Reply With QuoteI tried that once on November 31st.....
Just overheard our support guy on the phone talking to a user: "No you tried to enter Feb 30th in a date field....".
I tried that once on November 31st.....
Lousy Smarch weather...
'This world may be another planet's hell.'{Aldous Huxley}
'After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.'{Aldous Huxley}
My three favorite months: Septober, Octember, and Nowonder.
Well, it is valid once every 400 years.Originally Posted by Merkus
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I *AM* the Chinpokomon master!
he Two-Thirty Crisis already happened in 1712, which is why there were no computers around any more until the 20th Century. The imminent threat is the Y10k Crisis.
the 12:00 flash crisis plagues tech idiots though!
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
It's incredibly funny to me, there are now people in their early 20's entering the workforce at the company I work for who look at me when I'm some kind of pervert when I say "Looks like we got a 12 o'clock flasher here!".
Then I say "Every appliance in the house - flashing 12 o'clock!" and they look at me like I'm a moron because they've never seen a vcr, microwave, clock radio, television, or anything else do that.
Every once in a while I'll reference a piece of older technology from the 60's, 70's, or 80's and get responses like "oh, is that what you guys used to play Pong on?".
It amazes me that some of these kids have never known a world without, say, USB Keyboards because they were born in the early 90's and didn't actually get a computer until Windows 98 was in full swing.
A handful of us in our 30's and 40's were in a watchguard training session and somehow the subject of twinax came up as a joke.
Everyone but the new guy was laughing until we explained some of it.
It was kind of amusing reminiscing about the pitfalls of TIMI, though. (Has anyone done a "how to shoot yourself in the foot with an AS/400?)
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
Oh, and another good one from a field tech who had to go on site because the new PoE Wireless devices were sometimes faster but not covering the whole building.
The guy got out there to do a wireless coverage survey and discovered that where one of the PoE wireless devices should have been was absolutely nothing.
Gets up there and discovered that, sure enough, no Power of Ethernet.
Then discovers that it's using Cat3.
Customer: "We just reused the same cables from the old gear! Your gear is broken, not our cables!"
Tech: "No, the new gear is PoE+. There's no Cat3 support."
Customer: "Well that's just stupid, now I have to buy another one of those expensive 6 inch cables from Best Buy and they're 35 miles away!"
Tech: "/facepalms and hands him a 1 meter Cat5" "Just use this."
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
Power *over* Ethernet.
derp.
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
well the Power of Ethernet is that its more reliable than wireless and hell of a lot faster than any wireless for use in general purpose WLAN inside a home or business.
I still am amazed there are people that have never seen a blinking 12. Because Microwaves and modern stoves do it now that they are all digital.
I remember how awesome I thought it was when we had a VCR that had something like a BIOS battery or somehow held a charge because a mere 10min power failure it did not lose the time.
Today I feel completely pampered, my cable box sets its own clock and does daylight savings time on its own. even my clock radio has a battery backup and automatic DST.... Of course I also remember having a VCR with a manual tracking knob and when we used it to tune cable in our secondary room it had its own channel arrangements 13 on the VCR was not same as 13 on the cable box in the living room.(this was an old beast of a Sears VCR its casing was made of computer case grade steel. Setting its timer was like programming a Saturn V rocket and you had to get off your ass and tweak the tracking with old tapes... but the thing was a trooper and lasting a long time.)
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Yes, I really had to send this email today:
let me guess you have had to remove whiteout from monitors too.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Ok, so the Update server pushed some updates out, which caused your browser to not send the requests out, just needed a reboot.
"Can you explain that in layman's terms?"
Puter broke.... reboot fix. Me smash hed inta rock now.
Ok... I was much more diplomatic than that... but that's what I was saying in my mind.
I've got beer to drink and You guys are wasting my time.
Customer: I never converted away from your DOS product because I liked it so much but I need your help installing it on to Windows 7
Me: It hasn't been supported since December 2007
Customer: Why not
Me: The guy who supported it died
Customer: Well shit, why didn't anyone tell me?
