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Top Ten Reasons Why The Most Important Machine Is Unlabeled

Today is office move day across much of .NET Framework land.. Good folks across building 41 and 42 are doing a little shuffling around…   As part of the move, we all had to be out of the office today.  Like any good manager, I wanted to keep my team productive even during this “downtime”..   Many of engineers on the team wanted to work on “their” machines, so we reserved a conference room and had them plug in their machines there then go home or to Starbucks or the local library and work from there remotely.   So we ended up with a conference room full of nearly identical headless dev machines, luckily we had the foresight to label them.. all but one of them ;-)

 

All was going well until machine “Enso01” needed to be rebooted.  This is our test pass machine… no one could run or update tests without this machine… so it was arguably the most important machine.     Luckily someone on the team happened to be around, so we had them reboot it and we give them this description of where to find the machine:

 “Enso01 is a black Dell on a chair near the front of the room. It had a keyboard and funky old mouse attached to it.  It is not labeled…“

Which of course forced someone on our team to ask the obvious question that we were all wondering about:

“I'm still curious why we wouldn't put a label on the most important machine in the room.”

Luckily the answer was very clear.. enjoy.. I hope you get to use this someday!

 

Top Ten Reasons Why The Most Important Machine Is Unlabeled

10.   Where’s the fun in that?

9.       Label could change performance characteristics

8.       Security through obscurity

7.       Labels are used with GOTO, and GOTO is harmful, therefore labels are harmful!

6.       It is fun to brute force test which machine is which

 

5.       Famous machines don’t need IDs

4.       I thought you were going to label it!

3.       Through process of elimination, if all other machines are labeled, then the remaining one is Enso.

2.       Attempting parody movie, “Dude, Where’s My Server?”

 

And the number one reason why the most important machine is unlabeled…

1.       No budget for labels

Published 11 February 09 08:57 by BradA
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Comments

# Top Ten Reasons Why The Most Important Machine Is Unlabeled - Click & Solve said on February 12, 2009 12:00 AM:

PingBack from http://www.clickandsolve.com/?p=6683

# What's New said on February 12, 2009 6:20 AM:

Today is office move day across much of .NET Framework land.. Good folks across building 41 and 42 are

# Pop Catalin said on February 12, 2009 7:20 AM:

From the series of managed office moving guidelines ...

:)) funny stuff.

# Joan Miro said on February 12, 2009 7:21 AM:

Re: #3 - Maybe it's the programmer in me, but I never could see by BOTH Hot and Cold taps had to be labelled...

:-)

# Shivam said on February 12, 2009 7:51 AM:

Duh, I will keep it in mind and I hope to be able to use some of thoses reasons soon...

Regards

Shivam

# Ted Howard said on February 12, 2009 11:31 AM:

Along similar lines, my favorite way to identify a machine with known domain name and unknown physical location is to remote desktop in and eject the DVD tray.  I think Todd Abel may have taught me that trick.

# Andy said on February 12, 2009 2:20 PM:

@Joan Miro -- for the same reason that "a good programmer looks both ways before crossing a one-way street".  :]

# cmroanirgo said on February 12, 2009 8:16 PM:

Should we be asking a critically more important question: Why would a computer at microsoft ever need rebooting? ;-)

# Rick said on February 12, 2009 10:06 PM:

@Ted Howard - I've been using that same trick and my department has never understood the fun in it :)

# Muhammad Adnan said on February 13, 2009 12:50 AM:

I like all the reasons but specially the # 1.. at the time of recession every1 should think of budget saving schemes.. go man go :) you saved Microsoft from a big economical disaster :)

# Joe said on February 13, 2009 4:59 AM:

Do you guys ever get Block Wars on campus??

You know... Building 41 battle it out with Building 42 to reserve the office space. Meanwhile Building 43 sneaks in and occupies half of Build 42 while its occupants are raining program dumps on Build 41.

No... just wondered. Carry on.

# Brad said on February 13, 2009 8:34 AM:

Oh so true, so true...

But i would have to slide in

Label affects aesthetic posterity, somewhere on the list.

# Bob Armour said on February 13, 2009 9:10 AM:

Also, don't forget that variant of Murphy's law - labels that are important will fall off and price labels will put up a fight before always leave a stcky residue on the expensive gift that you just bought.

# yelinna said on February 13, 2009 10:17 AM:

Other reason:

Labels (readable text) avoid encryptation!

# Stefan Didak said on February 14, 2009 10:11 AM:

This might be the start of a "how many programmers do you need to label a machine". On the other hand, not labeling backups is MUCH more fun! :-)

# Miral said on February 17, 2009 11:53 PM:

You forgot the most important reason: if you labelled it, then the invading ninjas would be able to find and abduct/destroy the machine with ease.  By not labelling it, you are making things more ninja-proof!

Although possibly reason #8 covers that.

# Colin said on February 19, 2009 5:44 AM:

lol... But the question is... Does anyone REALLY know why it wasn't labelled? :)

# Sadeer said on March 2, 2009 4:32 PM:

4.       I thought you were going to label it!

1.       No budget for labels

These just killed me.

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