codehappy quotes

We sold a new Pentium to a new customer. After only a day or two it was back in
the shop. She was complaining about many errors she was getting in Windows: a
number of general protection faults, disk read/write errors, etc. We brought the
system to our shop, ran some tests...everything checked out fine, so we sent it
back.
Again a call came in from her, complaining about the same errors. We ran some
tests, everything was fine, and we sent the machine back. By the fourth call, we
decided there must be something in her office that was causing the problems, so
we asked her about microwave ovens, etc. Nothing like that was anywhere near her
computer, according to her, so we sent a technician over to take a look. After
five minutes on site the system worked fine. The technician removed the two
dozen or so refrigerator magnets that she had been decorating her computer with.

I delivered and setup a PC in an office, gave some small training, and agreed to
follow up a week later. When I returned, the monitor was off the top of the PC
and a typewriter in its place. The secretary felt the PC made a better
typewriter stand than her desk.

A customer called complaining that his keyboard no longer worked. The customer
had cleaned his keyboard by submerging it for a day in warm soapy water in his
bathtub.

Customer: "Is it ok to clean my MAC in the tub as long as the power is off?"

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

Customer: "My computer doesn't work."
Tech Support: "Ok, what happens?"
Customer: "When I turn it on, nothing happens."
Tech Support: "Hmmm. Can you think of anything you might have done to cause it
to stop functioning?"
Customer: "Well, I just cleaned it. There was dirt on the fan, and I wiped it
off."
Tech Support: "Oh, that shouldn't have hurt anything."
Customer: "Then I opened up the computer and wiped the insides as well. I took
it apart and washed everything with Windex."

Once I was sitting at my desk, and a clerical worker came back and told me that
her terminal was putting all sorts of garbage on the screen. I walked back to
her desk/office and looked around -- there was a rather large wet spot on the
floor, and an empty glass on the desk. I lifted the keyboard off the desk by the
cord, and water literally poured out of it. She said, "Oh! Could that be the
problem?"

I once made the mistake of telling a customer to take his machine to a gas
station and have them blow the dust out. I didn't figure on the gas station
handing him a 150psi air nozzle that belches rusty water and oil.

One technician had forgotten to turn the printer off. What happened? He lost his
screwdriver, and it fell so awkwardly that it shorted the electrolytics in the
power supply. The resulting ccurrent was so high, that it literally "welded" the
screwdriver to the connections, so that he afterwards could carry the power
supply out of the house just by lifting his screwdriver

Last year a guy called and said his cdrom won't work after he installed it. I
asked him to bring it in. while testing out the other drives, I noticed it was
really slick.
Tech Support: "Did you get it wet?"
Customer: "Wet? No way, that's the WD40 I used to get the drive to slide in
easier."

Once we had a customer bring his system into our service center. He seemed to
know a little about computers but thought he was an expert, so as soon as I
started to ask a few basic questions about his hard drive problems, he said,
“Look, I know that it's the hard drive thats stick because when I do this it
works again.” As he spoke, he lifted the back of the tower off the bench by
about four inches and dropped it.
My jaw dropped by about the same amount, and my supervisor, who was nearby at
the time, just stared at the system. I recovered enough to say, "Well, we'll
take care of it now, so why don't I just take that over here...."
Apparently he had been using this method to get his system going for the past
three months, but lately it was not working as well as it used to. Surprise,
surprise!

Someone called my teacher (who is also a consultant) for a network contract. The
guy was complaining of endless timeout errors and slow performance, even though
his network was small (25-30 computers) and had decent equipment. So my teacher
showed up, and, to his great surprise, found that every cable (10baseT - cat5)
had various numbers of knots tied in each end. Not small, loose knots but real
tight ones. Some of the cables had over 20 knots in them. The boss explained
that the guy who wired the network (who was unreachable) made knots in the
cables so he could identify them. The first PC had the cable with one knot at
each end; the second PC's cable had two knots at each end, and so on. Not bad
for the first PCs, but the cable for the 20th PC, with a total of forty knots in
it, wasn't in very good shape.
Hadn't this guy ever heard of a marker? Or stickers?

I got a call from a woman whose system was displaying hardware errors. She said
that this was related to a call they made a month ago. I researched the call she
mentioned. Both calls were regarding massive hardware failure, but the error
messages were different, and there was nothing else in common. I tried to call
her back, but there was no answer. Three hours later, she called me. There were
different errors now, and some of the supercomputers weren't working at all. I
promised to contact a hardware specialist immediately.
Tech Support: "By the way, why do you think it is related to the other call?"
Customer: "Oh, in both cases, the air conditioning had failed, and the
computer room was over 150 degrees."
That's the only time I ever let out a bloodcurdling scream in public. And she
still refused to turn off the computers!

