Posts by ricardian

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

Re: 1/60 sec...

All praise to Raeto West

Microsoft boss tells investors the company is working to 'win back fans'

I've resorted to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC. As soon as I can find a Linux version of one piece of "MS only" software I will be heading for Mint ASAP. I don't like being an unpaid QA person

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

Back in the Dark Ages it was not unknown for some wicked person to turn down the brightness control of a massive, bone-crushingly heavy 21 inch VDU...

To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane

Re: Everybody like big boom ...

Blaster Bates had at least one failure. A copper wire factory in Cheadle, Staffs experienced a total power failure whilst the furnaces were full of molten copper. Blast Bates was brought in to break up the solidified copper. Alas, the malleable copper absorbed the blast from the dynamite and the firm had to demolish the furnaces

Google is to journalism what Vikings were to monks. Now their man will run the BBC

BBC Radio & TV - the least worst in the world

To BSOD or not to BSOD? Only Microsoft knows the answer

It's the coloured pencil department at work again with some cunning scheme that they have devised without reference to real people

Russian spy ship theories sink after Orkney blackout traced to wind farm fault

And now (March 2026) the almost-brand-new FTTP link to the Northern Isles of Orkney has been damaged and repairs are expected to take several weeks. BT has to find and charter a vessel capable of finding, raising and repairing the fibre link.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/03/subsea-cable-break-knocks-out-broadband-and-mobile-for-part-of-orkney.html

BOFH: What physics defines as impossible, sales calls a challenge

Re: They are all like that

Changing colours will have no effect as 8 percent of males suffer from colour blindness

Trump orders purge of 'woke' Anthropic from government

AI = neural networks?

Hotel's rotary switchboard so retro it predates the concept of crashing

Project Emily. 1959-1963. RAF stations housing Thor missiles were Driffield, Feltwell, Hemswell & North Luffenham. All state of the art stuff.

Thor guidance system provided by the AC Spark Plug Company.

Each station had 3 subsites which interconnected via GPO cables laid in WW2. Each station had a CB9 (doll's eye) telephone switchboard.

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

What would PG Strangman think of all this?

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

35 years ago, working for a large Government department we had problems with latency whenever we used drive "F". After a bit of digging I discovered that Microsoft used drive F for analysis and had all sorts of tags attached to it which made it slow down. I have no idea whether this is still true.

New boss was bad, his attitude was ugly, so the tech team pranked him good

Re: TSR

There was one TSR which would occasionally send sheep with their backsides on fire, plummeting diagonally down the screen and exploding on reaching "ground".

BOFH: If another meeting is scheduled, someone is going to have a scheduled accident

In a previous existence (early 1980s) I used a Commodore Pet to process data acquired via a PDMA16 (https://download.tek.com/manual/65030B(PDMA16).pdf). I used 6502 assembler at first (thank you Raeto West! https://tinyurl.com/commodorepet) then upgraded to an Aztec C compiler (https://www.aztecmuseum.ca/intro.htm).

Sorry, but your glitchy connection might have cost you that job

Listening to one or two phone-in programmes on BBC Radio 4 I am astonished at the poor quality of some mobile phone connections, not much better than listening to the BBC World Service on shortwave receivers when overseas in the 1960s

Orkney islands look to drones to streamline mail deliveries

I was surprised to discover that this drone delivery is still in operation after two years, albeit to just two small islands Graemsay (pop 21) & Hoy (pop 400):

https://skyportsdroneservices.com/2025/11/meet-the-team-chloe-prescott-hub-operator-royal-mail

Techie ran up $40,000 bill trying to download a driver

BT was set toll out fibre in 1990 but the PM at the time put a stop to it

https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

Ministry of Defence's F-35 blunder: £57B and counting

Re: Bureaucrats and targets rather than just bean counters

My cousin was employed in what used to be Inland Revenue. In 1970 he was promoted and moved into a new office. There was a locked cupboard in the office and the key could not be found. He broke into the cupboard and found it stuffed with envelopes marked "On His Majesty's Service" and thousands of the Economy Return Labels similarly mared.

Note - he discovered that the Economy Return Label system was flawed because the gummed labels cost far more to produce than any envelope because of the difficulty of printing on gummed paper or adding gum to already printed paper.

Amazon Web Services’ US-EAST-1 region in trouble again, with EC2 and container services impacted

Somebody found the latest backup "We initiated the deployment of our ‘last known good’ configuration, which has now successfully been completed. "

Scottish Parliament affected! https://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/scottish-parliament-microsoft-outage-voting-5380855

Techies tossed appliance that had no power cord, but turned out to power their company

Re: Cast not blame unnecessarily

I hope that there are no colour-blind (red/green) employees!

Basic projector repair job turns into armed encounter at secret bunker

Re: We will not reveal your name and take great care to Regomize your exploits.

With great difficulty!

Re: Higher ranking officers

Could be RAF Corporal Technician in pre-1964 trade structure

Commodore PET lurches out of its 1970s grave – as a phablet

Commodore PET? Thank you Raeto West for your invaluable handbook, essential for 6502 assembler work. And thank you Commodore for including all the GPIB/IEEE488 routines hardcoded in ROM

Sysadmin cured a medical mystery by shifting a single cable

Maybe from PG Strangman's time?

