If I could only find the words…
We’re indebted to Chris Manderson, the technical lead for MSMQ support at Microsoft, for an illuminating support webcast.
If you search Microsoft’s web site for ‘MSMQ support webcast’, you can find one of those online PowerPoint presentations, which would certainly not have kept our attention until section five. Luckily, reader Matt Gordon has a longer attention span. If you really want to know what Chris thinks of MSMQ 3.0, click on part five and listen to the commentary.
Grass under pressure
Would the friends or colleagues – or especially the neighbours – of Altrincham-based computer consultant Ian Armstrong please get in touch? We’re anxious to award Ian a special bottle of Backbytes champagne for his sleepwalking escapade. As reported in The Sun this week, Ian’s wife Rebekah found him at 2am in the back garden, mowing the lawn. Naked.
‘I dread to think how long he’d been there, but he’d nearly finished,’ she told the reporter.
Knowing that it was dangerous to wake him, she unplugged the mower and went back to bed, leaving it until the next day to tell him about his little adventure.
We’ll swap a bottle of champagne for a picture of Ian. He can even keep his clothes on this time. Though of course, we want the mower in the shot as well.
In a tight spot
Just when you think you’ve heard all the stories about consultants, you hear another that you couldn’t make up. Simon Phipp (‘still enjoying being in ladies’ tights’) writes from Flude Hosiery. ‘A team of our auditors paid us a visit during our six-monthly stock-take.
One of the team looked as though she was fresh from university and was keen to understand our business processes. After 20 minutes of explanation of how we manufacture ladies’ hosiery, she piped up with the question: “What’s a dozen?”’
This might make you a little suspicious of her auditing ability. Or her egg-buying ability, for that matter.
Turning up the heat
More microwave fun: ‘At a party a friend of mine decided to find out what it would sound like to be inside a microwave oven when it was turned on,’ says Keith Sarti, using the now familiar ‘friend of mine’ gambit that Backbytes contributors employ to escape workplace mockery.
‘He realised that putting his own head in would not be a good idea, so in the interest of safety he phoned up a mobile phone, put the mobile phone in the microwave and then started the microwave. Apparently it goes “hmm skrsh” and then you get a dial tone.’ Who knew?
Not all of you will want to cook your mobile phone, no matter how dull the party is, so we prefer Sally Nicholson’s suggestion. ‘Try putting a Jaffa Cake in the microwave for that volcano effect,’ she says.
And Alan Drury, at Siemens Business Services, has a workplace amusement that must have occurred to many of you: ‘For secure data destruction and your own in-house version of the Northern Lights, stick an unwanted CD in the microwave for a few seconds.’
We suggest anything by Jamie Cullum.
Tech support becomes a legal matter
Another PC-phobic user: ‘I once had a user telephone me on the helpdesk in an absolute rage demanding an apology for the outrageous accusations that IT had made about her,’ says ‘John’, who’s not allowed by his boss to tell us this.
‘After a few minutes of confusion on my part as to what on Earth she was talking about, I managed to calm her down enough to explain what had happened. She had received a message on her monitor that an illegal operation had been carried out, and thought that we were accusing her of breaking the law.’
And a slap on our wrist from the University of Brighton: ‘Your anecdote about waving the mouse in the air does not show ignorance or PC-phobia on the part of the user,’ says Norman Sansom.
‘It demonstrates the inability of many IT staff to speak and understand plain English. The user did exactly what she was told – she moved the mouse up.’
Sex appeal is all in the mind
This week, in our series on how to deal with Mensa members, we offer the floor to the Mensans themselves.
Paul Delivett, at New Media Security, suffers discrimination as a Mensa member from insensitive people such as ourselves.
‘I therefore tend to refrain from admitting to being a Mensa member until I am on my third pint of real ale, by which point no one cares. So the best way to deal with us is to buy us a pint or two,’ he suggests.
This implies that Paul combines Mensa and Camra membership, which would either make him doubly interesting or doubly irritating, depending on your taste.
We know which point of view Len Riddell favours. He writes, perhaps not completely objectively: ‘I find Mensa people to be witty and extremely sexy.’
Keeping track of your movements
‘The obvious choice for musical toilets would have been that old Bobby Vee classic Poetry In Motion,’ says John Hamling, at P N Lee Statistics & Computing.
‘My nomination for toilet music would be Perpetual Motion by Francis Poulenc – it has some lovely piano runs,’ says Martin Williams, at Research Machines.
And John Ashford sends a long list, out of which we decide we can publish Pink Floyd’s Breathe In The Air and Should I Stay Or Should I Go by The Clash. He has the decency to apologise.
