If Rohan's friend didn't skimp on sacrificial goat, services of wizard would not be needed. Alas.

Waving a dead chicken over it is the recommended method:

https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/W/wave-a-dead-chicken.html

How did he get the machine stable enough to end the file if it was in a crash-boot loop? Did OS/2 have some equivalent to single-user mide?

I suspect this is a boot floppy time.

It did have a safe mode, but you rarely needed because the OS itself, Presentation Manager aside, was extremely robust. Would be interesting to know what caused the crash, presumably a bad driver for the modem hardware.

Yes. For OS/2 2.0/2.1 or earlier a boot floppy is required. For 3.0 you wait for the OS/2 blob in the top left, press alt F1 then C, for 4.0 it's alt F1 then F1.

It boots to a command line with no networking, TEDIT can be used to edit files (for OS/2 2.x you'll have to provide your own text mode editor).

It's not a single user mode, because OS/2 is inherently a single user OS (there is a sort of multi user add on, but it should only be used in very specific circumstances)

I’m fairly sure this was standard practice for most folk - either remembering stuff or knowing the phone number of someone who could!

I remember talking one customer through doing something over the phone, and when they realised I was travelling they wondered how i was driving while using a laptop - and I explained it here was no laptop, it was all in my head. There was a moment or two of silence, and then a question: “so how come you can remember all this, but can’t tell me what day of the week it is?”. Although now I’m older, I’m useless at days of the week, where my car keys are (last time was the pan drawer) and the computer stuff…

So far, I can still remember my own name though, so it’s not all bad ;)

Same here. I got so well acquainted with a specific DOS-based POS* that I could tell customers what exactly to do over the phone.

This also helped to restore some deleted data as well.

*POS in question was Ulti-Sales.

At that time it was all character-based, being DOS...

When I first read the acronym POS, I thought you meant "Piece of Shit". I realise you meant "Point of Sale", but I've dealt with a few POS systems, and it can be hard to tell the difference..

"and it can be hard to tell the difference.."

Indeed. Twins, separated at birth.

Back in the dying days of the last century, I was trying to fix a very broken industrial x-ray machine, with management breathing down my neck to get it up and running again for production. By this time, the machine had been extensively modified by the manufacturer and was distinctly non standard. No joy, so called the manufacturers. Got through to the designer of the machine in Germany barrelling down an autobahn at some insane speed, who gave me a whole series of "check the voltage on the blue with black strip wire going to pin 22 of connector C42 is between 1.7 and 1.9V type instructions for half an hour, entirely from memory and a second language. Much impressed!

Whenever I have a memory lapse I always remind myself of what I heard a doctor say, "The time to worry is not when you can't remember your PIN, it's when you don't know what an ATM is".

By which time you'll have forgotten that not recognising an ATM is .... something or other!

Has also occurred to me that [1]ATM has multiple meanings. And from a particularly kinky doctor it might just be the ‘other’ meaning.

Forgetting that ‘other’ meaning might just leave a bad taste in your mouth!

-----------> Obv!

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ATM

I guess you can't remember the day of the week because it changes every day, whereas the other things don't.

Was Jim really Gandalf coming to the aid of Rohan?

I'll get me coat. The one with the LotR trilogy paperbacks in the pocketses

sss nasty pocketses

my preciouses!

The Lord Of The Rings isn't a trilogy. It's a single novel, consisting of six books and appendices, commonly published in three volumes.

It's a sign of the times.

Back in the day we used to have people who really knew what they were doing. People just starting their careers were actively encouraged to learn. I worked with amazing people (one was even asked to produce content for the Open University). With the advent of outsourcing, that all seems to have taken a back seat. The gaggle of wizards is growing smaller, and that's a real shame.

Question - do you think the proliferation in AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard etc will lead to people becoming more dumber, incapable of retaining memories of certain processes?

Back in those days you absolutely had to memorize specific steps in order to be able to do your job.

Nowadays it is just as easy as opening a web browser, go to google, chatgpt or bard (or whatever) and asking for assistance, and most of the time you'll have the answer.

