power cut
we experienced a power cut at work recently. The server room is on our floor and the air cooling system in the server room wasnt linked to the same backup power supply as the servers are. this led a team of IT monkeys running up 5 flights of stairs (they used to be up on our floor but moved for whatever reason) to open the doors and windows and then commandeering every fan in the building. while we got to go to the pub.
(suboftheday, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 23:45, 4 replies)

I'm kind of an IT bod
with very little skill or any kind of quals. manly because the folk around me know i like future tech and scifi and look a bit like someone who might be a techhead. I have actually worked in 'Information technology' rather than 'i know about computers' and i still think IT is a stupid name for what most IT depts do. Anyway!..

i have dealt with enough utter bastards who's only worth to society (and they know it) is their ability to know the insides of a computer. I have also worked with supportive, witty, sociable folk who LOVE to pass on their skills and enthusiasm for tech to those who struggle with it.

I have dealt with tutors who are meant to be teaching 17 year olds (a generationwho have grown up with the intermanet and digital technology) and see computers as somethign that gets in the way of 'proper' teaching. I have also worked alongside some of the brightest, most enthusiastic tutors who understand that technoloy is ONE of the many tools required in the classroom.

Some suck ass, some are awesome. Often the best tech support are the most emotionally stunted, often its the exact opposite. All i would say is this:

The kids who invested their time to find out more about these new machines called computers and see what they could do with them made our world absolutely fucking awesome. A toast to the hackers, the crackers, the cyberpunks and the geeks! Thank you for freedom of information, gaming, virtual worlds, MP3s and space travel. Thank you for weather modeling, nanotech, CGI and MUTHA FUCKING ROBOTS!

That does not mean you ya grumpy fucker. Get out of the office once in a while and do something amazing with your skills. Checking other folks emails for porn does not count.
(DreddPirateBob has watched every scifi film ever on, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 23:05, 3 replies)

Listen to the IT person, please
So before I create follow-up posts with different stories from my last job (where I worked tech support), I'll share a little something that just happened right now that makes me wonder why a person will question everything that a professional in the field will say.

A person I know has just had a monitor go bad. Everyone's been there. It's a new TFT monitor, he tells me the symptoms (monitor turns on, whines, then turns off). I tell him it's shot, get a new one. He mentions it later the next day (today), other people start telling him to repair it.

Now as an aside, I must tell everyone here that you should never, EVER, EVER work on the internals of a monitor (regardless of type) or power supply. To do so can result in death. It is incredibly easy to electrocute yourself while working with these electronic devices, even if turned off and unplugged from the wall (no joke). I work in IT and I would *never* try to fix one of these.

Now, I stepped in and informed the guy that if he wanted to fix his monitor, he should have good health insurance and life insurance. Barring that, he should either toss the monitor or have a certified repair technician look at it.

Apologies for the lack of un-funny, there might be some of that going around.

PS: If anyone has a clip of The Screen Savers where Kevin discharged a monitor in front of the audience, please shoot me a link. Trying to find it so I can show these people what kind of dangers there are.
(Magus Zeal reloading since, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 22:54, 8 replies)

Autocomplete and user assist history


...are best disabled if you're finishing up your teacher training, are on placement in a primary school, and have a laptop filled with neatly-categorized and extremely deviant porn.

For if your friendly techie starts typing something in the 'run' box, and it autocompletes to a directory devoted to people raping dogs, you may find yourself kicked in the nuts, kicked off your course, and wondering what to try for your next career.

(nb: I was the techie, not the student teacher)
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 22:34, 2 replies)

I work in a small, independant computer shop,
and I always get a cold, numb feeling when someone returns to our shop with a PC that they've just bought and utter the words "It's not working, my friend, who's an IT expert, has set it up for me and I want a new one."

Now, I'm not in IT support, and I'm a long way from being an IT expert, although I'll quite happily roll up my sleeves and wade in to try to solve a problem for someone, but some of the lash ups I've seen come in through the door have been horrendous, from illegal copies of XP being installed on new PCs..."I didn't want Vista, everyone says it's shit", to badly installed Linux distros, which, strangely enough, don't have the drivers installed for most of the hardware on the computer.

When the inevitable response from us arrives, normally a format and reload, or a legal copy of Windows getting put on, the customer will throw their toys out of the pram in front of everybody, shouting that "My mate is an IT expert, he works for *insert name of any financial institution here*", well, it doesn't do anybody's view of IT support any good does it?

