Tech support chap invented fake fix for non-problem and watched it spread across the office

You can fool some of the people some of the time, but The Register tries to entertain all of its readers most of the time and especially early on Monday mornings, when we present a new installment of "Who, Me?" – the reader-contributed column that shares your stories of workplace mayhem and mischief. This week, meet a reader …

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Hilarious!

This could have come from the BOFH excuse calendar.

It reminds me a bit of the time a conductor complained about the excessive echo in a particular concert hall, claiming he could not have his orchestra perform this way. He asked the sound tech what could be done, and the sound tech with a complete poker face suggested replacing the red stage curtains with another colour (in this case blue). It was exactly the same fabric, with exactly the same acoustic properties, but the conductor was totally happy with the resulting "change".

[herman]

Re: Hilarious!

The stage curtains could have ended up draped a little bit more closed, which can have a big effect on the echoing.

[Andy Taylor]

Re: Hilarious!

Any decent sound engineer will have at least one slider on the mixing desk which is not connected to anything. When an artist demands an unnecessary change to the engineer's carefully adjusted output settings, this slider can be moved up or down to "fix" the issue. :)

[Workshy researcher]

Re: Hilarious!

That reminds me of Leland Sklar's "producer" switch. Leland is a bass guitar player who has played with all the greats.

“I call it my producer’s switch,” explains Leland. “If I’m on a session and the producer asks me to get a different sound, I make sure he sees me flip this switch and then I just change my hand position a bit. There are no wires of anything that go to this switch. It's a placebo, but it’s saved me a lot of grief in the studio.”

[IJD]

Re: Hilarious!

Otherwise known as the DFA control... ;-)

[GeneralDisaster]

Re: Hilarious!

I actually did use the excuse calandar once, solar flares being a great excuse for the crappy windows installation constantly crashing, I apologised to the user that managament was in no way going to shell out for expensive anti flare cases for anyone.

[herman]

Re: Hilarious!

Some faults and crashes are actually due to cosmic rays. Bit flips happen far more often than people think.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Hilarious!

I once had to explain that to a very senior team leader in the investment bank I worked, after a parity error on RAM led to a panic. The look on her face...

[Claptrap314]

Re: Hilarious!

I would raise ***** **** that ECC memory wasn't used. We're talking a few hundred dollar *cost* verses a multi-million dollar saving...

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Hilarious!

This was years ago but I presume it was - it detected the error, after all, it just couldn't correct it.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Hilarious!

Well, it is solar flare season (solar maximum) at the moment, and one well-timed solar prominence could do more than just make one computer crash. All those SpaceX satellites make for a juicy target for a few billion tonnes of charged plasma.

[KarMann]

Re: Hilarious!

It's less hypothetical than that, even. There was the recent emergency patch of the Airbus 320 family in December (or maybe November?) to make them more resilient in the event of such a bit flip, after it was suspected that just such a thing had caused a sudden loss of altitude whilst otherwise peacefully cruising along at speed.

[ColinPa]

Re: Hilarious!

Don't forget that red placebo pills are more effective than blue ones (or is it the other way around)

[ttlanhil]

Re: Hilarious!

Red ones should act faster, Shirley?

But medical studies into placebos have also found that larger doses of placebo have a larger effect - taking more of them, or more often, or larger pills - it all adds to placebo effect

[FifeM]

Re: Hilarious!

Medical studies on placebos are difficult. You give one group the placebo under test and a control group ??? A placebo placebo? But some placebo placebos probably work better than others.

[ttlanhil]

Re: Hilarious!

For some approaches, yes, it's hard (in large part because of the placebo effects).

If you just want to test the effectiveness of 1 dose of placebo per day vs 3 doses per day? That's trivial (you can't blind such an experiment, of course, but you can still get interesting results)

[upsidedowncreature]

Re: Hilarious!

The bassist Leland Sklar famously has a "producer knob" on his instruments. When the producer asks for a slightly different sound, he'll adjust the producer knob and record another take, resulting in a happy producer. Of course the producer knob isn't connected to anything.

[Joe W]

At least a good excuse...

... making on of them paperclip chains comes natural if you are bored in the office. This gives an excuse to make one on company time :)

[Richard 12]

Re: At least a good excuse...

This will be the real reason why.

A lot of people find making paperclip chains a relaxing and enjoyable break from either endless tedium, or a long and difficult task. So an excuse to make them is often welcome.

What happened after the solstice, next time someone needed to deguass?

[Ordinary Donkey]

Re: At least a good excuse...

Well, obviously they already knew that it was time to make more paperclip chains at that point.

[Yes Me]

Re: At least a good excuse...

Why would a paperless office have paper clips, or even a stationery cupboard to keep them in?

[Return To Sender]

Paperless office?

