True Tech Tales

Computer tech stories.

Hello again, everyone!
     Sunday Funnies is growing a little.  I am getting a steady
flow of material from you folks and from other sources, which
makes it possible to do this every week.  And, we're showing up
in relay form on a few other mail systems around the world, which
brings the audience to a few hundred or so.  Not too bad!  We may
even show up on a couple of Web sites in the near future.  I'll
let you know more about that.
     But this leads me to a small challenge, too.  I had been
planning on using some book material for future funnies - quite
possible for a little letter-style fun sheet, but we will have to
approach it with a little more care and get official permission
from the copyright owners to blast it around to so many people. 
I do try not to get sued by publishing companies with really big
legal departments!
     Thanks to all of you who sent me material for this and
future funnies, including: Helen Yee, Peter Adler, Howard Lesniak
and Bob Martens.  Oh, yes!  I didn't get to the topic yet, did I. 
All of us getting this share one thing - besides the fact that we
are all on the Funnies list.  We are all using computers.  About
time we did a little computer humor, isn't it?  I was going to
make a crack about having compiled some computer humor, but I'm
over budget on puns for this month...
     Have a great week!


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XRAY VISION DEPARTMENT...
---------------------

From the sealed envelope of a software upgrade:

     BY OPENING THIS PACKAGE, YOU AGREE TO ALL THE TERMS OF
     THE ENCLOSED SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT.   IF YOU DO NOT
     AGREE WITH THESE TERMS, RETURN THE UNOPENED PACKAGE TO
     THE PLACE WHERE YOU OBTAINED IT FOR A FULL REFUND.


         But the license agreement is _INSIDE_ the envelope!


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OLDER THAN YOU THOUGHT DEPARTMENT...
---------------------------------

     Computers deal only in numbers.  It doesn't matter to the
computer what you are typing, there is always a number behind it
to the machine.  So the letter 'A' is a 65, or more accurately
01000001.  Obviously, there has to be some way to relate those
numbers to letters.  ASCII (American Standard Code for
Information Interchange) is the standard code that lets you read
this and send other things around the world.  And also to see
what you are typing.  But it seems that ASCII may have another,
much older, meaning...

-----

From: lee@sq.com (Liam Quin) SoftQuad Inc.

I was looking at my 1837 copy of Johnson's Dictionary, when I
came across the following entry:

        ASCII  n s. [from the Greek]  Those people who,
        at certain times of the year, have no shadow at
        noon; such are the inhabitants of the torrid
        zone.


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WEIRD ERROR MESSAGE DEPARTMENT...
------------------------------

The personal computer ISKRA-1030 (made in USSR, supposed to be XT
clone) can generate an error message:

          "WRITE PROTECT ERROR READING DEVICE CON:"

     Which would seem to only be possible if someone had write-
protected the screen!


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TRUE TECH TALES DEPARTMENT...
--------------------------

     You've heard of 'True Stories of the Highway Patrol'?  Well,
here are True Stories of Technical Support...


   - "My hard disk won't boot." 

          The technical support person suggested that the user
          remove the floppy from drive A:.  They did.  In fact,
          they removed the whole floppy drive from the machine,
          with the floppy disk still inside.


   - "My dog goes nuts when I run Windows. No problem with any
     DOS programs." 

          The user had a cracked flyback transformer inside her
          monitor. When the multisync monitor switched scan rates
          upon entering Windows, the dog heard the high frequency
          sound made by the broken part.


   - "A virus ate my hard disk, but I have a tape backup. Can you
     help me restore the system."

          Sure, except that the tape 18 months old and that the
          user had never run a backup, saying, "I thought you
          just shoved in the tape and it sucked up the data."


   - "How do I get on the national data information super
     highway?" 

          The technical support person asks if he has accounts on
          any bbs's. He has Netcom, Compuserve, and others. The
          tech tells him he's already on the highway.  "Is that
          all there is?," he says.


   - "What's the fastest way to move 500 Megabytes of data daily
     from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles?" 

          FedEx.


   - "My hard disk isn't working."

