My Board

The following scenario is ficitional. Any relation to anyone or anything in the real world is pure coincidence.

A client calls me and complains that her webpage isn't working. This is the day after I went over to her buisness and installed it, made sure everything is working. She says:
"My son looked at the code and realised that some of the lines are redundant, whatever that means, so he deleted them."
I hold the phone, careful not to break the only thing from now tracking this woman down, my details are in my office, which is a 45 minute trip by car to it.
"Which lines did he delete?" I ask, calmly. At least I thought it was calm.
"Um, was he supposed to do that? He said he's really good at PHP."
At this point, I can hear the phone creaking under the enormous pressure I am putting on it by holding it.
"How good?" I ask.
"He made his own site, it's listed at [link] " she replies.
I tell her to hold on and I hop onto this site. First thing, it has FRAMES. I loathe frames. Secondly, every colour is either black, red or blue. Thirdly, the only thing PHP wise I can find on the entire site is a date and time thing, which isn't even synced to local time. The clock appears about 16 and a half hours behind.
"Did he make this site?" I ask, realising I'm still just about breaking the only contact to this woman.
"Yes. Well, no. It was his school's project. He did it in IT."
Again the phone creaks. Damn it's strong, or maybe I'm too weak.
"Ok, what file did he delete the lines from? And what did they say?" I say, changing the subject because my eyes are starting to bleed from looking at the site for too long. She names the main file, then she goes on to name a function extremely crucial to the entire running of the system I spent the previous two months on.
"Can you come around now and fix it?" She asks.
I look at the time. It's 4:55pm. That means where she works closes in 5 minutes. I live twenty minutes from the customer.
"er... sorry you're breaking.." I hang up.

A few seconds later, my phone starts ringing. It's her.
"Oh, sorry a..t that, .. signal around... area" I say, again faking bad signal.
"That's Ok. When can you come around?" she pleads. Her voice is shaking.
"Sorry, what did you say?" I say, still faking the signal weaknesses.
She repeats what she said.
"Oh... sig..l br..kin." I hang up.

This time, about thirty seconds later, she rings again. I can't turn off my phone. It's one of those flip ones. The power button is on the inside. To open it is to answer. The doctor says I shouldn't be exposed to stressful situations.

I throw the phone onto the desk, watching it writhe around on the desk. I rub my eyes with my thumbs and the phone stops ringing. I'm starting to beleive there is a God. The phone rings again and I'm finally realising that there isn't a God, but most definitiely Satan's working his magic. I let the phone ring, four times. I give in. I pick it up.

"Are you in an area with good signal yet?" she asks.
"Yes, I am I think."
"So when can you come around?" she asks.
"What time is it there?" I ask.
"Oh gosh it's 5pm, pack up people." she finishes the sentence off rather loudly, yelling out to all her co-workers.
"Tomorrow?" she asks.
"I'm busy." I lie.
"Wednesday?"
"Busy there too."
"Thursday?"
"Busy. Look, I'll call you when I find room, OK?"
"Ok."

She hangs up. I think it's all over. Five minutes later she rings AGAIN.

"Would Friday be a good time? That would be a good time for me."
I am stunned. This woman, despite all the subtle work I have been doing, still refuses to wait. I take the phone away from my ear and keep it in my right hand. I walk out onto my balcony, purposely hang up, and drop the phone. I watch it plummet to the ground and smash. Onlookers wonder who did it and look up to see me looking over. I act innocent, but by now they know it's me.

Somehow, the phone rings again. I know it's her.

/lmfao.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':lmfao:\' />

good job, radar

hahaha.... That's great.

lol, nice story






MORE :|

The following story is fictional. Any relation whatsoever to a person, persons or any particular event in the real world or not is purely coincidental.

After the incident with my last phone I had to save up to buy a new one. This time I ensured that it wasn't a flip phone and I could reach the power button without having to answer the call. Clients could now, once again, contact me outside of office hours.

It was Tuesday night, the week after the incident. Concrete plus an eight story drop can do funny things to a mobile phone. The lady hadn't called me since, so I assumed she figured out her problem.

