Just Call Me MacGyver: Systems Administrator


I’m working a bit late today as I had to schedule some downtime for a critical piece of hardware that needed to be powered down, lightly disassembled, have a part replaced and then powered back up. As I unscrewed the part to be replaced, I thought to myself “Boy, it’d sure stink if I dropped this case screw down into the bottom of the case, what with this rack-mounted system being without true rails and all and thus really hard to get into.” Bet you can guess what happened next.
Cursing my luck, I sprinted back to my desk, grabbed my flashlight and the closest thing to a mirror I had on hand — a Dell system recovery CD. Back to the rack I went and, using the CD as an adjunct periscope, I located and managed to fish out the screw, no fuss, no muss.
I’m so proud of me.