1) "Will it fit inside a PC? I mean, how big is this engine?"
It's only then I realised that he was under the impression that a game engine was some sort of mechanical monstrosity that we were importing from the U.S for the purpose of game development! Needless to say, he lasted only a couple of months in that place.
Haa haa Arjun, thats quite a funny mental image I picturing.
I don't treat Dilbert as much as a cartoon, more a synopsis of my experience.
Having spent my working life half in the dark side of engineering and half in IT most Dilbert's are a case of "seen that".
I've had the women who couldn't switch her machine on (no electricity in the building)
I've had the civil servant who couldn't get the printer to work (He had managed to waste about 2 rainforests in an office 50 miles away)
I have had so many that can't remember there password between Friday night and Monday morning its not funny.
Somebody who phoned up because they couldn't get onto the airport wireless network but didn't have time to fix it because he was boarding his plane.
A personal favourite was an office move we did.
Plan - Friday night - rip out all the machines, monitors, printers etc and remove all the patch cabling and fly leads.
Sat - Sun - Replace all the kit with new and rewire as needed.
Monday morning - Everybody comes into work as normal and everything is sweetness and light.
We decided to rip out all the patching because it was just a rats nest and needed redoing anyway.
Friday night went fine and we had cleared all IT related kit by Saturday morning. Empty office. All the kit shipped offsite by the company that was recycling them. To be honest as all this was being treated as scrap a few odds and ends were procured for personal use by all the lads. We could probably have been a bit more gentle with the stuff as well but it made no odds to us if it ever worked again.
So we went home for some kip and let the other lads take over replacing the kit.
Phone call Saturday lunch.
"Did you do that strip out job last night"
"Yes"
"Oh...... right.... Can you confirm the address you were at?"
"Sure, Floor 7, XYZ bulding, Anytown"
"Oh.... OK..... Have you got the work order?."
"Yep, No 123456"
(click - click - click)
"OK, got it"
"It definitely says floor 7 XYZ building doesn't it ?"
"Yep"
"It shouldn't..........."
Yes, we had stripped out just over 500 PC's, Servers, networking, printers, everything from the wrong office.
Somebody had got this weeks and next weeks job mixed up and all the kit had been delivered at another office of the same company about 150miles away.
I remember a guy managed to write off two colour laser printers a few years back (when colour lasers were quite expensive) - he wanted to print a picture, but didn't want to use bog-standard A4, so he put some photographic paper in the tray..... when the printer ground to a halt (because the fuser was gummed up with melted photographic paper) he thought to himself 'there's something wrong with this printer.... I'll use the other one' and fucked that one up the same way.
Then there was the guy who asked me to take a look at his printer which wasn't working, it was one of those that loads a sheaf of paper at the top. it was next to a pot plant and the dead leaves were falling into the paper slot and thence through the mechanism.
I also recall a lady who had a Hotmail account, instead of typing the URL into the address bar she'd type www.google.com, then in the Google search box type 'www.hotmail.com' and click the first search result.
For a bonus point - can you guess the profession of the above individuals?
In my currrent job we still get people who don't understand that when we ask them to check if a cable is plugged in, we want them to check *both ends* of the cable.....
first time I reinstalled windows98 on a PC, I didn't understand that I also needed to install drivers, and phoned a helpline to get talked through it
second time I reinstalled windows98 I got stuck with American defaults, and didn't have a pound sign, and copy/pasted one, and saved it in a word file to use
I also recall a lady who had a Hotmail account, instead of typing the URL into the address bar she'd type www.google.com, then in the Google search box type 'www.hotmail.com' and click the first search result.
.
You wont beleive how many first year undergrad computing students I see doing that. Usually the ones who arn't that confident (i.e. crap). They are usually monied foriegn students and usually get the door flung wide open (no matter how lazy and stupid they are) as non EEC students are charged over 6K a year to be there.
rather than show my mother-in-law the church warden how to use a computer for the first time, without looking at what she was doing I told her to go to hotmail dot come, she typed in hot male dot com.....
Heh heh heh, funnily enough - our company's outsourced specialists have fecked over one of my Solaris systems this evening....
Some bright spark, based in Manilla, made changes to pam.conf on one of my production cluster nodes, and were quite surprised when they found they couldn't issue "su" or "sudo" commands, let alone "ssh" in. Either way, I was able to move the services from the stuffed node, so the outsourced specialists can now play to their heart's content. I'm looking forward to seeing how they are going to fix this... I'm thinking a nasty power cycle and reboot from CD ;)
second time I reinstalled windows98 I got stuck with American defaults, and didn't have a pound sign, and copy/pasted one, and saved it in a word file to use
ha ha, i have to do that on my computer at work, got my pound sign in its own little text document.
