Apr 21
"I thought a repository was something you shoved up your ass until I discovered Ubuntu."
Jan 01
Posted by an Anonymous Coward in an unrelated discussion on Slashdot:
I have 2 dogs & I was buying a large bag of Pal at Big W and standing inline at the check out.
A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.
On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Pal Diet again although I probably shouldn’t because I’d ended up in the hospital last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IV’s in both arms.
I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Pal nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.
I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.
Horrified, she asked if I’d ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned. I told her no; it was because I’d been sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.
I thought one guy was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard as he staggered out the door.
Dec 31
From the NorthWest airlines in-flight magazine:
Darn terrorists, I can’t even drink out of the toilet any more!
Dec 13
Adolf Hitler was the führer of Germany, who reformed the German economy in the 1930s. He enjoyed painting and playing with his dog. He married his lifelong sweetheart, Eva Braun, two days prior to his death.[Citation needed]
See also: Criticism of Adolf Hitler.
Jul 08
Working in data recovery as I did, you get plenty of amusing disaster stories.
One day a businessman brought in some dead floppy disks. (This was in the days when people actually worked on floppy disks, as well as using them for removable storage.)
He told us that the floppies contained all his business data, but that they had somehow become unreadable. Fortunately, he had been careful—he had asked his secretary to make a copy of the disks every evening at close of business, and store the copies safely in the filing cabinet.
He showed us the copies. A thick stack of photocopies of floppy disks, each carefully annotated with the date it was made.
I’ve seen other stories like this, but I can vouch for the fact that this really happened at least once.
Jul 08
We had sold a computer system and software to a local company, and were providing them with ongoing support. One day they called, and said the machine wouldn’t boot.
Me: OK, so what does it display on the screen when you first power it on?
User: Nothing.
Me: No text at all?
User: No.
Me: OK, is the light on the front of the monitor on?
User: Yes.
Me: And the monitor is definitely plugged into the computer?
User: Hang on… [Checks.] Yes, there are two cables coming out of the monitor, one is plugged into the computer, the other is plugged into the power socket.
Me: OK. Can you open up the panel on the front of the monitor, and try turning the brightness and contrast knobs clockwise.
User: OK. [Pause] No change.
Me: When you power the computer on, does it beep at all?
User: Hang on. [Pause] No, no sound at all.
Me: OK, sounds like a power supply failure. We’ll send someone round.
Someone gets picked to go diagnose the problem. He returns and reports what happened: It turned out that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the machine. The problem was that the user had never pushed the power button on the front of the computer, they’d just been powering it on from the wall.
The user explained as follows: “Oh, I saw the button marked ‘POWER’, but I thought that was like the ‘TURBO’ button, and made the machine go faster.”
Well, yes, in a manner of speaking it did.
Jul 05
User: I can’t do anything right now, my laptop’s broken.
Me: Don’t you still have that spare I set up for you?
User: That one’s broken as well.
Me: Maybe I can get it running again. I know it’s old and the IT people won’t fix it, but it’s better than nothing.
User: Well, it’s not really a problem with the software.
Me: I’ve got spare RAM and hard drives.
User: Well, it’s a bit embarrassing really. Don’t tell anyone,† but…I backed my car over it.
Me: Accidentally?
User: Of course accidentally!
Me: But…how?
User: I was in the parking lot, and I put it on the ground while I put some stuff in the trunk. Then I forgot it was there.
† I feel that ethically speaking, an anonymized story like this doesn’t constitute telling anyone.
Jul 05
Customer: I ordered some software from you last week. The package arrived, but there wasn’t any software; just the printed instructions.
Support: No software? Was the disk corrupted?
Customer: Disk?
Support: [Pause] The black square thing with a hole in the middle.
Customer: Oh, that. I thought that was just packing material, I threw that away.
Jul 05
Seeing a thread on Slashdot about anecdotes from technical support reminds me that I haven’t posted mine here. So, time to start. I’ll be limiting myself to stories of things that either happened to me personally, or happened to a colleague I was working with; no “friend of a friend” stuff.
There are stories of more dubious provenance at rinkworks.com. I love their quote from Charles Babbage, which has to be the earliest example of a clueless user story.
