Go to L: A man of the cloth faces keyboard conundrum
- Reference: 1625211008
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/02/on_call/
- Source link:
Our tale takes us to the 1980s, when computer users had to give their hardware the correct time and date on startup – no internet time synchronisation services here.
"Martin", for that was certainly not his name, was cursed with being the one in his family who "knew a bit about computers" and so was frequently called upon to provide the occasional bit of support.
[2]
On the morning in question, he received a call from a family friend, the local priest, who had taken time out from God-bothering to do some tip-tapping on the church computer keyboard. Fortunately, the events predate those mainstays of today's Parish Newsletter: Comic Sans and Microsoft Publisher. In fact, the priest was having difficulty even starting the PC – it was asking for the date and time as usual but refusing to accept his entry.
[3]
[4]
"On the phone," Martin told us, "I talked him through every variation on date format but none worked.
"Then in an inspiration that must have come from the patron saint of computers, St John Damuchine, I asked: 'How are you typing the 1s?'"
[5]
We see what you did there with "John Damascene/Da-muchine", Martin. The Catholic Church goes for Isidore of Seville, a scholar who died in the seventh century and whose patronage includes computer users and the internet.
[6]Ouch! When the IT equipment is sound, but the setup is hole-y inappropriate
[7]A hotline to His Billness? Or a guard having a bit of a giggle?
[8]We don't know why it's there, we don't know what it does – all we know is that the button makes everything OK again
[9]Today I shall explain how dual monitors work using the medium of interpretive dance
It is, after all, written that the holy men of times past did battle with a hideous beast known by the Latin "Dominus Nefari Sanctum" – the master villain, or "DNS" for short. And yes, we made that bit up (in case the appalling schoolboy Latin was not clue enough).
As for our hero, Martin, he was told by the priest that "1" was being typed in as "l" (lowercase "L") as it always had been. By some fortuitous coincidence he'd never needed to enter a "1" during startup until today, but we presume a hard morning of prayer had slowed him, and the time was now 11:30.
"I told him to use the '1' character instead," said Martin, the miracle maker. "It worked."
"Old habits die hard."
[10]
There is a joke somewhere in there about the state of monks' garments, but we're probably on track for a lightning bolt after the DNS thing so will leave well alone.
Ever had the calling? Be it from a higher power or a user unable to operate a keyboard? Let us know with an email to [11]On Call . ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/on-call
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YN7jvQcjyQpl5GMd5Mo4rQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/25/on_call/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/18/on_call/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/on_call/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/04/on_call/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YN7jvQcjyQpl5GMd5Mo4rQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] mailto:oncall@theregister.com
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: accept emailed prayer requests
MIME encoded?
Re: accept emailed prayer requests
I think that's more associated with the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastic_sign_languages
;-)
Very different clerical experience
I was doing desktop support in a University on the edge of the City of London early in my career. The Pastor was vicar at one of the Wren churches and approached my boss with a problem with viruses. I was duly despatched with a floppy disk version of McAfee.
The Vicar was using language that was a good way from the divine about some minion who thought they knew things. Anyway, I managed to disinfect it but my hopes of developing a side hustle with the Wren churches never came to anything.
--> closest to a halo.
So in other words ...
... the Priest had been told by his typing teacher to go to 'ell?
He'd obviously learned to type on a very old school typewriter. I remember my dear old mum (lifelong secretary) talking about how when she first started work there were still quite a few old manual typewriters around that didn't include keys for 1 or 0 - you were expected to use a lower-case L or upper-case O.
I had a portable typewriter for a very short (i.e. within the Argos returns period) while that was like that. It went back in favour of one with a "proper" keyboard.
Font recommendations
And I don't mean the ones used for baptisms. Which monospaced fonts have you found offer the clearest distinction between lower 'el', upper 'eye' and number '1' and upper 'oh' and number '0'? And also look good at a range of sizes? Lucida Console (Windows) and Liberation Mono (Linux) are my go-tos, just wondering what else is out there.
Re: Font recommendations
I like [1]Go Mono. It's as good eye candy as I've ever seen in a mono font too. (I'm not any sort of a font geek, but not a fan of stripping the letters down to their minimum representation either.)
