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K, another story, again by the guy named "not me" (see Family Circus)

I was working in a computer retail store <cough>Computer City</cough> (second job while in the Air Force) when a guy came in looking for Wordperfect 6.0.

We had a promo copy on sale at the time and I pointed him in that direction. When he saw the price he was a happy camper (only 199.00) for the full retail version.

The fella took the software home and came back later that evening. He was furious that the software did not work and that it totally screwed up his machine ???. I went over to the counter where he had set his machine. Anyone remember the days of the 3 1/2" floppies? He had stuck the first disk of six into the drive (it went in and down to seat itself on the spindle). When the app asked him to put the second disk in he did. When it asked for what he thought was the third disk he put that in too.... He did say however that the third disk was a little difficult.

You see since the first disk went in and down the second fit quite nicely on top of the first.... The third disk (which it was actually asking for the second disk again) went in at an angle and actually fit upon some manual encouragement. So three floppies in a single disk at one time = one screwed up floppy drive + one screwed up Wordperfect install + one pissed off customer.

Management was nice enough to RMA the Wordperfect for him and give him a new set of disks as long as he purchased a new floppy drive and allowed us to install the app for him. Strangely enough he said YES (go figure)!

PS..

He told me off to the side that he was wondering how he was going to get the rest of the disks in...
 
And a cute one from "not me" again,

Working at same location as above!! The tech behind the counter was Figuratively and Literally ROFL... I came over to see what he was doing now since the guy was a real clown. He told me that I would "have to take the call for him (line 2)" through his laughter.

On the line was a dear old old grandmother who proceeded to ask me a question.

"What type of boot should I get for my computer...? The neighbor said I need to reboot my computer and I just want to know what kind to get...?"

She actually thought that she needed to buy a boot for her machine and was very confused why it would need one in the first place and which type to get.

I explained to her that he meant to "turn the computer off and then back on again" (this was the easiest way to tell her). That is what we call a reboot.

She laughed pretty hard once she realized what she had just asked.
 
8O .... I mean... 8O
Shocked.png
 
I really tried to help the guy out, but to be honest the guy was somewhat STILL being a jerk about "our" mess up...

When he left he basically told me that "I" should have made sure that "he" did not make that mistake.

It was my fault for NOT assuming that EVERYONE is a dork...
 
During my stint in hell as an HP computer phone tech support associate I took a call where the customer was complaining that the color printer that came with their new HP Pavillion would only print their documents in black and white, so rather than shuffle them off to printer support, I asked them what color was the text on the screen that they were trying to print....their response was "black".

I then had to explain what WYSIWYG is and that they would need to change the color of the text on the screen if they wanted to print in a color other than black.

Now how many of you are googling "WYSIWYG" ?
 
My favorite French scene in a film has to be the opening scene for "Team America World Police"...

Now that is funny... Great movie...

Gotta see the unrated version though 8O 8O
 
probably my worst story is one that I still debate whether it was actually my fault or just incredibly bad timing. But I was stupid nonetheless.

For whatever reason I felt it necessary to monkey with my partitions on my primary HDD, you know, the one with that silly OS thingy on it, because I wanted to have a double boot with Win98 and Linux. Well, after a while I decided to just build a seperate computer for Linux, and revert that one back to solely Win98. Things took a turn for the worse, and halfway through the repartioning the computer ceased responding. I left the ah heck on for upwards of two days, just hoping and praying it would finish. At long last I gave up and hit the reset. Reboot confirmed my fears, no boot sector, no viable OS. No way for me to get my data (several for-sale pictures I digitally created myself from scratch, and a half completed book I was writing with no hardcopy printed). Whats more, there seemed to be some sort of hardware malfunction in the drive itself, as now the bios was unable to even recognize it. For all intents and purposes, the drive was dead. So did I cause a hardware error, or did a hardware error cause the stall and subsequent demise? I have kept the drive to this day, unable to bare parting with the more-than-likely destroyed data it once contained, in the hopes that one day I may have a spare $2000 to send it to a company to get the contents retreived.
 
Ok,

Back on topic...

There I was, it was just me and my swiss army knife.... :)

K for real,

While in the Air Force there was a guy that was working on a piece of equipment that is called a Kleistron.... These fed Humumgous amounts of power to a very large circ antenna.

These pieces of equipment had to have what we called PMs done every month to ensure they stay in working order. Now these devices STORE a very large charge and must be serviced in a very srtict order/checklist.

One of the techs actually forgot one of the steps in the checklist (distratcted or something)... The step he missed was the part where you trip the discharge...

There are two very large terminals at the top that had to be torqued during every service (they never changed but needed to be done none the less). The torque wrench used is ~2ft long and clicks when torque is met. After completing discharge 😉 he proceeded to torqueing the terminals. He very quickly found that the discharge was not complete when he was thrown across the room hitting the back wall... He had brought the wrench too close to the other terminal and it arc'd to the wrench. (OUCH)

He is lucky since most people that get hit clinch their fists and you have to get the wooden cane to pull them off...
 
by the way, do those anti-static wrist thingies really do anything? because i never used one in my life and i havn't killed anything yet. maybe just dumb luck
Click to expand...

no one answered him, I'm confused about this too. Anyone mind answering??


thx
 
The one time you should have used one but did'nt will be the tell all... 😉

The wrist straps do work and can prevent ESD (electro-static-discharge) when used properly.

To that note I do not use them either but I am way too careful around my case when open at all.

I find the folks that fry things this way either leave the case open all the time and kinda disregard protocol or those folks who do not know about it at all.

I just ground myself to the case with the plug still in the wall then disconnect.

Anytime I get up and sit down again to start working I do the same again just to be sure.
 
Okay so a few years back the company I work for installs a new HP server for another company. It's a multi thousand LC series tower unit. It looks like a small mobile drinks cabinet ( it's big ). Now this place doesn't have a dedicated server room so they install the server in the storage room. It's was cool and pretty safe, and as the building was just being finished it seemed the best place for the server to be. Until.... and here's the kicker.. someone working on the building decided to store the chemicals they have been cleaning the brickwork with in the same room. Somehow a bottle of muriatic acid get spilled onto the floor and then left overnight. So the room fills with the fumes and the server's fans rightly pull the stuff inside the case. Muriatic acid is used for cleaning masonry but is so caustic it will attack almost anything !!!

Within 48 hrs... every metallic surface on the server is rusted. I mean case, screws, power supplies, hard drive covers.... it is completely ruined. And so down the toilet goes a several grand server !!!

However after the insurance claim was dealt with and everything was forgotten this machine carried on working..... and it still runs in our office under the bench today. I am guessing it's been 4 years. It looks like a special effects PC from an apocalyptic movie... but "Acid Burn" as it is affectionately known... still soldiers on.
 
Qué usted ve es lo que usted obtiene.
Click to expand...

The correct translation is "lo que usted ve es lo que usted obtiene" either that or "lo que ves es lo que tienes", both are correct, depending who are you refering to. Yours is the literal translation, which is wrong 😛
 
My worst screw up was actually a funny one, it wasn't even a screw-up on my part. My friend and I were both building comps with K6's (spare me the flaming, I didn't know back then) and when we powered up our comps they posted and then crashed, but there was this funny small. Well both of our CPUs had burned HOLES in them! Just HOLES! HSs were properly mounted and everything, but the CPUs just BURNED! Never bought AMD since then.
 
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