Gat

Other Off topic
1

Pulled the bakkie into a parking space this morning to quickly visit the bank. The parking bay was presided over by one of those old fashioned heavy gauge aluminium parking meters. I foraged in my wallet for a 20c piece, inserted it in the slot, and nothing happened. Immediately annoyed. I could see the coin sitting about an inch deep in the slot, where it got stuck. I gave the meter a polite slap to encourage the mechanism to loosen up and swallow properly. It didn’t. I then gave it a tap from the other side, hurting my fist. Still nothing. I then picked up a discarded match stick, and tried to work the coin into the meter. The match snapped off after a few seconds of effort. I thought, bugger it all, and crossed the street to go into the bank, with zero credits on the meter.

The poor state of municipal amenities and the injustice of it all was still fresh on my mind when, on returning to the bakkie, I saw a traffic officer penning away at her ticket book, some 3 parking spaces away from my own car. I quickly glanced at my windshield, but apparently I came off scott free. Still, because I like complaining when I have the moral high ground, I called her over and showed her the broken meter. How on earth, I demanded from her, can we be expected to pay for our parking spaces if the meters are in such a lamentable condition. Here I inserted a 20c piece, and nothing happened. Absolutely no credit was displayed in its little screen. What if I was issued a parking fine because of it? The traffic officer stooped a little, peered into the slot, turned the knob and walked away. I suddenly had four minutes to kill.

Rigil

2

I lol’d.

3

Aw what the hell, I’ll tell you one of mine.

Our company bored-room has a nice projector, sound system, wireless keyboards/mice, etc. Perfect for doing software demos (which is helpful since we’re a software company). I’d finished a long-running project consisting of “framework” stuff for a new system we were developing. It was quite important that my stuff operated correctly since the other developers typically use my work to do their work. Hence if I screw it up, it breaks everyone else’s work, or prevents them from doing theirs at all. Developers also tend to be a “tough crowd”.

So anyway it’s time for the big reveal, prove everything works fine and satisfies all requirements via a demo to be held for all devs + CTO in the bored-room.

I start my presentation, lay everything out, objectives, etc… Then we get to the show-and-tell. I fire the application up and start showing various options, features, blah blah blah… I click on a certain dialogue and it instantly disappears. I click on it again, it disappears again. This dialogue is going to be used A LOT.

grumbles in the bored-room

Me: “I, I, I don’t know what’s going on, this stuff has been tested to death.”
CTO: “Oh yeah? It seems broken”

click again click again click again… Just pops up and then disappears…

Me: “No really, I don’t understand, this works!”
general murmuring

… an eternity + 1/2 passes… I look down.

Me: “Oh, I have my finger on the escape key”.

LAUGTER

Turns out THIS keyboard didn’t have normal “top row” keys, they were touch sensitive instead. The lightest brush of the hand activated them, and I had rested my left hand on the top of the keyboard, basically holding down “Escape”, causing my windows to keep disappearing.

I’ve been bearing the brunt of this incident for years now.

4

I had an electrical experience. I’ve got an extension cable (one of those roll up jobs) that I plugged into the wall and all my stuff runs off that. At this school I was late (had to move the chairs first) and therefore rushed. Because I was late there was no power of course. Checked the wall socket to make sure it is switched on, find the DB board and make sure all the switches were on, then went to complain to the school. The janitor was send over and the first thing he did was to check my extension cord switch. I never use those switches, just push the plug in or pull it out. The previous day someone helped me.

5

New guy and his two kids came out to our archery club some years ago, wanting to learn more about the sport. I told them a little bit about the recurve bow - the riser, limbs, draw weight, string materials, sights. Since I was just about to set up for shooting myself, I thought it may be a good idea to show them how to string a bow, i.e. how to put the string on. Now as with most things, there is a long winded, safe way of doing this, and also a quicker but less safe way. The safe way requires a stringer - a piece of rope with two leather pouches attached that you are supposed to slip over the tips of the limbs. But by now it should be obvious that I did not choose the recommended method. With just a little too much zeal, I anchored the lower limb between my legs, arched the bow with one hand while simultaneously walking the string up the upper limb with the other. Something slipped. My shocked little audience had a ringside demonstration of a limb tip being driven into the lower lip of a near perfect idiot at forty-two pounds of force. Blood everywhere, but luckily my entire face went numb so quickly that there was surprisingly little pain involved. Even more surprisingly, the guy showed up the following month sporting his own kit, ready for action.

Rigil

6

Heh-heh :slight_smile: System requirements:

  • Pentium 3 minimum
  • Windows Vista or later
  • Beige and grey XT keyboard that goes clackity-clack

Rigil

7

IBM Model M.