Shark Tank: Don't know if he passed, but we know who failed

It's the late 1980s, and this pilot fish's company has just converted to a new midrange system -- and a week after the switch-over is complete, everything is running smoothly.

So fish concludes it's a good time for a learning experience. "I decided that I would teach my operator a thing or two about problem solving on the new hardware by introducing a minor problem," says fish.

"The procedures called for the operator to back up the system before running the day-end process. One entire rack was dedicated to the reel-to-reel tape unit, so I decided to power down the rack for the tape drive and see how he would identify the problem.

"He might see the power switch on the tape drive, but would he look at the power switch on the rack?"

Fish waits until the operator's back is turned, then flips the power toggle on the rack that holds the tape drive.

And suddenly, everything stops. Not just the tape drive. Everything.

"What I didn't know was that each rack was wired together so that if any one rack was powered off, all of the racks power down immediately in case of an emergency," groans fish.

"And it was a hard power-down, not a controlled shutdown. The CPU, disk drives, tape drives and cooling fans all went silent. In seconds it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop in the computer room.

"We spent an extra two hours to reboot our system and recover applications to the point where the backup and day-end process could begin.

"There was a lesson taught that night, all right..."

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