Can you recall an internal company email sent two weeks ago?

That’s what the CEO of a small company asked the head of his information technology (IT) staff. On Shark Tank at Computerworld there was an article on February 21, 2020 titled Flashback Friday: They’re due someone’s undying gratitude.

His IT chief said it would be time consuming but not impossible. Then he started calling each employee to ask for the password on their company desktop computer - so IT could check it for ‘viruses and stuff.’ His staff logged onto each of the seventy computers (as a remote desktop) and fished around. It took them a day and a half to find every copy of that email and replace it with a similar one.

What could have been worth all that trouble? The offending email apparently had graphics about salaries, which had a highly confidential spreadsheet embedded in them.  That spreadsheet contained a salary history for every employee in the company!

Back on June 12, 2012 at Think Outside the Slide Dave Paradi had another article that discussed Solving problems caused by embedding. He pointed out a PowerPoint Peril - that it was possible to accidentally link to and include an Excel spreadsheet with such sensitive information when creating slides.  

My wife told me she once heard of a similar situation. A networked hard drive (Z) had been used to transfer files between departments in a company. A department manager asked for salary info, and accounting put a spreadsheet onto that Z drive. They emailed saying it had been sent. That department manager then was supposed to delete it, just a few minutes after he had copied it to his computer. He did not, and it stayed out on the Z drive for weeks – where several other employees could have accessed it.

My father once told me about the analog equivalent which had happened way back in 1945. He then was a professor at the University of Cincinnati. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) had asked the administration for salary information, and they said no darn way. But the administration had been recycling their carbon paper. Another curious young professor got a piece from a box he had picked up to use in his typewriter, and realized it only had been used once.

So he held it up to his office window where it was illuminated by the afternoon sun. He saw tables of numbers and realized it was part of the denied information. Then he grabbed another three boxes, which had the rest of the payroll spreadsheet from their accounting machine. He passed it all on to the AAUP. Of course he said don’t you dare tell anyone who you got this from. After that discussions about raising salaries got much more interesting.  

Images of fishing and carbon paper were modified from those found at Wikimedia Commons. 

How does your laptop computer turn off its display when you close the cover?

A brand new laptop was misbehaving randomly. It was going into standby mode and turning the display off. A technician replaced some parts but the problem remained. Whenever a product begins to fail intermittently, you need to know how it was supposed to work in order to troubleshoot it.

One way to turn off the display is to have a small, normally-closed, magnetic reed switch (as shown above) at the lower left corner of the body, and a small magnet in the corresponding upper left corner at the edge around the display. When you close the cover the magnet moves near the switch, and it cuts off the power. At Computerworld on February 3, 2020 there was a Shark Tank article titled Memory-Lane Monday: PEBKAC – but VERY close to the keyboard. PEBKAC is a user error acronym meaning a Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.  

The user was seen wearing a magnetic bracelet on her left wrist. She was inadvertently shutting of the display. The troubleshooter explained to her why she should not be doing that.

Back on November 1, 2017 I posted on the topic of A humorous story about ‘healing’ a laptop computer with a dim screen.

An image of a reed switch and a cartoon of a laptop user both came from Wikimedia Commons.

A light bulb moment

In Shark Tank at Computerworld on November 20, 2019 there was an article titled A real light bulb moment. It described troubleshooting of an IBM 3420 tape drive used for backup storage  of digital data on an IBM 370 mainframe computer in London back in the mid 1970s. That drive was not loading tape properly. The Wikipedia article on 9 track tape describes how this should work:

“To load a tape, an operator would remove the protective ring (frequently called a ‘tape seal belt’ because its purpose was to prevent humidity and dust on the media) from the outside of the tape reel and install the tape on the supply hub, then thread the tape leader through the various roller assemblies and onto the take-up reel, installing three or four winds of tape to provide enough friction for the take-up motor to be able to pull the tape. The operator then initiated an automatic sequence, often by a single press of a button, that would start the vacuum system, then move the tape forward until the beginning-of-tape (BOT) foil strip was detected by an optical sensor in the tape path. The control electronics would then indicate to the controlling computer that the unit was ready for operation.