Customer: "Hello, yes, my system is crushed!"
Tech Support: "Crushed?"
Customer: "Yes, that is what I said, crushed."
Tech Support: "Oh, your system has crashed..."
Customer: "Yes, I cannot do anything, my mouse will not work, and I can't see
anything on the screen. I need it fixed now!"
Tech Support: "Ok, I need some history on this problem. What was the last
thing you did before the system crashed?"
Customer: "Well, after I stood on the computer to hang a picture, my machine
was crushed."
Tech Support: "Oh, so your system has been crushed..."

While working as the UNIX support for a major computer distribution company, I
had more fun with the people in the warehouse then should be allowed. My pager
went off with the message, "Program is down." I called to the warehouse lead,
and the following ensued:
Him: "Bay F is not working; come over and fix it."
Me: "Fine, let's go take a look."
As we entered the warehouse I saw the problem before we even get to the bay
itself. The bay was gone. I don't mean missing, I mean destroyed. The printers
were in pieces all over the floor, the table was spread out about twelve feet,
and the Wyse terminal was hanging from one of the blades of a fork lift.
I looked at the guy incredulously, but he was perfectly straight-faced. He
wanted me to fix a bay they ran over with a construction vehicle.

Customer: "Where can I get a BIOS upgrade for by 286 computer?"
Tech Support: "The unit should have been shipped with the latest bios."
Customer: "Well, I upgraded the processor myself, and my computer doesn't seem
to work."
Tech Support: "What did you upgrade the processor to?"
Customer: "I upgraded it to a 486DX-50."
Tech Support: "Sir...the 286 chip is soldered on the motherboard!"
Customer: "I know, I took out my handy soldering iron and took it out and put
the 486 on myself."
Tech Support: "Sir, the 486 is bigger than the 286."
Customer: "I know, I had to use quite a bit of solder to solder the extra pins
together."

A couple of years ago I was working at a local regional railroad and was given
the job of upgrading all the 486s to newer machines. One of my last upgrades
required me to upgrade a machine the was infrequently used at the car shop. Now
the car shop is where they repair all rail cars that are not locomotives. This
naturally results in a lot of airborne particles (soot, metal shavings, dust,
etc) and the contaminants not only covered the work area but also creeped into
the office. They combatted this by cleaning the office frequently and mopping
the floor nightly. Unfortunately the machine I was to upgrade sat on the floor.
For five years. Specifically they had been mopping around the computer for 1825
days.
When I arrived to get the machine I discovered I couldn't budge it. A closer
examination revealed five years of rust underneath it and five years of floor
polish sealing it to the floor. A quick call to my boss confirmed that we could
consider the machine "field destroyed" and take whatever steps needed to remove
it.
Which was just as well, as it took two of us and half a dozen whacks of a
sledgehammer to get it free. Out of morbid curiosity, we opened up the case
(wasting another 30 minutes) to discover the entire bottom of the case had
rusted away, but you couldn't tell because the inch deep accumulation of who
knows what covered every square inch of the inside. No one had ever seen fit to
blow out the dust bunnies...or dust lions, as they were in this case.

An instructor in the BASIC programming language was teaching his class how to
write a simple program and execute it. When each student had all their program
steps keyed in, he told the class to type R-U-N and enter. A lady in the back of
the class said that it didn't work. It turned out, when the instructor had said
to type R-U-N, she had typed, "are you in."

An optimist believes this to be the best of all possible worlds.
A pessimist fears this to be true.

Customer: "How do you spell 'Internet America'? Is there a space between
'inter' and 'net'?"
Tech Support: "No space between 'inter' and 'net'. It's spelled normally."
Customer: "Ok. A-M-E-R-I-C-K?"
Tech Support: "That's A-M-E-R-I-C-A."
Customer: "I-C-K???"
Tech Support: "'A' as in apple"
Customer: "There's no 'K' in apple!"

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

Tech Support: "Are you reading an error message to me?"
Customer: "No, I'm reading an error message to you."

Tech Support: "Do you have 3 1/2 inch diskettes?"
Customer: "No, I only have 3 of them."

In 1845 Boston had an ordinance banning bathing unless you had a doctor's prescription.

The wingspan of a Boeing 747 jet is longer than the Wright Brothers' first flight.

It is a popular misconception that the chameleon changes its color to match that of its background. The change is actually determined by such environmental factors as light and temperature, as well as by emotions such as fright and those associated with victory or defeat in battle with another chameleon.

Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.

A country that put men on the moon can't keep cold cereal from getting soggy.

That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.

-- Nietzsche

Never wear anything that panics the cat.