I'm a guy who thinks he "knows where he is in life". Mid-thirties, settled, career on track... you know the type. I pride myself on many things. I consider myself intelligent, reasonably well-educated, and good with technical subjects.

Because of my job as a network system administrator, one of my biggest pet peeves is users who call in and complain about something that's really their fault. You know, the coffee-cup-in-the-CD-ROM-tray types. The ones who don't remove disk two before inserting disk three. I even write songs making fun of them.

Today, I met the enemy, and he is me.

It's the day after Christmas, and I'm printing out pictures. I took photos of the family at the Grandparent's house on Christmas day, and some of them came out really good, so I'm printing them with my fancy photo printer on the fancy photo paper. You know, the expensive stuff, the kind where the paper costs more than the printer.

But I'm thhhmart. Yup. I don't print on the expensive stuff right away, no. I have some midrange stuff, some glossy paper that's cheaper than the high-end stuff. I use the cheaper stuff to test the size, cropping, and gamma first. Once the picture looks right on the cheap stuff, then I do a final print on the expensive stuff. Been doing this for a long time, now, and it's always worked well.

When you change the paper in the printer, you also change the "paper" setting in the printer driver software. The printer driver tells the printer just how much ink to put on the paper, to compensate for the different amounts of "wicking" that's built into each kind of paper. And the midrange glossy paper, compared to the expensive glossy paper, has two different specific settings in the printer driver.

So I get things looking right on the cheaper paper, drop a sheet of the pricey stuff in, change the printer driver to "Photo Paper Pro", and fire away.

The resulting print is not at all what I expected. It's in "simulate an illustration" mode. You know what I mean: Everything looks like it was painted with a watercolor brush. Now, it just so happens that this printer driver has this as one of its setting options. You can select, in the printer driver, a little checkbox to simulate an illustration, and it will print this way. Note that I'm talking about the printer driver itself, not the photo-editing software. They actually have an option for this right in the driver.

But I checked the driver and the "simulate illustration" checkbox was not checked. Hmph, I'm sure there's a bug in the driver. The software is behaving as if the checkbox is checked. It must have done it when I chose the different paper setting. Something buggy about the communication between the driver and the dialog box UI. Or perhaps it's because the printer driver on the print server is a different version than the one on my local PC. Or something like that.

I mess with it a few times and manage to waste a few more sheets of the expensive stuff in the process. I'm at the end of my rope. It's time to do what we sysadmins dread the most: call for backup.

So I call up Canon tech support. The lady on the other end of the line is very friendly and helpful. She talks me through a bunch of stuff, including reinstalling the drivers, as well as unplugging the printer from the print server and instead plugging it directly into the PC to rule out driver problems on the print server.

We print several test pages on plain paper with various print settings, and I can't get it to fail now. All seems well, and I chalk up the bug to FM. (She asked what FM was, too. My explanation is always: "The M stands for Magic.")

She says, "hey, before you plug it back in to the print server, print one final page on the good paper". Sure, okay, I wanted to get a good print anyway (the whole point of this exercise), so I do.

And it comes out as a watercolor illustration.

But this time, all I did was put the better paper into the printer. I didn't even touch the driver. And it was working just mere moments ago on the cheaper paper. My first thought is that the printer somehow detects the type of paper plugged into it, but I'd already confirmed that this wasn't the case.

Then she says, "you're not putting the paper into the printer upside-down, are you?"

You can just shoot me now.

Hey..... it happens to the best of us.... I have done some pretty stupid stuff in my days to, allthough I dont seem to recollect any now. But believe me, been there.... done that! =)

I fix copiers and printers for Ricoh and I get more calls for user errors than anything. The only time it's really annoying is when the user blames the machine or gets mad at us because they can't operate the equipment.

And just to prove I'm not totally dain-bramaged, here's a picture of what it the resulting prints were like. Those of you who've seen the "watercolor" effect in an image-editing program will agree that the over-inking on the wrong side of the paper (righthand image) looks exactly like that.

At some point I guess we're all an end user. Great story Tony. There is a person alive who wont relate to this.

There is a person alive who wont relate to this.

Who is this person?

I think that was a typo.

Hey Tony...just wanted to tell you that I really like your songs. They're very clever and well done. I particularly liked "Comfortably Dumb".

So, what's "Consonance 2000"?

HAHAHAHA! Yes, I have had days like this too. Very humbling. Glad you kept your sense of humor through it - I know some folks that would have been screaming at tech support (been on the wrong end of those calls, too...).

