Posts by Mos Eisley Trooper

Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?

Auto-Replace Shennanigans

In the early noughties we often used to have fun with a colleague (and it came both ways, we got as good as we gave ! ), for example swapping the tin of M&S curry in his lunch-time procured shopping in the communal fridge for a tin of dog food (an easy label swap), putting kippers in his briefcase, inserting "adult" magazines into the pile in his in-tray (remember those??) and so on.

Anyway, one time when working on a code specification document he left his PC unattended and (foolishly !) unlocked, so whilst he was away we had some fun in the MS Word dictionary, adding some auto-replacements. First of all was his name (whenever he typed "Gary" it auto-changed to "Gazza"), "floating point" became "flossing point"....and then there were some more risqué ones (I'll let you use your imagination). Some he spotted, some he didn't.

Luckily all documents went through in an internal review before being sent out, so that's when a lot of our fun came to light (along with sworn future vengeance and retaliation).

The chip that changed my world – and yours

The Z80 determined my career path

For Christmas 1982, aged 10, I got a second hand Sinclair ZX-81 when all around me were getting Spectrums. Whilst they played games (which I admittedly and enthusiastically partook in when visiting), myself and one other ZX-81 owner I knew started to learn coding since the games didn't have the same appeal (even with the 16k ZX-Panda RAM Pack acquired 7 months later on my birthday...though I do still have a soft spot for 3D Monster Maze). Initially we typed in listings from Sinclair User which helped learn tricks and techniques, but then I started writing my own things. I loved programming that little computer.

After that I moved onto an Acorn Electron (parents couldn't afford the BBC Micro I desired) so got into BBC Basic and 6502 assembly, and then by 1987 I was a PC owner (Amstrad PC1512, two 5.25" drives and no HDD until I added a 32mb hard-card after a couple of years), which set me down the Pascal then C route.

I'm now into my 35th year as an IT developer - and it's all thanks to the Z80.

Cheers, little chip !

A cheeky intern nearly turned MS-DOS into NSFW-DOS

Creative Underlining

Where I work we once employed a contractor for 6 months who did some creative underlining in some code spec documentation in MS word format. It only came to light after they had left and said documents needed updating, and we found that the underlining on section headings was a bit weird.

It turned out that the text in question wasn't actually underlined, but the line underneath had something like 2pt superscript text which looked like it was the underline for the previous line.

Upon zooming right in we found that the underlining was actually text that said "I hate this s**t company" / "I hate this job" / "I hate <managers name>" repeated until it matched the length of the text on the preceding line.

I was quite amused to be honest and was all for leaving it, but was told by my manager in no uncertain terms to sort it...

Singapore to roll out (literally) more Robocops

Anyone else thinking what I'm thinking ?

Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.

You now have 15 seconds to comply. You are in direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9.

You have 5 seconds to comply. 4. 3. 2. 1. I am now authorised to use physical force...

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!