AIX jumpstart: day 5

[sawyl]

Having finished the course proper yesterday, we spent today running through some additional notes on how to manage user accounts and how to create system dumps. I noticed and lamented the lack of a crash tool, but otherwise, everything was pretty much as expected — that is to say, retro and slightly weird.

Over lunch, the instructor gossiped about some of the other courses he'd taught, including one where one of the attendees hadn't bothered to check any of the pre-reqs and had turned up expecting to become a sysadmin, despite never having even seen a unix box prior to the start of the training. Which reminded me of Stross' note perfect clueless course delegates in The Atrocity Archive:

He leans closer, conspiratorially: "This is all beyond me, you know? Dunno why I'm on this junket, our training budget is just way over the top. Go to use the course credits or we lose them next year. Irene's off studying Eunuch device drivers, whatever they are, and I got posted here. Luck of the draw. But it doesn't mean anything to me, if you know what I mean. You look like one of those intellectual types, though. You probably know what's going on. You can tell me..."

"Eh?" I try to hid behind my coffeee cup and manage to burn my fingers. While I'm cursing, Fred somehow ends up standing behind my left shoulder.

"See, Torsun in HR told me he was sending me here, to learn to be the departmental system administrator so those people in Support can't pull the wool over our eyes. But his Vohlman-ness keeps cracking these weird jokes about devils and knives and things. Is he one of them satanists we got briefed on four years ago, do you suppose?"

I boggle as discretely as I can manage. "I'm not sure you should be in this course. The material gets technical quickly and it can be dangerous if you're not familiar with the appropriate laboratory safety precautions. Are you sure you want to stay here?"

"Sure? I'm sure! 'Course I'm sure. But I ain't too happy with the content. For one thing, where's all the stuff about license terms and support? That comes first. I mean, pacts with the devil is all very well, but I need to know who to phone for real technical support. And has CESG certified all this stuff for use on government networks?"

I sigh. "Go have a word with Dr. Vohlman," I suggest, and — a trifle rudely — turn away. I know there's always one person who's in the wrong course, but we're two days in and he still hasn't figured it out — that's got to be some kind of record, hasn't it?

Stross, C., (2004), The Atrocity Archive, Ace: New York, p.28

Needless to say, poor old Fred doesn't last long. A couple of pages later, he allows himself to get possessed by a level three nameless horror and gets beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by one of his course-mates...