Although, if the truth was being told, their mate's closest brush with IT was installing a load of crapware on any machine that came their way. And people wonder why tech support has got such a bad name, this must be repeated in stores across the country every day, in full view of Joe Public, who likely never hear, or see the other side of the story...the support bods who are on call to help their clients 24/7, and who generally do a damn good job of it.

Sorry for lack of teh funneh, but this rant's been festering for a while, and I'm glad I've got it off my chest. Keep fighting the good fight!
length, about 3 1/2 years
( loonybean giving as good as he gets since, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 22:24, 6 replies)

Got an error message? Here's how to find out what it means.
After rockers74's post below, I figured that a little piece of advice might help everyone. Well, everyone who doesn't already know it, that is.

Something apparently not very well known at all is the ability to perform a phrase search in Google. It's bloody useful when finding out what error messages mean.

Here's how: put the words inside quotation marks. That's all. "the rolling stones", for example, will bring up different results than the rolling stones. The former will cause Google to consider every word, in the exact order you typed them. The latter, on the other hand, will bring up anything which matches the main search terms, regardless of how they appear in the referenced pages.

You don't need to type the entire error message; an excerpt from it will often serve, as long as it's unique enough. Only practice will help you determine the best excerpt to choose for a given error message.

This will help you determine if the error is due to something which has gone wrong with the computer, and thus needs some assistance from the unshaven, unwashed, social rejects you call an IT department, or if it's something you can easily rectify yourself.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 22:03, 5 replies)

Does It Run On Pixie Dust
I'm an Electronics Techie in the RAF. I was visiting the Help Desk of a certain base located deep within the wilds of Suffolk and was lucky enough to eavesdrop on this particular gem.

Caller: "There's something wrong with my computer."
Operator: "What seems to be the matter with it?"
Caller: "Well, I can't log on."
Operator: "What's happening? Is it telling you that your password's wrong?"
Caller: "Nothing's happening, that's why I called you."
Operator: "Okay, when you try to log on, what do you see on the screen?"
Caller: "Nothing."
Operator: "Nothing?"
Caller: "That's what I said, isn't it? It's all just black."
Operator: "Have you tried to reboot it?"
Caller: "I've pressed the power loads of times, it's all just staying black. Nothing even happens when I type my password in. Will this take long, I have emails to check you know?"
Operator: "Are there any lights on the front of your computer?"
Caller: "Lights? What sort of lights?"
Operator: "Green lights? Little flashing green lights?"
Caller: "No, nothing like that."
Operator: "Okay, could you just look around the back of your computer. Above the power lead should be a switch, could you check that's set to the I position rather than the O position?"
Caller: (sounds of fumbling for 30 seconds) "I don't know."
Operator: "Well, is the switch set to I or O?"
Caller: "How am I supposed to tell? It's pitch black in here."
Operator: "Could you not just turn the lights on and have a look?"
Caller: "How the hell do you expect me to do that in the middle of a power cut? Now get someone down here to fix my computer, this instant."
(Chocolate Hostage, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 21:04, 11 replies)

RTFM
I'm not even in IT but I am pretty sure there is one dictum above all other that would cure most of the world's tech support needs and that is
RTFM
READ THE FUCKING MANUAL
It might help you know.....
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 20:56, Reply)

Sorry, I honestly am
But I'm one of the special people you seem to have encountered. I have read many of the replies with the mounting feeling of straying into a phrase book for a language that belongs to a land I do not wish to visit.

When I call IT I'd like to think that I'm not going to be treated like a special child that's escaped from the attic.

A computermebob is a tool in the same way a car is. I know how to drive, and I drive well, but when the noisy bit under that cover at the front goes wrong I take it to a man who didn't do well at school and pay him vast amounts of money to make it better. He probably has a message board (or graffiti in a bus shelter) where he discusses how silly I was to need a new HT lead (do they still have them?)

So when I call IT and have one of those prickly conversations where I can tell they are being patronising. I pull them up. Sorry, but just be nice. I am nice when I call. I understand that what I'm about to say has been said many many many times before, I know that I haven't invented new ways to break my "mechanical thinking machine" but tuff, if you had spent more time talking to women instead of sitting in your rooms doing code things then you may have more social graces to deal with the mundane problems of the majority of IT users.

Just wondering what a Doctors version of this QOTW would be... "and then he said, 'but my hearts stopped' and I realised he hadn't plugged in the life support, oh how we laughed"

Bastards.

