Someday, my printer will come

Paul Edwards, at TNT Logistics, is pleased to see us returning to the subject of stupid users, because he can get a few things off his chest.

For example, this conversation between Mike, who works for him, and a user at a remote site who couldn’t get the local print server box to work. Mike asked the user if only he used the printer, and when the user confirmed this, he attempted to help him connect the printer to the PC directly.

Mike: You need to unplug the printer lead from the box and connect it to the back of your PC.

User: Is it a black lead?

Mike: No. It’s probably the grey one.

User: Can you see me?

Mike: Huh?

User: It is a grey lead - can you see me?

Mike: No, it’s just that most printer leads are grey.

The user then spent five minutes attempting to find the port in the back of his PC.

User: I have one of those PCs that doesn’t have any ports on the back.

Mike: What type is it?

User: A Syncmaster.

Mike: No, that’s your monitor. There’s another box under your desk.

User: You’re right! I didn’t know that was there!

The next day two of his colleagues complained that they couldn’t print any more. Any more daft users?

You can call me Al

We’re not doing errors any more, as there are just too many of them, but we wanted to pass this one on.

‘The following error is listed in Delphi 3 Error Codes by Name,’ says Steve Bowker. ‘It is: WSAEALREADY 10037 WSAEALREADY: watch out,

Al is ready.’

His questions – and ours: ‘Who is Al? What is he ready for? And what should we be watching out for?’

A ruse to abuse from wear, tear or bear

Last week we brought you Mike Gooding’s Pelican storage boxes (‘the guarantee does not cover shark bite, bear attack and children under five’) and we brought you the terms of the guarantee: ‘Void only if the Peli product has not been abused beyond normal and sensible wear and tear’.

Which, as some of you point out, has one too many negatives. ‘Presumably, then, if it goes wrong and you need to make a claim, you hastily abuse it be yond normal and hope they don’t realise the abuse happened after it went wrong,’ says Chris Harris, at STL.

Kevin Walker, at Smiths Aerospace, thinks it might be a ruse to make you abuse its products. ‘Maybe at Peli they have a customer-based product improvement programme,’ he suggests.

Breaking up is not so hard to do

We occasionally bring you dating advice, not because you need it, of course. But we are indebted to the BBC web site for news of Richard Ecob’s research into the similarities between radioactive decay and the way in which we look for partners.

You’ve probably all realised this already, but we thought we should pass it on to you anyway.

His insight: ‘super daters’, who have lots of short relationships, are a positive force because they break up weak couples, who are then free to go off and find better partners. Well, that’s their excuse.

The similarity is between the probability of a nucleus decaying and a couple breaking up.

Good news: having more complex preferences makes no difference to the probability of ending up in a relationship. Bad news: that’s provided you accept that most of the criteria won’t be met.