Computer bloopers

elecplus · 18 Mar 2015, 16:59

Many years ago, there was a young Navy recruit whose job was to give the Commander a diskette with the daily files he needed. He was fresh out of tech school, so he thought he would do it the "smart" way, and he wrote a little DOS script to put the necessary files onto the 5.25" diskette. Then he would verify the files on the diskette, and deliver them to the Commander.

Trouble was, the Commander could never read the diskette. It was always blank, and needed to be formatted. After 2 days of this he went to the recruits office and demanded that he be shown just exactly how he was preparing the diskette.

Quaking in his boots, the recruit showed him the script, and put a fresh set of files on a new diskette. Then he verified them. "Very good", said the Commander. "What do you do with it next?"

"Well, since it is usually at least an hour before you come on board, I take this large magnet and stick the diskette to the filing cabinet so I won't forget to give it to you."

seebart · 18 Mar 2015, 17:11

Good one.

andrewjoy · 18 Mar 2015, 17:35

Ha ha ha ha!

My favourite modern one is , my mouse keeps moving all over the screen when i type. OK so you check the trackpad is working and it is , so you watch them type only to discover they are using the trackpad as a wrist rest. Never happens on OS X tho i wonder why ? It must have something that blocks trackpad input when you type.

Findecanor · 18 Mar 2015, 17:58

There is an infamous Swedish newspaper article from '00 that gets reposted on Swedish forums now and then:
"Andreas has tested for every possible software problem. Now, he has come to the hardware. The mother-modem, the actual heart of the hard drive, does not work."

elecplus · 18 Mar 2015, 18:08

True story:
Last week we had a fellow come in looking for capacitors. I asked him what kind of capacitors, and he said they were for his motherboard. Then he produced a naked motherboard. Totally naked, just a green board with lots of holes, absolutely no chips or anything else. Even the memory holders and PCI slots were gone.

So I asked him where all the parts were. He said a friend had sold him the bare motherboard, told him that "parts were easy to get, just ask any computer store".

I hated to burst his bubble! His buddy had told him it was an I5 motherboard, but it was made in 1994...

andrewjoy · 18 Mar 2015, 18:24

Thats terrible , i hope it was just a practical joke between fiends and he gives him the money back.

Then again its the only way they will learn.

fohat · 18 Mar 2015, 23:29

elecplus wrote: Many years ago, there was a young Navy recruit whose job was to give the Commander a diskette with the daily files he needed. He was fresh out of tech school, so he thought he would do it the "smart" way, and he wrote a little DOS script to put the necessary files onto the 5.25" diskette. Then he would verify the files on the diskette, and deliver them to the Commander.

Trouble was, the Commander could never read the diskette. It was always blank, and needed to be formatted. After 2 days of this he went to the recruits office and demanded that he be shown just exactly how he was preparing the diskette.

Quaking in his boots, the recruit showed him the script, and put a fresh set of files on a new diskette. Then he verified them. "Very good", said the Commander. "What do you do with it next?"

"Well, since it is usually at least an hour before you come on board, I take this large magnet and stick the diskette to the filing cabinet so I won't forget to give it to you."

My cousin actually did something like this, about 1984, when she stuck her (professor) husband's (5-1/4") floppy disc on the refrigerator so that he would not forget it. It was his only copy of a major project.