Tales from the IT Trenches from sulan@dun.org

Need a laugh?  Try these true tales from the dark side of tech support.

If God had meant mice to fly, he would have given them wings ...

While doing IT support for a high school, I replaced a French teacher's 286 DOS machine with a donated 386 running Windows 3.1.  I imported her worksheets, showed her how to open and modify them, and she seemed fine typing and adding to them when I left.

A little later, as I wandered down the hall, I came back to check on her to see how she was doing.  Coming up behind her, I saw her waving her mouse around in the air while clicking.  She turned to me saying "Why doesn't this work?".  I took her hand, moved it down onto the mouse pad, scrolled down to the right spot and clicked so she could edit the end of the document.  I showed her the little ball on the bottom of the mouse and explained how it worked.  Her response?  "Thanks, you're a genius!"

The case of the orgasm noises saboteur ...

In order to encourage more students to hang out in and use the computer lab, I'd occasionally buy them some new gizmo to entice them to come in at lunchtime and check it out.  I bought them a microphone and showed them how to use the Sound Recorder Accessory to record their own .wav files.

Our computer lab doubled as a regular classroom and while teaching Biology there the following week, I booted up the computer attached to the microphone and went back to lecturing at the whiteboard.  All was well until the Windows screen appeared, and the default startup noise began to play ... which was the sounds of a female crying out as she rapidly approached orgasm.  I dove for the power switch as this was an orthodox Jewish school where modesty reigned - females had to wear skirts ending below the knee and shirts ending below the elbow.

Red-faced, I continued the lecture as the class of 15 year olds giggled.

Later that afternoon, after securely locking the computer lab door, I set about sleuthing just who had replaced the default Windows startup .wav file with their own version.  I took the original orgasm file and, using the Sound Recorder accessory decreased the speed twice at which point I could recognize the baritone of a certain 15 year old male prankster in my biology class ... a fellow who perpetually had a twinkle in his eye and whose kepa perched percariously atop his irrepressibly curly red hair.

I called him out of another teacher's class and he sheepishly came into the hall.  Of course, he got a detention.