*checks over shoulder*

Most of us have heard the tech support diagnostic code PEBCAK, which stands for "Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard".  Here are a few more.  Happy Friday everyone!

LUBE: Lacks Understanding of Basic English

BIOS: Basic Intelligence Operator Subnormal - knows what a computer looks like: can't start it.

EULA: End User Lacks Ability - knows what a computer looks like: gets as far as "Enter Password"

RAM: Read Ability Missing - this for users who classify an issue as "Critical: Department Dependent" (something nasty will happen to the whole department if this is not solved!) but fail to respond to IT requests that they answer their phone/email. This means that someone has to physically go to that office.

SCSI: "Can someone please Solve/Complete this Stupid Idiot's ticket?" - see RAM above

CAMEO: CAse Made for Extermination of Operator

Fri Nov 17 2017 09:53:45 AM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: PEBCAK

Most of us have heard the tech support diagnostic code PEBCAK, which stands for "Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard".  Here are a few more.  Happy Friday everyone!

LUBE: Lacks Understanding of Basic English

BIOS: Basic Intelligence Operator Subnormal - knows what a computer looks like: can't start it.

EULA: End User Lacks Ability - knows what a computer looks like: gets as far as "Enter Password"

RAM: Read Ability Missing - this for users who classify an issue as "Critical: Department Dependent" (something nasty will happen to the whole department if this is not solved!) but fail to respond to IT requests that they answer their phone/email. This means that someone has to physically go to that office.

SCSI: "Can someone please Solve/Complete this Stupid Idiot's ticket?" - see RAM above

CAMEO: CAse Made for Extermination of Operator

I came up with one a while back:

PEBRALE: Problem Exists Between Right And Left Ear

My personal favorite when working techsup was code ID10T.

Exactly.  And now that I'm fairly far removed from tech supp, some of them haven't a clue when I use it.  Which only goes to prove the point, sadly.

IBM branched out to romania here, for near shore support. Because there are lots of transylvanian saxons there so they speak acceptable german. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons ) Some of them don't speak any german but understand it. All of them speak rather good english. I can understand a bit of their language, because it resembles french/latin a bit.

And yes, vampire jokes are mandatory!

This one day, I see a new guy sitting in one of our offices who came over from romania. Wearing typical emo black and I think to myself "Looks like little dracula", with his goaty and short hair and ear rings, etc. Later that day, he comes to my office and introduces himself with a thick east european accent "Hi! My name is Vlad!". Think of Blah from Greg the Bunny.

It took all my self-discipline for the next 5 minutes not to break out laughing my ass off. 

https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

The article is about Adrian Thompsons experiments with a FPGA board that he trained to discriminate between high and low tones.

"What he then discovered changes everything"... Go read for yourselves, it is pretty funny.

Clearly not the best article, other sources:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvable_hardware

2) "An evolved circuit, intrinsic in silicon, entwined with physics" <- Thompson's own paper about it, appropriately technical.

So you tell it what its job is, and it keeps modifying itself do to the best it can at that job with whatever resources it has available.

That's kind of cool ... and it does have a sci-fi kind of feel to it.  One can easily imagine it going wrong and turning into V'ger, for example.