Our backup system is always a joyful pain in the arse and recently the hardware decided to act up. So, we needed to get some cleaning tapes for the tape drive and last night I asked Riddler to acquire them (he also serves as the resident office supplies acquisitor and toilet-paper replenisher).

So by the time I arrived this morning and asked if he was done with the tapes, he’d had time to go and ‘explore’ the backup system. This is always dangerous, and it’s why we try to keep him distracted with other less damaging concerns. He mentions that he’s changed some of the settings in the backup software to make the tape cleaning work better (uh oh). He’s never used the backup software nor does he understand any of the processes involved.

So, I go to setup some tapes and tell the machine to initialize them. The first three tapes show up as identical and the last tape appears as a cleaning tape (which it is not). I ask Riddler to come and explain this new mess.

He shows me what he changed and explains his decision via this piece of logic. “I’m not sure what it does, but it felt pretty good.”

So. He didn’t understand what a setting meant, but enabled it anyways because ‘it felt pretty good’ and in turn it fux0red the entire backup. Fantastic.