Tag: funny

Chronicles of George

This web site is a collection of helpdesk tickets gleaned from the support database of my previous job. I was employed there for 20 months, and during that time I had the misfortune of encountering an individual whom I will call George.

George is, quite simply, the worst helpdesk technician ever.

His grasp on the written word is shakier than a canoe full of epileptics. His knowledge of computers is thinner than a Vegas dancer’s chiffon underpants. He is, by all standards of intelligence, a rock.

While we worked together, George was responsible for turning out some of the most mangled, garbled, and just plain screwed up help desk tickets ever before seen by mortal man. I have taken these tickets and collected them, and I present them to you as a cathartic expression, a venting of 14 months’ pain and frustration (George’s employ and my own overlapped by that amount of time).

where illiterate people work in IT

the Right Was Right

Now that the election is behind us, and the Democrats control both houses of Congress, there’s no reason not to admit it: the Right was right about us all along. Here is our manifesto for the new Congress:

  1. Mandatory homosexuality
  2. Drug-filled condoms in schools
  3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act
  4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses
  5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State
  6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein
  7. English language banned from all Federal buildings
  8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups
  9. All taxes to be tripled
  10. All fortunes over $250k to be confiscated
  11. On-demand welfare
  12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish
  13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems
  14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning
  15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8
  16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor
  17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery
  18. God to be mocked roundly
  19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN
  20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement
  21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy
  22. Texas returned to Mexico
  23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day
  24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore
  25. Modify USA’s motto to “Land of the French and the home of the brave”

the program for congress

Orbicule Theft Prevention

lol

If law enforcement fails to recover the stolen Mac, Undercover switches to plan B. In this mode, Undercover will simulate a hardware failure, making parts of the screen unusable. This erratic behavior will be accompanied by a Mac OS X system message stating that a hardware failure has been detected. At this point, we think the thief has 2 options: to send the computer to a reseller for repair, or to get rid of it by selling it on the Net. In either case, Undercover will show a full-screen message alerting the reseller or someone who bought the Mac from the thief that the Mac has been stolen, that it has become unusable and that it needs to be returned as soon as possible. Our contact information and a promise for a finder’s fee (which will be covered by us) will be displayed as well. This message can be fully customized by the user and when dismissed, this message will instantly reappear. Additionally, your Mac will start shouting at the highest volume level, using its built-in text-to-speech capabilities.

2021-07-16: Originally I thought this was an elaborate joke, but the service was real, but recently shut down:

After 14 years of Undercover recovery successes, we need to inform you that we’ll no longer be developing or supporting Undercover. All Undercover support will stop on Jan. 1st 2020.

Excel as a database

So true. And the facial expressions are accurate, too

As a developer, you’ve probably, at some unfortunate point in your life (possibly several points, actually), been handed an Excel file that has been crammed full of “data” by someone in marketing and told to “do something with it.”

Columns probably didn’t line up, and 1000 different fonts were used. Every feature of Excel was probably abused and abused again in order to avoid having to use an actual database application for storage of the data.