Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng

Thursday's trauma was brought to us by the letter "L" and the number "420".
I started getting calls from the "account care" team at about noon. On our internal customer profiles website, the contacts for (account name starting with "L", but deleted from this post to comply with non-disclosure agreement) are missing.
I went to the page and looked and yes, the contacts were missing.
The "account care" team emailed again to let me know that the contacts for all the accounts starting with "L" were missing.
I checked this, too.
Then I got my third email, mostly in all caps, about the information being missing from all accounts, not just "L" accounts.
Since the web site itself belongs to someone else -- someone at lunch -- I decided to go to lunch, too.
As I passed a co-worker's office I heard, "Dude! You have to help me!"
Slowly curling into a fetal position while frantically typing commands was (co-worker's name deleted to comply with non-disclosure agreement). "I think I broke the customer profiles website."
A machine error is different than a technician error. Machines get repaired. Technicians get fired.
I told him everything would be alright and I went back to work on the problem. By this time, the website had shut itself down completely.
While I restored basic operations, the co-worker told me he had unleashed a spider on the site to copy (not remove) the data.
After some questions on my part, it was revealed that the spider had not been tested on a non-production server. Also, the copy of the program used was pirated. It need not be stated (though I will clarify just in case) that the tech in question would fail a drug test.
After a quick (less than an hour, start to finish) restore from back up, the site was back to normal.
Since I still hadn't had lunch, I left. When I got back, the same co-worker flagged me out of the hall to show me what the goal had been.
He pulled up a command prompt and typed. He asked me for a server name so I gave him the mail server name for (company name deleted to comply with non-disclosure agreement). He completed the command, hit 'enter', and (after a brief pause) the contact information from the profiles website was displayed. I guess it is for people who don't have the website up already. Even though it is a link away from the homepage everyone is assigned through group policy.
Ok.
I smiled and nodded and walked back to my desk. As I started to sit down I heard a technician place his call on hold and announce, "Mail just died for (company name deleted to comply with non-disclosure agreement) and they have no idea what is going on. Is anyone working on it?"
I spat Coke Zero and dashed back out to let the guy know. Then I laughed a lot.
Plans for today include unsubscribing to emails and skipping out as soon as possible.