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What Computer Scientists Do (nasty work in remote places) |
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Recently, I suggested that we submit for the group's edification our best "DeBug" Stories. Debug means to us troubleshooting and all of us have done a lot of that over time. The story below shows how intense these things can get on a worldwide basis Jim is a (primarily) Unix wizard who worked at SUN during its glory days -- and at other places during theirs. He once referred me to a wonderful gig at a copper mine in Tembagapura, Irian Jaya ...literally the end of the earth. Although the mine was a huge operation, there were only 3 telephone lines to the outside world --- for 600 westerners and 40,000 Indonesians. The mine had a small network of SUNs (Editor: SUN is a computer server/workstation manufacturer) which told the engineers where to dig next. They were having severe problems on a little Ethernet LAN -- the kind that used thick yellow Ethernet that absolutely needed to be terminated with a special metal gizmo that threaded on the end of the cable so that, (if it was installed correctly) it just couldn't possibly disconnect. The mine had an Australian consultant working the problem when I arrived. The very first thing I asked him was: did you triple-check the cable terminators? Yes, absolutely. So I went to work. Nothing made sense --- it seemed like there were hardware problems on all three systems. |
(continued) Gotta be the network, right? We traced the cable all the way through some filthy ceilings, and discovered several zero-degree kinks. That kind of cable had a minimum turn radius of about 30 degrees. Fixed all that, but no joy. The mine was now one 8-hour shift from shutting down. In desperation, I called Jim at Sun. We kept that phone call going for almost the entire 8 hours. I was afraid to hang up, because we'd surely lose the line. In the end, Jim built a perfect replica of the mine's network -- except Jim's was in Mountain View California. We still could not reproduce the problem … until Jim tried removing the terminator from HIS cable. As he described what he had found, I happened to be looking at one end of OUR cable hanging straight down through a hole in the ceiling. The Australian consultant was standing next to me. I asked him again if the cable terminator was OK. He said "Absolutely. Look for yourself." As he said those words, I reached out for the cable. The instant I touched it, the terminator fell off and landed in a cup half full of cold coffee. Whenever I forget to be humble, Jim reminds me of this incident
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The
Saugeen Times has readers all over the world now. Sometimes I
write an article or two about science and/or technology. I'm in a
world-wide group of Engineers, Scientists and Mathematicians who
communicate on a daily basis. They are a passionate group with
strong opinions.