Well, look on the bright side, all that expensive paper that you thouht was ruined with watercolors can be flipped over and used properly...

Matthew

Hey, it says a lot to come out and tell a story like that. A lot of people would put this in the "We must never speak of this again" category.

...just wanted to tell you that I really like your songs. They're very clever and well done. I particularly liked "Comfortably Dumb".

Thanks, Svferris, I'm glad you liked them. That one is a particular favorite of mine.

So, what's "Consonance 2000"?

Consonance is an annual convention in the bay area where filkers go to share/swap songs.

all that expensive paper that you thouht was ruined with watercolors can be flipped over and used properly...

Again, I'm terminally stupid. Hadn't considered that!

/me retrieves sheets from trash...

Glad you kept your sense of humor through it

More like my sense of caution and embarrassment. The humor was my post-event therapy to conceal and suppress the crippling sense of humiliation afterwards.

But yeah, having been on the wrong end of those kinds of calls is one of the reasons I try to stay as humble as possible even when I think I'm sure the problem is on their end.

Dang it, yes.
But it illustrates my point

I had trouble connecting to my ISP, (yes, woefull dialup) and called tech support. I'd uninstalled drivers done the whole shebang and went through the entire thing with the help-desk.
Then, in a moment of brilliance, I typed in my NEW PASSWORD.
I thanked the tech for his help, appologised for keeping him from the hallway cricket match, hung up and stuck my head in a bucket of water.

I see the difference, but what is that a picture of?

It looks like a creepy one-eyed clown with sharp teeth and pointy ears giving me the finger.

ROFL!! It does look like that! And it looks like it was painted beautifully!

It's a magnified section of a picture of a christmas tree. That's one of the ornaments.

What a terrible ornament to have around a child!

I'm disappointed Tony;

Sys/Net Admin's don't call tech support... It's a sign of weakness!

You didn't read the FAQ?

Tony,
Don't feel bad. I just spent an evening instalilng mobo drivers & almost flashing my ROM before realizing I had the DV camcorder connected to the WRONG WIRE.

At least I had a smaller audience.

-Zeke

OMG! This is bad!
If even the FAQ master makes these kinds of mistakes, where does that leave us mere mortals?

We're doomed I tell ya, doomed!

One of his circuits must have temporarily overloaded. Not surprising at christmas.

I had one of those moments this morning. I spent 45 min. on a user's laptop cursing Bill Gates because the stupid thing wouldn't print to the office network printer. Finally I realized that the computer that the printer was normally chained to was not even plugged in due to a weekend LAN party at the office. Bleh! I'm an idiot.

Tony... it's no where near as bad as the user that called us to come move his enterprise server, only to have us inform him that he'd have no problems moving his filing cabinet by himself.... (in his defense, it was an impressive filing cabinet, black with red drawers... but still 3 drawers and a keyhole) sad thing is he was in charge of technical contracts for a department at one of the DC/Northern Virginia area airports (nothing involving flight, but still a little scary).... So I guess what I'm saying is that no matter how stupid you feel theres always some one that fell through the cracks of human evolution.

Speaking of which, anyone else have any good stupid user stories?

Did he use the 'server' for anything?! Wasn't he confused by the way people were putting paper in theirs?

ya got me.... the server in question ended up being in a different room and was moved several months prior by his non communicative lacky... and as much as I hate to pick on peoples physical defects I've never seen anyone in a position like his openly drool... but he did... spots all over his shirt... kinda gross...

Just one of those stories that needed to be shared..

Bet he was the life of the office parties

where's my....where's my staplerr. I want my stapler.

Tony, it's been a couple of days since I've downloaded your songs, and ever since then I've been driving my housemates MAD because I'm walking though the house all day long going :"beepbeepbeepbeep beepbeepbeepbeepbeep" ("chip wonder" is my favourite). I can't help it, it's such a catchy-ass song!

So all my housemates would like to say to you : THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

Seriously though : I like the songs and they've already found their way onto my Empeg. I hope you'll make some more material in the future.

Thank you! I'm so glad you like it!

Remember: that one is a parody of a Carla Ulbrich tune, and her original song is even better than my parody. Her album is really fantastic and quite funny in its own right. Check it out at www.carlau.com if you're interested.

Well, that's amazing story. I can't believe you shared that.

