Recently, though, I've been seeing advertisements for shows like Ice Pilots and Turbine Cowboys. And if Reality TV has taught us anything, it's that successful shows have a sort of trickle down effect. (This is basically a result of producers saying things like, "This show made money. How many ways can we repackage the basic concept before the whole trend collapses under the weight of its own silliness?")
So now I'm wondering just how long it will be before someone shows up to make my own career look like a marvel of courage and ingenuity in the face of extreme danger. "Knights of the Server Room: you've never seen I.T. like this before. Premiering this fall on The Learning Channel." The tag line would be accompanied by a picture of someone in full climbing harness, suspended by a pulley from the ceiling, running network cables on the back of a thirty-foot-tall server rack.
What would your job sound like if it were ridiculously overdramatized for a Reality TV program?
Late edit: Apparently Cracked noticed the same pattern back in January...
The Inevitable Future of TLC Reality Shows -- powered by Cracked.com
Hahahahah.. I've actually wondered about this very thing.
ReplyDeleteThey should show some poor IT guy falling through a hole in the server room floor where some fool left a tile out of place. Or maybe falling into a chiller and dying from hypothermia, or perhaps getting electrocuted while stuck in a rack. I can see a few ways to die in our server room, but you'd really have to work at it.
Halon. Don't forget the dramatic possibilities of a room filling rapidly with halon...!
ReplyDeleteDon't you all, like, dance on the precipice of keeping our servers from becoming self-aware and killing us all?
ReplyDeleteMy admin drama would entail baseball bats and mafia gangs to keep people turning in their paperwork. (Wait, no, sorry, that's my *fantasy* of my job.)
Nice. But no, I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
ReplyDeleteI'll be impressed when they produce a series titled "Industrial Refinery Coders"
ReplyDeleteI could see it now:
[A deep rumble in the background]
Mark: Greg? Did you check in any code just now?
Greg: Yeah, why?
M: I think there may have been a critical bug in the PLC code for the main process control system.
[The rumble gets louder]
G: No way, dude! My unit tests verified that it worked perfectly
[Clang, clang]
M: You sure about that, cause the reaction vessel isn't agreeing with you right now ...
G: Hang on
[Greg stares intently at his screen, his expression going from self-assured to terrified]
Oh, Shit! I wrote to the pc.lm register instead of the ...
[A fireball erupts in the background, and the panicked soundds of cameramen and crew running for their lives, all the while, the camera keeps an unsteady focus on the growing flame front]
----
Oh, my....
Okay, yeah, I would totally watch that show. ::snerk::
ReplyDeleteIt might look something like this: http://xkcd.com/705/
ReplyDelete::laughs:: Yes, yes it might.
ReplyDeleteProject Management: The Untold Story.
ReplyDelete"...so, Mister Smith. You said you'd get your chapter in last week." *Knuckle cracking.* "I hope I don't have to explain the situation in which we find ourselves..."
Okay, I LOLed.
ReplyDelete