So it’s April Fools 2000. I’m working at the bank on a nice sunny Saturday afternoon and we are taking delivery of a new IBM S80 Computer. This thing was expensive clocking at nearly 1/2 a million dollars.

It was also huge and heavy. Two refrigerator sized cabinets. The total weight was almost twice Audi A4 I had at the time. So the truck gets there, we get it unloaded and with a great deal of work, get it up to the computer room. Bring it up, configure it’s disks and get it ready to have Oracle installed.

So later that evening after we are done, we are sitting in the bosses office, and his buddy, the IBM reseller calls and asked out it went. To which he replies that it was to heavy and the lift gate on the truck broke. He’s like, “Yeah man, it’s sitting on it’s side on Euclid Ave.” The guy was freaking. He put him on speaker phone. He had him going for about 15 min.

Then he pipped up and said … gotcha, April Fools! We all got a good laugh. I think the reseller was ready to kill my boss though.

Funny, we were only suppose to have the computer for 3 years, we had it for 7, 2 beyond it’s service life. It is the only AIX system I’ve ever worked on.