Head ’em off at the password
We asked for stories of oversensitive users, and we got them.
‘We used to have a procedure in our office where new staff would be given a generic password on arrival and we’d ask them later that same day to change it,’ says Neil Davison, at CCLI.
‘I once went down to the latest recruit, explained that I needed her to give me a unique password and waited for an answer. She sat for a moment but couldn’t come up with anything, so I suggested that it be something familiar, like a loved one or a family name. Still nothing. "What about a dog’s name, or something?" I asked.’
At this point, tears formed in the eyes of the poor user. ‘But I don’t have a dog!’ she cried, before leaving the next day.
Getting your mouse in order
A quick aside, not strictly related to our oversensitive users: our mouse training stories appear to have struck a chord.
‘A user reported that their new wireless mouse didn’t work, because when they pushed it down the pointer went up, and when they pushed it right the pointer moved to the left,’ says Ian McCartney, at Wilson Tool. We don’t have to tell you the rest.
‘I once was part of a project team charged with installing a new Windows-based system in one of our police services,’ says Mike Robson, at Cleveland Cable Company.
‘Two of the more senior ladies were being shown how to use the mouse to click on a screen icon. The first one immediately picked the mouse up, pointed it at the screen and clicked the left mouse button as though she was using a TV remote control. The second moved the mouse across the desktop until the mouse lead was taut, then proceeded to yank on it and said: "You’ll have to get a longer lead".’
A fifth of November to remember remember
This week on ‘Things not to do with a microwave’ (though it is becoming increasingly obvious that there’s nothing that you haven’t done with a microwave already) a reader who signs him- or herself ‘M Baker, old enough to know better’ touches on the surprisingly little-reported subject of what happens when you put fireworks in your oven on Bonfire Night.
‘We put it in the garden on the extension lead, started with grapes, then fairy lights, then a roman candle, all very pretty. Then we put a catherine wheel in. It gave off a pathetic sparkle, then nothing.’
The disappointment didn’t last long. ‘As the microwave owner approached the machine there was an almighty bang and
everything went dark. The electricity in the house had blown and someone was hit in the leg by something, which turned out
to be the microwave door. It was a very loud explosion so we all went to town before the police turned up.’ We’re reporting this out of admiration.
Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner
James Dyson might have created a vacuum cleaner that can order its own spare parts, but that’s not encouraging for Martin Elliott, at Miller Insurance Services.
‘As the owner of a Dyson cleaner that has had more bits fail, break or just fall off in the few years I’ve had it than any previous vacuum cleaner I’ve owned, I find it amazing that the company seems very proud of the unreliability of its vacuums to such an extent that it has invested in technology to report things when they go wrong,’ he says. ‘What do you do if the chip in the machine that’s meant to report the fault fails?’
Revenge of the Mensans
‘I’ve been reading your articles about Mensa with some interest and amusement,’ says Michael Hather, at Richardson Sheffield.
And being a member of Mensa himself (with an IQ of 164), Michael has some insight into our techniques to deal with awkward Mensans.
‘The usual response is to fire difficult questions at you to catch you out; except answering questions requires knowledge, not intelligence – a common mistake among the unintelligent.’
If that hasn’t wound you up enough: ‘Here’s a thought for your readers. In three months from now I could have improved my knowledge; in three months from now you’ll still be thick. Enough said.’
Well, not quite enough. We’re sure any non-Mensans who have managed to read this far without falling off their chairs or drooling uncontrollably will have an opinion to share with us.
Outsourcing brings narrow returns
Despite the fact that the triangular train doesn’t really exist, being a fiction of someone’s Photoshoppery, it still proves to have all the attributes that interest our readers involved in software development. The desire to find unexpected benefits from a flawed design is one.
‘A Toblerone-shaped train is perhaps better at dealing with heavy snow falls, as the snow will slide off the sides,’ points out Rod Main.
And the narrow trains of the Hastings line have a very relevant story, dating from 1852. ‘They are an early example of
outsourcing,’ explains Ian Nisbet. ‘The job of building the single-track tunnels on the Hastings line was outsourced to a contractor.
‘The requirement was for tunnels to be lined with three layers of brickwork, but the contractor only put in two layers.
‘When this was discovered, too late to enlarge the tunnels, a third layer of brick was added, thus reducing the bore available for trains and hence the special thin trains for Hastings.
‘What is your outsourcer skimping on to come in on budget and make a profit?’
All we can promise is, we’ll never outsource Backbytes. Well, not unless someone makes us a really good offer.
