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Autumn 1997
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After another daring raid into the helpdesk archives, armed only with a bent paperclip and a rolled-up copy of the spring issue, Stacker returns. This selection can best be described as out-takes from the "How Not To Do It" file.
A customer was issued with a software update on 5.25" disk. However, he was having great difficulty persuading the system to read it.
After several attempts, the techie asked the customer if he had removed the diskette from its outer sleeve, meaning the paper envelope.
The customer said, "Oh, I see. Just a minute." Then he put the phone down on the desk. After a few seconds the techie could hear the sound of scissors and rending plastic as the disk's protective jacket was cut open.
A customer telephoned the helpdesk to report that their new UPS was not working. They assured the technician that they had cabled everything up in accordance with the instructions, but when they tried to test the powerfail facility, the computer went off as well. The techie asked what they had done, and learned that they had tried to test the battery by switching the UPS off.
As part of a local government programme, computers were being installed in primary schools throughout the city. A techie received a phone call from a teacher, who said that no matter what the children typed into the word processor, they got gibberish on the screen.
After trying everything else he could think of, the techie asked what characters appeared on screen when the teacher pressed the QWERTY keys.
"ABCDEF," came the reply. The teacher had thought that the children wouldn't be able to find the letters they wanted with the QWERTY keyboard layout so she had stuck stickers over the keycaps lettering them in alphabetical order, and lower case.
A customer's machine had developed a mysterious HAL-like antipathy towards the managing director. Each time he walked past, it would reboot itself, crashing users out of programs and initiating frantic calls to the helpdesk.
Given that the MD was a generally affable chap, and neither radioactive, demonically
possessed nor an alien abductee, the technicians were baffled. The machine remained
in perfect working order as long as the MD did not pass anywhere near it. Finally,
after dowsing-rods and pendulums had failed to diagnose the problem, it was
traced to a loose floorboard outside the MD's office, which ran underneath the
machine. Every time he left the room, his weight on the floorboard jogged a
loose connection in the power supply and caused the machine to reboot.
Last Updated: 31 October 1998