2002-04-19 - 9:43 a.m.
Well, it looks like BFI really meant it when they said they'd pick up our trash...a trash rollercan thingy showed up at our house yesterday...way cool.
But, that's not what I'm talking about today...today I'm talking about people who just shouldn't be allowed to use computers at work.
Okay, I admit it, I'm a computer kid. My father works for Unisys (used to be Burroughs), and back in the mid 70's, he was a trainer for their field engineers.
Well, in order to train field engineers how to fix computers, he had to break them first. This was back when breaking them meant pulling good hardware and putting in bad, for the most part.
So, he went in to the office about one weekend a month or so to break the computers for his next week's training classes. And Mom went in to keep him company, and they brought me because it was cheaper than day care.
So they sat me down in front of a terminal with a bunch of games. I remember B-80 Golf, invasion of the killer bees, and the coolest game of all time..."Rats"
Rats was Berserk before Berserk was cool. You were walking around a randomly generated maze, with a gun, trying to shoot rats. The rats were coming out of rat factories, which you had your mission to blow up. Occasionally, you'd shoot a rat and it would split into four baby rats, which moved fast and were almost impossible to kill.
This was a really cool game. I think it would still be cool today...I wonder who actually wrote it...
Anyhow...so I was working on a computer before I was 8. I leared to program in BASIC before I was 10. We had a B-80 computer in our house when I was 11. (a B-80 was Burrough's Mid-level business computer...probably about equivalent to a 486-25 these days, but back then it was the fastest thing on the market). I owned my first PC at 16, and I've pretty much bought a new one every couple of years since then.
So, yes, I'm computer literate...I admit it. And it's a good thing too, because it's like my job, you know?
I work for a law firm here in Richmond...and I sit next to one of the legal secretaries. She is *not* computer literate.
As an example, yesterday our tech support guy had to replace her computer because she needed a bigger hard disk and her keyboard was on the fritz, and generally wasn't working right.
So today, she is complaining because "this computer isn't working".
What makes her say that? The fact that her printouts weren't printing.
Why weren't her printouts printing? Because she had chosen to send them to a printer in Minneapolis.
"Well...I usually print to printer 3, so I chose the third printer on the list...isn't that printer 3?" (blissfully ignoring the fact that the name of the third printer on the list is "Minneapolis Office 2nd Floor Color Printer").
Duh...
Now she's calling up all her friends and complaining about it....
Of course, she won't call the helpdesk, because "they can't help me". Of course they can't help you, you won't call them...DUH!
She bitches because her printouts take 5 seconds to print...over a network.
I'm sorry...she just needs to be introduced to a chainsaw...hold on a moment while I enjoy that fantasy.....
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Ahhh...much better now...
Onto happier things...Night On Board is tomorrow, and we're all packed and ready to go. Should be fun.
Still working on the distillation of just what in the heck I believe in...it'll probably come out next week sometime...but here's a sneak peek:
"And Gorm said 'Let there be a fishtank'...and there was...and it was good. And Gorm did cause the fishtank to be filled with water, and a couple of nice plants, and even a florescent castle like thing. And he caused the florescent light to be turned on for a few hours each day, so there was day and night. And it was good."
And yes...that does factor into my personal belief system...I think I'll be calling it "Goldfishism", but I'm not sure on that yet.
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