At AST, another customer dutifully complied with a technician’s request that she send in a copy of a defective floppy disk. A letter from the customer arrived a few days later, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy. And at Dell, a technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and “close the door.” Asking the technician to “hold on,” the customer put the phone down and was heard walking over to shut the door to his room. The technician meant the door to his floppy drive.

The software inside the computer can be equally befuddling. A Dell customer called to say he couldn’t get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the “send” key.

Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so Dell technician Gary Rock referred him to the local Egghead. “Yeah, I got me a couple friends,” the customer replied. When told Egghead was software store, the man said, “Oh! I thought you meant for me to find couple of geeks.

Not realizing how fragile computers can be, some people end up damaging parts beyond repair. A Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it, he said, filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking his keyboard for a day, and the removing all the keys and washing them individually.

Computers make some people paranoid. A Dell technician, Morgan Vergaran says he once calmed a man who became enraged because, “his computer has told him he was bad and an invalid.” Mr. Vergara patiently explained that the computer’s “bad command” and “invalid” responses shouldn’t be taken personally.

These days PC-help technicians increasingly find themselves taking on the role of amateur psychologists. Mr. Shuler, the dell technician who once worked as a psychiatric nurse, says he defused a potential domestic fight by soothingly talking a man through a computer problem after the man had screamed threats at his wife and children in the background

There are also the lonely hearts who seek out human contact, even if it happens to be a computer techie. One man from New Hampshire calls Dell every time he experiences a life crisis. He gets a technician to walk him through some contrived problem with his computer, apparently feeling uplifted by the process.

“A lot of people want reassurance,” says Mr. Shuler

Last year, my friend upgraded his GirlFriend 3.1 to GirlFriendPlus1.0 (marketing name: Fiancee1.0).

Recently he upgraded Fiancee1.0 to Wife1.0, and it’s a memory hogger! It has taken all his space; and Wife1.0 must be running before he can do anything. Although he didn’t ask for them, Wife1.0 came with Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw and BrotherInLaw. These too slow down the system and cause a slow drain on the resources and well-being of the computer.

Some features I’d like to see in the upcoming GirlFriend4.0:

1. A “Don’t remind me again” button.

2. Minimize button.

3. Shutdown feature – An install shield feature so that Girlfriend4.0 can be completely uninstalled if so desired (so you don’t lose cache and other objects).

I tried running Girlfriend 2.0 with Girlfriend 1.0 still installed; they tried using the same I/O port and conflicted. Then I tried to uninstall Girlfriend 1.0, but it didn’t have an uninstall program. I tried to uninstall it by hand, but it put files in my system directory.

Another thing that sucks–in all versions of Girlfriend that I’ve used is that it is totally “object orientated” and only supports hardware with gold plated contacts.

Bug warning
Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.

If architects had to work like programmers . . .

Dear Mr. Architect,

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion.

My house should have between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of thses options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has.

I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularily the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

There is some compelling force in all Hackers that seems to draw them to their computers every day. Why they get up at 4am to use the modem, and why they continue to rack up a truly incredible phone bill is beyond me.

Most computer areas, at your home or at your office, tend to be messy. Even you try to keep it clean, it is truly impossible. Whether it be empty Coke cans laying all around, soldering devices, electric diodes, computer parts, or integrated circuits, it is not only a pain for your mother to look at, but a prime Russian ICBM missile target as well.

There is much detail needed to explain a Hacker. For instance, instead of organizing his clothes by color, best ones, or style, he organizes his by pile. Also, he likes to sing songs such as, “Let’s get Digital”, “We all live in a yellow subroutine”, and “Somewhere over the RAMbow”.

Most Hackers do well in school. The reason is not to impress their teachers, not to get money from their parents, and not to be educated, but they do it so they can hopefully get a scholarship to MIT. You can’t blame them, though, if they are looking out into space. It might be because they are worried if MCI traced the calls that they sent to NORAD.

All Hackers, big or small, love computers, whether they be Trash-80′s or an IBM 360/VM workstation. When they get on one, it’s mighty hard to get them off of it.

There are 2 types of Hackers. One who likes to crash local BBS’s, and the one who writes programs in Assembly Language. The Hacker who crashes systems is the one that most people think that a Hacker is. A typical example of one is John Fredrickson (A.K.A. “The Phone Man”). He loves to crash computers, and break into illegal systems. The ones that he has gotten in to are MCI, CitiBank, school systems, IBM, Southern Bell, and Georgia Tech, not to mention all the ones in between.

The second type of Hacker is the programmer. He writes games, utilities, and anything else that he can think of. Take for example, John Harris, a freelance software writer for On-Line Software Co. John had a brainstorm one day, and decided to write Frogger for the Apple. He thought that it would take about 3 weeks to complete. He started on Frogger a week late, because of the complicated music set that he had to write. After two months, he was almost done. He decided to take a break and go to the Software Expo. He decided to take his nearly completed Frogger, and show it to the consumers at the show. He also took with him the only back-up copy, in case the main disk did not boot.

While at the fair, he was talking to the Manager about getting a booth. He had his disks with him. Then, when he got a booth reserved, he reached down to get his disks, and they were gone! All his hard work, including the MultiLevel character generator, music lines, disk subroutines, assembly routines, debugging programs, etc. All gone.

After that tragedy, John was in a deep depression. He finally started working on it again in 3 months. He completed it in 4 months and 3 days.

At the time of writing, Microsoft’s slogan for Windows 95 was “Where do you want to go today?” These are some alternative and probably more truthful ad slogans for use with Windows.

1. Microsoft gives you Windows – OS/2 give you the whole house.

2. A computer without Windows is like a fish without a bicycle.

3. Windows and DOS: A turtle and its shell.

4. Bang on the left side of your computer to restart Windows.

5. Windows: The colorful clown suit for DOS.

6. Error #152 – Windows not found: (C)heer (P)arty (D)ance.

7. Windows 3.1: The best $89 solitaire game you can buy.

8. Windows NT: Insert wallet into Drive A: and press any key to empty.

9. I’ll never forget the first time I ran Windows, but I’m trying.

10. I still miss Windows, but my aim is getting better

11. My lastest screen-saver: Curtains for Windows.

12. Double your drive space: Delete Windows!

13. OS/2. Opens up Windows, shuts up Gates.

14. Out of disk space. Delete Windows? [Y]es [A]solutely [O]f Course!

15. How do you want to crash today?