Re: It's the weekend - time to get out the Hoover :)

["Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" <rMslade () shaw ca>]

Date sent:              Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:31:33 -0500
From:                   Robert Portvliet <robert.portvliet () gmail com>

> Meh, back in the 90's I worked for a shop among who's client list
> there were various small manufacturing facilities & auto body
> shops.... I've seen FAR worse.

Once worked with a company that sold software related to satellite tracking for 
the trucking industry.  As such, got good at taking calls from people who had *no* 
idea what to do with a computer, and walking them through some pretty esoteric 
stuff.

Got a call one time on installation.  (Installation was a frequent problem: once it 
was done, the system usually ran without much attention.)  Caller said "disk 
errors," so I started into my patented expert system drop through question chain.  
"You're putting the diskette in with the label up, right?"  "Where's the label?"  
"Well, most of the diskette casing is blue ..."  "Brown."

Brown?  We didn't ship diskette with a brown casing: all ours were blue.

Ah, says caller, that was just a joke.  The computer they were trying to use had 
been sitting in the truck bay for five years, so whenever someone put a diskette in, 
it came out brown from the dust.

"I think I know what your problem is," says I.

(This was about 20 years ago.  The software we sold was $5K, and the cheapest 
machine it would run on was $5K, plus $1K for the necessary secured modem.  
The truck units were $1-2K each.  The satellite account was $40K/year, plus 
usage.  I was constantly astounded at how people would try to cheap out on the 
most ridiculous things, and then complained that the system didn't work.  My 
favourite was using an old three wire terminal cable instead of the full RS-232 (full 
retail price <$15) that we specified.)

======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade () vcn bc ca     slade () victoria tc ca     rslade () computercrime org
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