Ha, yes, that thing we've been told we'll have any day now for the last 40 years or so :-). As somebody remarked during the early hype cycle, "a paperless office is about as likely as a paperless toilet". Yet to be proven wrong...

[RAMChYLD]

Paperless toilet?

I'd rather use a bidet than touch my ass and poo any day. God knows what germs are on that stuff...

[Herby]

Re: Paperless toilet?

Bidet vs. Paper. One must remember that the prize actually came from inside ones body. Then lookup ambergris.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Paperless office?

An old UserFriendly said something along the lines of:

"Yes, the paperless office did once exist. Back when we used clay tablets. Lots of them."

[Alumoi]

Re: Power without responsibility

Emily??? Is that you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Power without responsibility

I always found the deguassing button rather entertaining myself. A good monitor would make a sort of "boing" noise when you pressed it and the screen would go all wibbly wobbly before coming back a bit clearer. It was much more satisfying than a paperclip could ever be. So, I agree, Emily should have been told the correct solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Power without responsibility

Back in the early days of colour TV (the 1970's), the CRTs in TVs had to be setup in situ (i.e. after being delivered and installed in the customer's home). I had a p/t job in a TV shop (money to supplement what was then a student grant) - we'd plug a pattern generator into the TV and spend up to an hour adjusting the picture. The magnetic field resulting from switching a mains powered electric motor on or off near the set could upset it so customers were advised not to turn their vacuum cleaner on or off near it - else we'd need to make a service visit. Later sets had degaussing circuits, but it was a lesson that manufacturers had to learn. Sony Trinitron TVs were a dream sale for us as they never needed any such attention - no visits to set up, etc.

[Daedalus]

Re: Power without responsibility

In the late 1960s BBC-2 used to run a short film about setting up colour TV. There wasn't much BBC-2 programming, but if you had Rediffusion they would rent you a 625-line capable telly so you could watch all that artsy content (and Spike Milligna!) in the evening in black and white. Us school kids got home early enough that we would watch anything, even those trial short films.

Evoluon anybody?

Colour Telly at home? Not at 500 pounds back then. That's easily 10,000 pounds today. If you wanted to see colour, you went to hang out at the department store. For some reason it was a really popular place at around 5pm on a Saturday in football season.

[Emjay111]

Re: Power without responsibility

- Most - Sony Trinitrons were good sets, except for the KV-1810UB, where one of the GCSs failing could be the start of a very costly headache. Anyone who claims to like working on the 1810 is either a masochist or a liar!

Nice to see so many ex-TV techs in these replies though. :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Power without responsibility

Original poster here. We didn’t like working on any Trintron sets as they weren’t designed to be repaired - everything was packed in, unlike the more common UK and European brands where circuit boards were easily accessed. However, we hardly ever needed to attempt a repair (which meant we didn’t get much practice or familiarity).

The one time we had to get familiar with them was when we had to do a local modification. The sets had rotary tuners and sound was suppressed when off-station; unfortunately, a local transmitter* used a switching frequency that caused the set to mute its audio. Sony came out with a simple mod to their mute circuit (ISTR we just had to solder on a small capacitor - but reaching it was a nightmare)!

*For viewers in the city of Bath - surrounded by hills, they needed their own relay.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Power without responsibility

Upvote for Sony's Trinitrons, best picture & indestructibly reliable. Don't remember ever meeting a dead Trinitron TV. I knew of two that were still doing good service (in the UK) in the early days of lcd TV screens that only had a big turny knob for channel selection, no push buttons.

Watched an episode of Endeavour a couple of nights ago in which there was a representation of an early 60s supercomputer playing competitive chess. There in the middle of the console was a suspiciously Trinitron-shaped crt...

[IJD]

Re: Power without responsibility

That's why colour TVs used to make that <dummm...> noise when you turned them on, a nice big current pulse through the degaussing coils.

Came in useful sometimes though -- in my teens I had a small B&W TV in my bedroom, and discovered you could make the picture do all kinds of silly things by having a big ferrite ring speaker magnet in front of it. So tried the same to the colour TV downstairs (a Pye valve model in a nice wooden cabinet) -- woo, look at the fabulous swirly colours, man. Which of course didn't go away when I removed the magnet... :-(

So I sat in front of the set for maybe two hours -- turn on, <dummm...>, turn off, wait a few seconds, turn on, <dummm...>, wait a few seconds... -- and thankfully the riotous colours gradually faded, and eventually the colour returned to normal.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Power without responsibility

Those degauss coils were run throughout gh a thing called a Posistor, a positive thermal coefficient resistor that starts off very low resistance so the coils get a whack of current that quickly diminishes as the Posistor heats up, takes about half an hour to fully cool after you turn the TV off, so you wasted a couple of hours when it probably just needed to be switched off and left alone

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Power without responsibility

In the early 1970s, my young brother used a permanent magnet from a broken analogue meter I had taken apart, to make pretty colors on our color TV's CRT.

