Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard
Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard
US govt confirms outage, leaves feline in a quantum state of uncertainty
A four-hour system interruption in September at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri has been attributed to a cat jumping on a technician's keyboard.
You're viewing a single thread.
Permanently Deleted
Many of your points are good, but 4 is pretty weak. I have left my personal laptop for 20 minutes to come back and find that the cat has put me into airplane mode, opened a hexadecimal calculator I didn't know I had, written a complain to Microsoft that only didn't send because of airplane mode (error popup and all), opened my family recipes, edited my family recipes to include actual text-symbol emojis among other garbage, and recorded the whole thing as a...... Gamer Clip???
She does this routinely.
I disable my work laptop keyboard before I even LOOK away from it, I don't want to find out how much damage she could push to production.
recorded the whole thing as a gamer clip
FILTHY PRANK
YOU JUST GOT, PRANKED BRO HAHA
I know! That was the most disrespectful part!!
Cats are the masters of the obscure keyboard shortcuts.
Permanently Deleted
I err on the side of "this is bullshit" but... have you met cats?
My cute little booger has gotten it down to a science that she can even get into my keyboard tray when I have my desk in standing mode. Leap up, grab on my belt, and leap into the tray so fast that I don't even realize why my hands feel fuzzy. And if I am sitting? That is easy mode.
Which leaves a little ball of fur with four paws, a nose, and a tail, finding ways to get the best possible shortcuts. And mashing even more as you gently try to pull her out and she has decided your enter key is the best thing to hold on to and rip off.
And if you work from home... or just around cats in general? You are either locking them out every time you do any work or you are just rolling with it.
Similarly, if they are using a fancy management interface (or are just sickos who are obsessed with emacs shortcuts): I have genuinely been shocked by how easy it was to update a config and reboot a server.
Like I said, I think this is a bullshit excuse. But, depending on setup, it is very possible. And is mostly solvable the same way you prevent your own fuck ups.
I taught my cats not to go on the keyboard. Took a while, but now two of them are very carefully stepping around it, and the third kinda does, but easily forgets when she gets excited.
Just consistently moving their paws off the keyboard when they try and go there, use "bad" voice, and putting them on floor if they continue. And "a while" was almost a year.
Permanently Deleted
I love cats and would like to have one but I don't because I also like to not have my things moved around or messed with at the whim of a bored animal.
I wish there was a way to have cat friends rather than pets, so they could come visit and I could let them in for a bit if it's a good time and then they go off and do their cat things elsewhere.
There are cat cafes in the states too. Usually linked to adoptions.
Permanently Deleted
There are cat cafes in the states too. Usually linked to adoptions.
You talking about government systems here. Most were built before safeguards were a thing.
My wife works for a tax authority and she still has to use a green text on black background terminal with keyboard only interaction to review people's taxes. Being one keystroke away from blowing away a database is not surprising.
I always open up files in Vim because I can work with text much better than cat or less or whatever else.
But also I use git. For everything that is important.
dG seems a lot more likely to be hit by a cat.
But then she won't exit Vim, so no harm done
Alright,
dGZZ.I need a video of a cat playing twister on a keyboard right now
This could be a case of the reporting not being 100% accurate though. I could easily see some cat-like typing going unnoticed in the wrong kind of config file mangling a config for a critical process and requiring recovering a server (or, say, a remote firewall >_>) from backup.
Permanently Deleted
Guy was changing config, got up to get coffee, cat walked across keyboard, tech didn't notice what the cat did and saved and reloaded?
Or config was in some gui and not from a bash terminal?
Good to see all the armchair experts have shown up