EDIT; I work for a large multinational that has desktop updates every other week or so. I accept the update and sit back. I got into work a month ago accepted the update, it took 45 mins and I then got on with my day, only to find the mail saying it had been released by error had just encrypted my drives and should have only gone to portable users. They were working on getting it back in the mean time erm... call IT support. See why I'm jaded and confused?
(rockers74 killed a man in Reno just to watch him die., Sun 27 Sep 2009, 20:15, 26 replies)

Our IT department always looks worried when I call them with a problem....
'Cos they know I'll have checked all the obvious stuff first, and tried a reboot. I call with a problem, they know they're going to have something "Interesting" to sort out
(Sir Tainley Barking Ezekiel 23:20, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 19:36, Reply)

I worked in IT support for a bank
and the people I worked with were all well-adjusted professionals with ordinary interests, ordinary mannerisms, ordinary hopes and dreams and ordinary social skills. They all cared about doing their jobs diligently and to the best of their abilities, and genuinely wanted to help any non-IT people who called us with a problem with their computer.

Sorry if this disappoints you.
(Seance Trumpet has got no beef with a man enjoying a croissant, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 18:25, 4 replies)

I was an IT tech monkey at school
A few years back, I was in sixth form. My sixth form tutor happened to be the head of IT, and as he was a very laidback person (read: almost horizontal), we could have gotten away with murder under his supervision. Me and two of my mates, S and J, were interested in computers, and as a result, ended up being Mr G, the form tutor, being his minions after about two weeks or so.

As a result of being Mr G's minions, we got admin access to the school computer network, as well as pretty much any piece of technological equipment we so desired, and as this was a "technology college" I went to, we had a fair bit of kit in the place.

We used to do the bog-standard stuff of watching over kids in lessons, and at times, we used to monitor them via Remote Desktop, and if we caught them doing stuff like trying to get on porn, used to bring up Notepad and type in "Oi, stop that." or a message along those lines. Occasionally this would result in shrieks from the younger kids as they thought their computer was possessed.

Then there was the other stuff. Because we were all on one server, with a back-up server in case the first one died, we could have LAN games. There was one time during a free period when me and S were having a game of Tiberian Sun (raise your hands if you remember this fondly), when Mr G turns up, and asks what we're doing. We 'fess up, and instead of the bollocking we were assuming to get, he instead tells us to stop the game, and go and set up a new one and wait two minutes. We do so, and two minutes later, he's joined us for a game. We also had Unreal Tournament running on the server on the quiet side, and the people we knew and could trust with this secret would join us for a lunchtime frag session.

Remember how I said that we could borrow technological kit if we needed to, earlier? At one point, after school, we took over two rooms, borrowed two of the projectors and set up an Xbox LAN party in the rooms. This kept getting repeated every night after school up until roughly the end of lower sixth.

But the best part about all this was during upper sixth, me and S and J got paid £50 each per week to switch on the computers every morning and set up a test that the entire school was doing (it was one of those crappy test the nation type things). Essentially, this meant we all came in half an hour earlier, switched all the computers on, clicked an icon and typed in a username on each computer, and that was it all ready to go. And as this was going on for a month, it was probably the easiest £200 I've ever made from being an IT monkey.

I miss those days of easy money. :(

Length? Not long enough to satisfy me
(Ghost Atreides enjoying incontestable health benefits on, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 16:06, 1 reply)

The IT Helpdesk (or Nohelpdesk as I call them) where I work are utterly clueless about IT.
Being an IT Trainer, I get all sorts of calls put through to me that I really shouldn't have to see in the first place.

Ones that stick in my mind include: "User wants to know how to reply to an email"

...or having a conversation with one of the helpdesk monkeys about an email she'd received, which I was going to look into for her. I asked her to forward it to me, to which she replied "But I need it. If I forward it to you you'll have to send it back to me after you've printed it out"

But my favourite of all was: "Debbie has retired and she was left-handed. Can someone please replace her left-handed mouse with a right-handed one, as the new girl is right-handed"

I actually didn't mind getting that one, as I quite enjoyed phoning the user and saying "Pick the mouse up. Now put it down on the right-hand side of the computer. Ok, you're done!", and the ensuing "Is that it?! Why couldn't the woman who answered the phone do that then?"


