It's a dark and stormy night when this IT pilot fish gets a call from an older customer with a departmental system.

"This company keeps the system in a ventilated closet, and it turns out the caller is now in the closet with the machine," says fish.

"The caller describes how he started the regular backup, and the computer suddenly stopped responding.

"I ask what the computer looks like. The caller responds that it's completely dark, and won't turn on. The caller says he's very worried he has broken something important.

"Then he volunteers that he's very deeply worried that he really caused serious damage, because all the lights in the office are now out.

"I ask him to leave the closet,and look out the window. Sure enough, there are no lights visible for blocks.

"It takes several moments of reassurance to convince him that he did not cause a major power outage. Then I suggest he make his way home carefully and only return when the storm and the outage are both over."

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