Compaq is considering changing the command :"Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is. AST technical support had a caller caomplaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in. Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble-shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagose the problem, it was found that the customer labeled the diskettes then rolled them into the typewritter to type the labels. This pharse was suppose to be under the topic header ,I'll add it here. Just a few cornball jokes thanks to a friend of a friend, Professor M.D.Elias Penn State University

I do have about 10 more but as I am typing them. I know there is an easier way to do this it will take a while as I am one of these computer-illiterate,later Donna

Here's a few more (Some of which have now achieved the status of urban legend): Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key. Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so a Dell tech suggested he go to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me a couple of friends, "the customer replied. When told Egghead was a software store, the man said, "Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of geeks." Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually. Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn't work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in, and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked "What power switch?" True story from a Novell NetWire SysOp: Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?" Tech: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?" Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?" Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?" Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer." Tech: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, It's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?" Caller: "It came with my computer, I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it." At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive!

Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes . A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with Xeroxed copies of the floppies. A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crosing the room to close the door to his room. A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "bad and an invalid". The computer's "bad comman" and invalid" response shouldn't be taken personally. An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in,the computer technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens."The " foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse. That is all of them. Kaff posted the rest of them. Thanks Kaff.

Just add one from personal experience: I used to be a tech support person for WordPerfect. I got a call from a woman who couldn't figure out why her paper kept getting caught in the printer. It turned out she was trying to put post-it notes through the printer!!

Well, I am feeling much better about my limited computer skills! At least I can can bold and itialics!

Kaffeine, the story about the cd-rom is so hilarious! whenever I think about it I start to laugh again... are you sure this is a true story?, I wonder how dumb people can be?...

If you want to learn italics or bolds or several of the other HTML tags we use around here, check out my tutorial: http://www.spring.com/~anneh/tagsaaaa.html I tried to keep it simple.

Great

A student called me, as she was working her way through her manual. She couldn't find the backsplash on her computer. Another asked whether the antistat spray she used on her monitor would kill viruses. Still another thought if she left the dustcover on moset of the time it would help keep viruses out. One was worried about the Leonardo theme that comes with the Win95 Plus! Pak. He thought the graphics were related to the Michelangelo virus he had heard about. I tried to tell him that was Leonardo, you know, Mona Lisa, Last Supper, inventions-- but he was not comforted. "I didn't know there was a Leonardo virus," he said.

Here are some humorous lines collected from ".sig" files. (These are the "signature" files that people often include at the end of their e-mail messages; they usually include contact information and often a quotation that the writer considers clever or profound.) Some of these I do not understand well enough to "get" but others are hysterically funny even to me. ;-) SUBJECT: Programmer's .sig files MESSAGE from =larry.reed@3do.com 10-JUL-96 0:48 From: "Larry Reed" [larry.reed@3do.com] Date: 9 Jul 1996 10:14:22 U Mail*Link( SMTP Programmer's .sig files More interesting thoughts applicable to introducing technology into schools. This is a collection of items from email signature files. -- Larry * Daddy, why doesn't this magnet pick up this floppy disk? * Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand. * Error, no keyboard - press F1 to continue. * Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity. * Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I. * Double your drive space - delete Windows! * Who is General Failure and why is he reading my disk? * Multitasking: Screwing up several things at once... * Stack Error: Lost on a cluttered desk... * Stack Overflow: Too many pancakes... * Life would be much easier if I had the source code. * ASCII to ASCII, DOS to DOS. * How do I set my laser printer on stun? * 'Calm down -- it's only ones and zeros.' * Computer analyst to programmer: "You start coding. I'll go find out what they want." * I just found the last bug. * The programmer's national anthem is 'AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH'. -Weinberg, p.152 * If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. -Dykstra * "#define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb)) - Shakespeare." * "Real programmers use: COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE" * To iterate is human; to recurse, divine. * If at first you don't succeed, call it version 1.0 * God is REAL, unless explicitly declared INTEGER. * Asking if computers can think is like asking if submarines can swim. * From C:\*.* to shining C:\*.* * Programming is an art form that fights back. * "Daddy, what does FORMATTING DRIVE C mean?" * All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound? * To define recursion, we must first define recursion. * Good programming is 99% sweat and 1% coffee. * C program run. C program crash. C programmer quit.

