Wonder why?

Flashback to the mid-1980s, when this finance company's installation of more than 80 refrigerator-size tape drives has gone nuts, according to a pilot fish there.

"Inexplicable errors occurred each week, always sometime between mid-morning and 1 p.m., affecting multiple drives and abnormally terminating massive, long-running jobs," says fish. "Both company and equipment vendor spent huge sums of money trying to fix the problem, with no success."

For three months, vendor's account engineer comes up with no answers. Then one day, the engineer notices a bright spot of light playing across the front of the tape drives.

The light beam is coming from the building across the street, one floor above him. And as the engineer watches, he understands what's happening.

He just doesn't know why. That comes after a little more investigation.

"Turns out a computer operator fired four months before was now working across the street," fish says. "She periodically went into the restroom, opened a window and used a small mirror to reflect a narrow beam of sunlight across the tape drives, which totally messed up the drives' fiber optics.

"She didn't work there much longer."

Work with the Shark. Send me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. I'll send you a stylish Shark shirt if I use it.

Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

Now you can post your own stories of IT ridiculousness at Shark Bait. Join today and vent your IT frustrations to people who've been there, done that.