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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#441

Post by Paul-Craft »

btilly wrote: post #359
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...

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

I've never heard that one. It has many more characteristics of a modern urban legend than the simple "janitor unplugs the server then plugs it back in" story. Urban legends are essentially modern day folk tales. They'll often involve fear, horror, or even humor, and they're frequently cast as cautionary tales. They tend to be reasonably detailed (which helps keep a listener's attention), but at the same time they frequently not pinned down to a specific time or place. They're almost always told as secondhand stories (e.g. it happened to "a friend of a friend"), and tend to fall at the edge of plausibility.

But, the key thing is that urban legends always reflect some sort of underlying societal belief or worry. "Janitor polishes off patients" is about the fear of death, and how it can come for anyone at any time, and there's nothing they can do about it. "Janitor unplugs server every night at 5" is probably more about the idea that strange things happen sometimes, but it usually turns out that there's a good explanation.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#443

Post by Paul-Craft »

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…

It's not just any memetic structure though. Urban legends have a number of components to them that make people want to re-tell them. See, for instance, my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37596325

One of the things I talk about is that these stories often ride the edge of plausibility. Even with this one, dispatching an engineer to someone's house over a "quack letter" seems like a thing that could happen or could have happened in the past. Having high level people involved is a thing that others have talked about, but I'd also like to point out that people have literally emailed jeff@amazon.com before about issues and gotten resolutions that way, so it's not completely off the mark.

The real clue here that we're dealing with an urban legend and not an actual incident (though it may be based on one) is the lack of specifics. Urban legends are often not really pinned down to any specific time or place.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#445

Post by teddyh »

mulhoon wrote: post #436

There's a whole collection of Software Folklore over here https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/ Relevant thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23005140

“COMPUTER-RELATED HORROR STORIES, FOLKLORE, AND ANECDOTES”

https://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/humor/Unix/computer.folkl...>

“Computer Stupidities”

http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/>

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#449

Post by organsnyder »

notnaut wrote: post #250
genewitch wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on dslreports or broadbandreports there's at least two instances of me complaining about two cable companies because, at last, it was figured out there was moisture ingress in the LE (line extender, usually on cable lines on poles). The only common denominator was it happened during prime time, every night, and went away around midnight. The other common denominator was the cable company refusing to believe it was an…

I think you’d get this problem, monopoly or not, whenever cost saving measures are in place (and they always are, for good reason) at the customer-interface level. Maybe there should always be a hidden option that only people that meet a certain troubleshooting ability threshold get access to when calling in for tech support….

> I think you’d get this problem, monopoly or not, whenever cost saving measures are in place (and they always are, for good reason) at the customer-interface level.

I'm guessing that these scripts that we're all complaining about solve 95% of problems customers call in about. Sure makes things painful for the 5% of cases, though.

I've been a (grudging) Comcast customer for ~17 years, and I have been impressed by how their monitoring has improved over that time. It's been quite a number of years since I've had to convince them that I had an actual problem that their systems didn't automatically detect.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#450

Post by TeMPOraL »

notnaut wrote: post #250
genewitch wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on dslreports or broadbandreports there's at least two instances of me complaining about two cable companies because, at last, it was figured out there was moisture ingress in the LE (line extender, usually on cable lines on poles). The only common denominator was it happened during prime time, every night, and went away around midnight. The other common denominator was the cable company refusing to believe it was an…

I think you’d get this problem, monopoly or not, whenever cost saving measures are in place (and they always are, for good reason) at the customer-interface level. Maybe there should always be a hidden option that only people that meet a certain troubleshooting ability threshold get access to when calling in for tech support….

There is a hidden option - you can call it "proof of work", or "proof of determination". You keep calling, and trying ways to escalate, maybe even send a paper letter; eventually, something in the customer "support" process will yield and you'll get through to someone who can actually help you.
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