They never entirely went away.

[Donn Bly]

Re: Power without responsibility

I remember having an electromagnet specifically for degaussing TVs. Plug it in and turn it on a good 6 to 8 feet away, then slowly approach while keeping the coil constantly moving in a circular pattern until you were right up against the tube, let the TV make all sorts of pretty patterns, and then slowly back away - at which point we could stop making circles and turn it off. Kids have it so easy these days ;-)

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Power without responsibility

I remember hearing a loud degaussing doioioioing noise one night many years ago. It sounded like a CRT degaussing, but much louder. And my PC monitor was an LCD. So I ran downstairs to see if the TV had exploded. It hadn't, so I checked everywhere to make sure we weren't on fire - couldn't see anything, so went to bed. When I checked the news the next morning, the Buncefield oil storage depot had exploded, 25 miles away. My town being in a valley presumably did funny echoey things to the bang?

[Gerhard den Hollander]

Re: Power without responsibility

We had dual monitors on every desk. Nice big, fat, 21" monitors, capable of doing 1600x1200.

Then hit degauss on both montiors (more or less) at the same time ...

see the poor buggers try to sync ... eventually one would give out and the other would follow .... but this could easily take minutes

[ITS Retired]

Re: Power without responsibility

I rather liked the degauss button. When you pressed it, you knew you did something.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Power without responsibility

At one place I worked at, we had a couple of occasions I had to investigate ... wobbly screens.

One occasion, all the screens (green, or some of them, amber Wyse 60 terminals hooked up to a Unix box) would wobble - not a lot, just enough to be annoyingly noticeable. And it didn't happen all the time. I tracked it down to only doing it when the curtain fan heater in the shop below was running - i.e. a 2 or 3 kW load. I asked the electricians if any work had been done recently - they found a neutral had dropped out of the back of a socket - so what should have been a ring, was only a ring for the live, and thus creating a single turn coil carrying about half the fan heater current. This was enough to make the screens wobble.

More fun was when the offices were being extended - steel frame building, and for good measure the builders welded all the joints as well as bolting them. This time, they connected the welding earth to a convenient point and wandered around with the welding torch. So the steel frame became a large coil carrying welding current (probably 100+amps) - this took the picture almost off the edge of the tube when they struck up a good arc !

And a tale I was told by our instructor at an electronics night school ... cough decades ago. He'd been in an apprentice training scheme where one day a week for practical experience, local would be encouraged to bring electrical stuff in that needed repair - repair was free, just parts to pay for. One day, a rather high quality German TV set was brought in - and being one fo the better apprentices, he got to repair it. Simple fault, quickly fixed - then time to "fiddle". Who remembers playing with the horizontal hold controls on TVs/monitors ? Well apparently this one could shift the picture a good way off the side of the tube ... so ... he wired in a slider pot with a lump of plasticine on it's slider, and put the back on.

So, called over the instructor, said he'd fixed the fault, but got this very strange one - when he tipped the TV on it's side, the picture "slid" downwards. Tilt it the other way, picture slide downwards again - onto the tube and off the lower side.Before long it was being held up in front of the whole group, and various theories were being put forward - including interaction with the earth's magnetic field. Apparently it was half an hour before anyone thought to take the back off and they discovered the trick.

[Ordinary Donkey]

Re: Power without responsibility

No job satisfaction has ever matched my first encounter with the degauss button.

Which is ironic because otherwise it was the least satisfying job I have ever done, and I have guarded building sites.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Power without responsibility

It's ok, you can take the paperclips off your monitor now, we won't laugh at you

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Power without responsibility

(we will)

[blu3b3rry]

I worked in a building that had a thermocouple poking through the ceiling tiles of every room, so the AC system could monitor temperatures and attempt to keep things comfortable. These were in the form of a little black cylinder about 15mm long.

Naturally someone invented the rumour that they were microphones. Two years later this was still getting told to new starters, evidently some people very much believed this was true!

Working in a building full of engineers also has opportunities for mild mischief.

When we got a decent 3D printer someone made himself a fidget toy to keep his hands occupied during long meetings.

When he left, the contents of his desk were dumped outside my lab in a box. I left the fidget toy on the desk of one of the more eccentric engineers, knowing eventually he would get annoyed with himself for playing with it and toss it to one side.

Four years later it is still making its way around the engineering desks in the office....!

[Bebu sa Ware]

"some people very much believed this was true!"

Years ago a senior staff member with a wicked sense of humour, or just plain wicked, advised his colleagues that the system administrator was required to read all incoming and outgoing email.