The phone rings, it isn't her. I'm starting to gain faith in God once more. It's a number that both myself and my phone doesn't recognise. That's unusual. How does someone get my number without me giving it to them? I don't care at the moment. It's money, I want it. I pick it up and stab my finger at the button to answer.

"Hello, me here." I answer in my general apathetic tone.
"Um hi. I got your number from my cousin." He goes off to name the lady who called me last week about her webpage. My belief in a God is back to non-existant.
"Oh her, I remember her." I say in a calm voice. This phone's stronger than the last.
"Yeah, two things, when are you coming over to fix her program and can you help me create my database?"
"What kind of database do you want to create?" I ask, purposely ignoring the first question like a politician.
"Just one to store stuff in." he replies with a vague answer. I hate people like that. You'd ask them where they live and they would reply 'Earth'.
"Any chance your parents were cousins?" I ask, out of sheer curiosity.
"What?" he asks, clearly not getting the point that I was implying he must be inbred.
"Oh, nevermind. To create a database you need Microsoft Access." I say, trying to put it as simply as I can.
"Where can I get Microsoft Access?" He says the name of the product whilst imitating my voice.
"A computer shop would be a good place to start." I suggest.
"But they only sell computers." he quickly replies.
"I'm sure if you go in.." I begin
"Do you know of any other places?" he cuts me off.
"I don't know where you live, so no I don't." I answer.
"What about Software Supermarket? Would they have it?" he replies. Slurring his words like he's drunk.
"There's only one way to find out..." I reply, getting annoyed.
"What's that?" he asks.
"Ooo, I don't know, maybe go there and LOOK!" I end the sentence holding the phone at the end of my now outstretched arm to make it seem like I'm not shouting.
"What about that place downtown."
"What place down town?" I ask, getting frustrated.
"The one with the big yellow sign." he replies.
I hang up and take a deep breath in, hold it for a few seconds and let it out real slow. The phone rings again. I recognise the number now, it's him.

"I was just about to ring you back, I pressed the wrong button. Sorry." I make a mistake, apologising to the poor guy.
"That's ok. I have your number written down so I don't forget it." he finishes off laughing at a joke I seemed to have missed.
"I was reading on the Internet the other day. I heard you can download this program from a simple house utility, a fork for example."
"How does that work?" he asks, I finally have his attention. The whole two atoms of it.
"It's too complicated to explain over the phone, but all you have to do is to take the power cord out the back of your computer and then make sure that three of the pointy things on the fork line up to the three holes on the plug."
"Sounds too easy." He says, dumbfounded.
"Try it out." I say. The last I hear is the phone being dropped onto the table and him running across the room to his computer. I hear the computer's fan stop spinning. After a few seconds of silence a drawer opens, by the sound of it, it would have lots of utensils in it. I hear the drawer close. A few more seconds of silence follows.

I hear him come back to the computer and pick up the cord. I nominate him for a Darwin award.

;o! MORE!

OMG /lmfao.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':lmfao:\' />

[i]*nominates Radar for KN Client Care*[/i]

A client called today, complaining that they didn't have the right permissions to access a directory on their computer. I asked them what operating system they were on and they said Linux and I tried to tell them that I could tell them how to do it over the phone but they would only be happy if I came over. Reluctantly, I head over there.

The first thing that bothers me when I get there is the fact that the place is so massive. Each building is like it's own complex maze and it takes me forty minutes just to find the right building and another ten to find the right room. I explain my predicament to the guy who phoned me and he re-explains his. Basically what he's done is installed lampp, which is a Linux bundle of Apache, MySQL, PHP and PERL; It's pretty hard to see where the name "lampp " comes from. The problem is that he cannot write to the htdocs directory, which is both understandable and fixable. The reason why he cannot write to his htdocs directory is because he installed it in /opt/lampp, which is right where the readme tells people to install it to. I'm beginning to like this client. He even uses Mandrake.

