BASTARD SYSTEM MANAGER FROM HELL #1 - User discipline, the BSMFH way =================================== I start up my terminal, firing up twenty seven windows on our poor little system. Always looks impressive, just never know when the Big Boss will come creeping around spying on me. Noticed the machine a bit slow this morning, so I up my priority to 10, increase my working set to 20000 blocks and log in to twenty seven windows again. Much better. The phone rings. Shit. I thought I'd fixed that. Four rings and then all is quiet. Of course, it's been transferred to my pager, which is where? Now hold on a minute, I know, I left it in the room of that poor little contract programmer. I'm surprised they let him out so soon, it's very enlightening watching the effects on an over worked programmer when his windows keep turning upside down every few minutes. He should never have asked for those extra privileges. Hello, there's an ambulance pulling up outside that poor programmers office now. I do hope he wasn't the nervous type, frightened by a pager going off at full volume. Maybe the next contract programmer will have more sense than to mess with the BSMFH. The phone rings again. Better pick this one up, don't want the ambulance men asking awkward questions about pager volume knobs. "Hello," says I nice as pie. "THE MACHINE'S FUCKING DEAD," screams the ignorant, or mad, fool. Nobody who is neither ignorant nor a fool screams at the BSMFH. "I'm sorry," I answer very calmly, he's had it, "could you repeat that there seems to be some idiot shouting on a crossed line." The luser recovers himself. "The machine's dead. The machine's dead." Hysterics I don't mind, its all part of the service, but shouting is another matter. It's too late for this guy to learn. "What's you username?" I ask cunningly. "Why do you want that?" he asks, obviously he's upset me before. I switch on the phone tap. "It's just that I want to check the status of your process." "The machine's dead." This guy has a one track mind. He's beginning to annoy me. "I need your username to check on your process. The machine's are all up and running. There's a lot of traffic on the system, but maybe I can increase your priority, just this once." Sometimes people fall for the stupidest things. As if the BSMFH would increase anyone's priority. His brain goes dead; he gives me his username. "Wait a minute," he's awake, "there are only two users on the system." They'll only be one in a minute. "Slash priority equals one," I mutter. "It's you, isn't it?" He asks, with a little tension in his voice. "Slash working set equals one," I continue, "Yep." "Oh my God," it's hit him now, "The Bastard System Manager From Hell." I hear sobbing on the other end of the line. "Do you have backups?" I ask consolingly. "No, please," he begs. I hate it when they blub and beg. "Delete start dot star." I'm interrupted by the sound of a gunshot from the other end of the line. Another problem solved. Another luser who won't call back. There are good days, there are very good days and there are days when users let you know that they won't call again. Ever.