systems
ON CALL
Human users can be difficult to manage. A couple of hundred head of livestock and unsupported windows XP can truly stink things up
Invite to another instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column The Register releases each Friday as a cathartic service for readers who understand that handling tech assistance BS can be a cow of a task.
Today, fulfill a reader we’ll Regomize as “Jason” who informed us he had actually assisted a farming devices dealership with his computer system problems for about 20 years.
“One day this guy called me to ask if I could help at a farm in Yorkshire, where he’d arranged the supply and installation of a fairly substantial system that used a computer to do effectively everything for a few hundred cattle,” he informed On Call.
“That meant individually feeding them, measuring milk yields, planning pregnancies, and periodically submitting all the data to the government.”
Jason stated other tech assistance folk had actually attempted, and stopped working, to repair the system.
“This had somewhat soured the relationship between the agricultural equipment dealer and the farmer,” he punned in his e-mail to On Call.
Well punned, Jason.
We digress.
“Despite not being fond of wading around in cow shit at four in the morning, I agreed to take a look at the system,” Jason informed us. By this time he had actually found out that the farm produced numerous lots of milk every week, so presumed he would discover severe industrial-scale tech when he reached the farm.
That presumption was incorrect.
“When I arrived, the first thing that I found to worry about was that the whole thing was controlled by proprietary software on a single PC running Windows XP – just after Microsoft ended mainstream support.”
The other things to fret about were all acts of omission: the farm had no backups, no extra PC, and no one on website to keep the PC.
Jason asked if anybody was accountable for keeping the computer system as much as date with the security spots and was informed the farmer’s 14-year-old grand son had actually done some computer system research studies at school, so he got the task.
That lad had actually either not found, or erased, the lots of rather racy videos Jason discovered on the PC.
“When the farmer’s wife learned of this, there was what can best be described as a hullabaloo,” Jason informed On Call.
As he went into the mess, Jason discovered that the computer system was sending out milk production information to Her Majesty’s Government. He likewise discovered that neither the federal government, nor the farm management software application supplier, had actually troubled to need setup of a firewall software.
Jason states he set up one, made a couple of other tweaks, and got the system working.
“Everyone seemed pleased, or at least they did until they got my bill,” he composed. “And to be fair, they did pay it promptly.”
Jason never ever spoke with the farm once again.
“I don’t know if that’s because it’s still working OK, or if they’re just too embarrassed to see me again, or they found someone cheaper who could cope with my recommendations,” he composed.
What’s the strangest or dirtiest location you’ve been asked to provide tech assistance? Do not cheese us off by keeping back! Click on this link to send us your story so we can milk it for all it’s worth in a future instalment of On Call. ®
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