A True Story for the IT Types

Some years ago I worked for a credit reporting company. Part of their service consisted of the client calling the data center with an applicants credit report request. The information would be entered by a terminal operator. The report would then be read back to the client.

The terminal system was ancient and part of my job was to develop a new one. The system emulated an IBM 2260/2848 and was implimented using Digital Equipment PDP-11 hardware.

One evening I was called at home as the terminals had stopped woprking and all credit reports were empty. Over the phone I had the operator go to the system console and attempt to enter a few commands. Everything that I had the operator try produced no response from the system.

Finally I had the operator enter a control C to which the system responded with a prompt. I asked the operator to enter "MCR return" and nothing happened. In desperation I decided to drive in to the data center to determine the cause of the problem.

Upon arriving at the data center I went to the system console and on the bottom line of the console were the words...

MCR RETURN




Before anybody starts responding with the words, "Nobody is that..."

Let me assure you that yes they are!

The reason was that the credit reports were empty was that in the communications area, the T-Bar switch was thrown and the 2260/2848 controller was operating on the backup system but the data base was on the on-line system.

We had a staff member ask the help desk what a folder was?

.. and I have actually been called at 1.00 am to be asked where the "any" key was.:rolleyes:

Until that call, we thought the prompts we had in our shop system were completely and utterly idiot proof.

P
:D

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Originally Posted by bitingmidge

.. and I have actually been called at 1.00 am to be asked where the "any" key was.:rolleyes:

Until that call, we thought the prompts we had in our shop system were completely and utterly idiot proof.

P
:D

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Remember the universe is self leveling, when you make something idiot proof, the universe creates a better idiot:U:U

I think it's a bit rich for IT types to ascribe to stupidity the misinterpretation of their jargon by non-IT types. You've spent years of effort building up a mystique about what is really just cerebral rock-busting, then complain when a normal person calls your bluff. You can't have it both ways, fellers.

(Insert tongue-in-cheek icon here)

"stuck cursor" was always a bit of a problem.... Twink was a good solution.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...1189438505.gif

We had a university graduate who had been hired by a major consulting firm and put into a position on our project as a programmer/analyst at a cost of about $150 per hour. Her boss was responsible for phone support and his way of getting everyone up to speed with the project was to rotate the on-call mobile phone through the team. One day it was her turn and she took a call from a branch office. They had an error with their printer which she couldn't help with, so she had written down the error message as dictated over the phone:

PRINTER ERROR
BICYCLE FLOWER

After much head scratching, it turned out that the actual message was:

PRINTER ERROR
CYCLE POWER

I've just been bitten by spending too much time in IT...

The local gym has just been revamped, new carpet, new machines etc.
They've also added swipe card entry, and lockers which can be used via $2 coins or membership swipe cards.

I successfully locked my stuff away on day 1, got hot & sweaty, and was ready to go home.
The locker display reads:
1) NEW LOCKER
2) RE-ENTER LOCKER
# TO CLEAR

I stood there for an embarrasingly long while trying to find an "OPEN LOCKER" function, as I assumed that "Re-enter locker" was for when you had typed in the locker number wrongly, and wanted to re-enter the number, not physically re-enter the locker.

:doh:

Cheers,
Andrew

I sent a fax to a painter with the colours of all the walls and where the skirting was the same colour I wrote "ditto".

Some hours later I received a phone call from the painter saying he was in the paint suppliers shop and he and the rep couldn't find the colour ditto

went to assist an old lady 75/80 yesterday her son is head it for major newpaper set her up with a laptop just so she can type up the newsletter.

I got a call
Help! the screens gone black I was typing and now it all gone:doh:

Ok wait a moment what is on the screen

Nothing its gone blank/black I've lost it
Oh wait I'll shut it down an open it again!!

No wait.......to late.

Nope it's gone

ok I am coming over

yep all her typing had gone except for what she had saved about half a page not even a backup copy.

Now this poor lady is anti technology as it is fearfull she wanted to ring her son who's at work and usually in meetings.

Ok sat for a while had a play typed a bit used mouse etc.

:oo: that it its gone black she yells!!

I had highlighted the text.........she had done th same and continued typing which in turn removes the highlighted text.

Now this hs gone on for months her son grand daughter all Computer wizz techies come over rest evrything and retype the doc for her.

What was wrong is they hadn't turned off the Touchpad on the laptop but gave her a mouse so everytime she draged her palm or fingers across it bang type gone.:doh:

Auto save set up 5 mins backup 5 mins done:U LOML typed out newsletter pinted out we went home.

I overheard a guy working help desk at my company ask someone what was on their screen. He then smiled and put the person on hold and told me what she had told him...

drum roll please...