Yes, I know you can reverse the buttons too, but I'd already ascertained that this hadn't been done.
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 15:55, 11 replies)

PCs, Printers, Laptops, the whole 27 feet.
I used to (I say "used to", but a lot of it still sticks with me) work as a engineer in a small shop. 10 people working there, little shop on the High Street kind of place.

In 3 1/2 years, you get a collection of stories.

Firstly the job entaled building the new PCs as well as fixing the ones that "never worked in the first place" (Read, I fucked it up and don't want to admit to it. More on that later...).
Being the industrious little lad, I'd have them finish from parts, and set up on the side in a little under 2 hours (From parts, mind you, not just "slap it on the side and install Windows from the recovery disk"), for the lovely display of cheap and nasty budget cases, with more grey than you'd like to admit.
As people may know, a lot of OEM power supplies come with power switches at the back, as a master on/off. Which when packing the machines away, I'd habitually turn off.
By the end of my time there, I'd lost count of the number of people I'd spoken to along the following lines...

Nalr: Ok, what seems to be the problem?
User: That PC you sold me doesn't work!
Nalr: Ok, well, in what way doesn't it work?
User: It doesn't turn on!
Nalr: Have you checked the power cables, sockets, etc?
User: Yes, of course (normally adding in "I'm not an idiot!" at that point)
Nalr: Ok, well where the power cable goes into the back of the PC, there'll be a little switch with 1 and 0 on it. Which of those are currently set?
User: Er.. 0
Nalr: Flick it.
*Click*
User: Oh.

Amazing how many people fuck up the small stuff. I've had people saying they'd worked in IT before, and being caught out with that. Nothing malicious or owt, just a force of habit.
(Nalr I'll get the coals, you bring the burgers., Sun 27 Sep 2009, 15:31, 1 reply)

Is it too much to ask?
All too often companies view their IT Support departments as IT Training departments, completely oblivious to the blindingly obvious fact that being able to fix something and being able to teach are two completely different skills.

Consequently, a ridiculous number of desktop support calls will actually be "I don't know how to do something. Do it for me, please." One might hope for "Show me how to do it, please," but that implies a desire on the part of the user to learn something, and anyone who works in IT knows how unlikely that is.

I'm here to fix your computer when it breaks, not to teach you how to use the fucking thing in the first place. I don't expect you to know the intricacies of the Registry, NTFS permissions, or subnet masks, but I do expect you to be able to navigate your way around the user interface. That computer sitting on your desk is the tool for your job. Know how to use it. You wouldn't expect a plumber not to know how to use a wrench. You wouldn't expect a carpenter not to know how to use a hammer and nails. You wouldn't go to your car's mechanic and ask him to teach you how to operate the accelerator, would you? (I hope not.) Yet, for some reason, you're content to sit there completely ignorant of the basics of using that computer, and expect me to hand-hold you through every fucking thing. No, the user interface isn't especially intuitive unless you've taken the time to learn its foibles, but it's been pretty much unchanged since Windows 95 came out, long enough for you to have been exposed to it in one form or another.

Okay, maybe it's your manager's fault. I learned most of my job by myself, by having the spark to realise there was something I didn't know, work out what it was, and then go off and learn about it. But I didn't learn everything that way. I had specific training for some aspects of my job. I guess your manager should provide training to you, too. But that would cost money, and there's a perfectly good IT Support department sitting around doing fuck-all and with no greater desire than to sit there patiently teaching you what the phrase "right-click" means.

Finance Directors! Want to cut your IT Support costs? Then invest in some basic fucking IT training. Teach your staff how to use those computers you thoughtfully dumped on their desks without so much as a by your leave. Hell, tell them about that mystical, magical F1 key, and how many programs contain within them the very instructions needed for using those programs. Then they wouldn't waste fucking hours on end to the Helpdesk asking clueless questions about simple shit they should know by now. That would free up your Support staff to deal with actual faults, and thus you'd need fewer of them.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 15:13, Reply)

Once at work
we couldn't find the milk, and our scones and jam were corrupted. We had to call 'igh tea support.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 13:50, 5 replies)

iv never worked in IT or needed IT support but i do remember IT GCSE
the task was something to do with making some kind of catalogue so we had to go onto google to find images. my poor friend emily. probably led one of the most sheltered existences only for the school net nanny to let her completely down. all she did was type 'dishwasher' into the image search and somehow an interesting picture of a man with a horse came up. a very interesting picture.

i also remember the joy of waiting until the person next to you had got up for whatever reason and pressing CNTRL + n as many times as possible before they got back to their seat. do people do that in offices now?
(ladyintheradiator, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 13:11, 1 reply)

My first PC was from Time - a wonderful high-street retailer who I believe went bust some time ago.
Normally, when you turned on or reset the machine, the screen would flicker a bit before starting the boot-up. For some reason, it froze up one day and I had to reset it - all was going normally until I noticed it was taking a bit longer than usual to boot up. In fact, it had got stuck at the flickering stage and refused point-blank to boot, so we had to get it fixed.

