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“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

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Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#161

Post by wtracy »

paultopia wrote: post #84
clmul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar issue with my desktop computer: when I suspend or hibernate it, it sometimes wakes up again when I'm standing, getting up from my chair or leaving the room. This also occasionally happens (when hibernated) after I have physically switched off the power of the computer and switch it on again. The issue occurred first a few years after I bought it, but right now I have just given up debugging it, as I…

A very simple version of this: I used to find that my macbook was randomly going to sleep all the time when I was working with it. Eventually realized that it was because I was using my ipad pro right next to it, with its very strong magnets for the smart keyboard---and magnetic sensors are also how the macbook tells the screen is closed. Could probably put one to sleep by just waving a sufficiently strong magnet in…

There was a story on HN at one point about laptops that would immediately go dark when placed on top of another laptop.

The magnet in the lid of the bottom laptop would put the top laptop to sleep.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#162

Post by chedabob »

Pete_D wrote: post #133
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an admin for a company that had lots of open plan offices. In one of these offices a specific row of computers kept failing. Although they were cheap (Compaq Evos with NT4), they were pretty damn reliable throughout the rest of the company. Lot of head scratching ensued about the fault. Nothing really made sense. Totally by chance we found out what was wrong. One Saturday when the office was empty and with no a…

I've seen a similar accidental case where some internal cable in the PSU had gotten dislodged and was partially in the path of the fan blades, with the repeated contact making a chainsaw-like noise. Luckily it was discovered before the fan cut through the casing on the wire.

Hah, I had a SATA cable jammed into one of my GPU fans. I cursed Sapphire for building such a poor card that failed out of the box.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#163

Post by majos »

rhacker wrote: post #138

It kinda pisses me off that the second line of the body became a sexist joke phrase title in hacker news. If you're not clued in on sexism: The stereotype reinforcement that women are dumb with technology is the punchline. It doesn't matter that there was actually an issue with the pipeline from OpenOffice -> Cups, but the hacker news title was cleverly crafted to reinforce a stereotype. I don't care that this will b…

A while back I read a little theory that the reason "so easy your mom can use it" is a thing is that older men are less likely to experiment with new stuff in the first place than older women.

I have no evidence for this beyond second-hand anecdotes about who shows up to free computer education classes at their local library.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#164

Post by generationP »

IshKebab wrote: post #37
im3w1l wrote: post #4

I'm gonna argue that the bug is not in "file". The bug is that the workflow uses file, which by it's very nature must be based on heuristics and will get things wrong occasionally. EDIT: Well file really had a bug in this case, where they didn't detect what they thought they were, but the point stands.

Yes, this is why you should engineer things properly. Not duck tape them together with shell scripts!

> duck tape

That's a fascinatingly apt mixed metaphor: duct taping meets duck typing.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#165

Post by rconti »

IshKebab wrote: post #37
im3w1l wrote: post #4

I'm gonna argue that the bug is not in "file". The bug is that the workflow uses file, which by it's very nature must be based on heuristics and will get things wrong occasionally. EDIT: Well file really had a bug in this case, where they didn't detect what they thought they were, but the point stands.

Yes, this is why you should engineer things properly. Not duck tape them together with shell scripts!

*duct, ironically.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#166

Post by mrkstu »

darekkay wrote: post #75
hazeii wrote: post #36

Some years back I had a case where a co-worker complained his mouse didn't work in the afternoon. Eventually I went to have a look, and he demo'ed the issue; sure enough the mouse was completely unresponsive. Luckily I guessed the issue immediately and quicky demonstrated - with a shrug - that the mouse "works fine for me". Thing was I'd spotted there was strong sunlight through the window hitting the mouse; guessing…

This reminds me of a similar issue I've experienced. A colleague always put his jacket onto his chair. Almost every time he took it off, his monitor connection broke for a few seconds. This mystery was never fully solved, but our best guess was some static (from the jacket-chair-friction) causing issues with his VGA-HDMI adapter.

I have this occasionally from my MacBook Pro to external 4k. My office seems to be conducive to generating static and I'll occasionally shock my MacBook when first sitting down, temporarily fritz-ing the connection to the monitor.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#167

Post by gmfawcett »

jaclaz wrote: post #58
geek_at wrote: post #9

I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights to become a farmer in the midwest and then you find something like thís

The best hardware related one remains the classic Magic/More Magic switch: http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

This one, and the 500-mile email story, are my all-time favourites. :)

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#168

Post by dodo6502 »

I had a fun bug once where some functionality involving self sign certificates stopped working on Feb 29th. It came down to us simply adding +10 to the year for the expiration. There is no Feb 29th 10 years into the future, only 4, 8, 12, etc... That was a good lesson on why to always use a date library when adding or subtracting time. We weren't the only ones... Azure went down for the same reason that day.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#169

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

hazeii wrote: post #36

Some years back I had a case where a co-worker complained his mouse didn't work in the afternoon. Eventually I went to have a look, and he demo'ed the issue; sure enough the mouse was completely unresponsive. Luckily I guessed the issue immediately and quicky demonstrated - with a shrug - that the mouse "works fine for me". Thing was I'd spotted there was strong sunlight through the window hitting the mouse; guessing…

I work at a K-12 school and had a similar experience working in a school. The teacher complained the Smartboard touch capability wouldn't work in the morning, but worked in the afternoon. I said nonsense. Went in there and surely it didn't work, but I noticed a bit of a glare from the reflection of the light on the window. I asked her to turn down the shade and the Smartboard instantly started working... felt awesome lol.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#170

Post by AceJohnny2 »

the_watcher wrote: post #134
geek_at wrote: post #9

I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights to become a farmer in the midwest and then you find something like thís

Last Friday's xkcd happens to be very relevant! https://xkcd.com/2259/

And that XKCD reminded me of a couple other seminal debugging stories:

- "The Case of the 500-mile email" https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

- Brendan Gregg demonstrates the effect of screaming at hard drives: https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4

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