          "What kind of hard disk do you have?" the tech asked.

       "Well... It's black with a little red light..."


   - Most common support call. "I lost my CMOS setup. How many
     heads, cylinders, and sectors does a _______ drive have?"


   - "I move the mouse in any direction and the cursor only moves
     in inch or so on the screen and stops." 

          Take the foam shipping ring out from around the mouse
          ball.


   - "My systems on fire. What do I do?" 

          Ummmmm. Turn it off? "(Click)"


   - "My floppy drive won't read disks." 

          It turns out that the customer had been using spray
          glue around the machine, and managed to coat the drives
          and all flat surfaces.


   - "My printer stopped working." 

          Turn it upside down and shake out the staples and paper
          clips. Works every time.


   - Question LEAST likely to be answered correctly by support:
     "What is the current version of your
     software/hardware/firmware?"


   - Email from a friend: "CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?"


   - One support tech having a conversation with another.  These
     are not always friendly talks.  Tech support at a certain
     controller manufacturer, responding to a particular question
     about their product, "I can't answer that, please call your
     dealer." 

          "I am the dealer." 

       "Then call your distributor" 

          "He said for me to call you" 

       "Then have the customer call us"

          "AAAAAGH!" (click)


   - Some monitor manufacturers suggest using alcohol to clean
     the screen. What they forget to mention that the monitor 
     should be off at the time.  Of course, the explosion does
     usually result in the sale of a new monitor.


   - "The Arrow Key isn't working."

          Which arrow key? There are 16 arrows on the keyboard.


   - "Why is something broken every time you're here?"


   - Telephone support person: "Okay, now all you have to do is
     to take the distribution diskette out of its little paper
     jacket and insert it into the disk drive with the slot
     facing the rear. Got that?"

       "Okay".

          "Now close the door."

       "What?"

          "Close the door."

       "How will that help?"

          (somewhat exasperated): "Just do it, please?"

       "Okay, but I don't understand why!"

     The support person then hears the sound of the user's phone
     being dropped on the desk, followed by footsteps and the
     sound of an office door being slammed shut...

     [ He meant the door on the disk drive, of course! ]


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12-STEP EMAIL ADDICTION DEPARTMENT...
----------------------------------


You know you're an E-mail Junkie when...

  1. You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop to
     check your e-mail on the way back to bed.

  2. You get a tattoo that reads "This body best viewed with
     Netscape Navigator version 1.1 or higher."

  3. You name your children Eudora, Mozilla and Dotcom.

  4. You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling,
     like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

  5. You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your
     lap... and your child in the overhead compartment.

  6. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two,
     just for the free Internet access.

  7. You laugh at people with 9600-baud modems.

  8. You start using smileys in your snail mail.   :-)

  9. Your hard drive crashes.  You haven't logged in for two
     hours.  You start to twitch.  You pick up the phone and
     manually dial your ISP's access number.  You try to hum to
     communicate with the modem.
          ...And you succeed.

 10. You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using
     a word processor.com.

 11. You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.

 12. You start introducing yourself as "John Doe at AOL dot com."

 13. All of your friends have an @ in their names.

 14. Your cat has its own home page.

 15. You can't call your mother...she doesn't have a modem.

 16. You check your mail. It says "no new messages."  So you
     check it again.

 17. Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.

 18. You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you
     landscape. 

 19. You tell the cab driver you live at:
     "http://1000.edison.garden/house/brick.html"

 20. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.


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ATTACK OF THE DOS PEOPLE DEPARTMENT...
-----------------------------------

          Don't you wish when life is bad
          And things just don't compute
          That all we really had to do
          Was stop and hit reboot?

          Things would all turn out OK
          Life could be so sweet
          If we had those special keys
          [CTRL] and [ALT][DELETE]

          Your boss is mad your bills not paid
          Your wife, well she's just mute.
          Just stop and hit those wonderful keys
          That make it all reboot.

          You'd like to have another job
          You fear living in the street?
          You solve it all and start anew
          [CTRL] and [ALT][DELETE]

                              -- Author Unknown

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