Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: computer follies
Message-ID: <1086@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 4 Oct 88 04:07:25 GMT
References: <916@viscous>
Reply-To: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 38

In article <916@viscous> rosso@sco.COM (Ross Oliver) writes:
<A customer calls in and wants to know if there is a way to
<run his backups automatically at 1am in the morning.
<We explain to him how to set up a cron job to do just that.
<He goes away very happy.  The next day, he calls back.
<Apparently, his backup did not happen.  After going through
<the procedure with him again to make sure there were no mistakes,
<the tech support person is at a loss to explain the failure.
<Grasping at straws, the tech suggests, "Well, sometimes cron is
<a little tempermental, and you have to stop it and start it up
<again before it will recognize new jobs."
<
<"How do I do that?" the customer asks.
<
<"The easiest way is to reboot the system."
<
<"Oh, we've already done that."
<
<"Really?" says the tech.
<
<"Yeah, we shut down the machine at 5pm last night,
<and brought it back up at 8 this morning."

On the Tandy Model 200 laptop, you can actually get "silly" ideas like
thast to *work*!! "Off" is actually a low-power standby mode. You can
turn the 100, 102 or 200 off while they are executing a program and they
will resume where they left off when you turn them back on. (which allows
for a number of ways of freaking novice users.... :-)

But on the 200, they added a feature that allows you to have it "wake up"
and execute a program at a given time. When the internal clock reaches
the set time, it will take the machine *out* of standby and execute the
command. This can get *very* strange....
-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."