It's a few decades back, and this IT pilot fish is on the team converting a data system at an organization in the Midwest.

"In those days, things took longer," fish says. "We worked loading software and then data, pretty much around the clock for a couple of days.

"When everything was ready, we fired up a smoke test — and on this project, smoke there was. One of us had missed a step back at the beginning, and we were going to have to start over.

"It had happened before, but this time it just broke one tech's spirit. For several hours, he was only vaguely aware of others occasionally stepping across him as he slept on the hard, cold computer room floor."

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