This was just after my telling him that the volume of email was overwhelming our servers so he was clearly aware that no person could possibly read all the outgoing email let alone the deluge of incoming email.

After one or two enquires it was obvious any denials were pointless as the inquirers were certain that Mandy Rice·Davies applied.

Office gossip supplied the meat and bones as to what the contents of their email that might be of concern. Tawdry affairs and petty misdemeanors mostly.

My advice was and remains: ""Don't put anything in an email that you wouldn't write on the corridor wall. If you must, encrypt and sign it (pgp.)"

[GlenP]

CRT Monitors...

There was a Microvitec monitor where occasionally a short would develop to the metal case - nothing serious but it would disturb the picture and no amount of degaussing would help.

The proper fix would be to remove the monitor case* and ensure an adequate gap but often a bit of percussive maintenance was sufficient.

One one occasion I had a user complaining about her monitor so I said I might have a quick fix but this needed careful training and should only be carried out by an expert, then Bang - I hit both sides of the monitor which would cause the top to move up slightly. The user jumped about 2 foot into the air but her monitor was fixed!

*Which you did very carefully as there were scary voltages inside those devices.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: CRT Monitors...

Anyone else notice that the anode cap on a CRT is exactly where your thumb lands when you pick one up?

P.S. I started out working in Radio and TV servicing.

[DJV]

Re: CRT Monitors...

"Anyone else notice that the anode cap on a CRT is exactly where your thumb lands when you pick one up?"

YES!!! Another ex-TV engineer here.

Did you ever replace an old CRT and not check that the connection to the scan coils was fully home? The horizontal burn line across the brand new CRT was quite spectacular and necessitated its immediate replacement with a second brand new CRT. I did it only once - you don't make that kind of mistake twice (well, not if you want to keep your job).

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: CRT Monitors...

I've done worse, a single dot smack in the middle of a *very* nice CRT monitor for a Silicon Graphics system.

Annoyingly I'd learned by colleague's experience to always wind down the A1 before switching on a telly after replacing the CRT.

But no, I hadn't on the SGI monitor

[Contrex]

Re: CRT Monitors...

So did I, and I never got a zap in 15 years. If the tube was inside or outside the chassis, I'd pick it up by the metal corner brackets with the bolt holes. The need to avoid dropping/implosion/shock led to very specific methods,

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: CRT Monitors...

I always used a long screwdriver and a clip lead between it and chassis ground. Push the screwdriver tip under the anode cap, wait for the SNAP! and proceed.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: CRT Monitors...

Nice to see there's still a few of us around

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: CRT Monitors...

Some of the anecdotes here suggest to me that there's been a certain amount of luck involved in that outcome?

[TuckerJJ]

This only works with metal paper clips. The coloured, plastic, insulated ones in the picture would have the opposite effect.

[Pascal Monett]

In the days of CRTs, I don't think they had coloured plastic ones. I may be wrong though.

[jake]

We had the plastic ones (hard rubber, actually, like a comb) before the teletypes mostly disappeared.

I'm pretty certain I remember them back in the very early 1960s.

[Yes Me]

But surely they cost more so most employers wouldn't allow them. I always treated them as a luxury item.

[DJV]

Yeah, the coloured plastic of those types plays havoc with the RGB convergence of the CRT!

[Yes Me]

Not if you have the right proportions of red, green and blue ones.

[Robert Carnegie]

I think they do have wire inside, but stripping the insulation off may be counter-productive. Particularly if you risk them ending up -inside- the monitor.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Hilarious !

I will pay this one as the literal truth.

You can tell them anything… and they'll believe you.

What always got me was those with a more technical background were the most gullible picking up absolute nonsense and retailing it.

I soon learnt that logic and reason don't come into it and desisted from contradiction.

Sexytaries tended to be more sceptical but if it wasn't too outlandish or a moderate distraction from the workplace tedium, like paperclip chains, they went along with it.

The rituals involved in printing might be an exception but printers generally do require infernel invocations and blood sacrifice and even more so back then.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Hilarious !

It depends on how you mean 'back then'.

My recollections of the late '70s and '80s, when printers were centrally managed resources were that they 'just worked'. And if they didn't, it was usually something physical.

It was during the PC era, when printer configurations had to be maintained on individual PCs, and worse, individual applications on each PC that things went downhill.

[jake]

Re: Hilarious !

Yes, they "just worked" back then ... unless you had a manager who fancied himself a bit of a computer whizz.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Hilarious !

And don't get me started on IPPS, which was stated to make things easier while in effect making it almost impossible to diagnose anything if it doesn't work!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gullible!

It must have been close on 50 years ago now that I was in a shop - can't recall what shop. The store girls were chatting as I approached the counter. I heard one name saw which girl it applied.

It was the same lass that walked to the till to serve me.

