Live from Austin!

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.

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.

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.