Every ridiculous user request. Every theatrical solution. Every TTY training moment.
Filed, tagged, and ready for your amusement.
Emergency security patches required on Halloween night while costumed party-goers flood the datacenter. Server Rack #7 chose this moment to develop opinions about uptime.
The cooling system in Server Rack #7 developed strong opinions about temperature. Arctic blast one minute, gentle breeze the next. BMC firmware from 2014 was involved.
Patricia from Accounting reported the printer was 'acting weird.' Investigation revealed 4,700 queued jobs and a printer that had philosophically rejected the concept of paper.
MegaCorp's new API exposed GraphQL introspection to the internet. The Operator demonstrated why that's educational through automated query discovery and recursive mutations.
Someone ran Wireshark on the corporate network and decided to get creative with ARP spoofing. The Operator identified 192.0.2.0/24 as the target and decided educational consequences were in order.
Every afternoon at 2 PM, the network grinds to a halt. Users blame IT. The Operator deploys tcpdump and discovers someone is torrenting the entire Linux ISO collection during lunch break.
After LDAP enumeration revealed the user list, password spraying against auth.megacorp.example demonstrated why 'Summer2023!' shouldn't be your enterprise password policy.
The TTY created a custom backup script with SUID root permissions. The Operator demonstrates the proper way to find security nightmares hiding in plain sight.
The new web app at vulnerable-app.example has a search function. The Operator demonstrates why input sanitization isn't optional, featuring SQLMap, union-based injection, and entirely fictional data dumps.
A simple nmap scan against the network reveals every server's certificate metadata. Subject Alternative Names expose internal hostnames nobody knew existed.
Management wanted a complete asset inventory for megacorp.example. 847 subdomains later, we found test-api with no authentication. Classic.
The TTY discovered git push --force. Three weeks of team commits vanished. The Operator must recover the repository while teaching about why force push is called 'force' push.
A user complained their laptop was 'impossibly slow' and 'basically unusable.' Investigation revealed 847 open browser tabs across 3 browsers, including 127 YouTube videos and 43 articles from 2022 they would 'read later.'
The TTY discovered GitHub Copilot. Copilot suggested dropping the production database. The TTY pressed Tab.
A critical zero-day drops at 15:47 on Friday. Every Java application in the datacenter becomes a potential breach point, and management wants a 'quick status update.'
The TTY discovered the 'Add to Group' button. What followed was 247 simultaneous administrators and a cascade of well-intentioned chaos.
A user reported their keyboard was typing backwards. After two hours of investigation, the problem turned out to be simpler—and more embarrassing—than anyone expected.
A UPS died. The backup UPS also died. The TTY learned about cascade failures. Management learned nothing. Tuesday lived up to its reputation.
Management hired external penetration testers. The TTY panicked. The testers discovered what I already knew. Everyone learned something, except management.
A user reported that 'the cloud is full' and demanded immediate expansion. Investigation revealed 47GB of duplicate cat photos and a fundamental misunderstanding of infrastructure.
The TTY created a 'temporary' firewall rule to help a user. Three months later, it was still there. This is a story about the principle of least privilege and why 'just for now' never means what you think it means.
Management mandated that all systems must have 'AI integration' by end of quarter. No budget. No specifications. No problem. I complied creatively. They got AI integration. They did not get what they expected.