These stories are fun. Long ago, for those who remember that far back, I was doing field support for Datapoint and a big customer with a Diablo drive had a problem that their system didn't work. (Diablo cartridge drives were very high end at that time). It sounded like a disc problem. Going through an on-the-fly checklist I very explicitly asked if the red button on the drive was lit. Answer: No. (Red button was for write protect). I ended up driving 70 miles, walked in the computer room, pressed the lit-up red button, verified the system was working again, and reversed the 70 mile trip.
The official "WTF" thread
- Thread starter Smilingreen
- Start date
Back when I was selling Novell server systems with desktops/networking (Full Turnkey) to small businesses (15-20 nodes on avg.) would include a 2 hour Novell course that showed the basics, how to add/remove users, backups, etc. Well I would get calls, several calls, some I had to go their location to help them. I was nice at first then I found I needed to charge, I had a phone charge then charged more for a visit.
The calls slowed way down, found several started buying help books...lol
The calls slowed way down, found several started buying help books...lol
Water is receding from the coastline of Alaska--- tsunami is inbound!
EDIT-- and apparently the Warning is now an "Advisory", so no tsunami is known to be inbound...
EDIT-- and apparently the Warning is now an "Advisory", so no tsunami is known to be inbound...
Last edited:
My CNI did a Novel server for a canning factory with the office in the center of the production floor.
He loaded the server burned-in, tested it @ home and was ready to go. He delivered it hooked it up,
"No operating system found! Once more he loaded it up and the next day the same thing happened once more @#$!%.
3rd. time as he was hooking it up, a worker came in from the floor. As he passes through the door, he stops, wipes his
shoes and does a 360 in the door. This was quite a funny sight to see so he asked the now frustrated client,
"What in the world is he doing"? The quick answer was "All of the metal particles float around the
canning factory, and there is a big magnet that surrounds the door as well as a magnetic mat for the shoes.
Next visit the magnets were turned off and it worked.
He loaded the server burned-in, tested it @ home and was ready to go. He delivered it hooked it up,
"No operating system found! Once more he loaded it up and the next day the same thing happened once more @#$!%.
3rd. time as he was hooking it up, a worker came in from the floor. As he passes through the door, he stops, wipes his
shoes and does a 360 in the door. This was quite a funny sight to see so he asked the now frustrated client,
"What in the world is he doing"? The quick answer was "All of the metal particles float around the
canning factory, and there is a big magnet that surrounds the door as well as a magnetic mat for the shoes.
Next visit the magnets were turned off and it worked.
Too funny. Two things come to mind, heard of a cable crew wiring a room in a hospital, they left their tools in the room, I think they went to lunch, anyway, they came back to find their tools got sucked into the next room which was an MRI room. It actually pulled the tools through the sheetrock wall.
I went with my boss to a client's site to apply an update to their Novell server. We applied the update with our floppy but server would not reboot. We both went outside frantic trying to figure out what went wrong. I was younger and viruses were a bit new back then so I said what if it was a virus that wrote to the boot sector, well we took the floppy in to a desktop and sure enough the antivirus found a virus. I asked my boss where he got the update, well it was from the previous client's site he went to earlier that day, he borrowed one of their PCs to copy the update to the floppy. So we found a cleaner which removed the virus from the boot sector, tada the server booted. He contacted the previous client to tell them that PC had a virus.
I copied off SLOWWWW AOL to my own cleaned system! So glad when they went to web download
till it died about then.
When we arrived at Prescott AZ after a Summer in Billings MT (guy was a crook, was busted for
defrauding Indian Affairs on some computer maintenance contracts), the poor Computer Teacher
was looking at a stack of Novel 3.12 floppies and reading a book on how to load the system exasperated !
We offered our services (my son sat in in the Novel classes for FREE). The teacher went down and fixed
his classes schedule in a hurry! We loaded her server loaded a base Windows operating system for quick recovery.
A log-in script to load the student's info etc. and save to the server.
till it died about then.
When we arrived at Prescott AZ after a Summer in Billings MT (guy was a crook, was busted for
defrauding Indian Affairs on some computer maintenance contracts), the poor Computer Teacher
was looking at a stack of Novel 3.12 floppies and reading a book on how to load the system exasperated !
We offered our services (my son sat in in the Novel classes for FREE). The teacher went down and fixed
his classes schedule in a hurry! We loaded her server loaded a base Windows operating system for quick recovery.
A log-in script to load the student's info etc. and save to the server.