After it was shipped off, a letter from the company stated it'd be returned within 14 days. 53 days later, it came back, miraculously fixed - but with the hard-drive wiped. This was apparently company policy, regardless of whether or not the problem had anything to do with the hard-drive. And as they sold creaky, defective wares for a king's ransom, an awful lot of users regularly lost their data. Even better, if you didn't know about this daft policy beforehand, the customer service folk didn't always remember to warn you about it. I wonder why they went out of buiness?
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 12:35, 3 replies)

I would've read the manual
I once had to deal with a poor old dear at work who didn't know how to work her new DVD player. She must've been at least 70 and obviously had a lot of trouble understanding technology. She even brought in a notebook in which to write down whatever instructions I gave her.

Until I saw her write down "Press POWER button", I always thought that all those stories about people forgetting to turn on their computers were simply urban legends. I also wondered why she didn't have any grandkids or something to help her with that kind of thing.
(ElGranto, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 11:31, Reply)

Floppy Backups
CheesyChimp reminded me of this sad tale:-
My ex used to run a small computer company back in the days of 5.25" floppies in the Midlands. They supplied hardware, software and support to small businesses. One particular company on the South Coast was having trouble with backups. Their main user had been trained in the procedure and had been talked through backup and restore over the phone with no problem, only for to call the next day saying "The system still is not right". So a site visit was arranged later that day. Upon arrival the disks were requested. "They're on the filing cabinet". There they were - held in place with a large magnet.
(SBCkittencure, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 11:17, Reply)

An ex-colleague of mine
was once severly reprimanded for taking liberties on a service report.
We'd had this particular PC in 4 or 5 times for the same fault, a fault we were completely unable to reproduce. In the end we just wiped it, fresh install, away it goes - and it came back, same alleged fault.

Back it went with the service report freshly written out - "Fault lies between chair and keyboard". They didn't take kindly to that.
(pillockmcfly only signed up to do one QOTW, and then forgot., Sun 27 Sep 2009, 10:33, Reply)

I work in IT
One of the other techs here at the uni was putting a RAM upgrade in the machine. It didn't fit so he cut an extra notch in it with a hacksaw.

There are about 12 techys at this institution and two years later we still tease him about it.
( Peej, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 9:54, 3 replies)

how not to boot a PC
When we were switching from NT to XP a few years ago, we had a couple of test machines set up with XP.

I saw my boss - who has worked in IT for 25 years - standing next to them looking puzzled, so I asked him if there was a problem.
He told me he was trying to switch on one of the machines, but it wouldn't boot up.

I checked the mains sockets. All working.
I checked the cables at the back. All present and correct.
I checked that the monitor was connected and on. All fine.

I asked him to try again to switch it on.

At this point, I realised what the problem was.

He was pushing the floppy drive eject button.
( finnbar has officially retired, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 9:41, Reply)

Windows XP Racist Edition
We had a teacher at work who had an error come up on her computer when she tried to print anything.

When she phoned us to report it she said the message was very racist and rude to her and she demanded we fix it so it didn't display this message again.

We told her that we can fix the problem but there is no way there is a racist error message within Windows XP and besides, if there was we couldn't change it because that would mean re-writing the Operating System.

She was still adamant that we have to do something about it in the end saying we need to contact the manufacturers and get them to do it A.S.A.P! In the end we just said ok to her and sorted out the issue for her.

The actual error message simply said "unable to print - no printer detected" (or something similar). We still scratch our heads over how this could be in any way taken as racist...
(metalhead41, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 9:33, 2 replies)

It's always IT supports fault part 1
For those of you that live in the South-East London/Kent areas, you may remember this news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8159620.stm back in July.