Tech bro denied dev's hard-earned bonus for bug that overcharged a little old lady

Re: Lawsuit culture

Mutually orthogonal!

14-hour+ global blackout at Ingram Micro halts customer orders

Christian Trinity?

Field support chap got married – which took down a mainframe

Re: VAX field service engineers

Each of our early PDP machines required a 240v 30A supply.

On a long, residential course with a dozen other folk umpteen years ago our new instructor appeared without a tie and manglement quickly instructed him to find and wear a tie. However, it appeared that the local rules only said "a tie" and did not specify what sort of tie. There, for the rest of the course we all scoured local charity shops for the ugliest possible tie and our instructor happily wore them.

Ukraine strikes Russian bomber-maker with hack attack

And it gets worse https://danwatch.dk/en/serious-security-breach-russian-nuclear-facilities-exposed

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: Whoops

And in Orkney we don't have turnips, we have neeps as in "haggis & neeps"

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

CYTA (Cyprus Telecom Authority) in the mid 1960s insisted on using their own non-NATO alphabet. The only letter that I can recall is Y = Yokahama.

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

Re: Bombs too

At a seaside resort in North Yorkshire in the 1980s BT were advertising their remote fire monitoring package - a fire would trigger an alert and all would be well. Such a shame that a few weeks later a fire broke out in the local exchange during the wee small hours and by the time anyone noticed the place had burned to the ground

GCHQ intern took top secret spy tool home, now faces prison

Re: Official Secrets Act?

It was HM Queen Elizabeth II who signed the Act. Mere mortals sign a bit of paper attesting that they understand the penalties for offences committed under the Act!

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Re: been on many courses where the trainer has no answers

I was in the RAF 1959-73 and for my final 3 years I was an instructor. There was an intensive 3 week course "Instructional Techniques" at RAF Upwood which gave all of us great confidence in our ability to teach our particular subjects. I believe that in later years the course gained national recognition

Re: been on many courses where the trainer has no answers

For 'O' level History 1955-59 our teacher was straight out of teacher training after National Service. His flawed technique was to spend the first year dictating all the notes for the subsequent 3 years. Of course most of us lost the notes before the start of year 2.

Top Trump officials text secret Yemen airstrike plans to journo in Signal SNAFU

Re: 'glitch'

or Penistone

Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment

At work in the early 1980s we had a couple of Commodore Pets. We ran 6502 assembler programs which could do some impressive stuff, especially as the GPIB/IEEE488 routines were all encoded in ROM and just had to be called in order to control printers, etc. Of couse we were heavily reliant on Raeto West's comprehensive manual. We moved on to C using the Aztec compiler (remember .MAK files?), recommended to us because it was used by the CEGB in their nuclear power sites!

Payday from hell as several British banks report major outages

My TSB branch was in Kirkwall, to reach it involved a 2 hour ferry crossing and a 10 minute taxi ride (and the same for the return journey). Now the Kirkwall branch has closed and my nearest branches are in Wick & Thurso which would involve a further 2 hour ferry crossing and 10 minute taxi ride from Kirkwall. And, because of the ferry timings, it would probably involve at least one overnight stay in Kirkwall.

Fortunately I can check my TSB accounts online and use my local Post Office to withdraw cash.

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

You got an audible alert

Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend

Re: Cobol...

Back in the 1980s the OU taught programming using HEKTOR, a simple computer that had a UHF modulator which you plugged into the aerial socket of a TV. The course began by using pure machine code then using a very, very simple assembler. Once you got the idea you were introduced to BASIC. That stood me in good stead at work when I encountered 6502 assembler (Commodore Pet and Raeto West)

Re: Close enough

I and many others have got something that Elon and his like will never, ever have - "enough"!

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: ability

Myself and quite a few other folk have something that Elon Musk and his ilk will never, ever have - enough!

Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: Blisteringly inappropriate insults

Re: One place I was at...

IBM Data Transceiver (this was 1961) receiving cards but not printing text. Reported to BM tech who drives 250 miles from base, walks into room, moves "print" switch from "off" to "on", leaves room & drives 250 miles back to base.

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

London airport:

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3744849

Techie told 'Bill Gates' Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours

Re: 8 floppy disks for Office 97?

Remember Multimate? It came on a large number of 5.25 inch floppies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiMate

Stop installing that software – you may have just died

Re: Back to Front

<Pedant mode on>

The only person who signs the Official Secrets Act is the reigning monarch. We mere mortals sign a piece of paper certifying that we understand the penalties for offending!

<Pedant mode off>

Blaster Bates (remember him?) had one failure - a company that produced the overhead power lines for British Rail had huge furnaces to melt copper and other additives. One day there was a total power failure - backup didn't work - and molten copper solidified in the furnaces. Blaster Bates was brought in but his explosives made little impression on the solidified, quite soft copper. In the end I think that they had to send in people to physically chisel out umpteen tons of copper.

Re: Strangest?

My old boss in the RAF had a lovely, solidly-built, old Rover 90. It was written off when being driven at high speed over Dartmoor at dark o'clock and collided with an unfortunate owl that entered through the starboard headlight and exited via the dashboard

Yes, I am being intolerably smug – because I ignored you and saved the project

Re: Time for a slide show

I see your telegraph poles - how about https://www.nia.org