At the end of proceedings, instead of just saying thanks. I told her I was a tiny bit psychic and told her to concentrate on her name for a moment.

Do instead of saying just thanks, I added her name.

Gullible or what? She was dumbfounded and I simply couldn't persuade her any different.

[Caver_Dave]

Re: Gullible!

I've used the assistants name when saying "thank you" a few times - once last summer in a caving region about 100 miles from home. I forgot my wife was with me and she accused of having an affair as I 'knew' the pretty young assistant's name! (Doubly not amused when I said that I took the accusation that I could have an affair as a compliment!)

Not able to do it too often these days as many shop workers wear name tags. And my super hearing is becoming decidedly less so as I get older!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gullible!

When I worked a holiday shift in a camera shop, a lady came in to buy a light meter (this was back when cameras used film and were, in the main, manual - you needed to adjust shutter and aperture yourself). I showed her a mid-range model (that met what she was asking for*) but she wanted proof that it was accurate. "Certainly, madam. Follow me." I took it outside into the street, looked around and, estimating the light, said, "ASA125, f/11 at 1/125s". Set the meter at ASA125, f/11 and showed her 1/125s on the dial. "Spot on, madam." She was pleased and bought it.

Getting a usable light reading in daytime wasn't difficult (and, using B/W film there was usually sufficient latitude for small errors); besides, I could easily have tilted the meter up or down to tweak the reading had I wanted to con her. I knew it was a decent meter that would do what she needed, without costing too much - she just needed the confidence to trust it. I also showed her how to get a decent reading of reflected light from her hand.

Estimating exposure wasn't the case with Kodachrome slide film* - that didn't have much latitude before shadows blocked or highlights burnt. My personal preference was a Weston Master IV with an Invercone for incident light measurements. I still have on, though it hasn't been used since I went digital.

*I don't recall exactly what camera and film she used, but it wasn't a combination, or type of picture, that needed anything too sophisticated - an average reading reflected light meter was all she needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gullible!

While driving with a mate and some passengers in our trusty red landrover we mentioned the old joke that red cars go faster, only to have one of the passengers respond with "why is that?".

It turns out it's to do with the molecular structure of red paint, apparently - less drag. We managed to spin that out for a good fifteen minutes before we got caught.

[PRR]

Re: Gullible!

> red cars go faster

For sure. I wanted a new car mid-pandemic when there was no stock. I left my finances with the dealer salesdude and told him to call ONLY with a RED car. Much faster than my old black car.

Also musical equipment. Red guitars and fuzz-pedals rule. I often tell newbies that the internal parts, or circuit, matters much less than color.

[cosmodrome]

Re: Gullible!

Do you play, by any chance, a mid 1980s Charvel? Just guessing...

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Gullible!

That's clearly a tall story. Everybody knows that the fastest thing on the road is an unmarked white van!

Any van, as long as it's white.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gullible!

Presumably red ones with a stripe go faster still?

[RockBurner]

Re: Gullible!

I once had two motorcycles of the same model, one red, the second blue, otherwise nigh on identical. The red one was definitely faster.

[PerlyKing]

Re: red vehicles go faster

Legend had it that red Ducati 916s (and 748s) were faster than the yellow ones because every bike was initially painted red and the yellow was added on top, so the red bikes were lighter and therefore faster! ;-D

[Anonymous Coward]

Placebo

I'm sure everyone who has ever worked in IT support has invented some form of placebo fix. I know I have and very likely many times, I kept these solutions in the same pocket as the magic screwdriver that fixed issues when you walked into the room.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Placebo

Or coding, where you leave in just one obvious problem, so people can point it out and be done.

[Wargasm]

legend

Ok, actuall saw it years ago in Warsaw, Poland and thought it's made out of boredom or so ( accountancy, big employer). Jeez...

[lglethal]

Wont someone think of the...

Wont someone think of the children the Stationary Cupboard monitor.

I mean all of those paper clips being used to protect the monitors! What if someone desperately needed to use a paper clip for connecting a TRS Form to a PBT Form????? The chaos that could ensure due to improper documentation collation. I mean someone might end up putting them together with a *shudder* Staple! These things are just not done...

[xyz]

Re: Wont someone think of the...

Stationery... with an "e"

[Herring`]

Re: Wont someone think of the...

Assuming they don't move the cupboard around, it's both.

[EvilDrSmith]

Re: Wont someone think of the...

Unless it refers to a cupboard monitor who is not moving

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Wont someone think of the...

Theres only one thing to do in a stationary cupboard

Don't get caught

[Lee D]

Told it before but:

Teacher in a school said that their computer was slower than everyone else's. Kept complaining and complaining and complaining.