*** BASIC COMPUTER VIRUSES*** FEDERAL BUREAUCRAT VIRUS: Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which do practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of the computer. GALLUP VIRUS: Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 margin of error). PAUL REVERE VIRUS: This revolutionary virus doesn't horse around. It warns you of impending hard disk attack -- once if by LAN, twice if by C:. POLITICALLY CORRECT VIRUS: Never calls itself a "virus," but instead refers to itself as an "electronic microorganism." AT&T VIRUS: Every three minutes it tells you what great service you're getting. MCI VIRUS: Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus. GOVERNMENT ECONOMIST VIRUS: Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine. CONGRESSIONAL VIRUS: Computer locks up, screen splits vertically with a message appearing on each half blaming the other side for the problem. STAR TREK VIRUS: Invades your system in places where no virus has gone before. QUANTUM LEAP VIRUS: One day your PC is a laptop, the next day it is a Macintosh, then it's a Nintendo. Thanks to Mary Chaitt, University of California, Los Angeles .

You guys are priceless! Thankyou,thankyou, thankyou. I feel so much better now. p.s. Ann, the link is asclear as a crystal ball.....

I loved all your entries. Somewhere I have an even longer list of the viruses, but they're over a year old and can't find them right now. Ann, thanks for your HTML page - I've added it to my bookmarks and will study it at leisure when I ave more time.

Re112:8 Why Ann, I thank you so much! Though I have been testing some of these tricks before, the easy way of big and small and blink and colour was great to learn! Excellently presented too.I advice everybody who is not familiar with this html writing to visit Anns school. (This is a test as well.)

Re112:8 Why Ann, I thank you so much! Though I have been testing some of these tricks before, the easy way of big and small and blink and colour was great to learn! Excellently presented too.I advice everybody who is not familiar with this html writing to visit Anns school. (This is a test as well.)

Sorry lost post and was adviced(?)to reload but that produced a Dacapo of my partly failure to html. No colour appeared. Bear with me for one more try, will you? Zalakadola,mechicabola Colour appear!

Nope, I'll have to return to school for further lessons...

Ann2, you have restored my faith -- it is all magic, is it not? (Let us know as soon as you remember the correct incantation!)

Ann2, I think your problem is British spelling: [FONT SIZE="+1" COLOR="#ff00c0"]COLOR[/FONT]

Henry, are the quotation marks on the font size necessary? Do they work if you use them. I've never put them on.

If this will solve my problem I am so grateful HC. I can tell you that I had written color on my paper but thought it looked odd.And so altered it to that akward nonAusten spelling. I did not use big letters for font either.Do you think that matters? Correction! My husband(who is an English teacher)happened to come in and read over my shoulder and he explained that the word colour is differently spelled in UK and US.So it's really color that is nonAusten... I dare hardly try this time...

Oh Henry! I am indebted to you! The happiness which this reply produced was such as I have probably never felt before A sligth exaggeration but the feeling when the result comes out rigth is of a peculiar kind;)

Forgot to tell you Kathleen, some witchcraft *was* involved, as I kept my fingers crossed while I submitted the message! Will have to learn some other colors now...

Ann -- according to the rules of proper SGML, quotes are required whenever a character ofther than a-z, A-Z, 0-9, "." (period), or "-" (hyphen) is used in an attribute value. So [FONT SIZE=-1] doesn't require quotes, but [FONT SIZE="+1"] does (though many browsers will display it properly even if quotes aren't used)...

Ann - Here's a chart of the colors for you:

Kaffeine -- Your chart shows a 6x6x6 color cube PLUS a grey ramp PLUS red, blue, and green ramps... Colors in the 6x6x6 color cube are OFTEN not displayed as dithered, but there's no iron-clad guarantee... Macintosh windows has the grey ramp in its default system palette, but Windows does NOT... Neither system has all the red, blue, and green ramp colors in the basic non-dithering 8-bit pallete...

So Henry, is the chart good for our purposes. Should I put it in the tags tutorial???

And Henry, is there a way to tell which of the colors on that chart are on everyone's palettes, and therefore safest to use? And what is a "ramp" and how does one tell one "ramp" from another. (Well, I think I can tell the grey one OK. )

I believe if you keep your "RGB" numbers divisible by 3 you will be fairly safe.

