Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend
And there his troubles began …
On Call Digital technology remains frighteningly finickity, which is why good tech support people are always in demand – and also the reason The Register never tires of telling your support stories each Friday in On Call, the column your generosity makes possible.
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Boris" who years ago worked for a business providing services to what he described as "a large international automotive company" that ran its production planning application on an old school mainframe – proper supervillain lair kit, with big tape drives whirring away all day.
The IT director at this client had a temper.
"He was known and feared as someone who ate systems support people for breakfast."
Boris was therefore far from thrilled when he was called in to address a problem his colleagues had been unable to address.
"The planning application would sometimes suddenly hang at random points without any obvious reason," Boris told On Call. "This was very upsetting as delays in the availability of manufacturing schedules interfered with plant operations, which cost serious money."
Hardware experts were put on trans-Atlantic flights so they could pore over the mainframe's innards. Software engineers who had hand-coded the machine's OS were sent to find faults.
None could determine the cause of the hangs. Indeed, all reported the machine was working as intended. All systems normal.
Those investigations consumed months – and did not make the client happier.
Indeed, the irate IT director began making serious noises about seeking compensation and junking the mainframe.
In desperation, Boris was asked to examine the situation.
Boris wasn't thrilled about that, as his skill set – engineering and scientific matters – was not obviously applicable to the situation. And he knew nothing about scheduling assembly lines.
He nonetheless visited the client's office, and was quickly "shouted at and threatened by the IT director."
Boris managed to retain sufficient composure to ask for the application's source code.
"Fortuitously it was in Fortran – one of the programming languages I was very familiar with," Boris told On Call. It also contained an obvious error that he spotted after about ten minutes.
"The code assumed that all the tapes were at their start point. Whether or not the program would run successfully depended on the state of the tapes left by any previously executed application. Sometimes it would run, and sometimes not."
The fix seemed simple: a Rewind All; statement in the code – one at the start and one at the end – would surely ensure the tape was always at the start point when the application ran.
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Boris recompiled the software, ran it, and relaxed as the problem went away.
Which is where his troubles began – because the abusive IT director took a shine to him.
"Forever after I was his 'go to' person for advice on almost everything from hardware selection decisions to application development and I was treated with reverence and the appropriate level of respect by all."
But Boris knew this couldn't last – because his Fortran fix was fortuitous. He therefore lived in fear of being found out and ending up on the wrong side of the abusive IT director's wrath.
"Fortunately, I was moved overseas on a different project before my limitations could be tested," he told On Call.
Phew!
Have you ever found a fix despite not being an expert in the troubled tech you were asked to tend? If so, click here to send On Call an email so we can feature your story after the festive season.
On Call wishes readers all the best for their end-of-year celebrations, and thanks you all for the weekly gift of your stories. ®