Certainly more dumb I should think. :-)

It's already happened with phone numbers, I have no idea what my son, daughter's, or fathers mobile phone numbers are because I never learned them just added them straight to the phone memory.

I can remember my grandmothers landline number from childhood, the landline number I used for a BBS, my wife's mobile, all the landline numbers my mother ever had and the landlines I've ever had but that's about it. Oh, and my sisters mobile number before she emigrated.

I've also done the 'list out commands from memory over the phone' gig.

Used to work for a bank and did on-call support but it was reasonable in that they provided a mobile dongle along with the laptop so you didn't have to rush to somewhere with wi-fi which wasn't ubiquitous back then or go home or to office, or rely on a hotel network when travelling. Important fact here was that the dongle was used very infrequently.

Had gone out with the family to a National Trust place a good distance from home, which turned out didn't have very good mobile signal. Got a call saying we have an issue with some workflow in Exchange public folders, don't ask, we need fixed soonest or massive penalties, but no data signal.

Move to a location with some signal and try to dial-in, nothing doing.

Ok, drive about ten miles leaving family behind to find a good signal. Still nothing doing.

In desperation called one of my managers who was an AD guy not Exchange to see if they happened to be at home and could dial-in, while I'm sitting in a car on a 30C day, couldn't run AC so he could hear me, and couldn't open window because it was a busy road that I'd ended up on and SLA was creeping up.

Managed to talk him all the way through checking and fixing it though so was pretty pleased with myself.

Turns out accounting had killed the mobile contract because it hadn't been used in the last 3 months, there was no tag to say it was infrequently used.

But of course they hadn't said to me that they were doing so even though my name WAS tagged against it so they could bill my department.

Thanks so much. Words were exchanged shall we say.

I can remember my grandmothers landline number from childhood, the landline number I used for a BBS, my wife's mobile, all the landline numbers my mother ever had and the landlines I've ever had but that's about it. Oh, and my sisters mobile number before she emigrated.

Funnily enough met up with some old school friends last weekend and we could all remember each others phone numbers from 40 odd years ago. Haven't a clue what my Dad's mobile is now, although the landland hasn't changed for about 50 years, apart from an extra digit or two added to the start.

Actually, I would suspect the proliferation of AI would drive people to holding the processes in memory. Because AI is crap and prone to hallucinating bollocks answers.

As such, as AI proliferates, more sites will be filled with incorrect crap, so people will be forced to remember how to make things work, rather than relying on google searches.

It's a shame really, I mean I have limited mental capacity, every time I learn something new it pushes something old out of my brain. Like that time I took that home wine making course, and afterwards forgot how to drive?! :P

(This joke was stolen from Homer, of course... Just channeling all those AI's out there...)

Yes, you had to learn. There was no web browser. You talked to people. You experimented. You found ways to IMPROVE what was being done. What I see now is people blindly following whatever they are spoon fed. On more than one occasion not even bothering to stop when there were errors. The question then becomes, what happens if you look for an answer (as you say yourself - most of the time you'll have the answer) but you *don't* find one? Or the one you do find is incorrect?

I'd rather have someone who has the skill and drive to go and work out the answer....

of what that must have appeared like to onlookers. :)

When I think of the number of times I was consulted by staff and students on issues outside of my actual responsibilities (and far from the expected competencies of the role) and have responded with "that rings a bell" and motionlessly, silently scouring my memory for something I had read or seen then responding with an answer or "you didn't change...?" I was fortunate not to receive a visit from the Inquisition*.

* of course no one expects the (Spanish) Inquisition

Many moons ago, whilst onsite at a customer setting up some new software on all systems I was requested to update a few packages and windows service packs on the Finance Directors Laptop as on site IT had had some non disclosed issues.

The FD was last, turns out the FD was French and his Windows was setup as French, this was early NT 4 days, you know when the locale, and keyboard layout was US English on the login screen despite system being set to French or UK English or whatever.

So I rattled on installing patched, getting the system up todate, then installed the company wide softtware, then installed the additional things requested all without issue.