Of course back in the day of tech suppt. I asked this lady to go to her program manager (NT 3.51) and there was a 30 second pause. I said Hello? Hello? She said ok , he's here now.
She went and got her manager...
I won't go into the story of the person on a cell phone trying to dial in while driving...and then crashing into another car..

Ooo, those are good ones.

I have a second hand story along those lines. From someone who used to work a support line in the old days of 5" floppy disk drives:

"Put the disk in the drive, label side up, oval hole towards the computer."

"Okay, done."

"Then close the door."

"Okay, hang on."

<sound of phone being put down, footsteps, sound of office door being closed, footsteps>

"Okay, now what?"

That's nothing. We once sent out a set of DIMMs to upgrade a server at a clients office. They insisted that they could handle the upgrade themselves and that we wouldn't need to come out.

It all goes well until I suddenly get a phone call half way through them installing the memory. They said the console had bizarre errors and warnings which wouldn't go away. This was strange since in the instructions I sent them I explicitly told them to install all of DIMMs before powering it up. Turns out the moron actually left the machine ON whilst installing the memory!

Amazingly it still worked once they installed it properly with the power off... And as you can guess, I now don't believe them when they say they can handle it

- Trevor

One of our TECHS got fired for doing that. he kept insisting that it was a trick he learned and that if you powered up the computer and timed it just right there was some advantage. Honestly had no idea what he was talking about, didn't care, he needed to go as he'd blatantly lied about his skills on his resume.

I'll have a look at that album. If her original version is even half as good as your parody, then I'm sure I'll like it.

Thanks for the link!

Edit : I've looked at Carla Ulbrich's page and Boy Wonder is not downloadable.
And she isn't known at all on the more popular file-sharing programs. There's a good chance that the CD stores over here also will have never heard of her, so I fear for my chances of ever hearing the original song.
OTOH, I listened to a few of those songs that were downloadable and I liked them. I also have read the lyrics to Boy Wonder, so I believe I have a pretty good idea of how it sounds.

On a similar note I have quite successfully hot swapped failed ISA network cards in the past. Not recommended, but it did work...

There's a good chance that the CD stores over here also will have never heard of her, so I fear for my chances of ever hearing the original song.

She's got an MP3.com page where the song can be downloaded. Her CD isn't a mass-market CD, so you won't find it in record stores. But it is available via mail-order from her site.

Thanks! I was able to download it now.
I still like your version better.
Maybe it's because I heard that version the first or maybe it's because it's more about my field of interest I don't know...
Still, it is a nice song and I will listen to all the ones that are online. If they're all as good I'll look into in buying the cd.

Turns out the moron actually left the machine ON whilst installing the memory!

Once OS support arrives for hot add memory, make sure they have a Proliant ML570 with hot plug memory.

On a similar note I have quite successfully hot swapped failed ISA network cards in the past. Not recommended, but it did work.

That's coz it was slow enough to get the card in, in-between cycles.

[unix bigot]
As I'll point out again, Sun has had this technology for years.
[/unix bigot]

As I'll point out again, Sun has had this technology for years.

Same for the OS that ran on the Tandem boxes. The thing that has me excited about the Proliants getting it though is that it has now dropped enough in price that low end servers (albient mid range intel servers) can easially put it in the box without increasing the price over the last generation box.

I'm now wondering how long until hot pluggable CPUs exist in low end servers.

Also, the most likely OS to add the hot add memory on the machine above will most likely be a UNIX based one anyhow, as I didn't see a hint of .Net supporting it.

I recently had a roadmap meeting w/ HP/Compaq and they don't have any Unix planned for any Intel processor other than the Itanium (II). Somehow, it seems unlikely that Linux or one of the free BSDs will implement this, which leaves SCO and Solaris as, I think, the only remaining x86 Unix vendors. Solaris x86, while pulled from the fire, is likely to have even more limited hardware support than before, and who uses SCO?

So if your claim that .Net won't support it is true, it looks like it might end up being unused technology. Neat!

I recently had a roadmap meeting w/ HP/Compaq and they don't have any Unix planned for any Intel processor other than the Itanium (II)

Hmm, what roadmap was this? The only one I can think of would be the migration of the Alpha and PARISC based OSs. The HP/UX Tru64 mess will definitly be an Itanium only OS (same for the newer versions of VMS), but the IA-32 line should continue to support what it does today. Officially, Com^H^H^H HP supports Linux (including quite few open source drivers lately), SCO Openserver 5 (and probably the upcoming 5.0.7), Unixware 7 and 8, and Sun Solaris. Variants of BSD tend to work, but aren't officially supported unless your company name is Yahoo. Enough revenue is generated on non MS destined Proliants that it's doubtful the existing support level will ever drop. I don't have numbers on the Unix deployment, but 50% of all machines running Netware are Proliant boxes.