We kept testing and timing it and it was exactly the same all the time. Identical to all the others. And there's a reason for that... it was identical hardware purchased at exactly the same time as everything else, with identical specs throughout the site, with identical imaging from a WDS installation image that was identical for all machines. It was reimaged at the same time as all the others with the same image as all the others. It even had an identical "maintenance" regime for when we cleaned it, etc.

But, honestly, no different to any other computer. Was happy to believe that maybe environment, or user, or random quirk, or component failure or whatever was making a difference... but we couldn't measure any difference.

At one point, we even went around every single computer on site (all identical) and benchmarked them one after the one... time to boot, time from login "Enter" key to loaded desktop with no disk activity, time to load a given (real) user's profile, as well as all the official benchmarks, etc. etc.

It came to a head after this teacher kept complaining, for probably a year or so, and raised it repeatedly to... the head. And obviously at that point I, the IT manager, "had to do something".

So I did. I walked over. I told them I'd handle this "personally." I disconnected the machine myself. I brought it to the IT department myself. I dismantled it myself.

And then I waited. Said teacher eventually visited to check on progress (as she had no machine) and saw what was clearly their machine (numbers, stickers, etc.) in pieces on our worktop. That's what I was waiting for.

Then I left it there for another day or so. Then recombobled it. The exact same components, connected in the exact same way in the exact same machine.

Gave it a bit of an external clean (nothing that would make any difference, just removed her stickers).

Benchmarked it (always have a paper trail!) and guess what... identical to before. Identical to last month. Identical to last year.

Then I made a big fuss of taking it back to the room and cabling it back up to the exact same cables in the exact same location in the exact same way.

They WOULD NOT SHUT UP about how great it was to have a "new" machine that "worked properly". How "fast it is". How much it had removed stress from their teaching. How wonderful it was. How my intervention had made such a difference. etc. etc. etc.

This went on for - I kid you not - years. She kept thanking me for her "new machine" every time I met her in the staffroom or the dining hall. Constantly.

It even became a problem because by then she had told other teachers who all wanted new machines for themselves too. Why should she get special treatment? Etc. The ones we could trust, we told them what we'd done. And they laughed and apologised and said "No worries, just thought we were being left out". The ones we couldn't trust we either made excuses or (if they were nice) gave them the EXACT SAME treatment as we had this teacher. Yes, we took their machine, applied the special "placebo" patch and, as if by magic, they "ran faster" (with the exact same benchmark numbers). Same login times (to the second!). Same performance metrics. Same everything. But apparently, by some mysterious homeopathic avenue, they were "better".

When that teacher left several years later, she still mentioned how great her machine was and how she was grateful for my intervention. As an IT department, we were PISSING ourselves trying not to laugh.

Placebo is strong in IT, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Users absolutely CANNOT be trusted to gauge performance of a machine.

[Caver_Dave]

Placebo

My wife used to be a community Pharmacist. Her store used to sell placebo tablets (labelled as placebo, not just homeopathic). She used to explain that they had no active ingredients, but people still bought them - and would come back for more saying that they really helped.

Even when you know they are placebo, the power of the mind works in mysterious ways for the good.

(Icon as she used to wear a lab coat at work - another physiological trick that made the customers trust her more.)

[Lee D]

Re: Placebo

Yes, it's weird that placebo works even when people know it's a placebo.

Literally short-circuit and blindness of the human brain in normal operation.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: Placebo

It's a good brand name. ;-)

Though I wonder if "nocebo" perhaps is equally good?

To be clear, that's not "no placebo", it is the opposite of placebo.

[spuck]

Re: Placebo

A mate of mine was deployed to Afghanistan, and he tells the story of how the company medic always made sure to have a pill bottle with M&Ms or Skittles in his kit. The locals knew the Americans had medicines they did not, so when travelling through villages they were often stopped and asked for medicine. The medic would knit his brow and think, then offer a "red one" or a "blue one" to best address whatever malady the person had.

When he told me this story, I wasn't sure what to think. Obviously the medic wasn't able to sort out and actually address real problems on every stop, but was he doing more harm or good with this charade?

[PB90210]

Re: Placebo

I once saw a list of homeopathic remedies that included one for cancer made using cancerous cells.

Luck the remedy just uses diluted water...

[Alister]

CRT Monitors and floppies

Does anyone else remember that there was a rash of tech outlets (Radio Shack and Maplins come to mind) who for a time were selling what I can only describe as "saddlebags" which you could hang over your CRT monitor, which had pockets in them to hold all you most precious 3.5" floppies draped down the side of the monitor. The ideal environment for all your data.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: CRT Monitors and floppies

Those with memory from the era might recall that Apple often had photos of the Apple ][ with two dick drives on top, and a monitor on top of that. It worked just fine ... as long as it was the Apple monitor which had magnetic screening in the base. At the time, we had the local Apple dealership, and one particular client had problems with corrupted disks - but when the rig was brought in, we'd never find any problem. It was a while before we twigged that they had the monitor sat on top of the floppy drives just like in the pictures - but it wasn't an Apple monitor.

