[rescue] needed: u1 NVRAM chip

[Rick Hamell]

Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 07:45:13AM -0700, Rick Hamell wrote:
>> Sounds like it's time for you to stop waving the magic wand and making  
>> things happen. Seriously, we've all been in situations like this. The  
>> company needs to realize that sometimes you've just got to spend money  
>> to get things working. 
> 
> Yes.  When stuff like this happens, I usually end up waving the magic wand
> again, getting it working, and then telling them "You need to move this
> function to a newer machine, otherwise the next time this happens I'm not
> going to touch it."
> 
> In the past two days I've fixed or brought back to life two different
> machines that were 8+ years old.
> 
> Our policy is "If it's a production machine, it needs to be a
> production-class machine, not someone's old desktop, with a service
> contract."  However, if an ancient machine dies or goes down, I *cant*
> refuse to try to fix it; that's my job.

I understand you're in a rock and hard place. I'm just concerned when 
anyone (and god I know I'm in this same boat,) goes so far and above to 
fix an issue. If I had a dollar for every time I've been at a hardware 
sale of some sort and bought a piece of equipment out of my own pocket 
just in case the one at work fails... and then later used it. Heck, I've 
had ex-employers call me up for this reason.

But I don't see this as part of our job description, IT people are not 
hardware warehouses to be plundered at need. And I see it being 
detrimental in MOST cases. There are the rare companies that would 
appreciate and rewards this. But most will not and will come to expect 
it out of us. Most wouldn't even reimburse us for the used part, after 
all we hadn't used it already so it must have been useless to us. I'd be 
happy if they were even willing to do that much.

I both love and hate being in the IT industry for this reason. The vast 
majority of companies just don't give a crap except for the bottom line. 
But I love being able to fix obscure pieces of technology that the 
company depends on far more then they know. I like it better when the 
company recognizes that and actually rewards you, even if it's a $5 
check for the part and a handshake.


-- 
Rick Hamell
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