"So how can I get it to write to the directory?" he asks.
"Simple, change the chmod." I say. He opens the terminal and types in chmod 755 /opt/lampp/htdocs. Of course, it doesn't work.
"Oook, what did I do wrong?" The client dips into my negative reputation points.
"First of all you need to log in as the super user."
"How do I do that? This isn't even my computer. It's my friend's and he's out for the week."
"Do you have any way of contacting him?"
"No I don't, but I know someone who might." he replies.

This guy, has a friend who owns this computer. Now why can he NOT get in contact with this other guy? Blatant stupidity I suppose. I hear it's contagious now, I best be cautious or I might catch it. He makes a few phone calls and asks the same question, "How do I get in contact with" finishing it up with his friend's name. Most of them answer no and I'm starting to look around the room for pointy objects to stab this guy with. All I can find is a paperclip and the next best thing to that is the power adaptor from the computer.

He finally gives up, after wasting half an hour of my time. "Sorry, his mobile is turned off."
"Oh great, that'll be $100 call out fee thanks." I state the obvious. I'm good at my job.
"I can't pay you today, can I send you the money later?" He asks, I grind my teeth and then fake a smile.
"Sure, send it to.." and I supply him with my work's address.
"Do you want anything to drink?" he asks.
"Sure, I'll have a coffee." I reply. I have a plan and I need him out of the room for it. He will regret not having the money on hand when he needed it. He disappears out the room and I try logging on as super user. I notice a post-it note on the wall next to me. It plainly reads:
"User: nancyn002
Pass: computer2"
I shake my head, thinking why didn't I notice that before. I log in and I now have root access to this guy's machine. I do an old rm -rf /etc/ on his machine and turn it off.

He returns to the room with two cups of coffee in his hand and immeditely asks what is wrong with the machine.
"Oh, it overheated. Best to leave it off for about 30-45 minutes. Machines like that one do that." I explain, using my "leet" skills as a liar to weave my magic.
"Ok, thanks for coming out. I'll send you the money when I can." He says with cheer in his voice, showing me the door.

Oh how I love gullible people.

[color=\"green\"]omfg...this is too good /biggrin.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':D\' /> great stuff /good.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(Y)\' /> [/color]

ROFL .... bad radar, bad bad... LOL.....

ahahahaha.... That's one way to chmod it /blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' />

General disclaimer, not real.. blah blah blah.

It’s been ages since I’ve had a call that stands out from the rest and I’m starting to think I’m lucky. Wrong. It always happens, I think I’m on a lucky streak and it all just turns to mush.

I get a call from one guy who doesn’t sound incredibly intelligent and wants me to do a fifteen minute trip in ten minutes. Bringing the laws of physics into the equation, that is impossible. Nonetheless, I head out to his place.

First thing I notice when I get there is that it smells of smoke. Not just any old type of smoke, cigarette smoke, the type I hate the most. I walk in and the first thing I see is a CD spindle lid UPSIDE DOWN FULL OF CIGARETTE BUTTS. Lovely. The guy speaks to me, his breath, naturally, reeks of smoke.

“Yeah, my computer’s telling me that I have 256 megabytes of RAM when I know it has 512 megabytes.”
“How do you know?”
“I installed it myself.” he proclaims. That’s a good sign [/sarcasm].
I use a screwdriver from his bench to open his case which is filled with dust. Everything has a layer of dust. The dust is caked even on the CPU. There are layers of the stuff. I check the RAM and it seems to be plugged in and I recommend that he blow it out with an air compressor. Mistake #1. He pulls out an air compressor and starts blowing it out in this confined room. I open a door but his house is full of smoky air. I walk outside until the air compressor stops and I wait a few moments to see if the guy’s still alive. I need him alive for now. How else am I supposed to get paid? He tells me I can come back in.

I check out the RAM and it’s just that it is in the wrong port on the motherboard so I move it to the right one, boot it up and it shows 512mb of RAM. Good. The dust had dried out my mouth but I was busting for a leak so I asked him where his fridge and toilet was and if there was anything drinkable. On my way out he asks if he can pay later and I agree.