The sensing of BOT and EOT [end-of tape] was achieved by shining a small lamp at the tape's surface at an oblique angle. When the foil strip (glued to the tape) moved past the lamp a photo-receptor would see the reflected flash of light and trigger the system to halt tape motion. This is the main reason that photographic flash cameras were not allowed in data centers since they could (and did) trick the tape drives into falsely sensing BOT and EOT.”

The lamp was not burned out, so obviously the problem seemed to be somewhere else. They replaced the electronics connected to the sensor, but that did not fix things. Eventually someone presumably Read The Fine Manual (RTFM) which you can find online. On page 87 it says to Check that fiber optics lamp is on. They already did that! But there were two other less obvious things in the checklists. Way back on page 187 it also says to Reposition fiber optic lamp bracket to improve light output. And finally, on page 84 it says Fiber optic lamp – discolored (check when off with pen light). It indeed was blackened, so they replaced it. Problem solved – the lamp simply wasn’t putting out enough light to trigger the sensor.

Why does a lamp blacken? The Wikipedia article on Incandescent light bulbs says the tungsten filament slowly evaporates and metal vapor condenses on the inner surface of the glass envelope. Halogen lamps reduce that problem by redepositing tungsten vapor back onto the filament surface.  

Clip-on ties are for when safety is more important than fashion

In Shark Tank at Computerworld on August 23, 2019 there was an article titled Life-saving sartorial advice that discussed an employee beginning a career with a gigantic company who manufactured computer equipment. He was maintaining that equipment, and was advised by an old-timer mentoring him to get some snap -on (clip-on) ties to wear with his uniform of a white shirt and suit. What happened next?

“It only takes a few weeks for fish to learn the wisdom of the old-timer’s advice. He goes on a call to sort out a malfunctioning card sorter, which he does, and then he leans over it to watch it do its thing. That’s when his tie gets too close to the moving parts. It’s instantly ripped from his neck, and then wraps around the rollers and brings the sorter to a screeching halt.”

My first job back in 1977 was in the Ann Arbor research lab of the Climax Molybdenum Company. Engineers were expected to wear ties, and for safety’s sake to tuck them inside our lab coats when working with shop equipment like bandsaws or hacksaws. As shown above, I acquired an assortment of clip-on ties. Police and security guards also wear clip-on ties so they don’t get strangled by any of the angry people they deal with. Public speakers usually don’t have to worry about people being that angry.  

Clip-ons are not the only alternative to regular ties. As shown above in an engraving with five Celebrated English Chemists wearing bowties, chemists traditionally wore them to prevent dipping the end of a tie in the liquids the handled. (My father was a chemical engineer and he also wore bowties).

The Safety First sign came from Wikimedia Commons, and the engraving of Celebrated English Chemists came from the Library of Congress.

Failed communication

Sometimes normal procedures simply don’t work in an emergency. In Shark Tank on Computerworld there was an article on August 12, 2019 titled Messages pending.

A company had a third-party managed services provider (MSP) looking after their servers. The morning after a stormy night one of the company’s information technology (IT) employees noticed his email had not updated since 1:00 AM. He found the power had been off too long for the batteries in the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to keep their email server running. He got that server running again after the power came back on.

Then he checked his cell phone for missed calls and text messages, but found none. He contacted the MSP and asked why he had never been notified of a problem. They said their normal notification method was via email. That promptly got changed to cell phone and text message.

My graphic used icons for a laptop and email server from Wikimedia Commons.

It might feel O.K. – but still be completely wrong

Suppose that you were getting ready to print a handout for your presentation, but found your toner was low. You unplugged the cable on the back of your printer so you could pull it out. Then you put in a new toner cartridge, and plugged the printer cable back in. But now it didn’t work. What could have gone wrong?

You might have incorrectly plugged your printer cable into the network jack. At Computerworld in Shark Tank on there was an article on August 2, 2019 titled There are only so many shapes which described that sequence. As is shown above, the USB Type B plug used for the printer can physically fit into an 8P8C Ethernet network jack. (I have shown the end of a plug and an inline coupler).

It feels right, but it does not look right at all. The jack is much wider than the plug, and has a different shape. Also, that type B plug has four pins on the interior, while the network jack has a row with eight pins at the bottom. Nothing matches electrically.

