24 More Hours to Vote for the “Best of the Worst!”

First published on CloudBlogs on Feb 27, 2015

Over the last month you’ve been submitting some pretty amazing/terrible/hilarious stories to the “ Tales from Tech Support ” contest, and this week the 10 finalists have been collecting votes to be claimed the “Best of the Worst,” (and win a Surface Pro 3 for their troubles).

As expected, there have been some really great stories to tell – as my team and I read these, there was no shortage of laughter, disbelief, and pity. But now your opportunity to vote is nearly over – the polls close at midnight EST tonight . If you haven’t voted already, take a minute to review the 10 finalists below, then go vote for your favorite ! [Using awards show voice] Here… are the nominees:

• Unplug That! A story about a server room with an unreliable power supply – and an imperfect solution for future outages.  Read it here .

• High-touch User. When passwords get lost in translation the further they move up the corporate ladder, a story about what “equals” success.  Read it here .

• Tight Security. An account of the struggle between the most technologically sophisticated security and mankind’s earliest writing instruments.  Read it here .

• Password File. A tragic tale of the public (and ostensibly well-intentioned) public sharing of usernames and passwords – and the chaos that followed.  Read it here .

• Failing Backups. A tragicomedy (yes, that’s a word ) about the titanic struggle between floppy disks, magnetism, and ignorance.  Read it here .

• Delete the CEO. A story about spearfishing, deleted emails, forgetting about deleting e-mails, promising that no e-mails were deleted, and the merits of data recovery.  Read it here .

• Dubious Back-up. A story of the least sophisticated corporate data backup we’ve ever seen.  Read here .

• The Wrong Time. In the tradition of all great speculative fiction , a story that goes far beyond circumventing IT – this is a tale of one accountant’s attempt to eliminate time itself .  Read it here .

• Grandma WoW. An unexpectedly heartwarming story about how one computer support professional made sure a guild had its healer for the big raid.  Read it here .  And then call your grandma (or someone equally adorable).

• Lockdown Bypass. In a world with highly secure lockout policies, one IT Pro struggles to control an impossible threat:  Analog watches.  Read it here .

I think you’ll really enjoy reading the nominees on that list (which, to be clear, is in random order).  There were a couple other great stories that would have made that list, but they included the names of companies or people, and, well, we don’t want to embarrass anyone, right? If you have a favorite, or want to highlight the one that made you laugh the hardest, let me know !