Mensans trundle off into the sunset
We have been discussing the best way to get rid of annoying Mensans at social occasions, and luckily our old friend Cliff Lawson, at Amstrad, has a suggestion. ‘Persuade your troublesome Mensan to go away and design a utilitarian electric car for the masses,’ he writes. ‘It could probably run on a car battery, have stupidly small wheels that shed the tyres when cornering, and visibility needn’t be a problem if he was to fit a flag on a pole. Even suggest that “C5” might be a good name for it. ‘This works on the principle that Mensans may have all the intelligence in the world but they were sadly let down when the common sense was handed out.’
String ’em up, I say
We bring you more tales of users with weird health-related problems. ‘One user wanted a cordless mouse because “she has a bad neck”,’ says Kerry Hoskin, at Plymouth Marine Laboratory. If he was talking to us he’d be shaking his head sadly, but it’s an email, so we’re imagining it. ‘So she has either been using her neck to move her mouse around, or wrapping the mouse cord around her neck. We’d quite like her to do the latter.’
Ask me no questions
You will recall last week that we sent you to http://y.20q.net to try out the exciting 20 questions game. Peter Banks did just that, and made a shocking discovery. ‘It is a version of a program that I wrote for a Honeywell 615 mainframe in Basic in the early 1970s,’ he writes. ‘It’s difficult to remember for sure, but the original idea may have come from a magazine called Creative Computing. Although there are a few new features (such as more possible answers than just yes or no), in some ways this program is more primitive than its ancestor. ‘This is because the ancestor had the ability to expand its database by
asking: “What question should I ask to distinguish between…” if it failed to guess.’ Which goes to show that when it comes to wasting time, Backbytes readers are decades ahead.
Plug in, turn on, blow up
We have so many suggestions for things to put in a microwave oven that we’re going to have to provide one of our emails for anyone requesting a full list. But first, expect a few more weeks of suggestions to whet your appetite. ‘Obtain a suitably sized block of polystyrene and a selection of fairy light bulbs,’ says Robin Boldon, at BBC Worldwide. ‘Place lights in said polystyrene, with the bulb bases embedded in the block. Then sit back and watch the amazing “light show” as the waves illuminate the filaments in the tiny bulbs. Avoid trying it with the work oven in the canteen, as the catering company gets upset.’ Now for the one where we say: ‘Don’t try this, whatever you do’. ‘Take one old microwave and one large open space. The office car park after it is empty is ideal, but just to be sure, next door’s car park is even better,’ says Steve Black. ‘Add one long extension cable, long enough to reach the middle of the car park; one small metal dish – small metal dog food dishes are ideal – and a small can of petrol. Put the microwave in the middle of the car park, half fill the dish with petrol and place in the microwave, setting the timer to five minutes. Retire to a safe distance, running the cable out behind you. Plug in and turn on.’ We are assured that the results are spectacular. More next week.
Toblerone train turns out to be pointless
Lots of excitement about our triangular train last week. Phil Byrom tells us about the Hastings line, ‘where the tunnels were built so pointy that special rolling stock is required with straighter sides than usual, as standard curved-sided stock provides insufficient clearance of the tunnel walls… the “pointiness” of the tunnel profile varies with the weight of earth… It occurred to me that this might also be the reason for the Japanese triangular tunnels.’ ‘It’s the tilting version of the bullet train. If they weren’t narrower at the top, two trains would hit each other as they passed,’ points out Paul Friday, drily. Luckily, reader Neil Shaw knows the guys at the uk.railways newsgroup (don’t ask), who provided this helpful explanation: ‘The train is a former Kinki Nippon Railway – “Kintetsu” – KuMo270 series EMU. It was built in 1977 by Kinki Sharyo for the 2’6”/762mm gauge Hokusei line from Nishi-Kuwana to Ageki, near Nagoya. This line had been set to close, but was instead taken over by the Sangi Railway.’ Oh, and it’s not triangular. Someone squashed it up using Photoshop, as we can now reveal above.
Song choice is in the can
Also in Japan, musical toilets are still on your minds. ‘The original details mentioned that it had a heated seat, a feature that I’m not sure is a selling point. After all, the only thing worse than a cold toilet seat is a warm one,’ says John Carr, of Communisis. Luckily, Kevin Goosman, at ECOTEC Research & Consulting, has the definitive song selection; unless, of course, you know better. ‘The obvious choice for a singing toilet is Yellow River,’ he says.
‘Spam warning: We’ve sent you spam’
Richard Turner, at First Option, has news that one of distributor Northamber’s marketing emails (“Lexmark Printer deals!”) has been caught by a SurfControl spam filter. Northamber’s own spam filter.
The company’s email server then automatically emailed everyone on the distribution list to say that ‘the following messages are believed to be spam’, enclosing the newsletter. Nothing like getting advance warning from the people who know.