How could you prevent that problem - eliminate having a worst moment? If you are not using the network jack, then you could put a piece of masking tape or black electrical tape over it as a lock out device. Back on February 18, 2011 I had blogged about More on mistake proofing: lock out what you don’t want to happen.

  

Conversely it is possible to misassemble metric and inch dimensioned bolts and nuts that may look right but won’t feel right. The mixed combinations shown above in two tables (from an article by Guy Avelon) will be too loose and not have the expected strength.

An unintended power shutdown just waiting to happen

At Computerworld on May 21, 2019 there was a Shark Tank story titled What’s the emergency? It described a control room that had several emergency shutdown buttons (like the one shown above) both inside and also on the wall of the hallway outside.

A moving crew carrying some bulky equipment came down the hall and one fellow accidentally backed into a protruding button – which cut power to the whole building.

That unintended action could easily be prevented. As shown above, the button could be flush with the surface, or even recessed. Or, it could be protected by a clear cover shield that has to be popped-up before the button can be pushed. There also are safety covers for toggle switches.

Do you believe everything that you read?

Sometimes the written instructions you receive just are wrong. On April 10, 2019 there was an article at Computerworld in Shark Tank titled Don’t RTFM, and subtitled Do you believe everything you read? RTFM is the overused acronym for Read That Friendly Manual.

It told a story about a radio transmitter used by the army. The storyteller, who maintained electronics, had been in a unit where that equipment first was deployed. He and others were trained by the manufacturer, or by those who they had directly trained. Their units had only minor problems with the transmitter. But other units had many failures of the large, expensive final amplifier tube similar to one shown above.

Eventually he and a senior operator were assigned to visit one of the other units. That senior operator watched what the others were doing, and was horrified. Before shutting off power to the transmitter they were turning the gain control knob for the final amplifier fully clockwise (CW) to maximum power. Instead they should have been turning that knob fully counterclockwise (CCW) to minimum power, as shown above.  

They said we just were following orders. We did exactly what the manual told us to do! They didn’t think about whether that instruction made any sense. He corrected the manual to say counterclockwise, and informed  all other units to do the same.

What had gone wrong? Presumably whoever began writing the manual meant to use the abbreviation CCW but accidentally left off one C – a simple typographic error. Then during editing the words got spelled out but incorrectly.

I remember once seeing a case about a tall retaining wall in a book on construction failures. The drawing had specified 1-1/4” diameter steel reinforcing rods. When the drawing was copied the ‘1’ got so light it was illegible, and much thinner 1/4” rods were used instead!

An image of a vacuum tube came from Wikimedia Commons.

Sometimes change is good; other times it is not

Here are three cases where a change was bad.

I wrote an article for the September 1995 issue of Claims magazine titled How to Investigate Corrosion Damage to Goods Stored, Shipped. One case I briefly discussed involved coils of steel wire which were wrapped in a laminate of plastic and paper treated with a vapor phase inhibitor. Right after their purchasing department changed packaging suppliers a customer rejecting an entire shipment of wire. When the new supplier had asked what they wanted to protect, purchasing told them it was steel wire. They omitted a crucial detail – that it was bronze plated wire for use in tires. The surface was plated so it would properly adhere to rubber. The inhibitor they got was intended only for steel (not copper), and corroded the plating an ugly blue.      

When Microsoft introduced Office 2007 they changed their default for saving PowerPoint files from type .ppt to a new type .pptx. We were using my laptop computer and projector for meetings of Capital Club Toastmasters, but it had an older version of Office. Very soon we ran into their new filetype. At the last minute one of our speakers had to figure out how to instead connect her laptop to my projector. Then I had to find and  download their PowerPoint Viewer software to cope with those .pptx files.   

