Thank you, Reg Readers: On Call has turned 500! A short while back, The Register published the 500th installment of On-Call, the reader-contributed column in which you share your tech support stories. Thank you all so much for making it possible. The generosity shown by El Reg readers who told us their tales so that we could share them with the world is enormously …
Without a fresh on call story Mondays can be quite dull,
Then on Friday you get the who me and if there happens to be a new BOFH as well then that is perfect end to the working week
And yes I have submitted a story once…. But I no longer do call out work anymore.
regular features of 'on call' proving that there are employees who go above and beyond the call of duty especially when it involves clueless bosses, smoking computers, and surly customs officers, and the 'who me?' tales proving that there are some employees you wish went below the call of duty and never turned up that day.
So heres a beer for all those who've contributed >>>
PS.
I love the BOFH too and not just because hes got a cattle prod aimed at my head
Both of the topics On Call and Who, me are a healthy reminder that we are not alone, fixing, repairing, installing, breaking , twiddling, upgrading , commissioning, decommissioning, swearing, laughing , pulling our hair out a little bit every day.
Been following El Reg since 2008, I've a few more years left before I hang up my mouse and keyboard so I will keep going at least until then .
Cheers El Reg.
El Reg is the place where I stop to get information regarding all things IT, so I don't have to trawl a dozen other sites.
Plus the banter in the comments is what makes things so much better.
If I can make a suggestion - if you can be notified should somebody have replied to a comment of yours...
"some users aren’t getting any smarter, some bosses never become more reasonable, and AI will rob both groups of common sense."
Common sense would have to be the rarest element in this universe and its palpable absence probably accounts for Dark Matter more effectively than promordial black holes or WIMPS.
The idea of AI robbing either of these traditionally clueless groups of any sense, let alone the peerless pearl of common sense is about as credible claiming Space Karen suffers from excessive humility.
Best wishes for the next 500 instalments. Human frailty and failings will surely supply the grist to this mill. :)
The only website other I've read for so long is the BBC News. I've been reading El Reg since... I'm not exactly sure, it has me down as signing up for comments on 6th June 2007, but I'd been reading for many years before that, back when we only had dodgy dial-up.
I just checked my profile too and I have been signed up since Dec 2007 - didn't realise it had been that long.
Amusing note, the country that I am currently living in at the moment is the same one that I was in when I signed up, but inbetween I have moved countries 5 times!
Didn't realise it had been going quite *that* long!
I'd be really interested to see some of those early tales of Reformation-era techies revisited, and to read of their struggles in an era of religious conflict when theses had to be nailed to church doors because email hadn't been invented.
Or computers, or electronics (etc)...
Use El Regs own search function for "on call", mostly the results will be what you want.
On Google, search
site:theregister.com "on call"
In both cases, obviously, click the page results to get to the oldest ones.
Or just go to the Bootnotes section and keep "doom scrolling" :-) (Or just edit the number at the end of the URI for real techy kudos!)
WARNING!!!! DOOMSCROLLING BOOTNOTES COULD LEAD TO A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF "MISSING TIME". YOU HAVE NOT BEEN ABDUCTED BY ALIENS JUST BECAUSE IT'S SUDDENLY 3AM (Although if you notice missing time and you have a sore bum, you might want to consider it as a possibility)
Oh, you meant that far back in *human" terms! Sorry, I thought you were referring to the Mac/PC holy wars!
Oh, thanks! I tried that last night, using the "On Call" link, but it wasn't having it for some reason and basically acted like a generic search, giving unrelated results mixed in with On Call stories.hence my alternative options I gather El Reg was having some forum related difficulties yesterday. I wonder if it was something more fundamental on the backbend and other functions also were failing or misbehaving?
Yeah, but to be fair, the mistakes in "Who, Me?" are usually of the type most people here could can sympathise with- in a "there but for the grace of God go I" way- as much as laugh at.
Most are the result of the type of brief, unfortunate stupidity that happens to all of us now and then, but which happened at exactly the wrong time in those cases.
The problem with on call is, that often people will share their stories in the comments section rather than having it immortalised in an on call article itself. Maybe the call to action at the end of an article should include 'don't just comment it, send it in'. Either that or you're going to have to resort to intercepting the comments before they're published for material!
Congratulations!
But-- not kvetching, but--- Shark Tank at Computer World was doing this at the turn of the century. Jan 13, 2000.
https://www.computerworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/76-0-53366600-1725566017-sharky-150-100393005-orig.png
Looks like 2,380 episodes before farewell Sep 25, 2020 "Don’t call Sharky. I’m heading out to deep waters for a spell, so this is the last Shark Tank, at least for a while."
"I fantasize On Call will become my beer money gig when or if I retire. ....need to run about 500 more On Calls." Before you count chickens, you might want to ask 'Sharky' how it went with the >2,000 Shark Tank collection. Yes, perhaps mired in corporate copyright, or a shark illness, but maybe not really worth server costs. While 'Sharky's true identity was not spilled, you know people who can know.
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