Make a member of Mensa feel tenser and a little denser
This week’s tip on dealing with Mensa members comes from Rita Poselewska, who seems to know her way around this territory. ‘Typically, Mensa members are arrogantly convinced of their absolute genius. However, they also have a subconscious fear of being found out,’ she says. ‘The best way to deal with them is to ask them series of very obscure questions, preferably concerning a subject that is unfamiliar to them. To maintain their self-image of omniscience, they feel compelled to answer, but being profoundly unsure of their ground they then descend into a spiral of self-doubt.’ We hope that wasn’t a blind date at some point in the past, and look forward to letters of outrage from our Mensan readership, who have been strangely quiet so far.
The Toblerone now arriving at platform two…
It has come to our attention that some of you have been known to identify the occasional train, so for this week’s excellent Japanese invention, we bring you a special treat, or at least Andrew Miller, who sent in the picture, brings it to all of us. ‘Why would anyone build triangular tunnels?’ he asks. We have a feeling that some of you out there know why, and are just dying to tell us.
Carry on at your convenience
Talking of Japan: John Harris, at IBS, writes to tell us why the Japanese have musical toilets, as featured in a previous Backbytes. ‘They live in houses with thin walls, and they want to mask the sound of bodily functions. And presumably the odours.’ He suggests Handel’s Water Music as the appropriate tune for the toilet to play. We’re sure you have other suggestions.
I saw a mouse. Where? There in the air
More of you write with anguished tales of oversensitive users. ‘One of our users called the helpdesk to get a quieter keyboard for a co-worker. Apparently the incredibly loud clicking was breaking their concentration and stopping them from working! We swapped the keyboard for an identical newer one and told them it was a special quiet one,’ says a reader, who doesn’t want to be named in case the user discovers the keyboard was a placebo. Meanwhile Kevin Earley, at Neal Brothers, once had the job of
introducing PC-phobic staff who had spent a career using terminals to the joys of Windows. ‘I was taking one lady through the log-on procedure, and when she remarked that she did not like “the arrow thing in the middle of the screen” I told her that she can move the arrow to the top of the screen by moving the mouse up. She immediately lifted the mouse off the desktop and started waving it about in the air like a magic wand hoping to get rid of it.’ More phobic or easily upset users please.
Questions and answers
For many years journalists have been looking for a really useful application of neural networks – something that they can really get to grips with. Luckily Jan Clarke, at Manchester NHS Informatics, has found it: http://y.20q.net. We recommend you test the system immediately in the interests of evaluating new technology. After all, it’s not every day that you get to play 20 questions while you’re in the office, and have an excuse for doing it.
Let there be light
Last week we asked for extremely bad ideas of things to put in a microwave that you should never ever ever do. Jethro Eastwood gets us off to a flying start. ‘My favourite thing to put in a microwave is a light bulb. If done in the right way it will light up. A standard 100W bayonet fitting seems to do the job, it’s best if you put the exposed metal fitting into a glass of water to avoid unnecessary sparking – it should only take a few seconds to light up.’ He adds that he is sure this is dangerous. Like that’s going to stop you.
Less dangerous, but still inadvisable: ‘My colleague had run out of Chocolate Digestive biscuits, so he decided to make his own, using a plain Digestive biscuit and a lump of chocolate,’ says Aidan Hopson, at Kirklees Metropolitan Council. ‘The volume of smoke after 90 seconds almost necessitated the evacuation of more than 250 people and we had to sit with the windows open for the best part of the day.’
Clocking on
Two titbits from the ‘How did we ever manage before technology?’ department, supplied by Paul Mason.
First up: Dyson’s intelligent vacuum cleaner that orders its own spare parts when it goes wrong. Just dial the number, hold the telephone receiver to the vacuum, and a chip in the machine transmits a binary message telling engineers what’s wrong. Second: an intelligent alarm clock being developed by Microsoft. Users enter their home and work addresses, the clock checks traffic reports, works out how long the journey will take, and wakes up its owner at the correct time. To which a gruff Paul counters: ‘With the train I catch no one knows how long the journey will take. And how can it possibly know how long my daughter spends in the bathroom each morning?’
Heil Harriott
And finally: ready, steady, Google. For some unfathomable reason, Steve Jenkins decided to image Google celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott. Try it yourself, and you’ll see lots of pics of the cheesy chappie.
Now, says Steve, try again, only this time take a t off of Ainsley’s surname…
Is this guy boring you?