The FD had been watching for sometime, and during the process started to speak to me in French, I replied I'm sporry I dont speaak French, He said "oh I thought you did as you understood everything that came up on screen".

Nope just know what each box meant by looking at it and what each button was due to location, to be honest I hadnt even noticed it as in french.

Same here, last week I fixed a problem with Outlook, despite the GUI being entirely in Dutch. It's sort of like muscle memory.

Had that with a Japanese guest scientist :D I could recognise "hai" and "iee" on the buttons, and the rest was... guess work.

Stood in the middle of Tesco on the phone walking a friend in India through a particularly nasty issue to do with internal security certificates on a WebSphere Application server NDM deployment, visualising the console GUI and even moving my fingers as if they were the curser to keep my head "in the zone". yep, you do get stared at and no I didn't care as I was on decent £££ for it ( that 20min call paid for the weekly shop and a nice bottle of whiskey to celebrate )

Back in the day I worked on a lot of T-carrier stuff. I can't tell you how many times an owner/client ranted about a shiny new (fractional) T1/E1 link being down, how the equipment was shit, the field guys were incompetent, and how pretty much everybody involved with the installation should be taken out behind the barn & horsewhipped. Most of the time[0], it was an incorrectly set loopback switch on the new node. Seems bosses in general can't resist flipping switches ... and can't read blinkenlights.

Sometimes I'd casually reached out and toggle the loopback switch, thus fixing the link and painting the boss's face an interesting shade of red when I presented him with the bill reading nothing more than "Call out. Flipped loopback switch. $1,000" on an official invoice.

But once in a while, after inspecting the node, I'd stand aside & motion the boss through the door before me. While he had his back to me, I'd flip the switch ... and we'd go off to his office for a chat about fixing the obviously broken machine. I'd let him rant on for several minutes, around 20 was the record, but always ending up with something along the lines of "so what are you going to do about it, then?". To which I would quietly reply "Oh, I've already fixed it. We'll invoice you for the call out". Sometimes the resulting sputtering reached epic proportions ...

[0] The rest of the time it was a cable that had fallen out of the CSU/DSU because it hadn't been screwed down properly. We always took the blame for that, even if it was their guys bolting stuff together. We've all done it, we're only human, I'll take the blame, no charge ... sometimes it's handy to have a friendly couple of faces in a client's datacenter who probably won't ever try to throw you under a bus.

I seem to remember windows trying something like this fairly recently . Might have been early W10. Even after a normal shutdown stuff would reappear , maybe it was browser windows only , i cant remember but it wasnt good

I used to work with OS/2, from V1,0. No Internet of course, just a huge and heavy set of printed books which were so awkward you just had to keep it all in your head. So now I could still just about remember how to write an OS/2 and (PM) program in C off the top of my head, but struggle to remember people's names. But I totally agree that sometimes you just have to stop for a few moments to think and it comes back. I once worked with someone who would go for a shower when he had a problem as this was the best place for him to think. Sometimes several times a day.

Many years ago, when SQL Server 6 was US and Canada only and we were definitely not supposed to be developing on that version in the UK, we found an issue with the database that we were creating. We called Microsoft and after going through several layers of tech support they decided that it was beyond their ability to fix over the phone (this was many years ago, after all) so they would despatch a human being to investigate.

The next day a giant of a bearded man with poor personal hygiene arrived from Seattle to stare at our database and our code. After three days of staring, occasionally typing and even less occasionally grunting or asking for coffee, he said, "Got it, I'll send a fix". He flew back to Seattle and a fix was emailed to us a day later. Our stinking, silent, staring guru had fixed things and all was well. We went live before the UK & Europe embargo expired.

I've got no real stories of when I (or a friend) channeled a higher power to get something to work, but one thing I've found does seem to work, but only if the device is near a window, is this. When it fails, simply point out to it that it is very near a window (it helps if the window is high up) and that it will being going through the window quickly very soon unless it behaves.

You'd be surpised at how many devices start working when you do this.