Ann, the chart is fine to use as a list of sample colors and their corresponding Hexadecimal RGB codes, but it seems to be implied that these colors are all "safe" non-dithering colors, which is not actually the case... Katy, 6x6x6 cube colors have the value of each of the three components divisible by 51, which is "33" in hexadecimal. [[Insert audio of Tom Lehrer's "New Math" song here...]]

Kaffeine were you in Orem? My brother was a sales rep, pre-1994 layoffs. True story told to me by my cousin Noel: He was teaching his new assistant how to use the computer at her desk (this was about 8 years ago). She listened and nodded. When he asked her if she had any questions she stated she thought it was amazing how close they could get the paper to the glass (referring to the typing going on at the monitor). He said nothing, turned and walked straight to personnel and had her replaced. Ann thanks for the tutorial! I will be spending some time there now. Dina

6x6x6 cube colors have the value of each of the three components divisible by 51, which is "33" in hexadecimal. (((could someone say this in English? I don't speak math!)))

"Kaffeine were you in Orem?" No, I worked at one of the outsourcing companies - National TechTeam - until 12/31/94, when they downsized us from about 60 people to about 10 (the project is gone altogether since Corel). I just heard that NTT got a contract for tech support on a web browser - I'm wondering if its one of the big 2, or a smaller company.

"6x6x6 cube colors have the value of each of the three components divisible by 51, which is "33" in hexadecimal.' thanks Henry - I knew there was an explanation for the '33' syndrom that I was only half remembering. Joan: "RGB" numbers are values between 0 and 256 (decimal) 0-FF (Hexadecimal) for the three colors used by computers - red, green, and blue. When you use the "color=" parameter in HTML, you give it a six character number (ie: 0000FF is no red, no green, full blue. 000000 is black {no color} FFFFFF is white {all colors at full value}). There are 256x256x256 possible combos here but your terminal will display fewer than that. Most of the values on the chart Henry sent are have 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, or F as the value. If you try using other numbers, you will find that your screen displays them sort of to the nearest '33'. IE: 00AB00m and 008A00 and 009900 will probably all appear as the same shade of green on your screen. goota go - the ball is falling!!! Happy new year!!!

Thanks Katy, but this is still not English. Perhaps I can figure out increments of 3, but I still do not understand what HC meant about dividing anything with letters in it by 51.

Joan, "hexadecimal" is base 16, so 33 (16) is (3x16)+(3x1) = 48+3 =51 in decimal. I think you're dating yourself -- you came a little before the "new math", where they taught all about bases in elementary grades. My father owned all three of the Tom Lehrer albums when I was a child, so you'll allow me to indulge in a little nostalgia, and include the following song lyric, which explains it all very clearly

Joan, I'm with you - I don't speak math, or anything later than ordinary arithmetic! I loved the Tom Lehrer page, though, H.C. We have a collection of his records (old LPs) and last year finally found them on CD, so reaquainted myself with them. They're great fun.:-)

Grateful for Hex Triplet Color Chart kindly provided (must tell Kathleen Elder that the Swedish word witch is=h�xa(compare hex!). Also thanks to Katy for RGB-explanation (it spread some light into a confused mind). The color chart somehow reminded me of another Tom Lehrer text: There's a green one, and a blue one, a red one and a yellow one.... Little boxes and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same ...

"Thanks Katy, but this is still not English." Sorry, Joan. I date myself by thinking thinking hexadecimal numbering is second nature to everyone at all involved with computers. The Hexadecimal system, base 16, uses the digits 0-9 plus the letters A, B, C, D, E, & F. "A" is 10, base 15, "B" is 11, "C" is 12, ...."F" is 15. It evolved as a short hand for the binary system which is easy to understand but impossible to read in long strings. Each character in hex represents four bits in binary. "F" is "1111", "C" is "1100", etc. The color values 'CC99AA' in hex would look like "110011001001100110101010" in binary. If you are still reading with me, you can see why we computer pe ple learned to love the shorter hex system to represent machine language. In the RGB codes, each of the three colors is has 2 characters. Hence "3300CC" means a value of 33 (base 16) for red (which is 51, base 10), 00 for green, and CC for blue, (204, base 10). In English, that is a fairly bright blue with a little red mixed in - a rather purplish blue (lilac - maybe?). Tha amaturish rule of '33' is that as long as you use values of '00', '33', '66', '99', 'CC', and 'FF' for each of the three color values, you will get fairly consistent results on most 256-color monitors. This actually limits you to 196 colors(6x6x6), but that is more than enough for most graphics. There - more about the color chart than you care to know. BUT IN ENGLISH!!!.