On about my second ever week of having broadband at home, I became aware that there were many people on the internet who recommended some sort of security software, something to do with spyware or something.
I duly downloaded a copy of Limewire, and did a search for 'spyware'.
Lo and behold, I found a file, exactly what I needed, called 'spyware.exe'. This must surely be the software which everyone is talking about?
A simple double click later, and my PC is reduced to an hd churning, cpu munching bundle of malware and pop ups.
I'm convinced that the author of the (I was going to use the term 'trojan', but the software is clearly labeled as to what it is) software only named it thus in order to win a bet to see if anyone would be stupid enough to download it.
I have had many of those "I haven't been on any websites. The popups just came up all by themselves, and now I can't do anything on the computer"
Yeah, right.
And I once said to my sister: "Don't install Limewire, whatsoever"
Stupid cow installed Limewire as soon as I had left.
Result: PC jammed with who-knows-what.
Her next question a while later: "Do you have a CD with Win XP ?"
I once bought a TIME computer, that was pretty stupid.
My first computer was mail order from Time (well MJM who were Time but called MJM for tax reasons).
I remember if costing me £1200 in 1997. Looking at it now thats loads of money.
I soon then realised that it could have been built my be for about £500. Still for what I got out of it at the time £1200 was worth it.
If there is one thing I remember about windows 95 and 98 it was all the bloomin conflics you would get when installing new dievices.
Mind you at the time I knew nothing about the PC, how easy it was to put one together and how to configure an OS. So it would have been impossible. Still one year after owning it it had all sorts of upgrades installed by me.
3 SCSI hard drives at 4GB each,
4 GB SCSI Travan tape drive,
A ZIP Disk,
128Mb of Memory,
A 32Mb Graphics card.
I used to get alot of this stuff for free, its strange looking back what IT depts in 1998 used to throw away, loads of good stuff.
rather than show my mother-in-law the church warden how to use a computer for the first time, without looking at what she was doing I told her to go to hotmail dot come, she typed in hot male dot com.....
By the third day I was bored out of my head and went into one of the suites used for client presentations and changed the desktop wallpaper on the main large presentation screen computer to the word 'Bollocks' in 72pt Arial and set the bitmap to tile over the desktop.
Left work that night and met up with mate who came over from Belfast to see me. We got pissed out of our heads.
By 11pm I forgot what I did previously with the computer and said to my mate, 'hey I have the keys to my new workplace come and see it'.
I showed him around and said '..and here is the posh client area' and looked in the window. There in front of said computer was my boss and one of the companies prestigious clients working late on a presentation.
I said 'Fuck! I just remembered what I did earlier' :-o We both legged it out of the building and they never ever saw me again!
I phoned my previous employer back in London the next day and said 'Can I come back please, Edinburgh did not work out'...They said 'well technically you are still working your notice, see you on Monday'. :grin:
Comments
Haa haa Arjun, thats quite a funny mental image I picturing.
Hehehe, excellent find there Scottie ... and was exactly what I was picturing when reading Arjun's post :grin:
Having spent my working life half in the dark side of engineering and half in IT most Dilbert's are a case of "seen that".
I've had the women who couldn't switch her machine on (no electricity in the building)
I've had the civil servant who couldn't get the printer to work (He had managed to waste about 2 rainforests in an office 50 miles away)
I have had so many that can't remember there password between Friday night and Monday morning its not funny.
Somebody who phoned up because they couldn't get onto the airport wireless network but didn't have time to fix it because he was boarding his plane.
A personal favourite was an office move we did.
Plan - Friday night - rip out all the machines, monitors, printers etc and remove all the patch cabling and fly leads.
Sat - Sun - Replace all the kit with new and rewire as needed.
Monday morning - Everybody comes into work as normal and everything is sweetness and light.
We decided to rip out all the patching because it was just a rats nest and needed redoing anyway.
Friday night went fine and we had cleared all IT related kit by Saturday morning. Empty office. All the kit shipped offsite by the company that was recycling them. To be honest as all this was being treated as scrap a few odds and ends were procured for personal use by all the lads. We could probably have been a bit more gentle with the stuff as well but it made no odds to us if it ever worked again.
So we went home for some kip and let the other lads take over replacing the kit.
Phone call Saturday lunch.
"Did you do that strip out job last night"
"Yes"
"Oh...... right.... Can you confirm the address you were at?"
"Sure, Floor 7, XYZ bulding, Anytown"
"Oh.... OK..... Have you got the work order?."
"Yep, No 123456"
(click - click - click)
"OK, got it"
"It definitely says floor 7 XYZ building doesn't it ?"
"Yep"
"It shouldn't..........."
Yes, we had stripped out just over 500 PC's, Servers, networking, printers, everything from the wrong office.