Linux seems to me the most likely candidate for it first, due to the fact that Compaq already has developed drivers in that area for PCI, and the 2.5 kernel is making it even easier for any bus to have a hot plug handler (http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/).

and who uses SCO?

Quite a few people actually. I see indications that SCO OSs (namley Openserver 5) have a higher percentage of the Proliant marketshare then Solaris.

All I can tell you is that they didn't mention any OSes beyond Windows, HPUX, OSF1/Digital Unix/Tru64, and OpenVMS. They may have actually mentioned Linux, but not much -- they talked about VMS more, and they barely mentioned it at all.

Are you getting your info from the Compaq side or the HP side? We seem to have been coming at them (at least in that meeting) via HP, and that might be the reason we're getting slightly different stories.

OTOH, years ago, at a previous company, we were going to get discounted Compaq machines for some reason, but changed our mind when we asked, cursorily, if running Linux on them would be a problem and were told that it would void the hardware warranty. I try to avoid Compaq for many such reasons.

All I can tell you is that they didn't mention any OSes beyond Windows, HPUX, OSF1/Digital Unix/Tru64, and OpenVMS. They may have actually mentioned Linux, but not much -- they talked about VMS more, and they barely mentioned it at all.

Definitly sounds like a presentation aimed at existing 64 bit customers then. If they had any hands on parts, anyone attending would know to avoid Win64 like the plague for now. That was the most convoluted piece of crap I have ever seen. (Both the shipping "Windows Server Limited Edition" that MS even advises not to run in production, and early versions of "Windows .Net 64 Bit Version").

Are you getting your info from the Compaq side or the HP side? We seem to have been coming at them (at least in that meeting) via HP

I'm getting my info from the Compaq side. When the merger occured, the Proliant Itanium line died, and all the HP engineers took the one good thing from their work, the best EFI interface developed for first gen Itanium boxes. Since the Proliant Itanium line died, I haven't heard much about the roadmap for HP Itanium boxes beyong the 2005 timeframe for Alpha to IA-64 migration.

I'm really hoping the information you are getting isn't a hint that Unix support on the Proliant side might die off. The only logical reason I could see for that is they see the Unix market at the high end of equipment only. Still seems silly though, considering the main deployment tool for Proliants (Smartstart) just changed from a Windows core to a Linux/Apache/PHP/Mozilla based one.

OTOH, years ago, at a previous company, we were going to get discounted Compaq machines for some reason, but changed our mind when we asked, cursorily, if running Linux on them would be a problem and were told that it would void the hardware warranty. I try to avoid Compaq for many such reasons.

Seems to be a popular rumor that even went around ignorant Compaq employees for a while. That was never true for the servers anyhow. I can't speak for the Presario or Deskpro divisions though in the past. Currently, quite a few HP products support Linux including the iPaq handheld.

I have a feeling that that support thing wasn't ever true, even when we initially heard it, but no matter to whom we spoke at Compaq, we couldn't get anyone to refute it, and since Compaq stuff, in our experience, died about every two months, we decided to go another route.

I've hot swapped bioses several times. To flash a bad bios, just take a mobo that has the same one, boot up into DOS, pop the good bios out and put the one that needs to be flashed in its place and flash away. I first did it to hack an I-Opener, but have done it several times with different boards since then.

Hmmm. I still have an I-Opener open on my dining room table. I should find a use for it or sell it. It was going to be a music and map system for the car. Then I got the empeg...

I'm working on my second one. I'm trying to swap a TFT into it. Then I can use it as a video kiosk. I'll let you know if I'm successful.

I also got a Gateway Connected Touchpad which may become a walkaround control for my model railroad (dispatcher's model board) if I get around to it.

Of course I also have this full-sized (very heavy)
toy to use for that...

What kind of trains do you have? I've got an old 1950's locomotive (O guage) and coal car. I also have my uncle's 1945 set, though it's in serious need of some oil. You've never hear anything shreik like this thing. I'm not sure how old my transformer is, but it's a pretty hefty one.

All HO. My goal is a late 1950s or early 1960s layout based on various parts of Western PA. Right now it's just some benchwork.