Before that we'd been looking at power problems, they had some powerful spot welding equipment in the factory ...

[Pickle Rick]

When the tech's the target

On one job I had three line managers for different projects. All were in finance. One morning the three of them were having a conflab and shortly after they'd finished, one turned to me and asked "Is it true that if you type 'Google' into Google you'll break the Internet?" Looking at them like they were nuts my response was a simple "No, that's bollocks." Nothing more was said about it, just a few subtly deflated looks that I really didn't understand. I hadn't owned a TV for years, and it was years later until I watched The IT Crowd. They never fessed up, but when I eventually saw "that episode" I finally understood their looks and had a chuckle as I could at last share the joke with them. Miss those guys :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: When the tech's the target

Head of computing at a school where I used to work would do that... She'd open Chrome, click in the search box on the home page and type "google", then click "Search". Then she'd click on the top result, which was, of course, the Google search page, and type whatever it was she wanted to search for into the search box there.

I'm sure her class noticed me grimacing every time I saw her do it.

I did wonder whether to try and prank her (and anyone else Googling "google") with a redirection rule on the proxy server leading to some kind of "broken internet" error page but decided she might not get the joke.

[Blofeld's Cat]

Er ...

"I waited for days to be called into HR"

Probably HR had a chain of paperclips hanging over their monitor as well.

[Evil Auditor]

I might have told this story here before. Young me was trusted with walking a bunch of interns through the process of exposure, development and etching of PCBs. The setting: a lab containing some stinky chemicals and shielded from UV radiation to prevent accidental exposure of the PCBs. One of the interns asked whether we could open a window to let in some breathable air. Of course, we couldn't as this would not only let in fresh air but also UV radiation. Silly young me's response though was, no, for reasons of environmental protection we cannot let that air out into the open.

None of those poor interns was willing to join us.

And some time later, via an acquaintance, I was told that, apparently, my very company lets people work in hazardous environments without any protection. I knew that was rubbish because safety had truly been a core value of the company. But it took me quite a while to make the connection...

[Daedalus]

Astrology Domine

Good thing the miscreant didn't go with "Mercury in retrograde". That nonsense is still wreaking havoc today.

[Albert Coates]

Re: Astrology Domine

So, post your time, date and place of birth here, O unbeliever, and I'll learn all about you. Bet you don't.

[Albert Coates]

Re: Astrology Domine

Scared, eh? Just suppose it might deep-down actually work, despite the rantings of the 'rational' (hah!) scientific community, the snake oil salesmen, influencers and wank-filled popular newspaper columns? Yes it seems non-rational, I admit, but don't you ever trust your gut feelings?

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: Astrology Domine

You'd have a fair chance of identity theft by collecting personal information. ...Happy birthday, by the way. :-)

[Marty McFly]

Wiggle the mouse

Back in the Win 9x days where the world was fraught with frequent reboots that were always slow...

My IT counterpart told one 'frequent flyer' user that wiggling the mouse would help keep the system awake and it would boot faster. Of course, what that did was give this individual something to do which made them think they were doing everything possible to speed up the process.

A week later it was observed that most users were actively wiggling their mice during reboots too. He realized the power of suggestion when it comes from someone who understands the mystical workings inside a computer.

[ChrisC]

Re: Wiggle the mouse

My own recollection of the 9x era was that, on some systems at least, wiggling the mouse when the PC was running certain tasks, would force the UI to refresh more often than Windows would otherwise bother with, thus giving the impression that said tasks were running faster than they actually were, due to how slow they *appear* to be running when the PC has stopped bothering to keep you updated on a sufficiently regular basis as to what it's up to...

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Wiggle the mouse

Indeed, having something moving to tell you it's working makes things feel quicker than "just nothing".

Something else to be aware of ...

Some OSs prioritise apparent boot speed. The time between switching on and getting to a login prompt is a key driver of user perception. But, having got to the login prompt, or after that, a desktop on the monitor, the system won't do anything for you as it's still busy loading all the background stuff it needs to work. When I'm working form home, I'll switch on and put in the bitlocker password before I do breakfast, then I'll log in and have breakfast (and/or switch to my personal laptop and catch up with ElReg) while waiting for it to get to a point of being usable.

[Yes Me]

Re: Wiggle the mouse

> Indeed, having something moving to tell you it's working makes things feel quicker than "just nothing".

That is _exactly_ why cursors on alphanumeric terminals flashed continuously. If they didn't, users would complain that the mainframe was stuck. This goes back to the 1960s.

