Posts by DJV 2542 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2009
So... send print job from computer to new HP/Boeing printer. After 3 pages, the printer software decides that all the cartridges are now empty (whether or not they have any ink in them), all the doors on the printer fall off and an oxygen mask dropping down somewhere inside the printer causes a paper jam. Sounds about right...
Well, that's... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4V4Y-RR6CFk
Oh God, yes, this!
Client: We didn't want to disturb you by asking for a new custom field so we put the customer's ebay reference number in the phone number field as ebay won't tell us the phone number on orders so it didn't matter.
Client later on: How many of our customers are ebay customers?
Me: Dunno, I could have told you if you'd let me spend all of 5 minutes putting in a custom ebay reference number in the first place and not used the phone field.
Client: Erm, can you separate them out?
Me: Possibly. It will take a while as I've got to write a program to figure out how to tell the difference between the two...
Me a short while later: What are these types of entries? They match neither a phone number format nor an ebay ID.
Client: Oh, they're Amazon reference numbers - we, er, didn't want to bother you...
Me: AAARRRRGHH!!!!
Oh yes, I've suffered from that as well when at university. Back then (mid-1990s) there was always a rush to secure a computer for working on - either Mac or PC - you had to grab what was available. The EXACT same version of Word could never display the same document identically on one type of machine if it had been saved on the other (and sometimes not even on the same type, either).
Fully agree, Martin.
I worked in TV/Audio repair between 1973 and 1984. In that time I went from working on large wooden-box chassis TVs where pretty much everything could be replaced (valves (tubes for leftpondians) in sockets, several modular boards that were still individually repairable, testing and replacing individual components etc.) - to, one day, taking the back off a plastic-cased 14" portable TV and wondering where the hell they'd managed to hide the main PCB! In this case, it was a tiny thing mounted high up on the left-hand side and almost completely out of sight.
Around the same time (1984) a TV came into the workshop. Two of its main characteristics were that it had one great big chip on a long, narrow and rather flimsy PCB. The other was that it had a mains transformer mounted on a bracket that stuck out of the back of the main plastic front casing instead of somewhere else within the casing itself. Later on, I found out why. If you removed the transformer (sometimes needed to get at and remove the PCB), the whole TV fell flat on its face as the centre of gravity of the rest of the set (including the picture tube) was further forward than the front feet!
https://funnyshit.com.au/the_plan.html
It should be essential reading for all levels from the lowest worker to the CEO!
Hah, no - they still had some running a few specials last year! See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tGQr1fSXM
Yeah, that's the problem. Thank goodness for CustomCSSforFx which means it's possible to make it look like it did around version 50 with a properly usable interface!
My most often used shortcuts are pinned to my Quick Start toolbar, which has a much greater capacity for icons than the restricted taskbar. Even though MS tried to remove Quicj Start in W7, too many programs relied on it being there and, until W11, it was always possible to resurrect it easily. Under W11 it can still be added but it takes a few extra hacks. The taskbar is just for the RUNNING programs, like in W95 to XP, which is how I want to use my computer.
No, a true BOFH would make sure ALL error messages appearing on screens would be QR images and then supply graph paper for people to report errors to him (refusing to accept any other kind - photos of said screen being automatically rejected). But, of course, the QR code on screen would have some subtle code running behind it so that it would flip the occasional square at random intervals making sure that the pattern copied by the user would never match the one on the screen, thus rendering all the error codes invalid due to, ahem, "user copying error".
Having gone through several cloudy services, I'm currently using a combination of the following: OneDrive, DropBox and Filen.io (yes, these three will all work on the same computer at the same time).
The latter is by far the fastest for uploads and, so far, hasn't glitched on me. My requirements are modest so I've been only using the free versions of all three. However, Filen.io's prices do look very reasonable with a €35.99 lifetime payment currently for 200GB (this is a Black Friday deal).
Others I've tried in the past include Box but their free space remaining has a habit of not recalculating after you delete files and you "run out of space" when, in reality, you should have plenty free; iceDrive but this doesn't play nice with the excellent FreeFileSync program that I use a lot; nextCloud which had various issues that I couldn't get resolved; and pCloud, which also had issues which meant that backups would randomly fail to sync.
I've never tried Google Drive but that's mainly because I loath them as a company!
"Users expressed disbelief that Microsoft would send an update out into the world that resulted in such carnage"
Really? Unfortunately, this seems pretty normal for Microsoft nowadays. And I speak from personal experience having suffered from their Windows Defender update earlier in the year that wiped icons and then programs without warning!
Just look at the similarities:
Has the right physique for cage fights (well, I expect he probably thinks so).
Had a similar privileged upbringing.
Frittered most of his money away on bad business ideas (but claims they were all successes).
Enjoys being sued by lots of people.
And is also a great actor (what do you mean, he's not acting?)
I trust them* to deliver the goods somewhere - but, given the stories about them over the years, I don't necessarily trust them to actually deliver the goods to the designated address.
* them being Amazon, or any company that uses Evri/Hermes (or whatever they're called this week) or any similar so-called delivery service whose drivers have difficulty knowing how to find their own arses upon far too many occasions.
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