Computer Stories

[LSW]

I know some of you old-timers out there must have computer stories that experienced folks can laugh at & new folks can learn something... maybe.

 

1)  My wife called earlier that they seemed to have power outage, not uncommon in Juneau even in the summer. But the lights works where as the PCs did not. She just texted me that someone hat the brilliant idea of turning off the power to the fire alarms to see if they run on batteries. Another brilliant person years ago put all the PCs for her building on the same circuit, so they all lost their ability to work for an hour and no one could figure out why.

•      Really? No documentation for the Alarms?
•      Is turning off the fire alarms a good call during the work day?
•      Alarms should really be on a dedicated circuit don't you think?

 

2)  Also today a fellow employee has made his 30 years with the State of Alaska (most of it in this office). Back in 1983, joined this office as a programmer. He did something and a process failed so he reported it to the head programmer. That person said not to worry, it fails more often than not and is on a Paradox server that they will be getting rid of soon enough as it is an old database standard and out of date. About 7 years ago our Division Director slid a note to the new Deputy Director asking him to ask a question during a sales pitch by a computer company vendor, so he asked if the program in question was compatible with Paradox and the description in his own words: "The fellows eyes popped open and his jaw dropped and he asked astonished if we really were still using Paradox, he did not know and said he would have to check on that." Well Paradox was supposed to go away in 1983 and it was considered old then... we just sun-downed it two weeks ago, 31 years later.

 

Did my Paradox story send shivers up any spines? Over two extra decades of giving generations of programmers grief! Glad I only worked with it a short time when I started 5 years ago, I was re-writing to Paradox apps into Crystal Reports... so they could sun-down it... back then!