Excerpts from The Dilbert Newsletter, issue #12

Induhviduals Calling Tech Support
...another true tale from tech support:

Tech Support: "What does the screen say now."
Induhvidual: "It says, 'Hit ENTER when ready'."
Tech Support: "Well?"
Induhvidual: "How do I know when it's ready?

 
True Tales of Induhviduals

My friend called his car insurance company to tell them to change his address from Texas to Vermont. The woman who took the call asked where Vermont was. As he tried to explain, she interrupted and said, "Look, I'm not stupid or anything, but what state is it in?"
_____

A co-worker was playing with an astronomy program called Distant Suns when an Induhvidual walked by, noticed his monitor and inquired what he was doing. He replied that he was connected to the Hubbell telescope and was manipulating its view from his keyboard over the Internet. He even let this person take a try at moving our NASA's multi-million dollar telescope himself, just by clicking the mouse and the arrow keys! The person could not pry himself away, thinking he was working with the Hubbell and could not wait to tell his wife what he had done at work.
_____

Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?"
     "Just use copier machine paper," she told him.
     With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
     Hey, interns work free.
_____

I was working the help desk. One day one of the computer operators called me and asked if anything "bad" would happen if she dropped coins into the openings of her PC. I asked her if this was something she was thinking of doing. She said, "never mind" and hung up. So I got out my trusty tool kit and paid her a visit. I opened her CPU case and sure enough—there was 40 cents.
_____

The Dilbert Zone:   http://www.dilbert.com

Bruce Hutchinson's Story

I used to work in a storefront computer store back in the early '80s that was next to a major department store. As a result, we had a lot of kids wandering around, playing on the machines—"just looking". But some of them were bent on mischief, and we lost a couple of systems to a "format c:" (and a quick exit!), before we learned to remove or rename the formatting program.
     However, the kids still tried, so I created a hidden batch fileformat.bat and filled it with ctrl-G characters, interspersed with ANSI messages blinking:

     After a dozen or so "alarms", the word got around and we had no further problems!

Bruce Hutchinson, bhutch@cris.com
originally posted in alt.folklore.computers

Miscellaneous Quotations:

"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots. They do exactly what you tell them at amazing speed...even if you order them to kill you, so if you do happen to change your mind, it's very difficult to stop them obeying the original order, but not impossible!"
           — The Doctor (Dr. Who)

One of my 5 years old son's kindergarten classmates came over for a visit. When we took the tarp off the sandbox and he saw the buildings in it he said "oh, Sim City, what level are you at?"
           — Kelly Bert Manning (bo774@FreeNet.Carleton.CA)

Would you rather fix the stuff that you broke while you were trying to fix the stuff that never got fixed, or just start on the stuff you haven't already tried to fix to build up your confidence?