Many of you ought to thank John Hamling, at P N Lee Statistics & Computing. Last week we raised the delicate subject of how annoying Mensans are, and this week, he guides us to a web page. ‘How Do You Handle Annoying Mensans?’ is the title of the article, which tells us: ‘If the person is really bothering you, you get away from them. Don’t apologise, don’t make excuses. Sticking around will only encourage them. If, however, the person is polite but weird, a low-key approach is called for. You listen politely for a few minutes, then make some excuse like running out of dip. Then you just walk away.’ This is excellent advice, and we’d be delighted to hear your stories of annoying Mensans to remind us to take it, and walk away. Oh, by the way, the advice comes with good authority: it’s from MensaWorld, and they should know.
You’re oven a laugh
‘What’s your microwave story?’ asks Franck Lynch, at Peterborough City Council, which as a question serves as a way he can embarrass his boss, who went on holiday, got caught in the snow and tried to dry her and her husband’s underwear in the microwave – for three minutes. ‘Fighting her way through the stench and smoke at one minute and 30 seconds gave them both a clue that all was not well,’ he says, because the intimates ‘melted and welded themselves together into a large strangely- shaped article’. On one hand, it serves them right for not wearing natural fibres in important places. On the other, it leads us to ask you what happens when you put odd things in a microwave. Ideas please, because it has been a while since we ran details of how to do something really dangerous.
By the time I make Albuquerque…
This week’s bad beard shot comes to you from the Smoking Gun web site, which has a rather interesting collection of police mugshots. But for our purposes, by far the most exciting is this gem: www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/gatesmug1.html a lovely snap of Bill Gates captured by police in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1977, after a traffic violation. What do you mean, he doesn’t have a beard? Oh well, just have a look at the picture anyway.
Upside down, boy you turn me
One Backbytes reader claims to have detected an unfortunate error from last week. ‘Your frequent tirade against those with unfortunate facial hair is bad enough, but kindly reprint Nigel Hardy’s picture, this time with his hair where it should be, on his head, and not upside down as your printers have printed it,’ says Peter Phillips. We won’t let it happen again Peter, although we would like to point out that Nigel made a significant contribution himself.
Cable and wireless
It looks as if our request for stories of computer users with silly health-based computer problems may be a closely-fought battle. ‘Health-based excuses? We hear loads,’ says a tired-sounding Phil Reah, from CCLI. ‘One user decided she wanted a wireless mouse, so claimed that hers was causing RSI as it was too heavy. Why was it too heavy? “Well, it has to pull that cable round after it”, she said.’ There’s a happy ending to this story, as Phil’s user was saved from RSI after his team purchased a wireless mouse, which, containing batteries, is heavier than the old one, even counting the cable. From the physically challenged to the mentally: ‘While visiting a customer a couple of years ago, the IT staff told me that some users had asked for the Microsoft “paperclip guy” to be removed from their PCs,’ says Paul Emmett, at Agresso. ‘Not on the basis that it’s an irritation, but because they found its “winking and wiggling eyebrows” rude and suggestive.’ Any more hypochondriac, phobic, or just plain weird users?
Going, going, gone underground
In a display of what consultants call ‘synergy’, several readers all write to us this week to add their dead passenger stories to our thread on ‘things left on trains’. Trouble is, they are all adding the same story about how a friend was on a train, with a woman sitting opposite her, staring into her eyes. We won’t tell you the rest, just look it up on the bible of urban myth: www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/subway.htm. While you’re all lying to us, Snopes does reference a true dead-person-on-a-train story: ‘In 1999, 37-year-old Ignacio Mendez expired on a New York subway during the morning rush yet was not discovered until hours later. “He was found sitting up, his head slightly tilted down, eyes closed looking like a typical rider taking a catnap before his stop” reported the New York Daily News,’ the site tells us. Look carefully at the guy opposite. Shouldn’t he have moved since lunchtime?
Sensos working overtime
Sadly, we are unable to bring you a silly Japanese invention this week. Instead, Swiss company Rinspeed Design has created a car called the Senso. ‘The Senso has, not without reason, been labelled the most
sensuous car in the world. The Senso actually “senses” the driver by measuring his (or her) biometric data, and then exerts a positive effect on him with the help of patterns, colors, music and fragrances. A person who is relaxed and wide-awake simply drives better and more safely,’ says the car data sheet at www.rinspeed.com. It also tells us about the particularly active on-board computer: ‘A “Mobile Eye” camera records his driving behaviour, in other words how well and how often he changes lane, and how close and at what speed he approaches the cars in front. Then an HP on-board computer evaluates the data and establishes, with the aid of special algorithms, the driver’s current state of mind.’ If that state of mind is that you have fallen asleep, the computer will shake you awake by vibrating your seat.