"A network of colored pipes."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she described her screen saver.

QUOTE AlexS;585288]I think it's a bit rich for IT types to ascribe to stupidity the misinterpretation of their jargon by non-IT types. You've spent years of effort building up a mystique about what is really just cerebral rock-busting, then complain when a normal person calls your bluff. You can't have it both ways, fellers.


We ran a three hour "Orientation to a PC " session at work for the manufacturing staff. At the end of the session two of the girls said "it was great, but how do you turn the machine on "

In the days of the old IBM dumb terminals and the old green/orange screens. We use to have anti clare screens fitted to all of our terminals. The guy that sat beside was very annoying so when he went to lunch I grabbed a piece of cardboard and a black nicko and colour it in. I stuck it on the inside of his anti clare screen. When he return and saw there was nothing on his screen he called IBM and logged a fault with his terminal. The promptly arrived and unplugged and replugged cables, twiddled nobs, whacked on the side and decided it was easier to replace the terminal. Lucky I came back from lunch and showed them the fault.......

They weren't to impressed but we all were.

Michael

Waaaay back when, in graduate school at Uni, we used punch cards for programs and data (terminals came along a little later). Keypunch machines were in groups of four or five, in rooms scattered around campus. It was always difficult to find an idle machine. Soooo: Keypunch machines had programming capability; useful for skipping to particular fields for data entry as most programs didn't use free format. The programs were punched on an ordinary punch card, which was then mounted on a program drum in the machine. Program or non-program was chosen by a switch. We prepared a program to skip the entire card, and mounted it on the drum. Then put "out of order" sign on the machine. When a victim tried to use the machine, it spit cards all over the place. When we wanted to use it, we removed the "out of order" sign, switched to non-program, and worked merrily away; restored to program and sign when finished. We had to repeat this exercise often, because a few spoilsports were wise to the game.

Joe

Ah yes the old programmer's tales of punch cards. You know they still use the card terminology in IBM 3270 programming - most people working on it now would never have seen a punch card (including me).

One of the blokes I used to work with reckoned if you didn't like someone, you took one of their cards out and inserted it somewhere else in the deck. Then when they tried to run it, they'd be scratching their heads trying to work out what was wrong.

We had a computing subject at uni.

Took a month to punch these stupid friggin' cards to tell a machine to draw a simple PERT schedule that I could have done by hand in about thirty-five seconds.

I never could bring myself to understand the process, nor how to arrive at the outcome. Just blindly punch holes in the card, get it to work, then make a note to self : "computers are useless, never get involved in anything to do with them ever again."

And so it was for a couple of decades, and probably why, when intelligent typewriters came in to being, I bought a Mac, not a computer.

Cheers,

P
:D

Ah yes, punch cards, Called many things but the correct name is Hollerith Code Card.

Punch cards make wonderful note pads. (I have about 500 left and are used for that purpose today.)

A punch card is 0.0075 inch thick or .19mm thick. (You can bet on it!)

When my kids were little, they kept about 1000 punch cards in their room. On rainy days they would build card houses using these punch cards. It would keep them quiet and busy for hours.

One of the guys I worked with had worked for the RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) in the early days of mainframe computers. They eventually got rid of the punch cards and replaced them with 3270 terminals (terminal screens and keyboards for the mainframe-challenged). Trouble was they only had one and you had to be a data entry operator to use it. So the programmers had to write out all their code on code sheets, which would be given to the data entry girl and she would type them all in. They then had to wait until overnight when the one and only CPU could be freed up for testing to see if the programme would work. Fix any bugs the next day, get it typed up again, and go through the whole process again until it was right.

I guess they got pretty good at 'desk checking'.

Back when I was a youngg bloke, I used to have to write programs on punch cards using a Holerith punch...not one of yer fancy IBM electrical card punches. This one had a key for each row on the card, and non-numeric characters were made up of combinations, so I soon became pretty dextrous with my fingers ;).

The worst problem was that the characters weren't printad on the card, so you always tried to get it right the first time...and never did.

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Originally Posted by AlexS

I think it's a bit rich for IT types to ascribe to stupidity the misinterpretation of their jargon by non-IT types. You've spent years of effort building up a mystique about what is really just cerebral rock-busting, then complain when a normal person calls your bluff. You can't have it both ways, fellers.

(Insert tongue-in-cheek icon here)

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I'm with you.
If someone invents something that isn't logical to the common man then it's up to them to carry that burden. :rolleyes:
Then there are those who just love to stir geeks:D:D:D

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Originally Posted by K_S

Then there are those who just love to stir geeks:D:D:D

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....:D

....one lump or two :D