Apr 29
I feel like I ought to explain the whole Wii thing. Yes, it’s puerile, but that’s incidental. Anusol and Flatulex aren’t particularly funny because the brands reflect what the product is really about; but when you name a video game system after something from the bathroom, then it’s funny. Context. That’s what makes Mike Meyers’ jokes about Preparation-H funny; it’s in an inappropriate context.
I love mocking stupid corporate branding. I found it funny when we were sitting in a bagel shop in Cambridge and saw an Internet terminal branded “NetPecker“; the company went bust, surprise surprise. Otis Spunkmeyer describe their name as “fun and memorable”. Well, yes, sniggering at Spunkmeyer iced brownies is fun, I guess.
Branding disasters don’t have to be bathroom-related to be funny, though. It was stupid for the UK Post Office to rename themselves Consignia; they renamed themselves back a year later. Dumber was the UK railway company that had the stupid idea of naming themselves “One”. Station announcements for the 9:30 One train to London caused confusion, and they had to rename themselves again. Both companies were mocked, deservedly. Childish?
I’m pretty sure renaming PriceWaterhouseCoopers Consulting wasn’t a bad idea, but picking “Monday” as the new name was. The only thing that saved them from professional ridicule was being bought by IBM, who immediately killed the whole “Monday” thing.
Would you believe that a company is trying to sell dog and cat food under the brand name BARF? (Do they sell Kitten BARF and Puppy BARF?) Who at Coca-Cola thought that naming their new drink “Zero” was a good idea? “BlaK” was bad enough, especially at the start when they put a line over the ‘a’ suggesting that it was pronounced “Blake”. (They’ve now changed it to a Coke swoosh.)
Internet branding is full of stupidity. Remember when Palm renamed themselves pa1mOne? (Hint: any brand that’s 1337sp34k is stupid.) I can’t see Samsung’s WiBro taking off, fo’shizzle. And on a more trivial note, what possessed C|net to make all their URLs look like alt.cnet.swedish-chef.bork.bork.bork? And the less said about Oui Oui Bebe the better.
Of course, it wasn’t Yeslam Bin Ladin’s fault that his plans for Bin Ladin branded perfume and clothing were ruined, but would you buy a Studebaker Dictator? I guess dictators were all the rage a hundred years ago, and you can still buy Autocrat coffee, though the Aryan supermarket chain Purity Supreme is no longer with us, having been bought by the shrewd but dull brand Stop’n'Shop.
Would you rub Nad’s on your body? Even with the apostrophe, it’s still a terrible brand name. Every time I see Nasalcrom I think of Conan the Barbarian; what do you think Zim’s Crack Creme is for? Worse still is POOLIFE®. Terrible. I can’t believe they went as far as registering it, let alone writing it in all caps.
Magazines pick silly names too. Self, the magazine about the person you love the most. Heeb, the magazine for Jews, current issue “The money issue”. Back in the 80s, Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky joked about a magazine for conspiracy theorists called Popular Paranoia, and now it exists. And at least Crochet Fantasy didn’t decide to call themselves Crochet Rocket.
So is it childish to laugh at such things? Perhaps, but people do it all the time. Childish jokes about sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend have been around for decades. Foreign Engrish remains a source of amusement to thousands. Yes, English isn’t their first language; but even if you’re Japanese or Spanish, you ought to check what your company name might mean in English.
Unfortunately, Nintendo fanboys get all bent out of shape and puritanical when you start mocking their favorite video game company’s products. Perhaps it has something to do with the way the GameCube has been dismissed as a “kiddy game” console for years?
Anyhow, the Nintendo Wiinies are now theorizing that it’s all a cunning publicity stunt, and that the real name for Wii will be revealed next week. Maybe Wii is intentionally awful, like Dogfish Head Golden Shower beer.
I’m doubtful; Japanese companies have a knack for bad product names. Even video game companies—consider Irritating Stick and Radiata Stories. (”I was bleeding the valve one time when scalding water shot out over the carpet…”)
I hope for Nintendo’s sake that that the publicity stunt theory is true. I mean, really, I have nothing against Nintendo—I own a GameCube—and the last thing they need is to attach a childishly silly name to their new console.
And if you want to flame me or call me childish, first tell me you didn’t laugh at any of the above. I’ll tell you that you need a sense of humor.