Welcome once again to On Call, The Register’s Friday column that celebrates the frolicsome fun that readers have experienced when asked to deliver tech support.
This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Nigel” who shared a story from 2004 when the office he worked in found itself in the path of Hurricane Ivan, the superstorm that rampaged its way across the Caribbean and the USA for almost three weeks.
…so the story is that an American police officer almost murdered him for no reason
The cop was joking. Also, Ivan was 21-years ago, things were a little different in America. I was there.
Reminder that unless you are protecting the lives of others, no job is worth your own life. Keeping a hospital online to keep patients alive? Sure, I might stay through a hurricane for that. Keeping email online for Helen in accounting? Nah, that can wait. We have DR plans.
Also, you don’t significantly increase a generator’s efficiency by removing the load. In fact, they need to have a minimum load to run properly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_stacking). If you wanted to save fuel, you’d have to shut it down completely. If you wanted to ensure continuous operation, you’d already have a fuel truck on standby to go in behind the hurricane and refuel.
As always there’s an xkcd for it.
