Befuddled PC Users Flood Help Lines, and no Question Seems to be Too Basic
From the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, March 1, 1994. Reprinted without permission
AUSTIN, Texas - The exasperated help-line caller said she couldn't get her new Dell computer to turn on. Jay Ablinger, a Dell Computer Corp. technician, made sure the computer was plugged in and then asked the woman what happened when she pushed the power button.
by John Carney
From: paul0426@tarsus.com (Paul, A Servant Of Jesus Christ)
To: allusers@rome.org
CC: s_peter@jol.com (Judaea Online)
Attachments: none
Subject: general teaching
This memo is to announce the development of a new firm-wide software system. We are currently building a data center that will contain all firm data that is Year 2000 compliant. The program is referred to as the "Millennia Year Application Software System" (MYASS).
Next Monday at 9:00 there will be a meeting in which I will show MYASS to everyone. We will continue to hold demonstrations throughout the month so that…
Micro was a real-time operator and dedicated multi-user. His broad-band protocol made it easy for him to interface with numerous input/output devices, even if it meant time-sharing.
One evening he arrived home, just as the Sun was crashing and had parked his Motorola 6800 in the main drive (he missed the 5100 bus that morning), when he noticed an elegant piece of hardware escorting her daisy wheels in his garden. He…
The Latest Breaking News on the GoodTimes Virus It turns out that this so-called hoax virus is verydangerous after all. Goodtimes will re-write your harddrive. Not only that, it will scramble any disks that areeven close to your computer. It will recalibrate yourrefrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goesmelty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your creditcards, screw up the tracking on your…
God and the ComputerIn the beginning there was the computer. And God typed: %>Let there be light! #Please login. %>login God #Password?. %>Omniscient #Password incorrect. Try again. %>Omnipotent #Password incorrect. Try again. %>Technocrat #And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Sunday, March 1. %>Let there be light! #Unrecognizable command. Try again. %>Create light #Done %>Run heaven_and_earth #And God created Day and…
July 18 - I just tried to connect to America Online. I've heard it is the best online service I can get. They even included a free disk! I'd better hold onto it in case they don't ever send me anther one! I can't connect. I don't know what is wrong.
July 19 - Some guy at the tech support center says my computer needs a modem. I don't see why. He's just trying to cheat me. How dumb does he think I am?
I am currently running the latest version of GirlFriend and I've been having some problems lately. I've been running the same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 forever as my primary application, and all the GirlFriend releases I've tried have always conflicted with it. I hear that DrinkingBuddies won't crash if GirlFriend is run in background mode and the sound is turned off. But I'm embarrassed to say I can't find the…
A truck driver hauling a tractor-trailer load of computers stops in a bar for a beer. As he approaches the bar he sees a big sign on the door saying "NERDS NOT ALLOWED-ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!" He goes in and sits down. The bartender comes over to him, sniffs, and says, "You smell kind of nerdy, and just what do you do for a living?" The truck driver says, "I drive a truck, and the smell is just from the computers…
