Misplaced mainframes, spooky systems, and other tech horror stories

The majority of stories submitted to Off the Record are understandably about encounters with people: the demanding boss, the tech-challenged user, the ladder-climbing coworker.

Personality clashes and office politics prove time and again to be a major time suck and energy drain, especially if someone wants to actually — gasp — have a life outside of the office. (A simple search on Amazon.com with the word “coworker” yielded a number of captivating titles on how to deal.)

But what about other major players a techie encounters daily, such as the mighty mainframe? There are times when the hardware itself can take on a life of its own, invite a series of circumstances, and plague the IT pro. And such times are ready-made for an audience’s amusement.

Hardware-related tales crop up from time to time in the Off the Record blog. Here is a trip through the archives of a handful of such stories, including reminders that it’s helpful to know where the hardware actually is at and, for the kid in all of us, a tech-style ghost story:

• “The case of the disappearing data center.” One network manager gets the scare of his life when the truck containing an entire data center takes a wrong turn.
• “I swear I can count!” Even experienced techies can forget the most basic of skills.
• “How fast can you move a data center?” The clock ticks away when one tech team learns it has change relocate its entire data center in practically no time.
• “The ghost who sabotaged the mainframe.” Do you believe in the supernatural? A team of HP engineers can assure you that spirits live — and will come back to mess with your mainframe.

Send your tech tale — hardware-related or otherwise — to offtherecord@infoworld.com. If we publish it, we’ll keep you anonymous and send you a $50 gift cheque.

This story “Missing inventory? Blame the tech,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com.