"I tried the thing, ya know, and it worked, ya know, but
now it doesn't, ya know?"
Advantages: Provides interesting communication challanges.
Disadvantages: So do chimps.
Symptoms: Complete inability to use proper nouns
Real Case: One user walked up to a certain Armenian pod manager
and said, "I can't get what I want!" The pod manager
leaned back, put his hands on his belt-buckle, and said,
"Well, ma'am, you've come to the right place."
- "Well, I hit ALT-f6, shift-f8, CNTRL-f10, f4, and f9,
and now it looks all weird."
Advantages: Will try to find own solution to problems.
Disadvantages: User might have translated document to Navajo
without meaning to.
Symptoms: More than six stopped jobs in UNIX, a 2:1
code-to-letter ratio in WordPerfect
Real Case: One user came in complaining that his WordPerfect
document was underlined. When I used reveal codes on it, I found
that he'd set and unset underline more than fifty times in his
document.
"It didn't work with the data set we had, so I fed in my
aunt's recipe for key lime pie."
Advantages: Will usually fix error.
Disadvantages: 'Fix' is defined VERY loosely here.
Symptoms: A tendancy to delete lines that get errors instead of
fixing them.
Real Case: One user complained that their program executed, but
didn't do anything. The scon looked at it for twenty minutes
before realizing that they'd commented out EVERY LINE. The user
said, "Well, that was the only way I could get it to
compile."
"Last week, when the moon was full, the clouds were
thick, and formahaut was above the horizon, I typed f77, and lo,
it did compile."
Advantages: Gives insight into primative mythology.
Disadvantages: Few scons are anthropology majors.
Symptoms: Frequent questions about irrelavent objects.
Real Case: One user complained that all information on one of
their disks got erased (as Norton Utilities showed nothing but
empty sectors, I suspect nothing had ever been on it). Reasoning
that the deleted information went *somewhere*, they wouldn't shut
up until the scon checked four different disks for the missing
information.
"Will you look at those. . .um, that resolution, quite
impressive, really."
Advantages: Using the cutting-edge in graphics technology.
Disadvantages: Has little or no idea how to use the cutting-edge
in graphics technology.
Symptoms: Fuzzy hands, blindness
Real Case: When I was off duty, two users sat down in front of me
at DEC station 5000/200s that systems was reconfiguring. I
suppressed my laughter while, for twenty minutes, they sat down
and did their best to act like they were doing exectly what they
wanted to do, even though they couldn't log in.
"But it read a file from it yesterday!" 'Sir, at a
guess, this disk has been swollowed and regurgitated.' "But
I did that a month ago, and it read a file from it
yesterday!"
Advantages: Apparently has remarkable luck when you aren't
around.
Disadvantages: People complain when scons actually use the word
'horse-puckey'.
Symptoms: Loses all ability to do impossible when you're around.
Must be the kryptonite in your pocket.
Real Case: At least three users have claimed that they've loaded
IBM WordPerfect from Macintosh disks.
"Well, this is a file in MacWrite. Do you know how I can
upload it to MUSIC, transfer it over to UNIX from there, download
it onto an IBM, convert it to WordPerfect, and put it in
three-column format?"
Advantages: Bold new challanges.
Disadvantages: Makes one wish to be a garbage collector.
Symptoms: An inability to keep quiet. Strong tendancies to make
machines do things they don't want to do.
Real Case: One user tried to get a scon to find out what another
person's E-mail address was even though the user didn't know his
target's home system, account name, or real name.
"Well, first I sat down, like this. Then I logged on,
like this, and after that, I typed in my password, like this, and
after that I edited my file, like this, and after that I went to
this line here, like this, and after that I picked my nose, like
this. . ."
Advantages: Willing to show you exactly what they did to get an
error.
Disadvantages: For as long as five or six hours.
Symptoms: Selective deafness to the phrases, "Right, right,
okay, but what was the ERROR?", and a strong fondness for
the phrase, "Well, I'm getting to that."
Real Case: I once had to spend half an hour looking over a user's
shoulder while they continuously retrieved a document into itself
and denied that they did it (the user was complaining that their
document was 87 copies of the same thing).
(unfair, perhaps, as these tend, overwhelmingly, to be males)
- "I need a Mac, and someone's got the one I like reserved,
would you please garrote him and put him in the paper recycling
bin?"
Advantages: Flatters you with their high standards for your
service.
Disadvantages: Impresses you with their obliviousness to other
people on this planet.
Symptoms: Inability to communicate except by complaining.
Real Case: One asked a scon to remove the message of the day
because he (the user) didn't like it.
From: samjones@leo.unm.edu (Sam Jones)