Re: you never know when your SSD might be used in a time machine.
Not just a signed integer but a signed short integer. A standard 32bit one would be:
2,147,483,6476
5893 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007
I was one of the sneaky spoilsports that wrote a listing program in assembler that would do a normal list with all those codes as numbers in square brackets.
Incidentally, did you know that using the SPOOL command with a text file on disk, you could assemble 16k sideways ROM images on an ordinary BEEB
Never provoke a NaN
My Nan was a sweet little old lady who'd never hurt a fly. Quiet as a mouse, so much of the time you'd forget she was there. However, even in her late 90s she had near total recall of everything we said and did, right back to when we were in nappies. As I said:
Never Provoke a Nan!
The prescription is handled electronically between the the pharmacy and the surgery, but for renewals, I'm given a repeat form (used to be half of the prescription itself) and have to hand that in to the pharmacy next time. However, the renewal form isn't just a copy of the last one, but freshly (electronically) fetched from the surgery. Now that would be fine but for one problem. Sometimes the repeat from has items missing - not because the treatment has ended, but because someone somewhere failed to tick a box. So then I have to go to the surgery (and wait in a long queue - sometimes in the rain) to fill in a new request.
I've learned to not throw away the empty packets until I have replacements.
It then takes at least 3 days to be cleared.
That's just one of the ways new users are taken in by this evil entity.
About a year ago I was asked to look at a problem one of the office ladies had with the scroll wheel. It would go 'up' with no problem, but when going 'down' after a short distance the pointer stopped moving. Rather to my surprise it did behave exactly as described, so I grabbed a spare one and that behaved perfectly. The boss was quite happy to order another spare, so I took the faulty one home to examine.
I confirmed it still did this on my computer, then opened it up. At first I couldn't see the problem, but when working the wheel with the top off I spotted a tiny lump of crap moving. It turned out there was a hair wrapped round the wheel spindle which when scrolled one way, would pull this over the photodetector. This wasn't wrapped tight enough to stop the wheel moving though. As soon as you scrolled in the other direction, it would drop back out of the way.
The user was delighted to get 'her' cured mouse back.