So the boys from the Layout department interrupt me the other day to tell
me "We need to recover some stuff from backups, but the tape drive doesn't
seem to be working." As you know, this could mean anything from "We forgot
to plug it in" to "The magic smoke is coming out." I deign to go have a
look.
It powers up OK, so I feed it a tape. The drive starts making The Wrong
Noises and refuses to give back the tape. Meanwhile, Layout is hovering
over me, because we're still trying to beat the concept of "doing something
else while you're waiting" into their pointy little heads. Eventually I
have to tell them "You'll get the drive back when and if I can resurrect
it," in the I-have-a-cricket-bat-in-my-office-with-your-name-on-it
voice[1].
So I end up in my clean room[2] disassembling the damn
thing. Suddenly I
have an unpleasant hunch: those look like tape fragments. Sure enough,
there's about two feet worth of DAT wrapped around the spindle. After I've
finished surgery and tied off the stitches, I confront Layout. "Oh, yeah,
it ate a tape last week, but we didn't want to bug you about it." Yeah,
why would I possibly be interested in something like that?
The problem is, I can't be completely certain it won't spontaneously eat
another tape. So now I don't trust my backups, which is a lot like not
trusting my girlfriend -- sooner or later either they'll win back my trust
or I'll have to trade them in on a new model.
There is now a mixed-media work on my door entitled "The tape drive doesn't
seem to be working." Scotch tape and digital audio tape on paper. I don't
know if it qualifies as art or not, but I find it soothing to look at.
| [1] |
In $COMMONWEALTH this might conceivably mark me as a
sportsman-type, but in Southern California it's merely eccentric. |
|---|
| [2] |
My office, with the door closed and a
"BUGGER OFF" sign on the door. (And a Mountain Dew within arm's reach; I
mean, let's not overextend the metaphor.) |
|---|
Date posted: 15th March 2000
