Posts by skeogh

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

Thanks for that, Liam, well explained - something I have been trying to do with friends and colleagues for decades now.

Cheers, and have this one on me. --->

The server is down, money is not being made, and you want me to fix what?

Back in the late eighties and early nineties, I used to work for a merchant bank with a large department of Fund Managers. All of whom expected to be treated like royalty. Each Fund Manager team had a secretary, and one of their jobs was to run reports, via a convoluted system involving a terminal emulator, over a serial connection to the minis, scripting, and Lotus Symphony, and a report writer package. I got a call from a fund manager, demanding that someone come up to his floor IMMEDIATELY as the secretary's computer wasn't working, and the afternoon reports were VITAL!!! (Added ! marks to model the tone of the Fund Manager in question, an ex-army officer who, even among the rarefied atmosphere of the Fund Managers' floor, had a VERY superior attitude).

So I slogged up there, and got the full treatment, shouting, hand banged down on desk "IT around here has to be ROBUST!!!"

I took a look. These were old IBM ATs with CGA graphics and old IBM colour monitors. The tell-tale light on the monitor was on. Guess what wasn't? I reached over, pulled the Big Red Switch, turned to the still-fuming Fund Manager, and in my best, most polite voice, said "Fund reports work best if the computer is actually switched on" and walked out. Never heard from him again. Secretary had never switched the PC system unit on before, she thought that switching on the monitor was switching on the computer. Sometime earlier (probably the previous evening) someone had switched the unit off (which of course you had to do physically, the old ATs couldn't switch themselves off). Happy Times? errrr.....

We regret to inform you there are severe delays on the token ring due to IT nerds blasting each other to bloody chunks

re: Network stress testing

Oh yes, network stress testing. BTDT. I also had a weekend LAN party once, where I borrowed three PCs (486/33s I seem to recall) from the office (with official chit from the manager so that I could get them out past security. I told him I wanted to test some network scripts without any danger of affecting the main lan). Got them home, set up with my 486DX2/66 as the fourth, on my own ethernet hub (no switches then, not that I could afford anyway), Music from my machine, with a midi sound module, each player with headphones on for their own sound. And what sound...we played co-op rather than deathmatch, but even as a group, the sound of a distant door opening, followed by the racket as a chainsaw started up....always chilling. Followed by Pizza and many beers, followed by doing all the maps again, in Nightmare mode. I think we finished about 4 in the morning, then the living room floor was covered in bodies until about mid-day :-) Simpler times, simpler pleasures...