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From: gmm@bunker.UUCP (Gregory M. Mandas)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: A TRUE STORY
Message-ID: <454@bunker.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Jul-84 09:55:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: bunker.454
Posted: Tue Jul 17 09:55:53 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jul-84 06:33:26 EDT
Lines: 40

[]

With all this talk about UNIX and VMS, I am reminded of a TRUE story
that happened to a friend of mine. "Ralph Rep", we shall call him, is a 
field rep. for this company (not using VMS or UNIX).

This hardware company that was having problems with the OS. 
Apparently, when the OS was loaded down it would produce strange
results. So, the boys in the back room went to work locating the 
problem by placing error messages in the OS. When the system was loaded
down, out would pop this message and the problm was located. When they
no longer got the message, it "must' have been fixed.

Several weeks after the new OS was released the following conversation
took place.

RING RING.

RALPH REP: Hello, Ralph Rep here.

JOE USER: Hi there. Hey, we got this message on the console and we don't
          really know what to do about it.

LARRY: Did you look in the manual.

JOE USER: Yes, but we couldn't find it referenced anywhere.

RALPH REP: Well, what happened?

JOE USER: We were in the middle of some heavy processing and the
          console spit out, 

          "Shut her down Scotty, She's sucking mud again."

RALPH REP: OH!

Release N+2 was soon in the field.

Greg Mandas
ittvax!bunker!gmm