I spent a year and a half building a hugely complex multimillion dollar security system that controlled ingress/egress, a fiber network covering a few miles of laid fiber, digital ptz cameras, elevators, a emergency 2-way telecom system and a infant wandering system (lojack for babies basically). It all terminated in a NOC I helped build from scratch so the security department could control and manage everything from one room. This room had walls of LCD's, a few server racks stacked with servers, security panels and lots and lots of storage to store logs and videos.
It was extremly complex and required a number of components all coming together and being tied together in a way that someone who was non-techincal (IE: the guards) could easily use and understand everything.
This key piece of software that allowed everything to come together as needed was written specifically for this install by a company that specialized in this sort of thing. I spent months with a engineer from this company on-site getting everything worked out and overcoming all the bugs and then it was time to put the hardware dongle usb key into the server this was managed from in order to unlock and authenticate all the features (we were running on a grace period of 90 days up until that point).
And.....
Shit, I could not find that damn dongle anywhere.
I spent days ripping through EVERYTHING, I had co-workers, my manager, security teams all on the hunt for this damn little tiny USB dongle.
After a good week of intense search for this dongle that no one could recall ever actually seeing, we contact the company and initially they flat out refused to send us a new one.
They wanted us to pony up another $50,000 to get a new one.
So the search continued some more and we all became convinced that through some error we never actually received it from the company.
We had our lawyers involved and they're working with the other companies lawyers and in the end they relented and sent us a new dongle for free and we all had to sign statements saying we didn't steal it, if we found it we would not use it in another install or try and sell it and to destroy it if it was found as it was considered invalid now.
Whew, crisis solved after much pressure put on me specifically from my management on top of working my ass off for the past year and a half to get this system up and running in a horrible work environment in a terrible city that was full of crime. I was driving on average two hours each way every day for this damn job.
Fast forward to 7 or 8 years later, I'm long gone from this job (yea!) and living in a different state now.
I've moved a few times since and have been living in the house I own now.
I decide to go through a small closet I have in my bonus room/office one weekend and recycle, donate, toss whatever I no loner want.
I find my old computer bag that I used while working that old jobs from years ago and decide to see whats in it.
I find all sorts of old screws, connectors, misc crap and HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! the mother fucking USB dongle is there caught under some fabric in the damn bag.
WTF!?!??!??!?
So I tried calling my buddy who I worked with at that job all those ages ago, he got me the number to our old boss, I get in touch with my old boss and he tells me the company is gone. Was bought out and basically just run into the ground and closed up shop years ago now. He said to just destroy it and so I did.
Oops!
