September 26, 2000

Wanna-Be Programmers
   by yawetag

This could have been titled "Co-Workers - Part 2," but I don't actually work with this guy.

There's a guy that works at another one of the buildings that used to work as a Programmer in our building. He still has the authority to write programs on the system (which is an AS/400 for any of you that care :]) that he needs to write, and he does about once or twice a week for various reasons.

Today he decides to release a program around 8:30am. I don't come in until 4pm and the program was still running. At 5pm, I check the DASD percentage, which tells me the percentage of HDD memory currently used. It hovers around 35-45% throughout the week. At 5pm, it was at 79%. I thought this to be weird and left a note for myself to check it around 6:30 or 7. At 6:30 I checked it and it was up to 89%. At 90% I'm supposed to call our AS/400 Administrator and let him know. I went ahead and called him.

Come to find out, this guy's job was writing files that took up almost 60% of our DASD (or around 200 gigs). The AS/400 Admin deleted the file right as DASD got to 95%. The DASD instantly dropped back to 39%, a VERY safe level.

If the DASD had gotten to 99% (which would have only been an hour later at the most), the system would have shut itself down and a full restore would be mandatory to bring it back up. Total time for this: 3-5 days.

Yearly Paycheck for Programmer: $50,000.00

Coke from the Drink Machine: $0.60

Skittles from the Candy Machine: $0.60

Shutting the system down for a week: Priceless

PFFT! to the Programmer!

Published: September 26, 2000
Editor: stacy