Somebody had got this weeks and next weeks job mixed up and all the kit had been delivered at another office of the same company about 150miles away.
That was an entertaining few days.
I know somebody that did that. The scary thing is he was at College here in the US studying electronics!
Yes ... of course ... classic ;-)
and we still never found out what AJDB's experement with two halfs of beyboard were.
Then there was the guy who asked me to take a look at his printer which wasn't working, it was one of those that loads a sheaf of paper at the top. it was next to a pot plant and the dead leaves were falling into the paper slot and thence through the mechanism.
I also recall a lady who had a Hotmail account, instead of typing the URL into the address bar she'd type www.google.com, then in the Google search box type 'www.hotmail.com' and click the first search result.
For a bonus point - can you guess the profession of the above individuals?
In my currrent job we still get people who don't understand that when we ask them to check if a cable is plugged in, we want them to check *both ends* of the cable.....
Magenta icon
second time I reinstalled windows98 I got stuck with American defaults, and didn't have a pound sign, and copy/pasted one, and saved it in a word file to use
You wont beleive how many first year undergrad computing students I see doing that. Usually the ones who arn't that confident (i.e. crap). They are usually monied foriegn students and usually get the door flung wide open (no matter how lazy and stupid they are) as non EEC students are charged over 6K a year to be there.
~($)-($)~ @ \___/You get my drift.
Some bright spark, based in Manilla, made changes to pam.conf on one of my production cluster nodes, and were quite surprised when they found they couldn't issue "su" or "sudo" commands, let alone "ssh" in. Either way, I was able to move the services from the stuffed node, so the outsourced specialists can now play to their heart's content. I'm looking forward to seeing how they are going to fix this... I'm thinking a nasty power cycle and reboot from CD ;)
ha ha, i have to do that on my computer at work, got my pound sign in its own little text document.
IN31: It is quite complex to set it up ship it next day to me in London
Next day at IN31 central....
IN31: Okay lets plug this PC from New York in and re-install software
BANG!!!!! :lol:
:lol:
I once bought an Atari Jaguar, that was pretty stupid too!!
I duly downloaded a copy of Limewire, and did a search for 'spyware'.
Lo and behold, I found a file, exactly what I needed, called 'spyware.exe'. This must surely be the software which everyone is talking about?
A simple double click later, and my PC is reduced to an hd churning, cpu munching bundle of malware and pop ups.
I'm convinced that the author of the (I was going to use the term 'trojan', but the software is clearly labeled as to what it is) software only named it thus in order to win a bet to see if anyone would be stupid enough to download it.
Yeah, right.
And I once said to my sister: "Don't install Limewire, whatsoever"
Stupid cow installed Limewire as soon as I had left.
Result: PC jammed with who-knows-what.
Her next question a while later: "Do you have a CD with Win XP ?"
Why is it so difficult to listen ?
My first computer was mail order from Time (well MJM who were Time but called MJM for tax reasons).
I remember if costing me £1200 in 1997. Looking at it now thats loads of money.
I soon then realised that it could have been built my be for about £500. Still for what I got out of it at the time £1200 was worth it.
If there is one thing I remember about windows 95 and 98 it was all the bloomin conflics you would get when installing new dievices.
Mind you at the time I knew nothing about the PC, how easy it was to put one together and how to configure an OS. So it would have been impossible. Still one year after owning it it had all sorts of upgrades installed by me.
3 SCSI hard drives at 4GB each,
4 GB SCSI Travan tape drive,
A ZIP Disk,
128Mb of Memory,
A 32Mb Graphics card.
I used to get alot of this stuff for free, its strange looking back what IT depts in 1998 used to throw away, loads of good stuff.
Or was it
hot male dot cum
By the third day I was bored out of my head and went into one of the suites used for client presentations and changed the desktop wallpaper on the main large presentation screen computer to the word 'Bollocks' in 72pt Arial and set the bitmap to tile over the desktop.
Left work that night and met up with mate who came over from Belfast to see me. We got pissed out of our heads.
By 11pm I forgot what I did previously with the computer and said to my mate, 'hey I have the keys to my new workplace come and see it'.
I showed him around and said '..and here is the posh client area' and looked in the window. There in front of said computer was my boss and one of the companies prestigious clients working late on a presentation.
I said 'Fuck! I just remembered what I did earlier' :-o We both legged it out of the building and they never ever saw me again!
I phoned my previous employer back in London the next day and said 'Can I come back please, Edinburgh did not work out'...They said 'well technically you are still working your notice, see you on Monday'. :grin:
well, if you want to know, instead of www.hotmail.com she typed in www.hotmale.com and they don't even have a click to verify age and proceed page,
*deletes cache*