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Suckifying rays

Arkan_Wolfshade said:
That's a known phenomenon called TPS (Technician Present Syndrome)
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Can one of you supernatural beings please visit my mother? She lives three thousand miles away and it's too much of a trip to drop in and magically fix her computer. I was on the phone for three hours yesterday explaining how to use a flash drive. Must go, I need to bang my head on my desk a few dozen times.:mad:
 
CheeseDude:

Look for VNC (http:\\www.vnc.com). You can talk her through an install of the server portion (make sure it's password protected and all, maybe leave it disabled by default with a shortcut to run it when she needs your help), and then you can remotely access her system to fix issues. If you aren't going to tell someone no, I'd suggest some sort of remote access tool. Very useful in assisting family members.

There are similar commercial products (Timbuktu, DameWare, and others), but they cost dollars.
 
I have an aquaintance who can crash laptop computers simply by using the touchpad. I've watched it happen on several different computers that never had a problem when anyone else used them. No one else using the touchpad had any problem at all; and he could also use the laptops just fine as long as he only used the keyboard, touchpoint (nipple mouse), or a USB mouse. As soon as he touched the touchpad, though, *crash* within moments. One of the strongest device-specific SR emitters I've ever known.
 
I have postulated the existance of the uncomfortable fairy.
Every night when I go to bed, it's nice and comfy.
If I have to get up for any reason during the night, she appears and sprinkles uncomfortable dust onto my bed.
When I get back into bed, my matress has transformed into a hard, cold lumpy thing.
 
I'll admit, I myself am a watchslayer. Only wristwatches, though. Pocketwatches I can use with impunity, but of the last seven wristwatches I've owned, I've killed every one. I two fairly expensive gift watches that didn't last three weeks, four $30-and-under wastes of money, and a $60 Timex that took a licking and stopped. It also developed an hour hand that was 15 minutes slow. The minute hand was perfectly accurate, but if the time was 12:15, the hour hand would just be reaching the 12. I gave up on wearable watches at that point.
 
"Oh my gosh...that is so weird..I cant have expensive watches because they all end up stopping-I htought I was just hard on them"

What the hell? "just hard on them"?

:boggled:
 
sat556 said:
"Oh my gosh...that is so weird..I cant have expensive watches because they all end up stopping-I htought I was just hard on them"

What the hell? "just hard on them"?

:boggled:
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My watch has a stationary second hand in "normal mode" (It moves when using the stopwatch function.) If I hit the watch hard against something, it moves a second. I can do this by hitting it firmly against the table (about the same "force" as when using a normal office stapler.) Sometimes I find the hand has moved two or three seconds, and I have no memory of it hitting anytning. The watch itself doesn't stop though. :) Austrian(!) titanium all the way...
 
On the "acid sweat " issue.
In 1999 I bought a Casio digital watch (about $25) which I wore for two years, every day, work rest and play, showered in etc. In 2001 the plastic strap broke and it fell in a pit of oil based mud at about 60 deg C, in which it floated. (The mud density was 2.3s.g.).
On extraction, by the traditional stick and bucket method, it was covered in mud and the watertight seal was showing through in a sort of hernia at one end.
I tried opening it, but found the screws immovable, so stuck it in a beaker full of 10% HCl , where it sat for four days. At the end of this time, the screws backed out smoothly.
I then opened it and turned the o-ring inside out- not easy , don't try this at home without an adult topologist- and crammed the case back together.
It is February 2006. The watch still works, on its original battery. (And its fifth strap).
So I cry "Hooey" on acid sweat.

Some people are just hard on machinery.

Why are you all looking at me like that?

Edit because I realise I got it in 99, not 97 as I thought. Still damn good, I think. Full marks to Casio.
 
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My wife always emits SRs to printers. She'd always claimed this, and I'd always cruelly mocked her for being rubbish with technology. Erm, I mean, supported her through this mysterious affliction.

So, one day, we were printing out invitations to our wedding (100+), I started the print run going, everything working fine. My wife was over the other side of the room. The door bell rang, I answered it and took a few seconds to chase away the people trying to get me to change to their gas supplier (ooh, don't get me started on them. . .). On my return, the sheets that had gone through in my absence were smeared and torn. All the sheets before and after these four were fine. As a result, I now have to do any jobs that involve printing, as this was seen by my wife as proof positive that she was printer cursed.

Strangely, my similar argument that I am cursed when it comes to washing clothes or dishes, as evinced by the number of broken plates / pink-tinged shirts, is put down to my carelessness. Proof of SRs should validate my claim that there is a genuine reason I should not have to complete these activties.
 
