> VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places. In my business, I am frequently called by small sites and startups having VAX problems. So when a friend of mine in an Extremely Large Financial Institution (ELFI) called me one day to ask for help, I was intrigued because this outfit is a really major VAX user--they have several large herds of VAXen--and plenty of sharp VAXherds to take care of them.

> (large skip)

> So now the whole data center was dead, sort of. The fire alarm system had it's own battery backup and was still alive. The lead acid storage batteries of the immortal power system had been discharging at a furious rate keeping all those big blue boxes running and there was a significant amount of sulfuric acid vapor. Nothing actually caught fire but the smoke detectors were convinced it had.

> The fire alarm klaxon went off and the siren warning of imminent halon gas release was screaming. We started to panic but the data center manager shouted over the din, ``Don't worry, the halon system failed its acceptance test last week. It's disabled and nothing will happen.''

> He was half right, the primary halon system indeed failed to discharge. But the secondary halon system observed that the primary had conked and instantly did its duty, which was to deal with Dire Disasters. It had twice the capacity and six times the discharge rate.

> (and it continues)

Always figured there was some minor defect or something that caused the battery to start emitting hydrogen.