On April 9, 2019 there was an article at Computerworld in Shark Tank titled Grease is the word. It described a case from back in the early 1970’s where the card reader on a mainframe computer was causing the system to repeatedly crash. Support technicians sent to handle the situation were baffled. Finally the manufacturer sent their design engineer, who arrived on a Friday afternoon. On Monday morning employees arrived to find the reader disassembled, a high voltage probe on an oscilloscope attached to the ground wire, and the engineer lying on the floor laughing hysterically. Eventually he calmed down, and told them what caused the problem. Bearings on the roller shafts of the card transport mechanism were supposed to be lubricated with a special conductive grease. Instead regular nonconductive grease had accidentally been used. Static electricity charges built up as cards were being read, until a high-voltage spark discharged them. The card reader was behaving like a Van de Graff generator. It was replaced by one with the proper lubricant. Electric arcing is a common enough problem with bearings that it is discussed on pages 16 and 17 of the Torrington Company Bearing Failure Prevention Guide.

   

The Currier and Ives image of A Changed Man came from Wikimedia Commons.

A 1960s Halloween superprank in a computer center

Telling scary stories is a favorite Halloween activity. This year the Shark Tank blog at Computerworld told one titled Little IT Shop of Horrors III: The eyes! The eyes! from the mid-1960s about the first supercomputer, the Control Data Corporation 6600.   

The control console on the CDC 6600 had a pair of large, round, green, display screens that typically were used to display text, as shown in an image from a linked article. But those screens also could display graphics, as is shown above.

AT 2:00 AM the operator on duty saw those screens “wake up” to first display a pair of closed eyes. Then the eyes slowly opened, looked to the left, looked to the right, and stared straight ahead. Finally the eyes closed, the display went blank, and right back to displaying text.   

An image of a CDC 6600 originally came from Wikimedia Commons.

Whether that dedicated server room is secure (or not) hinges on something simple

I enjoy reading stories in the Shark Tank series of articles at Computerworld. My latest laugh came from one on January 25, 2018 titled Throwback Thursday: Oops!

A company had finished building a dedicated secure server room. Then they proudly gave a grand-opening tour. That room had a raised floor (in case of flooding), and a fireproof and reinforced door with an electronic security lock. But as the tour group left, and they began to close that door the article author noticed that, as is shown above, the two removable hinge pins were located on the outside of the door. The locked room could easily be entered just by using a flat-bladed screwdriver or pry bar to remove them. A week later a contractor fixed the hinges.

       

That story reminded me of another story about safes that were unsafe – because the combination never was reset from one supplied by the factory. It appears in Richard P. Feynman’s 1985 book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, at the end of a chapter titled Safecracker Meets Safecracker. At Los Alamos Feynman met a locksmith who had been asked to drill a safe. But it turned out he didn’t have to:

“Oh, yeah. I knew that the locks come from the factory set at 25-0-25 or 50-25-50, so I thought, who knows; maybe the guy didn’t bother to change the combination,’ and the second one worked…

[Then Feynman said]

I went from office to office in my building, trying those two factory combinations, and I opened about one safe in five.”

How about locks with keys? The beginning of that chapter says:

“It turns out that picking ordinary tumbler locks—like Yale locks—is easy. You try to turn the lock by putting a screwdriver in the hole (you have to push from the side in order to leave the hole open). It doesn’t turn because there are some pins inside which have to be lifted to just the right height (by the key). Because it is not made perfectly, the lock is held more by one pin than the others. Now, if you push a little wire gadget—maybe a paper clip with a slight bump at the end—and jiggle it back and forth inside the lock, you’ll eventually push that one pin that’s doing the most holding, up to the right height. The lock gives, just a little bit, so the first pin stays up—it’s caught on the edge. Now most of the load is held by another pin, and you repeat the same random process for a few more minutes, until all the pins are pushed up.….What is not really appreciated by most people is that they’re perpetually locking themselves in with locks everywhere, and it’s not very hard to pick them.” 

Now it is even worse since there is a faster procedure (using a special key) called lock bumping.

‘Active’ stylus means it needs a battery

When your car won’t start the first thing you think about is if the battery is dead. But when the stylus on your tablet computer won’t work, opaque jargon means you might not realize there even is a battery inside.

At Computerworld on November 1, 2017 there was a Shark Tank article titled The question isn’t WHETHER to replace – it’s WHAT. It described what happened to the local tech guy at a satellite office of his state's environmental agency. Last year they got new HP tablet computers to replace their Microsoft Surface Pro 2s. A few months later a user was complaining about the stylus not working on his tablet.

