Category: Here’s a Good One

(from Here’s a Good One: Pencil-Pushers).

I’m the last Unix Engineer standing, managing the Frankensteinian infrastructure of three merged companies under a Texas State entity. Picture this: Tandems, Unix, Windows servers, imaging systems, and Xerox high-speed printers—a tech jamboree working in harmony to churn out claims across Texas. While I’m not the only Engineer here, most of my colleagues are Windows administrators. And let’s be real—Windows admins are basically power users with fancier job titles (everyone not named Willie Wilson).

This operation processes 100,000 pages of claims every day. The Tandem systems are the crown jewels, fine-tuned by wizards who write software so low-level it’s practically whispering to the hardware. Sub-second response time? Achieved. These machines are so good, they’d laugh in binary at your gaming PC.

Now, imagine a massive data stream starting with these Tandems, zipping through Windows servers (trying their best not to lag), passing an imaging server, and ending with a Xerox beast spitting out hundreds of thousands of letters daily. It’s beautiful when it works. But when it doesn’t? That’s where the story gets spicy.

Case in point: a Xerox field engineer called me—not one of the dozens of Windows admins—about an NFS mount issue on a Windows PC hooked to a high-speed Xerox printer. Why me? Your guess is as good as mine (maybe not, I’m betting it’s Unix).

It took me ten minutes to spot the problem. The PC was running Windows Home edition. Yes, the tcp/ip stack was having a full-blown existential crisis because it’s not designed for enterprise anything. When I asked the engineer why he was using Windows Home, he admitted the company didn’t send him a PC, so he grabbed an EZ-PC from Frye’s. Frye’s! I half-expected him to say he installed the OS off a cereal box prize.

Let’s just say there are too many things wrong with that picture for me to unpack without a drink.

So, what was the point of the PC attached to the high-speed Xerox printer? The PC is used to augment the formatting of the final output produced on the Xerox. In other words, it’s a simple way to add a signature. Once the letters are printed, the staff would cart the final letters to a department that would actually scan the letters before they were mailed. This was unnecessary since the final images could have been offloaded to repository and saved.

There was a point where I decided to step away from technology after being over-worked. Let’s call it a “sabbatical”. One day, a friend of mine—a senior enterprise administrator—called me up and asked, “Want to make some quick cash?”

“Sure, why not,” I said, because, well, why not?

The gig? Moving boxes of PCs from one place to another. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. My previous job had me working round the clock in Greensboro, North Carolina, and this was a nice break after moving back to Austin.

My friend showed up with a few junior IT folks in tow—guys who clearly had nothing better to do. Now, I’d worked with my friend at least 10 years ago. One of the younger guys asks…

Him: “Why is it so easy for you to move these boxes?”
Me: (Grinning) “Well, I am a fine specimen of a man.”
Him: “No, that’s not what I mean. We’re more like pencil pushers and you’re…”

I looked at my friend and said, “I can’t believe he said that.” I actually can believe he said that because it’s not the first time in my career hearing questionable statements.

I dont’ t remember what my friend said at the time, but a few days later, he called again. “Hey, we need a Unix Engineer. Interested?”

“Sure, why not,” I replied.

Fast forward, I’m now the lone Unix Engineer managing the combined infrastructure of three companies under a Texas State entity. We’re talking Tandems, Unix, Windows, imaging servers, and Xerox high-speed printers—all the tech you’d expect for processing claims across Texas.

One day, I get a call from a user. He’s frustrated because he can’t see a file he just FTP’d using his browser.

“Did you refresh your browser?” I ask.
“Of course!” he says indignantly.

“Alright, where are you sitting?” I walk over to his desk. The guy looks startled to see me and it’s the same guy that made the racist comment. Without saying a word, I reach over, hit the refresh button on his keyboard, and voilà—his file appears.

As I walk off, I glance back at him and say, “You should know better than that, pencil pusher.”