Friday, July 08, 2005

Legacy Stuff:

I helped the company I work at to swap two labs. Each of two projects had a large room full of STUFF and each would actually be better off if they had the other’s room. Mostly, moving is a mind-numbing process but in this case there was a fun part: each lab contained some equipment whose ownership was uncertain. We had to figure out whether there was a better course than leaving each bit of orphaned stuff untouched, taking up precious space. Ingenuity, and also a large garbage can, were required! This sort of thing happens when a company has a long history. The best part: there was a computer server running in one of those labs. Was anyone really using it? Could we shut it down? It took days to find someone able to tell us that it had probably hummed along unused for a year.

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