I believe it's called "Dicing with death by a thousand cuts".

That day he happened to be carrying a floppy containing software that mimicked a washing machine?

I’m guessing it wasn’t his first call out to the audit department.

They weren't Autonomy's auditors by any chance?

They weren't Autonomy's auditors by any chance?

Well if you're going to take HP to the cleaners, doing so to the soundtrack of a washing machine seems thoroughly appropriate...

Once, long ago, I was in way over my head, I didn't know the app in question at all, I told a PA to a D level that her computer needed to be shutdown* and unplugged for 10 minutes to drain the capacitors, I needed a few more minutes to read up on her App's error message. And was praying to the reboot gods for assistance too. When I returned to her desk, I found my boss clacking away on the keyboard, he looked up without missing a beat and said, "The capacitors are drained, and I've been able to correct the error." I could tell there was a smile under his beard somewhere...

*Shutdown as in shutdown any other questions I couldn't answer, she was the PA to a Director... I didn't want to look incompetent!

It's not quite as daft as it sounds.

The original PS/2 Model 50 would often blow the PSU if shut down and then restarted immediately. A minute or so was sufficient to avoid the problem but of course you always tell impatient users to wait longer than necessary, on the assumption that they will always try earlier than told.

I remember that smell - reminded me of Fray Bentos. Nice amount of smoke, epsecially on the model 55's

I had one go in a computer room once (that had the old Halon). Never moved so fast in my life

Way back when I worked at HBOS, well, ComputerCentre, subcontracted, as is the nature, they had these awful Dell C610's which had an amazing design flaw.

The "little blue dot" human interface device, or, to give it's technical term with a completely straight face, nipple, on the keyboard had it's ribbon cable run over the primary ram slot before joining the motherboard. This ensured that after enough hard work, with the ram getting hot, then cool, then hot, then cool, enough times that the mouse would take itself on a jolly little wander around your screen; somewhat perturbing to the bean counters the devices were issued to.

Official fix from Dell was, you'll be surprised to hear, a brand new keyboard at a hundred and fifty pounds (plus vat) I thank you. The unofficial CC fix was to ask the user if they have ever in their life used, or had the inclination to use, the little blue dot on the keyboard to move the mouse? At which point they'd say no and four screws and a pair of snips later the cable was removed and the mouse was back to being compliant and well behaved.

We called these "nipple-ectomies" and I don't know why, but when explaining this to a user one day the words came out of my mouth "well, in solidarity, I'm going to have to take one of yours too", he just sat there, sort of stunned silence fell over what had previously been an upbeat and banter filled conversation. I never did repeat that jape on any further call outs.

One joke that did land though, maybe not with the user, was those lucky enough to have some aging Compaq desktops (well after Comapq had been resigned to the bin of HP purchases and guttings) were treat to what could only be surmised as attempts to summon a lesser demon. A fault with an IE6 update caused the audio driver to corrupt and then whenever IE was opened the machine started speaking in tongues, bidding it's ode to whichever nameless entity it was trying to resurrect.

The fix was straight forward enough, swap out the corrupted file for a known good, this could even be done over network and not require me to attend, however, as I was second line support and our contract stipulated I had to attend, I got a good walk around the office after technically closing twenty of these calls (before the keen eyed are like, why not the call centre? They were in-house, so we wouldn't get paid if they closed the call, and so far they hadn't worked out the simple fix).

Half way through my stack of call sheets I get to a floor and find an absolute a-hole berating a poor young lady over nothing (least nothing I could make out), poor love was physically cringing, it's a workplace, no matter what you've done, it can't call for that and I just knew, of course, the belligerent a-hole would be who I'm seeing, as it always is. Before I could intrude on the screaming fit he clocked me with a "ah, you're finally here, fix this shit" pointing to his pc (call log twenty minutes ago, btw), with out a word I walk over to his machine and popped my standard issue toolkit out my pocket and unzipped it.

Well, I say standard issue, there was one little swap I'd done, you see down the spine of the faux-leather bound tool kit was a plastic tube that I am, to this day, some two decades later, still to ascertain it's exact use, unless I'd nodded off in the induction where they mentioned we have to take urine samples as well as fix pcs. So, this useless tube had long since gone, and, as one of the senior engineers was a bit of a whovian, replaced with a childs toy sonic screwdriver, it even lit up and made the sounds.

Plucked from the spine of the toolkit, a flick of the wrist extends the sonic screwdriver and I run it up and down the side of the PC, giving it a little stare as a flourish (though I'm still confused as to why he always stares at something with no evident readout..) and let the user know "that should've done it, you can use your machine again". I'm fortunate looks can't actually kill, but it's fairly possible I may have been sucked in to one of the nostrils that flared so much if I was a step closer. Taking the silence as intended, I reassured him it was resolved, grabbed the mouse, opened IE and, nothing, not a bleep.

His face, forever seared in my mind, as I think I fundamentally broke something, deep inside. The rational part of his brain knowing full well my childs toy did nothing to fix his computer. Yet, evident to his eyes (well, ears) it was fixed with neary any other interaction. "Any other problems, just give us a call" I smile, turn, wink at his colleague and make my exit.

As it turns out, unbeknownst to I, the senior engineer was on the floor at the time, he corners me in the lift. "Never, ever do that again" he breaks "funny as hell, but never do that again, alright" with the widest grin. That sonic screwdriver's still in my toolkit (though, the one in the house, I don't think I'd be still living if I was on break-fix for two decades, the lure of cat5 cables and suspended sealing supports would've been just too appealing an escape from user queries...).

Hmm, starting to worry about my attention span now.

Fantastic!

Nipple? Hmmm, my usual designator for those usually refers to the nub a little lower down on the female anatomy... (No, not in polite company. Then it's just a nub. Nipple would probably get many in trouble too).

It's called a G-spot because it's next to the letter G.

Centrally Located Input Tool

I still buy Thinkpads now just for these (and never had the Dell issue) as the horror of having to use use trackpad fills me with dread.

I remember that program :o)

There’s probably a copy of it in one of the boxes of ancient floppy disks in my attic (I rarely throw anything away - a lesson from my dad who, when watching antique shows on TV often remarked “we had one of those - threw it out years ago”). A surprise treasure trove for my grandkids when they have to clear it out once I’m pushing up daisies…