Unclassified PC Support

I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn't solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my co-workers for help; they could not offer any new ideas. After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly, "Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow construction paper?"

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Customer: "Hello? I'm trying to dial in. I installed the software okay, and it dialed fine. I could hear that. Then I could hear the two computers connecting, but then the sound all stopped, so I picked up the 'phone to see if they were still connected, and I got the message, 'No Carrier,' on my screen. What's wrong?"

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I have a friend who just bought a computer and was instructed to load a program by typing "A:" and then the name of the program. My friend told me it would not work because his keyboard was no good. He said he couldn't type the "dot over dot thingie" and that every time he tried to type the "dot over dot thingie" he kept getting the "dot over comma thingie" no matter how careful he was to press only on the very top of the key. When I taught him about the shift key, he thought I was a genius.

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This guy calls in to complain that he gets an "Access Denied" message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and password in capital letters.
Tech Support: "OK, let's try once more, but use lower case letters."
Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."

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My friend was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon. He noticed a young woman sitting in front of one of the workstations with her arms crossed across her chest and staring at the screen. After about 15 minutes he noticed that she was still in the same position only now she was impatiently tapping her foot. He asked if she needed help and she replied, "It's about time! I pushed the F1 button over twenty minutes ago!"

Unnatural Laws

• "The Law of Volunteering" If you dance with a grizzly bear, you had better let him lead.
• "The Law of Avoiding Oversell" When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse.
• "The Law of Common Sense" Never accept a drink from a urologist.
• "The Law of Reality" Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.
• "The Law of Self Sacrifice" When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
• "The Law of Motivation" Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster.
• "Boob's Law" You always find something in the last place you look.
• "Weiler's Law" Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
• "Law of Probable Dispersal" Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
• "Law of Volunteer Labor" People are always available for work in the past tense.
• "Conway's Law" In any organization there is one person who knows what is going on. That person must be fired.
• "Iron Law of Distribution" Them that has, gets.
• "Law of Cybernetic Entomology" There is always one more bug.
• "Law of Drunkenness" You can't fall off the floor.
• "Heller's Law" The first myth of management is that it exists.
• "Osborne's Law" Variables won't; constants aren't.
• "Main's Law" For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
• "Weinberg's Second Law" If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would have destroyed civilization.

US Presidential Election 2000 (1)

Stars and Stripes

A few votes for Bush, A few votes for Gore
Therefore we suggest an amendment to the American Flag
Markus W. Amman

US Presidential Election 2000 (2)

Ballot Paper

US Presidential Election 2000 (3)

THANK YOU MONICA!

The following is an unbelievable gossip:

It says that after being declared US President-Elect, W. George Bush sent a thank you card and a new green dress to Monica, and Mrs Clinton sent her a box of Havana cigars!

US Senate Demands End to Browser Development

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP, Sept. 2, 200x) - US Senate Majority Leader Ray Noorda (P-Utah) today demanded that the Department of Justice order Microsoft and Netscape to cease development of new Internet browsers, saying the ever-escalating battle for Internet dominance had sapped the American economy of its vitality.

Noorda's comments came only a day after Netscape released Version 407 of its Navigator browser, which includes the ability to listen to AM radio from any laptop. Version 407 had just completed its 37-hour beta trial, while versions 408-441 are in development. (Microsoft, which has been criticized of late for slipping behind Netscape in the browser race, vowed to deliver Version 405 of its Internet Explorer "before the next major religious holiday," though company spokesman Jim Manzi declined to specify which religion the company was referring to.) Mark Gibbs, author of IDG Books' best-selling Deleting Old Browsers for Dummies, said the continuing instability in the Internet market has virtually halted development of new applications. "How can you build to a platform that only lasts 51 days?'' asked Gibbs. "The only apps being developed now are crossword puzzles and 3-D, rotatable crossword applets."

According to research firm International Data Corp., the average PC user now has 62 browsers installed. That has significantly limited the usefulness of the desktop machine because each "browser/operating system/object bucket/API repository" consumes a minimum of 1G bytes of storage and requires 256M bytes of RAM to operate (somewhat less if the touch screen option is disabled). Intel Corp. recommends the use of at least a 757-MHz Decadium processor to support current browsers.

In the late 1990's, it was hoped that the browser model of accessing information would actually allow for the development of simpler, less-expensive desktop devices that would rely on applications and data housed on Internet servers. But the dream of the so-called Internet device died with the release of Internet Explorer Version 231, which cracked the 800M- byte storage requirement and supported some 250,000 ActiveX Controls.

(This statement best viewed with Internet Explorer Version 396.)