Humor | wyckedone.net

Most expensive Outlook ever?

I was looking for a new/used vehicle a few days ago and decided to check out the Saturn Outlook. I checked a local dealer’s inventory and got this list:

I should have gone to the dealership to see what kind of upgrades it had for that price.

The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. - Mad Magazine

08.Jul.08 Humor Comments (0)

I was at a medical office yesterday morning setting up their server. There were two main pieces of software to install. The first was Symantec Backup Exec and the other was Dawning Technologies DTI Interface Software.

When I started installing the Dawning software, I got the following EULA. Is it really that simple or is it a trick?

I just feel like there is something they aren’t telling me.

30.Mar.08 Humor, Software Comments (0)

A new race

One of the database projects I’m working on involves importing data from an existing student information system (SIS). The main data being imported is student name, date of birth, gender and ethnicity. The SIS stores the ethnicity of the student, in the student table, using an ID number that corresponds to the ID in the ethnicity table. I thought I’d just do a straight import of that table in order to keep from having to create a different ethnicity ID.

I start creating tables on my development SQL Server database by looking at the SIS tables, data types and data. I do that so that I don’t accidentally create a column with a data type of integer that has to be changed later to varchar or something. When I get to the SIS ethnicity definition table, I got a little confused. I saw the normal ethnic categories: White/Caucasian, Black/African American, American Indian, etc. The last three made me say, “Huh?”.

It seems that someone in the school system decided that the available ethnic categories didn’t really fit their students so they created new categories.

>001
>002
Yes

Seriously. I know at least one school was using those categories because I was able to query the student table using the ID numbers for those ethnicities. Thankfully there were only 5 or 6 results out of about 20,000 kids. I brought it to the attention of the people in charge of the SIS. They said they would get it fixed right away and couldn’t understand how it happened.

Lesson they learned: Never underestimate your users.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly. - Theodore Roosevelt

07.Feb.08 Humor, Microsoft SQL Comments (0)

The thunder killed it

It all started last Friday. One of the secreta…administrative assistants called and said, “I saw on the news that they are expecting some storms this weekend. Can you, or someone in IT, come in early Monday and bring all the computers back up? Maybe we need to shutdown the servers, too, so that they don’t get damaged.” Uh, thanks for the concern but no. Everything should be OK because all workstations have surge protectors and all servers are on APC battery backups. I told her that if she was worried about it to just shutdown her computer. Plus, I saw the forecast and they were calling for rain. No lightning or high wind at all.

Move forward to this morning. I get another call from the aforementioned admin. assistant. “I told you we would have problems! My computer, monitor and printer won’t turn on! The thunderstorm knocked out everything. Will I get a replacement before lunch?” Again, no. I went to her desk to see what was going on. Queue chugging the last bit of coffee as to not waste the caffeine.

The first thing checked, naturally, was to see if she had tried to turn on the equipment. She was right. Nothing would power on. The next place I looked was the surge protector. I wanted to check it but it was gone. As in not there. As in “why are the power cords all dangling but not connected to the surge protector?”. Her response was beautiful.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she drug that out,”I disconnected it because of the storm. I don’t trust surge protectors and didn’t want anything to happen. I thought you had came in early and set it back up for me. Guess I should have checked first.”

No, you should have heard me when I said “No” to the request you made on Friday. She reached into one of her desk drawers to retrieve the missing surge protector. Why she felt the need to hide it, as well as assuming I would know it was there, was beyond me. I didn’t ask because I was ready to run. After connecting everything back up, a miracle happened. Everything worked! I was out of there before another word could be spoken.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. - Confucius

22.Oct.07 Hardware, Humor Comment (1)

Math isn’t my strong point

I was downloading a Dell training DVD earlier today and caught this. No matter how I work the numbers, I just can’t seem to come up with the same percentage that IE did. Any ideas?