Encyclopædia Moronica: R is for Reconfiguration
It's a Monday.
Due to a series of coincidences and random occurrences that run somewhere between "a run of incredibly bad luck" and "a witch has cursed you", I have been on call now for approximately four months, while my neighbouring region has been effectively unmanned for almost the same duration. I haven't exactly been covering two regions constantly, but there have been multiple occasions where I have been asked to leave my area to work in the unmanned adjacent one; including still receiving calls about issues requiring urgent and immediate attention in my own region while I am multiple hours distant.
This doth not please the technician.
On this particular Monday, however, I checked my queue to find only a single, regular, normal job. Yes, technically it was for a piece of equipment that had been down for several days before it was reported to the customer's internal help desk, and yes, that help desk had spent several days "investigating via remote connection" before escalating it to my Help Desk, who then sat on it because it was received on a Saturday, until I saw it on Monday morning, so the total time of equipment unavailability was rapidly nearing *weeks*. I read the job description, and immediately, there were several likely options forming; equipment failure, disconnection (accidental or otherwise), software misconfiguration, just to name a few. Some of them fell outside my particular remit; but I would at least be able to investigate and potentially narrow down the fault to determine just who's responsibility it was to rectify it.
Drop the spares I might need in the back, insert keys in ignition, rev engine, and race off to the customer site *while maintaining 100% compliance with and respect of all speed limits, local laws, and traffic regulations.* It was quite literally the worst time of day for traffic, but I persisted nonetheless. It is what they pay me for, after all.
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Finally, a scant forty minutes after I first received the job, I was on site.
> ME: Hey Manager (MAN)! I'm here about the {equipment} being offline?
> MAN: Oh yeah, that's been down for at least a week.
> ME: Really? I only just got the job this morn-
> MAN: Yeah, I forgot to actually call it in to the Help Desk.
> ME: Oh! Yeah, that'll slow down the process a bit... I'm here now, so let me have a look and see what I can figure out, OK?
> MAN: Sounds good! BOSS is around too, I think maybe he was having a look at it on Friday?
> ME: Ok, I'll let you both know what I find out.
So, customer is aware I'm on site and why. Time to earn my pay; time to put the brain to use and figure out what's going on here.
The screen is blank and unresponsive. Cool, it hasn't just gone to sleep and no one knew how to wake it up... this time. Power indicator is out. Pressing the power switch has no effect. Okay, no power to unit. One step further back the power chain. UPS is turned diagonally in order to fit inside the tiny cupboard. Turn it forward and... no power indicator here, either. Press the power button, screen comes up for a second but immediately turns off again. In that second, the battery charge indicator showed zero charge remaining.
> BOSS: Hey G! Any luck?
> ME: I'm making progress, or at least, I *think* I'm making progress. MAN said you looked at it last week, what do you remember?
> BOSS: On Friday, it turned on when I pressed the button, but then it would turn off again. Saturday, it wouldn't even turn on any more.
> ME: That tracks. Let me check something...
While we'd been talking, I had visually traced the black cable that snaked from the rear of the cabinet to a hard-wired connection point on the wall. Immediately adjacent to that connection was a key in a lock.
> ME: What are the odds...
I twisted the key to the right. Immediately, I heard a small click from the UPS cupboard, followed by a quiet *beep*. I pressed the power key on the UPS. Immediately, the VOLTAGE OUT indicator showed line voltage was being provided, and the BATTERY CHARGING indicator came on. I hit the power button on the equipment itself; the screen flickered to life at once and began to show the normal start up process.
> BOSS: What did you do?
> ME: I turned that key about an eighth of a turn to the right. I'm guessing it got bumped and the UPS kept the equipment online as long as possible. When you tried turning it back on, it only worked until the UPS battery got too low.
> BOSS: Well... damn, that's been down for DAYS. How do we stop that from happening again?
I reached out, and dropped the key into his hand.
> ME: Maybe store this somewhere *other* than in the lock; it doesn't take much of a turn to hit the OFF position.
> BOSS: ...yeah, that'll work.
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I returned to my vehicle and started the close out paperwork.
**Time to site:** 30 minutes (2x 15min block) **Time on site:** 15 minutes (1x 15min block) **Equipment used:** None **Return to base:** 30 minutes (2x 15min block) **Description:** Investigated report of offline equipment. Discovered UPS not providing power. Confirmed UPS battery discharged. Confirmed insufficient input voltage to UPS. Reconfigured input voltage connection to restore correct voltage. Confirmed UPS battery charging. Confirmed UPS output voltage correct. Confirmed equipment started correctly and online. Informed customer of issue and resolution steps. Observed successful operation of equipment prior to departing site.
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That's a whole lot of words to say "I turned it back on at the wall."