Boss helped sysadmin take down horrible client with swift kick to the nether regions Welcome once more to On-Call, in which Register readers share their stories of silly tech support incidents. This week meet “Jay” who told us that “Long ago, in a career far away, I worked in Field Service for Wang Laboratories in the Philadelphia, PA, area.” Among the products that Jay tended was the model 702 plotter. Jay …
The acid test will be whether Simon cares enough to stay on as a commentard. I hope he will: to disappear completely would seem a bit dismissive both to his successor and his community.
Raise a glass to Simon as I see his future self: a scurrilous backseat driver as Rebecca takes the column on to new excitements.
I wonder if Simon will be remembered, many, many years from now, in the way today we celebrate the life of Steve Ditko, on his death last month, aged 90, the creator of Spiderman and Dr Strange. Funny how people we never get to meet and often don't even know the names of, can have such an affect on our lives.
I took a new job recently - so I know the feeling. I hope you have some rounds of ---> before you leave. Great column you started, thanks for (all the fish ;p )
The story goes that a guy with a car gets towed into a mechanic's. The shop owner looks at the car, takes a hammer, hits it. The car springs to life again, and the mechanic demands 100 quid for the fix. "But you only hit it with a hammer!" goes the customer, "please write me a proper bill for what you did!". The bill read: "hit car with hammer: 5. Know where to hit: 95."
(I guess most of you know that one...)
> The bill read: "hit car with hammer: 5. Know where to hit: 95."
Some years back, the viscous coupled fan on my Landie froze, so I decided to replace it with an electric one. Removing the old fan seemed really hard. Some people spoke of having to buy a special tool, others that it could be done but only if you were a contortionist. I took it down to my local old-style garage, and asked f he could help. He said "Pull it in closer," and while i was doing that got an air line and a percussion attachment. He opened the bonnet, had a good look, aimed the tool carefully, and there was a short "PRRFT, and then he simply hand-spun the fan off the now-loosened bolt. As he closed the bonnet, I said to him "That took 10 seconds and 25 years." He smiled, understanding me perfectly.
He wouldn't charge me either.
Thanks for all the good columns.
> "got an air line and a percussion attachment. He opened the bonnet, had a good look, aimed the tool carefully, and there was a short "PRRFT, and then he simply hand-spun the fan off the now-loosened bolt."
If any of you have a suitably size air compressor and air tank. I can say an impact wrench is wonderful to have. I don't know if the electric ones work as good, but they don't make the cool air tool sound.
I was replacing an alternator in a car. I thought I lucked out as the new one came with a pulley already attached. But alas, it had a slightly smaller diameter and I couldn't get the belt tight enough. I couldn't loosen the nut on the old alternator as the pulley just spun even clamped between two boards. Finally went and bought an air impact wrench for my compressor. The nut came loose in a jiffy with me holding the pulley in my gloved hand.
I've got an electric impact driver (the impact wrench's baby brother), and.... it's just not the same, especially if the nut is rusted on. If it is, it's gonna take either the air driven wrench, or a large breaker bar with a length of pipe to increase the amount of leverage, AND possibly a couple well-aimed blows from a large dead-blow hammer. And at that point, you are getting very close to breaking the bolt, which makes the problem worse. :)
@J. Cook
I've got two electric impact wrenches. They work really well, about as well as their air brethren.
The downside is that they are bulkier, both bigger and heavier than an air driven one.
I have one that is corded and does 250 foot pounds of torque which I use to remove nuts and bolts from cars, and a 20V cordless that is rated at 116 foot pounds of torque that I use to put nuts and bolts back on.
I've used them for exhaust systems, suspension work, brake work over several years and they haven't let me down yet.
For the super rusted nyts and bolts that I worried would snap, I would start with a propane torch and get them nice and hot.
I do miss the compressor and air impact noises though.
In the 1960s, in the days before fuel injection, my Dad did exactly that sort of thing (tapped on the carburetor) on a Sunday to a car that had stopped running near his apartment. He did not charge for it, but told the driver to have it properly repaired before it happened again. There was a small crowd, and I was proud of the Old Man.
I once heard, and I can't promise it isn't apocryphal, of a police sergeant who used to deal with cases of paranoid old ladies - the ones who went into the station telling them, for instance, that there was a black man with a knife lurking outside their house - by going round to their house, drawing occult symbols with chalk on the doorstep, and telling them their house was now magically protected. It apparently had a high success rate both in lack of police time wasting and knifing of little old ladies.
Oh, and best wishes Simon.
I've heard tell, more than once, of social services thinking "okay, this poor sod's got some bad paranoia and some clear religious leanings: maybe the local priest would be willing to do a blessing or something to calm them down?".
The local priest might do, or they might give the diocesan exorcist a call. CoE exorcists are generally trained in mental health issues, because, well, Anglicans are generally inclined towards being Sensible about things.
And so, a meeting is arranged. the priest talks to the poor soul that social services are worried about, and with appropriate due diligence decides that maybe they should go with the ritual route. Social Services attend because they need to be sure nothing untoward is happening, and honestly who would turn down a chance to see an actual exorcism? They don't exactly happen three times a day at the Odeon.
The usual result is a calmer client, the priests comfortably convinced there was nothing demonic going on and happy to have helped, and at least one social worker now 100% certain ghosts are real and they just saw one banished.
"The usual result is a calmer client, the priests comfortably convinced there was nothing demonic going on and happy to have helped, and at least one social worker now 100% certain ghosts are real and they just saw one banished."
I once had the misfortune to live next to a pair of social workers, who appeared to live on a different planet.
It wasn't just me; all my normal neighbours were of the same opinion.
"When it comes to old ladies and black men with big knives, Sigmund Freud is your go-to."
Ah, the good Dr Freud. Someone once summed up his career as having started out in animal husbandry until someone caught him at it, at which point he switched to diseases of the rich. The first part sounds more like Jung but I can't fault the second.
No, it isn't. As the derivation suggests, exorcism is the removal of evil spirits, not magical protection against imaginary dangers. Also note that the first is approved of by the Catholic church and some Anglicans while the latter is disapproved of by both.
if you tried to argue it in public against a Jesuit I fear you'd come a very poor second.
Jesuits are one's you'll never win against. Doesn't matter the topic and they don't need in depth knowledge. On the up side, many do know the best local brews.
To paraphrase Dr Johnson, a man is never more innocently employed than in trying to convert a Jehovah's Witness. An excellent way to spend a wet winter's afternoon. But the game is rather like cricket: one does not play to win, but merely to draw.
I always read this column due to it's lighthearted, yet terribly real, content. It's always refreshing to know that the Mad Bosses and Psychos that we encouter on a daily basis are not just within our own offices...
Thanks for all the good work and best of luck for the new adventure...
Not IT, but many years ago, back when I was in school, I had a part time job in a coffee bar. One day the customers started complaining that the jukebox had stopped working. I walked up to it and held my hand, palm vertical, above the front panel. I moved my hand slowly to the left and then to the right and when I got back to the centre did a light 'karate' chop on the panel. The machine suddenly burst into life and the customers gave a great cheer as I pretended to be nonchalant while I walked back behind the counter.
I got the sack a while later, but that might have been to do with the other incident of balancing about 30 glasses stacked one inside the other.
p.s. thanks for the articles Simon and good luck!
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