Apparently it was my teams fault that no one could work because there was no power - go figure...
(metalhead41, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 9:24, Reply)

"Paging IT. Windows issue"
When I started my last job, I was given the office that had, officially, 'The Best View in the Company'. Across the street lived a nubile young lady who had a phobia for closing her blinds, and a propensity for walking around naked several times a day. We would duly be treated to an impromptu show in the morning when she got up, then during the day when (we think) she came back from the gym, and if we'd been really good boys and were working late she might even entertain a young man of an evening.
Needless to say she was a legend in the building.

As if the floor show wasn't enough I worked it to my advantage, too: I made a deal with IT that if I paged them, they needed to show up pronto. Sometimes it was for the show; sometimes it was to fix my laptop. I like to think I was even-handed.

The unintended, very Pavlovian, effect, though, was that after a while every time I paged IT I'd get a string of visitors to my office.
(Thomas_The_Spankengine, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 4:04, Reply)

..........lucky...........
First post this, after a long time lurking.

I work in education, and when I started my present job I had to get up to speed with interactive technology. One of the first things I did was look at some software our department had. I took it home.

I loaded the disk into my laptop, and what should come up but the menu for a hardcore pornographic film. Do remember that this had been taked from the dept. store room and was meant for use in the classroom. I was very relieved I hadn't just banged it on in class.

Obviously, I watched the film... or about 30 seconds of it anyway. I stopped so soon, not because I had erupted everywhere, but because there was a well endowed man dressed as a clown, including the make up, doing unspeakable things to a woman dressed as a vampire or gothic vixen or something.

Anyway, I nervously took it to the IT people the next day, and one of them seemed very relieved to see the film. After I explained that it wasn't mine etc, I left and began to relax a little. Imagine my surprise the next day, when a copied DVD turned up in my pigeon hole. And several of my colleague's pigeon holes, all copied using their computers in the fetid hellhole they spend their days in.

Length - probably a bit too long, and not snappy enough, but give me time... am also concussed after falling into a hole last nite, then down some stairs... doesn't help.
(youwhat? braaaaap, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 1:23, 3 replies)

I was in IT...
I is still in IT.

Otherwise, it would just be T.
(Jimmy Savlon, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 1:18, 1 reply)

The Last Straw
I worked in senior support for a major PC company for nearly eight years, but by January 2007, after much thought, I'd finally decided to give it all up. I sent in my application for a university place, for an Engineering (non-IT) degree, though I didn't want to resign till I actually had the place and it was closer to September. In March I was sent to Colorado for a training course, and took a side trip to see the people doing the same job as me for the Americas region.

The office was like a cross between a Dilbert cartoon and a scene from The Shining. 10,000 square feet of cubicles, almost all of them empty. My American colleagues were crammed in to one corner of this space, and they were not happy. Some of them were much older than me and clearly had more experience, yet probably made 2/3 of the pay I did and got 10 days leave a year. They were pissed off at how they kept getting more work while their numbers dwindled, though they didn't have much time to talk to me. It was just sad to see what was happening to them, and if that was a glimpse of my future, well, I didn't want it.

Their manager drove me back in to town so I could get the Greyhound back to Denver later. Once he got over his amazement that I was happy taking a bus - "guy must be from Europe or sumfing" - we had dinner and beers at a local bar. He was clearly glad to have someone to talk to besides his people, and underlined what I had long suspected: IT Support people were considered expendable, and not really part of the company. I had even been to Bangalore to train some people to do my job, while US jobs were heading to Costa Rica.

By the time the Greyhound pulled back in to Denver, I knew I'd be getting out, and by the end of May, after an interview, I knew I had the university place. I just started 3rd year, and despite the financial insecurity and the possibility I'll be unemployed afterwards, I'm still confident I made the right decision.
( bnt what, me worry?, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 0:33, 3 replies)

Command.com
Hehe, just remembered this one.

Back in the day, you could edit the error messages in command.com using the hex mode in XTree Gold. Being a nice person, I decided to make some judicious changes to my boss's error messages, the one I remember was changing 'Bad Command or File Name' to 'Learn to type fatboy'.

Unfortunately, he was pretty competent with a keyboard, doubly unfortunate was that he'd made a new DOS boot disk from this machine the very afternoon after I'd made my edits. For those who don't know, making a boot floppy copies the command.com from the system.

Not too bad but he'd also used the boot disk to format hard drives in new systems and systems for repair. Copying my modified command.com to a number of customer's systems.

Ooops.

Width? 5.25"
(ceeej, Sun 27 Sep 2009, 0:21, Reply)