these are all true. . . We have this amazing staff of non profit technology consultants that provide services to over 70 clients every month. For those consultants that have been with us a while, the shock threshold gets higher. The new guys still can't believe most of what they see on a daily basis. Here is a story that leapt across the shock threshold to become legend.



Our senior consultant was called to a small community center that had recently lost their "accidental techie" and knew they needed help with IT. As a typical technology consultant, Mark's first question was "Take me to your server". He was shown to the janitor's closet (you can see where this is going) where he only found a green hefty bag that was sucked in on all sides. "Why is the server in a bag ?!?!?" "To protect it from the leaky pipe"



True story.