[1] https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/go-mono
Re: Font recommendations
I've always been a fan of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
https://www.dafont.com/bitstream-vera-mono.font
Re: Font recommendations
I always liked Comic Sans... I know, I know, I'll go around the back of the bit barn and shoot myself.
Re: Font recommendations
I'm using "Hack" and "JetBrains Mono" in Linux, and "Consolas" in Windows.
Computer: Please enter the current date.
Priest types in MCMLXXXIV
Computer: Invalid date!
I was going to suggest that the priest entered the name of the saint commemorated on that day, but as there is no saint for July 2nd, at least in the Anglican calendar, that would fall rather flat. Maybe he could have entered "third Sunday in Lent" or whatever.
"2nd Wednesday after Pentecost, 2nd Wednesday after Pentecost!" A. J. Rimmer
Calling upon a higher power
I have worked for a UK church organisation that did not so much hold daily standups but morning prayers, at which we would be praised for accomplishing completion of a Jira ticket or a prayer would be invoked, asking God to guide the hand of the developer in solving the blocker. Production deployments merited a special meeting where everyone would stand and contemplate for a moment before a prayer asking God to look down favourably upon the DevOps team.
Re: Calling upon a higher power
I guess that's one way to handle change management...
The chosen one
Martin should have told him to RTFB.
(For the avoidance of doubt: B stands for Bible)
RTFM
The answer was in the Book of Numbers
Re: RTFM
Revelations, surely?
those mainstays of today's Parish Newsletter: Comic Sans and Microsoft Publisher
Publisher, yes when I was editing a Church Newsletter, Comic Sans - never! My favourite for that job was Century Schoolbook as people with failing eyesight found it easiest to read. It's still used now, several years and several editors later.
School days
From the title I was expecting a mathematical conundrum from a text based adventure game from the early '80s
I still remember "L" fondly. And can still use a quick square root
Ah. Well, ahem...!
Something along these lines caught me out recently.
My bank insists you have a magic key-phrase when you set up online banking, and each time you log in you have to type the requested random three characters out of it.
It's a complete ball ache in the first place, but during lockdown I set a second account up for my dad because he was no longer able to go to his building society (who didn't do anything other than on paper, anyway). But such a dumb security system means you have to write the damned thing down somewhere.
I always make the key-phrases more complex by using numbers to replace letters in them, and in my dad's case - and for God knows what reason - I left one lower case 'L' as a lower case 'L', and another as a '1'. And then forgotten I'd done so (if I ever realised I had split them).
It took forever to figure out what I was doing wrong when I couldn't log in until it suddenly clicked. And it took weeks to manifest itself in the first place until that particular '1' was one of the random three requested.
there can be only one
"The Catholic Church goes for Isidore of Seville, a scholar who died in the seventh century and whose patronage includes computer users and the internet." You left out the beer! Quelle horreur! https://nl.latrappetrappist.com/nl/nl/producten/p.23213.suffix.html/la-trappe-isidor.html (yes, I know this is a different guy, but he is the one that counts. ;) )
At a former place, around the time of the millennium crisis, our build system broke on February 2nd, 2000. Some code checked the date and rejected this one. Investigation showed that the date checking code was completely, absolutely broken. It was written in Perl, and it was the kind of brokenness that you could only produce in perl. But - it was never given an incorrect date, and in the past it had reported all dates are fine.
Exercise to the reader: In which way was February 2nd, 2000, different from every single date in the 1000 years before?
For my sins...
...I have to code in VBA in Office (Access mostly), which defaults to Courier New. '1' and 'l' (lower case L) basically are the same appearance wise. There is a very subtle shift in the pixels on screen between the two but it's practically not noticeable. So I've got used to making sure I try not to use a single 'l' for variables, in case when I come back to code in future I confuse it with a '1'. Fortunately variables in vba can't start with numbers, so anything that looks like a '1' at the beginning should only be an 'l'.
An excellent contact page
I saw an early version of the web site of the Carthusian Order, who are strictly silent.
Their contact page said that their webmaster would be happy to accept emailed prayer requests and reports of broken links, "but please understand that it is not in the nature of our vocation to reply".