On TPS: I was one administrator for a UNIX server. Generally it worked like a breeze and took up little of my time (I had other tasks as well, unfortunately), and some of my colleagues might have thought I had an easy job, except: EVERY time I went on holiday, or even had a a couple of days off, it had a major break-down. Since this was before the days of cellphones, such break-downs were solved by calling expensive external technicians, who, not knowing the particular quirks of my system, usually spent a day or so tearing their hair out before thet got it fixed.

I SWEAR I did not have a trun (timed invocation of a program) hidden in the system, but it was a good thing that my colleguas didn't know about the possibility, or they would have been suspicious :D.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
On TPS: I was one administrator for a UNIX server. Generally it worked like a breeze and took up little of my time (I had other tasks as well, unfortunately), and some of my colleagues might have thought I had an easy job, except: EVERY time I went on holiday, or even had a a couple of days off, it had a major break-down. Since this was before the days of cellphones, such break-downs were solved by calling expensive external technicians, who, not knowing the particular quirks of my system, usually spent a day or so tearing their hair out before thet got it fixed.

I SWEAR I did not have a trun (timed invocation of a program) hidden in the system, but it was a good thing that my colleguas didn't know about the possibility, or they would have been suspicious :D.

Hans
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Hmm... Desuckifying rays? Do you expose photographic film if you stand next to it Hans?
 
Mashuna said:
Strangely, my similar argument that I am cursed when it comes to washing clothes or dishes, as evinced by the number of broken plates / pink-tinged shirts, is put down to my carelessness. Proof of SRs should validate my claim that there is a genuine reason I should not have to complete these activties.
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Or, as my grandfather used to say, "Don't get good at anything you don't want to do."
 
Tricky said:
Hmm... Desuckifying rays? Do you expose photographic film if you stand next to it Hans?
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He does, but the picture has an eerie aura-ish quality and, if you look closely, you can faintly see the Hammer of Reason(tm) in his right hand.
 
Trixie, it is my considered opinion that these SR's represent the cutting edge of evolution. Congratulate Mrs. Tricky on being a bit more evolved than the rest of us, possessing a gene which (through currently unknown mechanism) acts to defend her against this modern, western concept of time. Time, as we know, is an illusion (lunchtime doubly so), and any attempt to use this artificial concept to regulate our thoroughly natural lives must be resisted, in the same way that toxins must be resisted. We are the descendants of those for whom toxins tasted bitter. The organisms for whom toxins tasted sweet did not get the chance to pass that particular gene on. Generations from now, If all goes as I see it, the human race will have an increasing proportion of watch-killers. We should see this most in the monochronic societies where we are "ruled by the clock" in an unnatural manner. In polychronic societies, the selection pressure will not be as great, and perhaps people who wear watches merely as jewelry may still find their watches working for months on end.

I, too, am a watch-killer. I have killed digital, analog, american, japanese, russian, korean...wrist-watches, pocket-watches...I swear there's a sundial that hides behind clouds when I come near. I am the cutting edge of genetics. I am a mutant. I am the future.
 
Mercutio said:
Trixie, it is my considered opinion that these SR's represent the cutting edge of evolution. Congratulate Mrs. Tricky on being a bit more evolved than the rest of us, possessing a gene which (through currently unknown mechanism) acts to defend her against this modern, western concept of time. Time, as we know, is an illusion (lunchtime doubly so), and any attempt to use this artificial concept to regulate our thoroughly natural lives must be resisted, in the same way that toxins must be resisted. We are the descendants of those for whom toxins tasted bitter. The organisms for whom toxins tasted sweet did not get the chance to pass that particular gene on. Generations from now, If all goes as I see it, the human race will have an increasing proportion of watch-killers. We should see this most in the monochronic societies where we are "ruled by the clock" in an unnatural manner. In polychronic societies, the selection pressure will not be as great, and perhaps people who wear watches merely as jewelry may still find their watches working for months on end.

I, too, am a watch-killer. I have killed digital, analog, american, japanese, russian, korean...wrist-watches, pocket-watches...I swear there's a sundial that hides behind clouds when I come near. I am the cutting edge of genetics. I am a mutant. I am the future.
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Where you been, bard?

I see you as the next star of an X-Men movie. AntiChron, who defeats his foes by having them stuck in a business meeting in which time is slowed to a crawl.
 
Tricky said:
Where you been, bard?

I see you as the next star of an X-Men movie. AntiChron, who defeats his foes by having them stuck in a business meeting in which time is slowed to a crawl.
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The odd thing is, I have an uncle who is a horologist.

Arch-enemy? I think perhaps...
 
Tricky said:
I see you as the next star of an X-Men movie. AntiChron, who defeats his foes by having them stuck in a business meeting in which time is slowed to a crawl.
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He could partner up with the guy that disables his foes by making them settle the bill after lunch, named "WhoHadTheSteak-Man"
 
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