Re: Percussive maintenance
I used to work with a cruddy Beowulf cluster - Pentium 4s, IIRC, and it was decided to disable the screensavers because they were using up CPU cycles we wanted to spend predicting the future.
Problem was that corporate policy required unattended machines be locked to prevent unauthorised access.
So, naturally, we just put them all in a climate-controlled room (a tiny cupboard-like space that was once the office for a presumably small manager), and locked the door to the room instead. Proper keypasses and stuff so only certain people could get in there, and it was all tracked and logged.
Audit were happy, and so we were we, at least until the air con died one autumn (leaves in the vents - this was the same year the trains failed because of the wrong kind of snow, IIRC).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