"more about the color chart than you care to know. BUT IN ENGLISH!!!." Well, probably as close to English as it is posssible to get, but for the mathematically challenged probably no amount of translation is enough. "Tha amaturish rule of '33' This is closer to my speed! :-) HC, they did try to teach us bases other than 10 - but they could never explain it in English. :-( (Reminds me of the statistics prof who, when a student who could have been I said that she did not understand his explanation replied that he did not know any other way to explain it. At that moment we all knew that we were doomed; we learned almost nothing in class and spent long hours on the telephone teaching ourselves from the textbook.) and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same ...

I've uptated the tutorial again to add the color chart, images, and emoticons: http://www.spring.com/~anneh/tagsaaaa.html Enjoy!

Katy -- an entirely admirable explanation, except that 6x6x6=216

"Katy -- an entirely admirable explanation, except that 6x6x6=216 " A nice person would not have mentioned that - esp on New Year's day!

thanks to all one question; if I do 2 things to the font, such as colour and size, do I have to close it {/font} once or twice? testing

images don't work so well; I have trouble ascertaining where/when to insert a space...

I copied the green smiley address from the tute (maybe the frowney?)

Anna, you only need this part: htpp://www.spring.com/~amy/gfrown.gif or with the IP address: http://208.199.212.10/~amy/gfrown.gif

(Interesting that it turned the one with an IP address into a link, but not the one with the domain name!) The whole command looks like this - substituting [ ] fir the pointy brackets: [IMG SRC="http://208.199.212.10/~amy/gfrown.gif"]

"(Interesting that it turned the one with an IP address into a link, but not the one with the domain name!)" Joan a typo is the culprit (htpp instead of http) :)

I was using [IMG SRC="htpp://www.spring.com/~amy/gsmile.gif"], except with greater and lesser than signs instead of the square brackets. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? My browser just shows image icons rather than the image; HC's pics work OK

too slow me - but thanks! I'd never make a proff reader...

for anyone like myself , lazy &/or efficient; beware. Most of the links in the tute also appear as htpp, unless they mutated in copying.

I'd never make a proff reader... Nor I! Amazing that with those 2 lines sitting within an inch of each other I should not have noticed the difference between htpp and http. Actually, I did not type either of them myself - copied one from Anna's link and the other from my own crib sheet of graphics URLs. I never type when I can cut and paste. My cutting and pasting skills are so much better than my typing skills! ;-)

] My cutting and pasting skills are so much better than my typing skills! a sister of the scissors! Hurrah!

So, is there a typo in the tutorial???? If there is, let me know so I can fix it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, My most profound apologies. There was indeed an error in the tutorial. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused you. I assure you, the error has been corrected. Sincerely Yours, Ann p.s. Please E-mail me if you find any other errors. I will correct them as soon as possible.

Ann, I think there may be; I copied the info on gifs and pasted it into a text file, and all the addresses I copied had htpp instead of http. I don't think I can have done it with a straight copy and paste, but my skills are very basic and I wouldn't swear to anything. Great Tutorial !!!

Anna -- each [FONT] tag should be closed, but if you want to change two things at once, you can do it in a single font tag: [FONT SIZE="+2" COLOR="#33cc99"] Size and color changed! [/FONT]

Yes lets not forget to close like I did...

thanks HC

I have updated the tutorial (again). It now contains all seventy of the graphic smiley faces which Amy had HC scan, such as: To get directly to the graphical-smileys page: http://www.spring.com/~anneh/emotica.html

Nice job, Ann. I'd still like to do something a little different with them, but you got them up a lot faster than I ever would have gotten around to it. Now for some sound...

Amy, what would you like to do with them??

Not quite sure yet, Ann. Maybe nothing is needed. Everybody seems to love them. But the neat thing about the web is, everything's a draft.

Some of the pictures would work well with different names. I was thinking that maybe some should be offered without the names attached to them, so people could decide for themselves.

Yes, Amy was saying the same thing, and I agreed with her that this expression, for example, could go with other feelings:

And certainly this one:

Yes, Amy was saying the same thing, and I agreed with her that this expression, for example, could go with other feelings: Ah, yes. The Yiddish expression.

