How Not to Stay Lost

this is a geeky joke that only network administrators will truly appreciate:

How to not stay lost: always carry a small shovel and loop of fiberoptic cable. If lost, bury fiber optic cable in the ground. When the backhoe arrives within the hour, hitch a ride into town.

(for those who don't get it, it seems that in the same way mobile homes cause tornados to come down upon then, fiber-optic cables cause backhoes to dig through them. anyone who'd in IT will tell you of the day of the fiber cut.)

Martin, you don't have to be in IT to get that. My last job was managing a hardware store, so i usually got to hear both sides of the story. But some of those operators are, shall we say talented.

And since we are on a survival forum, if you are digging a hole be sure you call your local underground marking service. In most municipalities it is also the law. Of course we all want to hear your account of how you survived climbing out of the hole caused by sticking your shovel through a water main.

... And make sure you are on the right land...

Two Februaries ago, a survey team came through my land to do a core sample. They were a block away from the land they were supposed to be at... Tore down two Plum trees, a grape vine, part of a fence...

There were words, all very calm on my part, and reperations were made. It did create an interesting situation where A neighborhood group became very active because of the reason the survey crew was there.

Rena

since you posted the geeky joke i thought id post this, on an episode of the simpson the "comic book guy" character had on a t-shirt with a geek joke on it.

and later i saw it on an actual shirt..heh.

the shirt was black with white lettering and said:
C: DOS
C:DOS \ RUN
RUN \ DOS \ RUN

it was good for a chuckle.

One word. One phrase. For those who are or have ever done technical support.


[color:"white"]. . . . . . . . . . . . .[/color][color:"brown"]P E B K A C[/color]


~Sarah

Yep.

And there's also the somewhat less arcane error code: I D 1 0 T
(That's usually pronounced "eye-dee ten tee".)

:-)

David

O.K. eye-dee-ten-tee i understand , But ;
what is PEBKAC !!!!

PEBKAC == Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

The (l)user, iow.

On the subject of tech support I have the status of uninvolved bystander. As such I have to say that it´s quite funny. Sometimes it´s hard to hold back the laughing though. One of my favorites is a call where the helpdesk guy struggled to help the user find and hit the delete key on his keyboard over the phone for more than 15 minutes. The whole office got really desperate. The operator because of his struggle and the rest for fighting the laughter (we may be cynics but we are not neccessarily rude).

there's no place like ~/

<img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Rena

In addition to the (L)user, we've also defined the following:

The Power Meddler = someone who knows just enough to screw up his/her PC thoroughly, but never admits to having done anything. The term is derived from "Power User", a more-knowledgable-than-average user. The Power Meddler may have actually read an article in a PC magazine...once...maybe...about DOS... (Formerly classified as a Magazine reader.)

And also, the A/B-user (pronounced "aay-bee-user") = one who is abusive of the PC, and moreso of the techs who have to bail him out of the hole he dug himself into...

:-)

David

I guess it's not surprising there are at least a few sysadmins on here. Maybe more than statistically likely... The mindset and attitude are certainly appropriate. (Well, ok, maybe not the attitude. :-)

I'm no hi falut'n sys admin - I JUST CLEAN UP AFTER THEM! Just a lowly computer tech, waiting for the next time someone decides to shut the computer down half way thrugh installing the o.s.... or stuffing a catalog CD (the one s with flat sides) into a slot loading CD-ROM... Or trying to plug a SCSI device into a paralel port...

grumble, grumble

Happy August!

rena

Ah yes, good old Operator Error.