Posts by RhoganJosh

Faxing hell: The cops say they would very much like us to stop calling them all the time

That reminds me of an incident that happened in my office back in the early 00's.

one of our users was trying to send a fax, and as the fax lines all went via the PABX they has to start the number they were calling with 9 prefix, for an outside line.

They later confessed they were having a bad day and jabbed the 9 multiple times, something along the lines of "Press 9 (jab) for an outside (jab) effing (jab) line (jab).

They did not realise the fax was diligently recording each key press, and so when it dialled the number it went straight to 999. The user oblivious to what was happening just saw the fax had failed to send and walked away in frustration. The fax machine just did what was expected of it and kept redialling every 10 mins trying to make a connection...

Not long after a Police car turned up at the office with a very irate PC demanding we turn the "bloody fax machine off". Thankfully I wasn't involved in the "fact finding enquiry" that took place but I did see it happening and there was nothing humorous about it...at the time.

Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering 'E' on monitor

CRT vs Magnetic desk toy

On one callout, many years ago, I had to go see a user who reported that the one side of their monitor was all blurred and distorted.

This was back in the day when we still had clunky CRT monitors and sure enough, when I got there his right hand side of his display was distorted to an alarming degree. Now this was just before Christmas, and I noticed that on his desk, next to the monitor, was the still wrapped secret Santa present he’d been given that morning. With his permission, I picked up the pressie and moved it away, bingo! His display reverted to normal.

I was explaining it was probably due to a magnet in the present when the girl sitting next to him sheepishly admitted that not only was she his secret Santa, but that it was one of those magnetic desk toys that were popular at the time.

Waiter? There's a mouse in my motherboard and this server is greasy!

In the office where I work, power and data outlets are housed in floor boxes covered with a heavy flap. We are constantly called out to PCs that have dropped off the network only to find the user has accidentaly kicked the cable, pulling it out of the port. On one occasion I opened the floorbox to find a perfectly mummified mouse lying next to the power outlets. It must have been in there ages..

A story about a certain burger joints milkshakes. Nothing that would breach food hygene, but my friends who worked there told me that one day the new trainee forgot to add the flavoured syrup to the vanilla shake mix. It wasn't until very late in the evening that a customer actually noticed (and they had sold lots....)

ZX Spectrum Vega Plus backers complain of months-long refund delays

I really wanted one of these devices, but due to my natural tight fistedness I decided to wait until the finished product is released...doubt that will happen now.

Another unfortunate side effect of these schenanigans is that if someone ever wanted to pick up the idea in the future, and have a serious attempt at doing it, it will be forever tainted by association to this calamity. And that will always hinder future crowd funding efforts.

Bad show all round.

Support chap's Sonic Screwdriver fixes PC as user fumes in disbelief

We have toilets you know....

A few years ago I strolled into work only to be told...

"Be careful if you go into the PABX room...there's a BT engineer in there taking a dump of the realtis switch..."

Well really....