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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#351

Post by saagarjha »

kqbx wrote: post #204
jjbinx007 wrote: post #49

We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…

Reminds me of a problem that I had (many years ago) with my iPhone 4 - if I tried to boot it in a dark place, it would get stuck on the Apple logo in an infinite boot loop. Turns out some versions of the Pangu jailbreak for iOS 7.1.x would crash during boot if the reading from the ambient light sensor was below some threshold. To this day I don't know the exact explanation of this bug, but it seems that Pangu include…

Seems unlikely. I don't have access to the paste but from the comment below it I think it's probably a false positive that Pangu was doing something with the sensor. (Not that I don't doubt that the sensor could be the problem, it's just that the code is not very conclusive.)

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#352

Post by irrational »

qingcharles wrote: post #346
jjbinx007 wrote: post #49

We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…

Argh. My own mouse not working one: - Use to fix PCs professionally in the early 90s. - Guy comes in with PC. Right-mouse button stopped working. - Replace mouse. Still not working. - Play with Windows 3.1 drivers. Nothing helps. - Pull HDD from another PC, install, boot. Mouse button still broken. WTF. - Pull whole mobo, put another spare mobo in, with replacement HDD and replacement mouse. Still don't work. - Repla…

I used to know an older woman who did trap and eat squirrels as her main source of protein, so... this isn't entirely unlikely.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#353

Post by ot1138 »

I intentionally caused a problem like this for a co-worker in 1996.

He was a flamboyant character and had a habit of talking loudly on the phone for an hour or so a day. I modified his mouse driver to give me remote control on demand and installed it when he was away from his computer.

For the next few weeks, I would wait for his daily call and gradually move his mouse as he was trying to use his computer. He was visibly frustrated and eventually caught me when he went on a rampage during his conversation and he caught me laughing.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#354

Post by doubled112 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #314
jjbinx007 wrote: post #49

We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…

I'm amazed an IT department would troubleshoot deeply enough to figure out it was the thin plastic letting in interfering light on sunny days. I would have guessed they'd shrug at the first sign of trouble, swap it out with a known-working mouse and mark the ticket resolved... unless all the replacement mice were thin plastic too, I suppose.

I can't leave something like that unexplained, and I've been an IT department before.

It would bother me until I figured something out.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#355

Post by ot1138 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #114
drivers99 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely an urban legend at this point. A reddit thread[0] mentions it being collected in 1990 from computer stories going around in the 80s[1] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/5yrs1... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3227607-the-devouring-fu...

Essentially all these stories are apocryphal. Even this vapor lock story. Sorry but even before today, having a automotive engineer sent to a random person's home over what clearly sounds like a quack letter seems implausible to me. The dictates of capitalism, human resources, and the politics of the workplace would make this difficult if not impossible. Even in the past when there was more human capital in support p…

Well, CEOs do look at these letters quite frequently. At least, I did when I was the CEO of a networking company.

We were only selling equipment in the US at the time but some had found its way around the globe. This one particular Indian gentleman had been engaged for some time with support claiming that his unit wasn't working right and exhibiting all kinds of strange behavior.

I had a habit of looking at the cases with the longest open history, which is how I found it. I continued to monitor though I didn't send anyone out to India or anything like that.

Eventually it came out that the sleek looking aluminum unit had some kind of stocky packaging material stuck to it, so the customer had put it in the washer to clean it off.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#357

Post by ot1138 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #271
bombcar wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You soon learn at a big company that almost any expense is justifiable to the boss if it prevents his boss from asking inconvenient questions.

By coincidence, I have witnessed this just last night. No details will be provided to protect identity, I'll just say you probably heard of the company. It's staggering.

What industry?

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#358

Post by joshvm »

drivers99 wrote: post #78
dumbfounder wrote: post #66

This is a secondhand anecdote, but it’s pretty funny. Back in the days of server rooms, a friend’s server for his company would reboot every day around 5pm. They checked everything they possibly could with the OS, they would be logged in and running checks on it and it would spontaneously go offline for about 5 minutes and reboot every day. Finally they decided to go stand in the presence of the server around the tim…

Definitely an urban legend at this point. A reddit thread[0] mentions it being collected in 1990 from computer stories going around in the 80s[1] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/5yrs1... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3227607-the-devouring-fu...

I mean it actually happens. Not powering down the actual machine, but in my last house the landlord had a cleaner visit every fortnight. Occasionally I came home to find downloads broken or my remote connection would drop randomly in the afternoon. We lived in an old house and had a wifi extender to reach the upper floors (and not enough sockets). The cleaner would unplug the extender to vacuum the kitchen and half the house would go offline.

The ice cream story reads too much like a dramatisation to be truly believable, but accidental and repeated unplugging is common I expect.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#359

Post by btilly »

drivers99 wrote: post #78
dumbfounder wrote: post #66

This is a secondhand anecdote, but it’s pretty funny. Back in the days of server rooms, a friend’s server for his company would reboot every day around 5pm. They checked everything they possibly could with the OS, they would be logged in and running checks on it and it would spontaneously go offline for about 5 minutes and reboot every day. Finally they decided to go stand in the presence of the server around the tim…

Definitely an urban legend at this point. A reddit thread[0] mentions it being collected in 1990 from computer stories going around in the 80s[1] [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/5yrs1... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3227607-the-devouring-fu...

The version that I remember hearing was https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/polished-off/. Also false.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#360

Post by sitharus »

kup0 wrote: post #149

This reminds me of the "my monitor blinks every time I sit down in my office chair" turning out to be EMI spikes from the gas lift affecting the signal traveling on monitor cables. A DisplayLink KB article even mentions it (and the associated white paper about the issue), stating: Surprisingly, we have also seen this issue connected to gas lift office chairs. When people stand or sit on gas lift chairs, they can gene…

This actually happened to one of my colleagues a few years back! Except it was someone in the next row over sitting down causing his monitor to turn off. Took them ages to figure it out.
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