(Actually, we sent a customer-base-wide email that DOS support ended in January 2008, ten years after we stopped selling it, because the sole remaining support rep had passed away)
Customer: Well, I need to convert my files then
Me: Here's the instructions. I can walk you through it but have no idea what to do to reconcile the two sets of files after you complete it, such as re-assign certain tax types or verify data. Our usage group can help with those questions.
Customer: OK, I'll handle it.
A month later...
Customer: I'm still waiting for you to finish my conversions
Me: Say what?
Customer: You said you'd walk me through the conversions
Me: Yes, we did that on the phone together.
Customer: Well now you need to help me find missing data
Me: Barring speaking to our Usage support group, You said you'd handle it
Customer: Well I didn't know what to do! So I called you back
Me: You need to speak to the usage support group
Customer: But no one there knows the DOS program!
Me: Correct. But at this point, you're no longer USING the DOS program, right?
Customer: Well, no, I'm still inputting data...
Me: Well it's not going to magically continue to convert! You need to STOP entry in that old program!
Customer: That's not how it works
Later...
Customer: I still need your help finding this information
Me: Look. I'm NOT a tax guy. I cannot help you with TAX questions. I cannot help you with data entry or repair. That's the other part of the support group.
Customer: Fine, have one of them call me.
Later...
Coworker: I need the customer's original DOS file
Me: Why?
Coworker: To help him find his missing data
Me: Do you have a working copy of the DOS application?
Coworker: No
Me: *head-desk-bang-bang-bang*
Let's hope I never have to use that line - and I've been supporting many old custom systems. I've used "He quit 10 years ago" several times, but never death...
We recently had a request to review some file processing, and went to the meeting blissfully unaware of how things were.
My colleague had the tech lead:
Tech lead: So, walk us through this - what do you do when this file arrives from the supplier ?
Coworker: Well, we start by importing it into this system *opens up very old custom system from the mid-1990's, starts to import file*
Tech lead: You know that startup screen that you clicked through ?
Coworker:... Yes ?
Tech lead: The one that says "SYSTEM HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN, ONLY PERUSE THIS TO LOOK AT VERY OLD DATA".
Tech lead: We stopped development on the system in 2008, and it was shut down for good in 2010!
Coworker: Yes, we know! But we figured out that this bit still works!
Developers, in unison: ...
Turns out that they use that bit of the old system, then do ANOTHER import into the new system, and then use paper and excel sheets to fit it all together.
They didn't want to bother us, since it worked.
Sometimes, all you have to do is ask. Developers are not all firebreathing dragons - some of us actually get a very big satisfaction from taking old systems and improving them. *sigh*
"Silver bullet solutions are rare, silver bullet sales commonplace"
That customer should be lucky that you even had a dos support into the 2000s. DOS has not been on a computer since the shift to WinXP or technically It has not been on enterprise systems since WINNT.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
My sister bought a Dell desktop with Win8 just before Thanksgiving. I gave her the "layman's terms" feature breakdown.
"I like this one because it's got wireless built in" she says.
I configure it, install programs, give it back to her.
Just before Christmas she started having problems with email. So instead of forcing me to drive the 50 miles (one way, with tolls) to her house, she brings it to my mom's, and makes me drive the 22 to my mom's instead. (Which I'm kind of thankful for.)
In the big cloth shopping bag in which the desktop resides, she included the power cord, keyboard, mouse, and a USB Wireless stick.
I sent her a text message.
Me: You do realize the computer has wireless built in, right?
Her: It does?
Me: Yes, that's why you picked this model.
Her: Really?
a common issue with simple users and wireless built in laptops is their annoying ability to find and hit the wireless button.
I mean I know why its there, So that when not near wifi but on batteries you can save power but the fact is I typically see it used to cause connection issues.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Coworker: So my new laptop is wireless, right (it wasn't a question)
Me: Right
Coworker: What do I do when it runs out of juice?
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