I come back having done my business and replenished my thirst with the only thing in-date in his fridge, a bottle of yellow soft drink that didn’t taste too bad.

I leave and head back to base and just as I’m pulling up the driveway I get a phonecall. It’s him again.

“Did the yellow soft drink in the fridge taste bad to you?” He asks.
I won’t accept payments after I’ve been. You’ll pay when I’m there with money or with…

I don't think we wanna know what the yellow stuff was, do we 0.o

Pun intended?

Apologies to any typos, Microsoft Word is not installed on this computer and I can't be screwed jumping on my laptop to type it all out.

And has it been THAT long? OCTOBER? Jesus.

As usual, my standard disclaimer:

Any relation in this story to any one/thing/entity/god is purely coincidental.

And here's the story:

Been a long time since anything really has shocked me out of my wits, I thought I was on a role until one fateful day last week. A company asked me to fix their copier for them, saying it was leaving lines through all copies it did. Also no computer could tell it to print, their words, not mine. Don't you love it when they are accurate in their description of the problem? Anyway, I went over there and the drum unit was malfunctioning. Sitting in a chair typing away furiously next to me was this kid would wouldn't be over 15 years old.

"What are you doing?" I asked out of curiosity.
"Coding." He replied in a typically one-worded teenage response.
"What are you coding?"
"PHP." Wow, this time he used an acronym!
"Hey I know a bit of that language." I say, sitting up and looking closer at the screen, reading his code. "There's an easier way to do that." I suggest.
"Don't care." He replies, this time with TWO WORDS, ladies and gentlemen, a world record for a teenage response.
"You know, all it is using the explode function, what you've written is buggy." I continue, trying to break this teenager's apathy. He ignores me completely.
"Hey buddy, I need a computer to print to this copier, can I use that one."
"No." Back to the one worded answers, just when I thought we were making progress. "Use that one over there." He uses a total of five words, smashing his old record by two and a half times itself. He points vaguely behind him.

On the computer next to the empty one there's a lady sitting there doing some graphical design.
"Who is that?" I ask, with every intention to report the teen to his superiors.
"Who? Oh, him. Never mind, work experience kid. We let him go, do what he pleases. The school uses us to keep him out of their hair." She explains as Plan A disintegrates. Plan B materialises.
"Would you mind getting me some coffee?" I ask the lady. "I didn't have mine this morning and I get cranky."
"Sure." She replies, getting up from her chair and walking around a bend into the kitchen.

I roll my chair over to the teenager.
"Use explode, it will save a lot of headaches."
He spins around on his chair. "I don't care. I can code it, you can't code it. You don't have any idea how to code this language, go away." Smashed his old record 4.2 times!
I decide to stop giving the pro some tips and I go and try to print from that other computer. No luck. I notice the work experience kid's log book sitting next to me and I get an idea. I dial few numbers into my phone, then one more number and not press the call button. I go over to the other side of the room, blackmail in hand.
"Hey, I need that computer."
"Too bad." He replies stubbornly.
"Do you recognise this number?" I show him my phone.
"Er... where'd you get that?" He asks.
"Never mind that, what about this number?" I show him the number for his school. "Or this number?" I show him his principal's number. "Or this one?" I show him his work experience co-ordinator's number.
"I recognise those numbers, man. Just take the computer."

The lady comes back with my coffee, thank God. I drink it like a dehydrated camel at an oasis. The teen walks over to the other computer and just sits there. The lady goes back to her computer and also continues her work.

I go through the whole process of deleting the copier, setting it up again and eventually setting it up. I toy with a few settings on the computer and then fiddle with the copier until the screensaver comes on.

In bright green writing across the screen, "I hate work experience." and a password box at the top. I pack up my tools and notify the lady that her copier is ready. I tell the teen he can use his computer again. I show myself the door and stop right before it and wait for the inevitable. After about thirty seconds, it comes.

"What is this on the screen?!" I hear the lady say.

I make my exit.



[color=\"green\"]vercz-fixed spelling /bigwink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\';)\' />[/color]