Xref: utzoo rec.humor:18690 rec.humor.d:1593 comp.misc:5010
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!apollo!ron_b
From: ron_b@apollo.COM (Ronald Buttiglieri)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,rec.humor.d,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Keywords: floppy labels
Message-ID: <415f020d.16321@apollo.COM>
Date: 9 Feb 89 14:35:00 GMT
References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <4744@sfsup.UUCP> <2887@sybase.sybase.com>
Reply-To: ron_b@apollo.COM (Ronald Buttiglieri)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 57

In article <2887@sybase.sybase.com> robert@jive.UUCP (Robert Garvey) writes:
>
>  Heard a story about a company whose PC software was being blamed for
>  the consistent failure to read backup data off floppies.  Unable to
>  determine the cause, they finally sent someone to sit beside the
[superfluous type removed]
>  the drive and started to label it.  A blank label was put on and the
>  disk inserted into the carriage of an electric typewriter...
>

Here's a few (I'll try to be brief):

A friend was doing some PC consulting work on the side. Most of the
people he was dealing with started out being completely computer-
illiterate. One such gentleman had a database set up for him by my friend.
He was given explicit instructions on how to start up every morning and
shut down at night. After a week, my friend received a frantic call from
his client who said that the computer "couldn't find any data". My friend 
(who did back up the system previously) told the gentleman what to do,
relay the results to him over the phone. Sounded like the data disk was 
erased, so my friend told him how to copy from the backed-up diskette.
Everything went fine, the gentleman thanked him and went about his computing
merry way. Next week, the same scenario occurred. And the following week.
On the fourth week, my friend (slightly perturbed by now) instructed the
client to shut down the system so he could observe the procedure first-hand.

My friend went down to his client's place of business and sat down with him.
He then asked his client to "go ahead and start 'er up". The gentleman booted
the PC, started the software program, and was ready to insert the data disk.
He turned around and removed the diskette from his white-board, the diskette
being held up with a small magnet. 

After peeling himself off the wall, my friend went on to instruct his client
on the theory of magnetic media (and charged him a sh*tload of money for
being so stupid! only kidding :^).

My other story again has to do with the perils of the 5 1/4" floppy disk.
My 2 college roommates and I were playing some computer games one Friday
night (real exciting bunch, huh?) when we decided to make it into a
drinking game (typical college attitude). Well, one of my buddies was into
slow-gin (sp?). We got a little too happy |^) and spilled one of these 
drinks all over the diskette (it was out of the drive at the time). We didn't
notice this until the next morning (or was it afternoon?). The diskette
with our FAVORITE GAME was destroyed! (or so we thought) Just then, my 
other roommate had the bright notion (actually, he said he heard of this
somewhere before) of salvaging the diskette by removing the magnetic 
media from the jacket (all very sticky at that point) and gently rinsing it 
under luke-warmwater (from Star Wars, remember him? sorry). We replaced
the cleansed and dried floppy media into a clean jacket, copied it onto
a good blank disk, and had our game running in no time! 

From that point on, all floppies toted the phrase, "Dishwasher safe, and
just look at that shine!"

Ron

P.S. I guess I wasn't so brief after all. Sorry.