SHARK TANK

Manager gets testy

Pilot fish and his team are called upon to investigate a large computer that's running slowly. The problem: users who are just abandoning their sessions on the big machine instead of quitting properly.

"We wrote a script that would detect the rogue sessions and kill them off," fish says. "Then we would report to the manager the names of the users who did not exit cleanly from the session, and the manager would have words with them."

That's the plan, anyway. Fish warns users that the script has been written and what it's for.

And it works. On the first day the script goes live, it catches a rogue session — which was left hanging by the manager.

Manager explains that he was just testing the script.

Floating passwords

A mortgage provider decides to beef up security for its users' laptops by adding full-disk encryption, reports an IT pilot fish who helps support the users.

"The encryption program has three security questions you have to answer," fish says.

Two of the questions are standard for all users: mother's maiden name, and the name of the street where the user grew up. But the third question is up to the user to choose.

After months of using the system, one user has trouble logging in — and can't manage to reset his password, either.

He calls fish, who walks him through answering the questions. The first two are no problem. But user's third answer is rejected.

Fish: What did you choose as your third question?

User: "It's 'What is the rate of a 30-year mortgage?' I put it in, but the machine isn't taking it."

Fish: Your answer has to be whatever the rate was when you set it up months ago.

Missing CPUs

A company depreciates and replaces its desktop PCs on a three-year cycle, which means IT is constantly replacing machines, reports pilot fish.

"Recently, we've noticed a disturbing trend of more and more hardware not working right out of the box," fish says.

Because the DOA machines are new and from a major vendor, fish and his co-workers don't troubleshoot. They just call the vendor, which sends out a techie to fix the PCs.

Fish happens to be nearby when a vendor techie is opening up one of the computers that has failed.

After opening the box and taking a quick glance inside, techie looks up.

"I see the problem," he says. "There's no CPU in here."

Sighs fish, "Maybe in a cost-cutting move the vendor has removed the 'verify the computer has a CPU' step from the QC checklist."