The tech guy tried it, and found the little AAAA battery inside was run down. He bought a pack with a couple replacement batteries and put one in. Problem solved. But:

“ ‘Thanks,’ user says. Then he drops a bombshell: ‘Gee, the other IT guys said they were throwing away the styluses that stopped working, and getting new ones.’ "

A new HP Active Stylus costs about $60, while a battery costs about $2. If you look up support topics, you will find an article titled HP PCs Touch Screen Stylus Pen is Inaccurate or Stops Working which describes two types of styluses or pens:   

“Active stylus – requires power source (usually batteries)

Passive stylus – Does not require power”

The local tech guy emailed the agency’s help desk with a reminder about the two different types.

Perhaps those active styluses should be labeled with a generic Battery Inside sticker, like the Intel Inside trademark campaign which began a couple decades ago. Or they could team up with a manufacturer and, as shown above, put Duracell Inside.

The image of batteries was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.   

A humorous story about ‘healing’ a laptop computer with a dim screen

 

Sometimes having faith in an employee can heal dimly understood technology. At Computerworld there was a Shark Tank article on October 16, 2017 titled Hey, a little showmanship never hurt anyone! It described someone who was asked by an executive in a nearby office what was wrong with her new laptop computer.

The monitor brightness adjustment was a thumbwheel (like the tuning control shown above on a radio) on the frame around the screen, and she accidentally bumped it to dim.

The employee put a hand on each side of the frame, and slid them both down while commanding the computer to Heal! Of course, it was healed to normal brightness.

A long time ago one of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons was titled Appliance Healers. That healer  said:

“I command the foul demons that have clogged this vacuum cleaner to come OUT!”

The faith healer was adapted from an 1896 carton at the Library of Congress, while the image of a transistor radio came from Wikimedia Commons.

Don’t underestimate the ingenuity of an annoyed user

On November 29, 2016 in the Shark Tank blog at Computerworld there was an amusing story titled Never EVER underestimate an irritated user.

A large manufacturer had proclaimed a new security policy - all computer screens will lock up after 15 minutes with no activity. Then users had to log back in again - with their passwords that had to be changed frequently.

"An employee on the factory floor was very irritated by this change, and devised a system so that his computer would never lock.

He turned his optical mouse upside down so that the sensor was facing up. Then he hung a rag over the mouse, and positioned a fan to blow at the rag.

That way, there was always mouse activity on the computer -- and he never had to key in his password to gain access to the computer during his shift."

A bad way to make passwords secure

On November 23, 2016 the Computerworld website had a SHARK TANK article with a software horror story titled Now THAT’S password security. It described what a government employee encountered when he tried to login to another agency, as he had to do quarterly. It seemed like he could never remember his password, since he was told it was invalid each time he tried to use it again. 

“Eventually, fish can no longer restrain his engineering urge, and he decides to do some testing to identify the actual problem.

First he attempts a login, and as usual it fails. He goes to the password-reset page, but instead of typing his new password into the input box, he types it into a text file, then copies and pastes it. That way, he knows he'll be inputting exactly the same password every time.

Then he immediately logs out and tries to log back in by pasting in the password. And as before, the new password fails.
 
Fish tries several more times, and it keeps failing -- even though it's the same pasted password every time.
 
Clearly, it's help desk time. Fish makes the call, and after several rounds of debugging and testing, there's finally a clear answer: The passwords that fish is creating when his account is reset are all too long.
 
‘But instead of failing, the reset system simply chopped off the extra characters and saved the result’ fish says. So my password of ABC=12345 became ABC=12. But on the password-setting page, there was no mention of a maximum length, and no error message for a too-long password.
 
And a year later, now that they're aware of the problem, there's still no error message, and no warning of a maximum password length. I guess it's more efficient to have users create a new password every time they log in than it is to tell them what a valid password is.”

The image of an Xacto paper cutter was derived from one at Wikimedia Commons.

Does your speaking voice sound too robotic?

Perhaps you should vary both your pitch and speaking rate. Yesterday at Computerworld there was a brief, humorous Shark Tank article titled To stop speaking to a real person, press 0. It said:

“The call center for this college's IT help desk has one particular staffer who's really, really good at his job, reports a pilot fish in the loop.

