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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)

#61

Post by ken »

notacoward wrote: post #59

This is why one of my favorite features in the original MacOS filesystem was type/creator fields (four uppercase letters each). Yes, it was possible for developers to create collisions, but it was still better than the UNIX method of applying fragile heuristics to the file contents. IMO it would still be a good idea to replicate this (minus the four-character limitation) with a standardized extended attribute, fallin…

Type/creator codes were any 4-byte OSType, actually. ASCII values were commonly used, for obvious reasons, but not required.

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

#62

Post by dfox »

DonHopkins wrote: post #33
jakobegger wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that you should use care when using file. My app relied on "file" to identify file types, and in some cases it mis-identified some Microsoft Office files. The problem was that Apple ships a very old magic file with macOS, and when I reported the bug they said they don't care.

Excel mis-identifies CSV files whose first column is named "ID" as SYLK files. But who would EVER think of naming the first column of a spreadsheet "ID"? https://www.optibrium.com/community/forums/6-general-how-do-... >Q: I have saved the result table from admensa into .csv format. However I am not able to open in excel. It is said that SYLK: file format is not valid. Do you have any experience on it? Thanks. >A: Thi…

Excel actually mostly ignores the extension and relies on heuristics to detect the file type on load. Many web applications used to implement "XLS export" by writing out CSV file with .xls extension.

This magic detection of file type has one unfortunate side effect: it is not exactly obvious how to convince Excel to load plain text data that is not CSV with delimiters from the current locale. (which is major PITA with most European locales where Excel uses "Semicolon"-SV and not "Comma"-SV but still calls it CSV)

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

#63

Post by DoubleGlazing »

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 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/c background noise one of the other admins noticed the PCs in the problem row weren't making any fan noise. A quick investigation revealed that the PSU fans had been blocked with paperclips and bits of paper causing the CPU to overheat.

An older member of staff who was in that row found the PSU fan noise irritating and just decided to take action to stop it. She genuinely didn't realise she was breaking the PCs.

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

#64

Post by torstenvl »

sdrothrock wrote: post #15
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

Maybe you've already seen this one, but maybe there are some people who haven't... I get a kick out of it every time I reread it, anyway. :) http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles Edit: And the FAQ: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

Wait. How come it wasn't ~280 miles then?

EDIT: Never mind, answered in the FAQ.

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

#65

Post by johnchristopher »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #63
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 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 must confess that the eleven year old me didn't realize it would be a problem to put a screwdriver through the PSU grid to stop the fan from making noise and that it may have been preventing that musheen from working properly at some point.

Yeah, I am sensible to some sound :/.

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

#66

Post by sixonesixo »

willvarfar wrote: post #32
nabla9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite one is the one where engineer notices that he can login on terminal only when sitting down. When standing up, login fails.

Not the same one, but very recently, this problem has been cropping up for real all over the place! https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/1214162400666103808?s=... People having screens that turn off when you sit down or stand up. SPOILER: its the gas compression in the shockabsorber causing an EM spike or something like that.

it happens to me all the time with a colleague that sits in front of me. every time he stand up, my monitor start glitching. i found that cause a couple of weeks ago, and now i find it hilarious

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

#67

Post by yrro »

notacoward wrote: post #59

This is why one of my favorite features in the original MacOS filesystem was type/creator fields (four uppercase letters each). Yes, it was possible for developers to create collisions, but it was still better than the UNIX method of applying fragile heuristics to the file contents. IMO it would still be a good idea to replicate this (minus the four-character limitation) with a standardized extended attribute, fallin…

The separation between type and creator had other beneficial side effects. The Type code told you which apps _could_ open a file (by drag and drop or via the file chooser dialog). The creator code told you which app _would_ be chosen when the file was opened in the Finder (e.g., double-clicked). So HTML documents I had created in some web authoring tool would open in it for editing, whereas those I had saved from a web browser would open in it for viewing.

I don't remember it being possible to change either code using tools that shipped with the OS. I obtained a tool on one of MacFormat's early cover disks...

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

#68

Post by clmul »

numlock86 wrote: post #34
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

I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were g…

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 have absolutely no idea what the cause could be. It's mildly annoying sometimes as I have to check that it's really staying put, but I can deal with it.

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

#69

Post by horomeme »

sdrothrock wrote: post #15
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

Maybe you've already seen this one, but maybe there are some people who haven't... I get a kick out of it every time I reread it, anyway. :) http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles Edit: And the FAQ: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

My first time. Absolutely hilarious!

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

#70

Post by numlock86 »

stazz1 wrote: post #39
numlock86 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were g…

https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-... Also, some reddit makes it seem like a Titanium pin in his shoulder was to blame: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2rsivw/monitor...

Wow, nice find. Although that is not the story I was looking for. Seems like it isn't as unique then.
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