LOL! The wit of the contributors here in unparalleled.

I have loaded up the graphical smileys without the names on them. So if you like this picture: , but you do not want the name "loaded attached to it: , you can use it. The addresses are basically the same as given in the tutorial: http://www.spring.com/~anneh/tagsaaaa.html but with the suffix "2", such as loaded2.gif or happy2.gif

Thanks, Ann.

Sure, Babe.

]graphical smileys without the names on them. imagination runs riot! thanks muchly

The Tutorial was very very good and easy to understand. I want to thank you for your effor. This is my visit here. I very much enjoyed the visit. Thank you very much Gopal.

LOL Gopal! What a quick study! ;-)

No kidding. Good going Gopal. We're looking forward to your future visits here.

Maybe I ought to put this question in the Topic "incredibly dumb..." but this Topic-name also has an indulgent ring to it so... Does this mean that you can change the colour and/or size of a smiley or one of Ann's emoticons ? Using the formula above I mean... I suppose not...how could that be done?

Where is the formula above to which you are referring? There is no formula in the immediately preceding posting (#80).

Ann2 -- no, you can't change an image with HTML tags; you need an image editing program for that... I have an image of the raw large emoticon sheet in its original black and white form (before I changed black to #1F81A6 in Adobe Photoshop), but I've only cut off two or three individual emoticons from it... No-one has broken it up into 70 individual emoticons as Ann has done with the #1F81A6 version...

That one is a real beginner's : If I have a picture/image as a file in my computer can I post it on the internet and how should I proceed. I can change the size of an image/picture taken on the internet by saving in on my computer and resizing it with Corel Photo-paint (since on Windoze), how to put it back on line, how to post it on our BB ?

I highly recommend Lview (read about it in our apps conference). It makes resizing a snap.

Thanks a million Terry, BTW I just started conquering NetMeeting and NetTerm for your conference

Johanne: If I have a picture/image as a file in my computer can I post it on the internet and how should I proceed. You can, especially here, because Terry will give those who want one a shell account which gives you a directory to put them into. Or else, you can e-mail it to someone who already has one and have them upload it to their directory from which anyone can access it. Many graphics applications will allow you to re-size a graphic, but before uploading they should also be compressed into either a .gif or .jpeg (.jpg) format. This will make them take up less space on the server and load more quickly when being displayed. The .gif and .jpg formats can also be viewed by any machine type - which is why .gif - Graphic Interchange Format - was first created (by CompuServe) - so that images could be shared among different kinds of computers.

Would you like your own shell account Joan. Email Amy or myself and we'll be glad to set it up for you and you can be on the way to your own little corner of the web. Your own web page. Any contributor on the Spring is welcome to a web page.

I meant Johanne. Joan too, though.

Joan already has one.

Is anyone with a web not listed in our user listing? http://www.spring.com/users.html Of course if you want to be unlisted, we can do that too.

Terry, I'm definitely will be asking for a little space of my own (with pretty pleezes) and Amy already made me the gift of a shell account. Let me just finish reading Internet for dummies, More internet for dummies and HTML for dummies first, dear. I got NetTerm and NetMeeting, think I know how to use them (?) but having figured why yet.... this only goes to show where I come from

Confident with Unix, Joan?? My what a change this is ;-)

HC: Confident with Unix, Joan?? My what a change this is ;-) Who said anything about confident??? Certainly not I! Most of the tiny speck of UNIX that actually I know anything about has been forced down my throat past my tightly clenched teeth!

Linda - I really hesitate to say this when you are so happy... Explorer isn't going to help. The problem is with Prodigy's firewall, and using IE won't help with that. I'm so sorry!! We WILL find a solution to this - I promise!!

"Proxy cache server", not "firewall", right?

Kaf, if I make a "Yeah, yeah, whatever" graphic, I will share it with you.

I'm sure this doesn't belong here, but I don't want to look around forever. Why do the messages post with a time stamp that is 26 minutes later than the actual time?

Actually, the was nearly a day ahead. Next time you see this anyone, please mailto://terry@spring.com or mailto://amy@spring.com and one of of can reset the system clock with the date command.

date [-nu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t minutes_west] [+format] [[yy[mm[dd[hh]]]]mm[.ss]]