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Comment by rikthevik | Hacker News Reader

Yup. My girlfriend's dad was an IBM mainframe troubleshooter in the 80s. IBM would tell him to be on a plane in 45 minutes, go fix a mainframe, and then go do it again. I think he burned out after a few years, or maybe he quit when they told him to cut his hair. I know I don't have the constitution to be in permanent fire-fighting mode and short notice on-call like that.

He's been a high school teacher ever since.

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I did quite a bit of "be on the customer site tomorrow morning when the doors open and stay till it's fixed" over the years. Not as bad as 45 minutes, but still rough. I can't imagine how you do it logistically now, since in the age of 'if you aren't scared shitless the terrorists have won', doing a "single male booked a one-way ticket at last minute with no checked bags and a backpack full of weird electronics" is apparently a 100% guarantee of spending quality time with a TSA 'enhanced screening' these days on top of all the other miseries that travel now brings.

Back in the 70's I worked at Aph that developed handheld LED games for Mattel. Glen, the owner, would put the wire-wrapped prototypes in a Samsonite briefcase, and off the the airport. Security would wonder what the heck it was, so he'd open it up, fire it up, and play the game. It would draw a big crowd! (Back then nobody had seen anything like it.)

Another friend, Eric Engstrom, was developing a phone. The prototypes were made of modelling clay with wires and chips and LEDs. That really set the security guys off.

Booked by corporate on business/first class should help through TSA, I'd guess. Or if it's a real problem, they'd go private and bill the client.

Might be able to get the fixers TSA IDs, which could help get through security too.

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