‘He's calm, professional and succinct,’ fish says. ‘So much so, in fact, that one caller took him for a voice-response system and demanded to speak to a ‘real person.’
 
‘The caller would not accept the staffer's word that he was, in fact, a real person.'
 
'He continued to demand to speak to a real person until the staffer transferred the caller to his supervisor.’ “

An image of Robby the Robot came from Wikimedia Commons.

Why you might need to see the problem to understand what really is going on

Sometimes you have to see (or visualize) a problem to understand what really is going on. On November 20th the SHARK TANK troubleshooting section at Computerworld had a humorous story titled Is it the appendix? The spleen? The intestine?

An application analyst (software guy) at a hospital was working the Third Shift along with a support tech (hardware guy). At 2 A.M. the software guy got called to help troubleshoot a (nurse) user’s  problem: 

“User: ‘The thing on my computer stopped working.’
 
Which thing, ma'am?
 
User: ‘The thing attached to the computer.’
 
Yes?
 
User: ‘So I can see the patient orders.’
 
You mean the monitor?
 
User: ‘What?’
 
The TV?
 
User: ‘No, so I can put my password in.’
 
The keyboard?
 
User: ‘No. I am busy. I don't have time to play these games. 
I can't move the arrow so I can get the line into the box for the password.’
 
You are saying the mouse is not working?
 
User: ‘What?’
 
The oval-shaped thing with the buttons?
 
User: ‘Yes.’
 
I'll have tech support bring a new one as soon as possible.
 
User: ‘What do I do in the meantime? I am busy.’
 
I'm sorry, but is there another computer available in the area?
 
User: ‘The one next to me is not being used. I will move over.’
 
I called tech support to relay the message. The tech ran to the floor with the replacement.Turns out she is left-handed, and was using the mouse for the computer to her left."

Bureaucracies and workarounds

When your job involves a bureaucracy there often are ways to work around pesky restrictions.

Early this month on the Shark Tank blog at Computerworld there was an article titled Now that’s our kind of emergency! It described one software developer’s experience with the bureaucracy at a railroad.

Approval for installation of new software normally involved an elaborate process calling for signatures from the project lead, the development manager, and a variety of other managers. Also, approval had to be done by noon on a Monday, since installs only were  done on Wednesday nights.

But there also was an Emergency Install process that involved mostly the project lead (or alternatively a senior analyst) and one simple form. Better yet, emergency installs could be done at any time. Eventually almost half of all installs were being done on an emergency basis. Did management step in to fix the broken normal process? Of course not! Instead a memo went out stating:

"Effective immediately, all emergencies must be scheduled at least 48 hours in advance."

Four decades ago I experienced an effective workaround done by a noncommissioned officer (NCO). From 1972 to 1978 I was a medic in the Air Force Reserve. That began with spending the second half of 1972 on an active duty tour that was planned to include basic training and  tech school, and finish with a month of on-the-job training (OJT). I still had plans to start graduate school at Carnegie-Mellon University in early January.

My orders originally called for OJT in the hospital at Scott Air Force Base, east of St. Louis. By the time I got there after the first week of December the schedule had slipped for a variety of reasons. I wrote my reserve unit a letter asking if if was still supposed to be there for a month.

After another week they called the NCO who handled ward administration for medics at the hospital, and told him my orders just had been amended to immediately send me back to my reserve unit in Pittsburgh. But those written orders got hung up in the pre-Christmas mail. The ward administration NCO took me off his weekly schedule. That left me hanging around the dormitory for medics.

For almost a week I was in limbo, mopping floors and doing other odd jobs as needed there. Then that NCO saw I was still there. He said, OK enough of this crap, we are going to get you home for Christmas via Verbal Order of Commander. He called Pittsburgh and got the only important feature from my orders - the charge codes saying what accounts should pay for my travel. A few hours later I took workaround paperwork he’d filled out to the travel section, and was given a plane ticket. Problem solved.

A Google search led me to a detailed 2014 magazine article by Steven Alter in the Communications of the Association for Information Systems titled Theory of Workarounds.