{"id":814379,"date":"2026-10-26T12:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/814379\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T12:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:06:09","slug":"lets-just-shove-a-bigger-fan-in-there-and-see-what-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/814379\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Let’s just shove a bigger fan in there and see what happens’"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n systems\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Who me? <\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n Techies tiptoed around server to keep it working as company sank\n <\/p>\n

IT people are asked to cram a lot into a working week, which is why The Register tries to ease readers into Monday with a new instalment of \u201cWho, Me?\u201d \u2013 our reader-contributed column that shares your stories of office mistakes and escapes.<\/p>\n

This week, meet a reader we\u2019ll Regomize as “Robert,” who told us he worked for an outfit that scours newspapers and websites to find stories mentioning their clients.<\/p>\n

“We found key words in articles that customers were paying us to monitor for. We would then cut out the articles and send them to the customer,” Robert explained.<\/p>\n

Sadly, business wasn’t great. By the time Robert left it was almost bankrupt, and he gathers a fire sale ensued.<\/p>\n

That strained financial situation meant the company was very keen on keeping legacy hardware alive.<\/p>\n

“We had this one 2U pizza box server, and one of the three internal fans wore out,” Robert explained. The server was so old no replacement was available.<\/p>\n

“So, we took the lid off and put a bigger fan on top of the component that needed the airflow,” Robert confessed. The server couldn’t tell the difference and kept working.<\/p>\n

Six months later, another internal fan broke.<\/p>\n

“The logical thing to do was to put another ill-fitted fan in\/on the server to ensure that the airflow was good,” Robert said. Again, the server didn\u2019t have a problem with that.<\/p>\n

The server, which was an integral part of the company\u2019s daily operations, was now operating with one original fan, no lid, and two non-standard fans precariously balanced over its exposed components.<\/p>\n

This rig mostly worked.<\/p>\n

“We had to be careful when working near the server, because too much shaking would cause the fans to fall over,” Robert confessed.<\/p>\n

When the third internal fan died, management finally decided to buy a new box.<\/p>\n

Have you rigged risky hardware and gotten away with it? If so, share your story by clicking here<\/a> to send email to Who, Me? We’re pretty sure The Register’s hardware will hold together long enough for us to tell your tale on some future Monday. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"systems Who me? Techies tiptoed around server to keep it working as company sank IT people are asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-814379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}