Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!julian!uwovax!gerard
From: gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca (Gerard Stafleu)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: computer follies
Message-ID: <627@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: 29 Aug 88 09:03:29 GMT
References: <5856@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Lines: 19
Organisation: University of Western Ontario, Canada

In article <5856@ihlpf.ATT.COM>, trdill@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Diller) writes:
> 
> If you have any funny stories like this let me know, I'd be
> interested in them.

Some years ago I was in charge of the remote sensing image processing
machine (mainly a PDP-11 with a fancy graphics terminal) of a Dutch
university.  People came in with tapes containing satellite pictures and
such,  and then did all kinds of things with the images.  One day a user
came to me complaining he could not read his tape. I went down with him
to have a look at the situation.  I at once had the feeling that
something was wrong, but it took me a few moments to clue in: the tape
was the wrong way around on the reel! 

As to this day I have not figured out how to get a tape onto a reel that 
way, at least not without trying reely (sorry :-) hard.  In defense of 
Dutch computer.land I must say that the tape was not from the 
Netherlands.  I won't tell you which country it came from, but they eat 
a lot of pizza's there.