Oh look, Firefox's little | cursor is flashing as I type. If not, it's a sign that the Internet is stuck.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Wiggle the mouse

If it's | that way up it's a caret. If it's _ that way up or a █ it's a cursor.

[John PM Chappell]

Re: Wiggle the mouse

No, in this context they are synonyms, and in fact the vertical line is the cursor (as seen on sliders for, e.g. slide rules) long before the usage was extended to a blinking hash or underscore, etc.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: Wiggle the mouse

Depending on the OS and on whether you auto-run a lot of software. But yes... but specifically, when the Windows - what version is it now - Windows 11 login prompt appears, there are background services still spinning up. So I haven't timed it but - I propose that the time from an immediate login to seeing the desktop, is longer than if you give it a minute and then log in. Of course, though, I'm not counting that minute.

[xyz]

You try that in 2026

I needed a paperclip last week to reset a device... I hadn't seen one since about 2004. Eventually found one in an old box of papers along with a thing called a pen. It's called stationery seemingly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You try that in 2026

As they apparently had been sitting there since at least 2004, I'd call them stationary too.

[This is my handle]

More a commuter story than at-the-office but ...

My commuter train had just past the last "downtown" station where it was really picking up speed. It was a Friday, I think, and after rush hour, so express trains were done for the day and this one was going to stop anytime it saw a station. By this point though, it was headed south to University of Chicago at about 100 kph. A lady walked into the car, who was obviously under the influence of ... something. She looked around and for some reason was particularly focused on the upper level. I was on one side trying to mind my own business, and a couple of guys were sitting across from me. "Is this train going to Chicago?" she asked, speech slurred. "No, not this one. *That* car is going to Chicago," said one of the guys on the E. side of the train, pointing to the car she had just exited. "Oh, OK. Thanks." It was funny but I was worried about her safety. Before I could flag down a conductor the train made an unscheduled stop and I saw one walking her off the train and giving her instructions on how to get the Northbound back to Chicago.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: More a commuter story than at-the-office but ...

I don't understand U.S. scale, but is that the University of Chicago located south of 55th Street? Does that count as long distance by telephone? Thank you.

[Anonymous Coward]

IT adjacent

Since so many users assume "uses electricity" = "IT's responsibility", I'll share my 2nd hand story.

Some years back, the local electric utility was installing smart meters for the first time. At one fairly rural house, the homeowner was pestering the lineman with endless questions, including the obvious "hey, can you set that thing so I pay less for my power?"

The lineman decided to have some fun. He glanced around like he was making sure they didn't have an audience, dropped his voice to a near whisper, and said "don't tell anyone, but if you put a standard brick on top of the meter housing, it slows down the electromagnetic fields, and makes the meter read lower usage."

A couple weeks later, the lineman was back in that area again. Every house on that road had a brick on the meter housing.

[Yes Me]

Re: IT adjacent

Someone I know had a smart meter installed, which works fine except his house doesn't have cell coverage. A person comes to read the meter once in a while. Once in another while, a person comes to investigate why the meter isn't calling home, logs the absence of cell coverage, and goes away. It's the same person, since he's the tech assigned to both meter readings and meter repairs in that area.

[Giles C]

Did the same

Years ago I was fixing a problem with a 2mb serial link, I can’t remember what the problem was but it was sorted (probably timing related) but I was asked by someone what the problem was. Well I said the warp core was out of alignment and it is now fixed.

Unfortunately that went up the management chain and back down to my boss who wasn’t overly impressed although he questioned how someone had never seen Star Trek and could get the reference.

These days I tend to quote Monty python more…..

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Did the same

Maaany years ago, when stuff got passed around the office by photocopying it and passing bits of real paper, a "Troubleshooting Flowchart" came around - you'll have seen a version of it, starts with "Did you bugger about with it ?" and at the other end has "Dump it in the skip". The copy of a copy of a ... looked rather rough, so I sat down at my new (to me) Mac and redrew it. And copies of that now neater version started going around. A few weeks later I was visiting a different department and found it going around there - having been up to the director's corridor and back down the chain !

[Giles C]

Re: Did the same

Haven’t seen that one, but I remember this from years ago

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/414260865694352016/

[bigtreeman]

ANY Ex

My ex rang out of the blue, which was unusual because our relationship was tense.

Frustrated with her computer which was telling her to hit "ANY" key.

I told her it was down the bottom left of the space bar, my keyboard had "ANY", but hers might have a picture of some sort.

All sorted and didn't hear from her for years after that, which suited me just fine.

[RobDog]

He did a good job with that one

I remember from my days in desktop support, mid 90s, there were definitely monitors with paperclip chains on them in the Marylebone Road office of a now defunct department store. I never asked why but I distinctly remember them

[nonpc]

I misread 'driver drama' as 'diva drama'...