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  • From: nealbirch <nealbirch AT attbi.com>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [SM-Discuss] totally off topic... but funny
  • Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 09:11:54 -0500

Well, it's a week unemployed today... So I am doing some minor free lance consulting type stuff.

Yesterday I did some in home repair for a guy a know, he wanted to get on the web with his old compaq (300 mhz, win98) machine. I quoted a price, (I have a reasonable hourly fee, you want to be able to get out of there sometime. And if he's got the money to burn, I got the time to waste answering inane questions =) and we took a look.

Kenny has no idea about ergonomics, so we discussed how using a kitchen table as a computer desk is gonna kill him, even if he is a one finger typer who can't double click. It's only $40 for cheap computer desk at Office Depot, for christ sakes... anyway. Did I mention he has cats? I'm allergic to cats.. at least he kept them outside.

His pc, at least 4 years old, is in the original pristine compaq install condition, with every piece of crap software they install on it still running. loverly.

His modem won't dial. this is because it's not being detected anymore. It used to be detected, because it's setup, but when I remove it, it doesn't find it again. bummer. com2 completely gone. I decide that I will show him what a modem looks like, so we disconnect the thing and I haul it off to his kitchen where he has a tall center island perfect for working on the thing.

I quickly see that someone has been there before me, because they have broken the fricken power button attachment by trying to take the front of the case off without disconnecting the cord, which on these models is firmly plugged into the motherboard... if you try to pull the front bezel off it breaks the mounting bracket for the power switch rather than unplugging the cord. Nice design. He said that a friend of his had done that, and I explain the joys of non-conductive epoxy for case repair, he says he doesn't use it, there is a power switch on the back he uses instead when he shuts down.(ok, he gets points for actually shutting down properly, which makes up for never in 4 years doing a scan disk or defrag.) I told him to put some duct tape over the front so someone else doesn't hit the switch and jam it again.

Unfortunately, the case won't come apart because his cat has at sometime in the past sprayed the thing. ("It's mine! Mine, I tell you!" I had a dog like that.) After a few moments of reflection, I say: "Normally, we don't use hammers on computers, but do you have one handy?" With a couple of judicious blows using a screwdriver as a chisel, I pried the thing apart and took a little sandpaper and 3in1 oil to the rusted parts.

I figured that maybe the cat had pissed on the modem too, but no, no evidence of corrosion there, swapped it to the other pci slot (rockwell hcf modem, early model, software upgradeable) and figured what the hell, it might work, so I washed my hands and we tried it. Joy! It works! Oh, by the way, the cat chewed the phone cord, too. go figure.

Oh yeah, he wanted to use AOL. I figured he was paying. Latest version didn't display well, but an earlier version did. Told him to call and cancel in 45 days, he should get at least another free month, then he can get the AARP discount... AOL is good for people like him. It's all in one place, and he'll have to upgrade his computer to run the latest version so he'll stimulate the economy.

I had to explain that computers aren't like cars. With cars, they don't increase the minimum speed limit from 40 mph to 250 mph... And it doesn't hurt to clean the keyboard every now and then.

And keep the cat away from the computer...

Oh yeah, I got $50 and a couple of good cigars for about 3 hrs work. I work cheap.

The story above is true. I didn't change the names because he'll never see this.
--
"You can fool some of the people all of the time
--and those are the ones you have to concentrate on!"
GW Bush-- from the N.Y. Times





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