Friday, 10 October 2008

• Strange Things One Must Do...

  My friend Josh asked some of his collegues to write about various superstitions and other irrational things IT workers do while they do their jobs.  This made me think of a couple of very irrational things I had to do:
  

  1.  We had this old MicroVAX that was responsible for operating a piece of very complex test equipment.  This wasn't the only setup we had.  We had about 30 of these MicroVAX setups testing semiconductors.  From time to time this one machine would begin to report false errors while testing a very particular product.  We called these failures stringers.  The product under test would test perfectly on all the other machines.  And this machine would test all other products perfectly.  It's just this specific pairing of product to machine that caused us grief.  So, when the VAX would start reporting stringers of errors we would stop testing.  At that time we had a team of experienced engineers responsible for maintaining the test programs and machinery.  None of us could explain why this particular MicroVAX would suddenly start failing just this product.  To correct the problem, we would open the debug menu, assert parameter 4 high, assert parameter 4 low, exit the debug menu, count to 10, kick the VAX in the upper right corner of the case, then continue testing.  Failure to complete these steps in that order would not resolve the problem.  We called it the "Leather Reboot" and actually documented it in an FMEA.  We thought it had to be a loose connection or something, but we could never find it.  It's all back plane type of architecture so no cabling.  We used gallons of acetone and electrowash cleaning all the connectors but the problem persisted.  To this day we cannot explain why this machine behaves the way it does and the "Leather Reboot" procedure is still followed to correct the problem.

  2.  This next story is a little creepy, but absolutely true.  I still have no explanation for this.  While I was in college, my dentist, (I'll call him Phil) knowing that I was a CS major, asked for some advice on an excel problem he was having.  He wanted to do some data trending and reporting by entering data once a month and have it spit out a lengthy report on the data.  So, in trade for some dental work, I helped him develop a macro that he executed when he entered data he was collecting once a month.  It wasn't a complex macro, just your basic copy, subtotal, paste and print on multiple worksheets.  After I finished the macro, tested it out and showed him how to use it, he was very pleased and thanked me.  The next month he called me with a problem he was having.  When he ran the macro, a Visual Basic error would pop up complaining about an invalid variable.  Phil was not an idiot when it came to computers, maybe a little inexperienced, but he knew his way around.  He emailed me a screen capture of the error.  Sure enough, there was a valid error screen.  I had him email me the workbook so I could debug at home.  I was never able to replicate the problem.  The macro ran fine every time.  So I went back over to his office.  I figured it must be some kind of environmental variable set weird.  I was not able to replicate the problem there either.  Just for good measure, I rebooted Windows and again attempted to replicate the error with no luck.  Satisfied that the problem was resolved, Phil chalked it up to a fluke of nature and apologized for my inconvenience.

      When I got home there was a message from Phil.  No sooner had I walked out the door, he sat down and entered in more data, ran the macro and the error returned.  I had him do exactly what I did when I was there.  No luck.  He rebooted Windows.  No luck.  We were both very frustrated and decided to let it go for the night.  The next day I called Phil and asked if he was up to trying to figure this thing out.  He agreed and met me at the office about 10 minutes later.  We walked into the office and sat down, turned the computer on, launched the program, entered in some random data and ran the macro.  No problem.  Then I had Phil do it so I could watch exactly what he did.  We started over from the point when the computer was completely off.  I watched him power up, launch the program, enter the data, run the macro and no problem.  He did everything correctly like he always did.  No errors reported.  Phil and I stared at each other dumbfounded.  He then entered in some real data instead of random data, ran the macro, no errors.  We could not explain why he had errors.  The only difference was my presence in the room when the macro ran.  We both laughed at the theory that one person's physical presence could affect the execution of a simple macro like this.

      So, I went to go get us some lunch.  When I returned, Phil was sitting in the waiting room shaking his head in disbelief.  He ran the macro while I was gone and the error returned.  I went into the office and the error message was still displayed on the screen.  I had Phil clear the message and re-run the macro.  No error.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I waited out in the parking lot while Phil ran the macro.  The error returned.  This was ridiculous.  I simply could not wrap my head around the fact that this macro was dependent on the presence of it's creator to execute correctly.  Phil couldn't believe it either.  It didn't take an expert in computers to know that this was not normal or even possible.  I finally had an idea.  I walked over to Phil's photocopier and fished my driver's license from my wallet.  I copied the license, took the copy over to the computer and taped it to the side with scotch tape.  I then had Phil re-run the macro while I waited outside.  No errors.  I ran it myself with again no errors.  I had Phil run it again with no errors.  This solution sufficiently creeped both of us out.  We left the office and Phil waited another month to have more data to run to try out the new 'fix'. 

      Phil called the next month.  Everything ran perfectly.  "But", he said, "I don't dare take your picture off the side of my computer." 

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