Practice what you preach
When consulting on IT Infrastructure there are two things I tell clients:
1.) With electronic devices if it squeaks, buzzes, intermittently locks up or does anything else that it shouldn't be doing, either fix it or get rid of it.
2.) If a device were to be disconnected (power, network) and that action affects your operations then that device cannot be considered "decommissioned".
Why I am writing about this today?
The fan for the graphics card on an old PC at my home office had started to rattle intermittently. Today the system froze up and would no longer reboot. My suspicions were confirmed after opening it up -- the graphics card fan no longer turned. Because I still used that box for print sharing meant that I could no longer print -- something that normally wouldn't be that big of a deal, but today it most definitely was.
A few weeks ago when I first noticed the intermittent rattle I discounted the likelyhood that failure was imminent. I thought I was safe deferring maintenance because at the time I had deemed the equipment to be "basically decommissioned".
Today I had to cancel my appointment because I could not generate the needed printouts.
Shame on me.
