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this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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I worked for a college for a while.
All of the student records were on a mini frame IBM as400 from 1986.
The only connectivity to this device was via a 100 MB ethernet connection. There were no backups. The tape drive that was used for backing up this data I had gone defunct well before my time at the college.
I started noticing errors in the connection logs and I notified the CIO, saying that we needed to replace this box or upgrade it or do something before the connection failed or else we could lose access to data that we are federally required to maintain.
They noted my concerns, and then they let it go.
About 6 months later, the ethernet card failed.
I let them know that our only way to get data into or out of this machine has gone offline and cannot be resuscitated.
They asked me to fix it I told them I can't. The card was down. I had gone through the proper processes of rebooting the machine and opening it up to take a look but couldn't find anything wrong with it I tried reseating the card, but this system is old as shit and they didn't make parts for it anymore and even if they did the school would have to buy it and the school is too cheap to buy them.
People are running around scared for losing their jobs because the consequence for this not coming back up could be so severe as to cause the entire college to be shut down.
Okay so now that the stage is set, a few days later the former IT guy happened to stop by the college. This dude was 70 something years old if he was a day, and I saw him out in the corridors.
I walked up to him, I was like hey man just so you know the as400 network connection is down, do you have any tips on how I might bring it back up?
He said hang on a second.
I let him into the server room and he waved his hands in the air over the as 400 and said try it again.
And sure as shit, the fucking network connection came back up.
I lost my shit.
The administrators for the college lost their shit.
Everyone's fucking mind was blown, and somehow they suddenly magically had the money to purchase a cloud as400 and upload all of our data to it within the next 6 weeks.
I got to retire that box but I'm never ever going to forget how somebody fixed a 40 year old ethernet card by waving their fucking hands in the air
My friend recently introduced the concept of the machine spirit to me; the idea that all computers and machines have spirits and that the more complex and complicated the machine and software, the higher the level of technomage required to submit it. Most computers and desktops have low machine spirits so people with basic knowledge can make it work, but machines with purpose or that are complicated require high level technomages to operate. I think about that sometimes when I can fix my friends stuff in minutes but my machine will have issues that take days or weeks to fix.
This makes sense. My level was too low to reactivate the ancient artifact. Hopefully I've leveled up since then.
Sounds like when someone calls me and whatever it is suddenly works when I do it. I always tell them it just got spooked back in line by the IT guy.
I've long bought into the idea of the machine spirit, and I have so many anecdotal stories about it. Most of the time it's stuff like the mechanics laughing because they finally get to be on the other side of TPS (Technician Proximity Syndrome), but others are more amusing to me. Like the number of times I've fixed something by threatening to microwave the machine piece by piece and further turn it into the desktop/server of Theseus.
This reminds me of the magic / more magic switch.