My favorite story from being a university computer lab assistant was the girl who complained that the Mac wouldn’t give her back her 3.5″ floppy disk. After much fiddling with the highly technical removal tool (bent paperclip), I finally extracted the disk from the machine. She had removed the floppy from the plastic casing!
Youngster!
My father spoke of the user experience lab at IBM in Rochester, MN when they were testing the manuals for the IBM System/32. Developed in Rochester in the early 70s. The s/32 had a line printer, a 6×40 char display, and 8″ diskette drive.
The instruction was to remove the diskette from the envelope and insert it in the drive slot.
The subject picked up the diskette, missed that the paper envelope had fallen off and proceeded to unstick the plastic diskette wrapper and insert the naked disk into the drive.
They had another time where they discovered they needed to add explicit instructions to remove the previous diskette before inserting the next diskette. Had to dig 4 diskettes out of the drive…
Kinda related but not comedic (technology) , was at my VAMC for a yearly chest cat scan , and had a chance to attempt to sort out my failed attempts to change over to the new myheathevet login . Been using it for about 8 years with no problems . I got to see the head mofo in charge of my healthevet , the “coordinator” . Basically he said I needed a smart phone to complete the process . He answered in the affirmative that I was not the only vet he had tried to help , and that in his region/area 9000 vets had lost access to their accounts due to the new login we discussed . He also said the .gov website is a third party or some such. So I am not alone in having problems . This sucks , I really use the site for accessing med records, messaging care providers, appts etc. Why can’t they just leave shtt alone . Calling the V.A. helpline is just long waits and handoffs from one person to another until you just get hung up on and lost two hours of your life . Bullshit !!
“V.A. helpline” is an oxymoron.
“But the Sysadmin knew peace…”
For about 15 seconds, and then the phone rang again…
Some funny stuff right there. I had to save that on a word doc. LOL
(Apologies for the length)
Dr. Seuss does network troubleshooting:
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash.
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on the mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM,
Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!
And the vessel with the pestle has the pellet that is poison…
But the chalice with the palace holds the brew that is true!
“You chose wisely”
All- Good ones, especially yours WN!!! The one I remember is ‘Home’ is where you ‘hang’ the cursor… sigh…
Truth.
My favorite story from being a university computer lab assistant was the girl who complained that the Mac wouldn’t give her back her 3.5″ floppy disk. After much fiddling with the highly technical removal tool (bent paperclip), I finally extracted the disk from the machine. She had removed the floppy from the plastic casing!
Youngster!
My father spoke of the user experience lab at IBM in Rochester, MN when they were testing the manuals for the IBM System/32. Developed in Rochester in the early 70s. The s/32 had a line printer, a 6×40 char display, and 8″ diskette drive.
The instruction was to remove the diskette from the envelope and insert it in the drive slot.
The subject picked up the diskette, missed that the paper envelope had fallen off and proceeded to unstick the plastic diskette wrapper and insert the naked disk into the drive.
They had another time where they discovered they needed to add explicit instructions to remove the previous diskette before inserting the next diskette. Had to dig 4 diskettes out of the drive…
Kinda related but not comedic (technology) , was at my VAMC for a yearly chest cat scan , and had a chance to attempt to sort out my failed attempts to change over to the new myheathevet login . Been using it for about 8 years with no problems . I got to see the head mofo in charge of my healthevet , the “coordinator” . Basically he said I needed a smart phone to complete the process . He answered in the affirmative that I was not the only vet he had tried to help , and that in his region/area 9000 vets had lost access to their accounts due to the new login we discussed . He also said the .gov website is a third party or some such. So I am not alone in having problems . This sucks , I really use the site for accessing med records, messaging care providers, appts etc. Why can’t they just leave shtt alone . Calling the V.A. helpline is just long waits and handoffs from one person to another until you just get hung up on and lost two hours of your life . Bullshit !!
“V.A. helpline” is an oxymoron.
“But the Sysadmin knew peace…”
For about 15 seconds, and then the phone rang again…
Some funny stuff right there. I had to save that on a word doc. LOL
(Apologies for the length)
Dr. Seuss does network troubleshooting:
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash.
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on the mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM,
Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!
And the vessel with the pestle has the pellet that is poison…
But the chalice with the palace holds the brew that is true!
“You chose wisely”
All- Good ones, especially yours WN!!! The one I remember is ‘Home’ is where you ‘hang’ the cursor… sigh…
Home == 127.0.0.1
And thx!
LOL, yep, 127.0.0.1