this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
35 points (92.7% liked)

Sysadmin

9949 readers
72 users here now

A community dedicated to the profession of IT Systems Administration

No generic Lemmy issue posts please! Posts about Lemmy belong in one of these communities:
!lemmy@lemmy.ml
!lemmyworld@lemmy.world
!lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
!support@lemmy.world

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's Friday column that celebrates the frolicsome fun that readers have experienced when asked to deliver tech support.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Nigel" who shared a story from 2004 when the office he worked in found itself in the path of Hurricane Ivan, the superstorm that rampaged its way across the Caribbean and the USA for almost three weeks.

top 4 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 9 points 10 hours ago

Reminder that unless you are protecting the lives of others, no job is worth your own life. Keeping a hospital online to keep patients alive? Sure, I might stay through a hurricane for that. Keeping email online for Helen in accounting? Nah, that can wait. We have DR plans.

Also, you don't significantly increase a generator's efficiency by removing the load. In fact, they need to have a minimum load to run properly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_stacking). If you wanted to save fuel, you'd have to shut it down completely. If you wanted to ensure continuous operation, you'd already have a fuel truck on standby to go in behind the hurricane and refuel.

[–] ordinarylove@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

...so the story is that an American police officer almost murdered him for no reason

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

The cop was joking. Also, Ivan was 21-years ago, things were a little different in America. I was there.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago

As always there’s an xkcd for it.