This pilot fish fresh out of college, Class of ’80-something, gets a job in county government as a developer. At the end of each week, the computer operators pass around a large pile of accordion-fold, tractor-feed computer paper with the names of files created that week, and each one circles the files that can be deleted.

Naturally, the file names can be quite similar, and one time fish the newbie circles the wrong one. Which goes unnoticed until someone discovers that the voter registration database has been deleted. Panic ensues, but there’s a tape backup, and the restoration is soon done and verified, so no harm done.

Fish notes, in his defense: “The recovery process had never been tested until I forced the issue.”

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