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Computer Crash Reactions Examined
dankinit writes "MSNBC has an amusing story about research showing how people react to computer crashes and losing data. Among the numbers, 7% of those surveyed hit the computer, 13% yell at first, and another 13% try to "sweet-talk" their computer. The article also has results from a study done at the Univ. of Maryland. In that study, "One restaurant manager who was so upset with his laptop that he threw it into deep fryer. That destroyed the laptop ... and deep fryer, too.""
My desktop at work: I do a dance of joy! Finally I get a new linux machine. Thankfully all my data is on the server so my desktop is no loss.
My home computer that hasn't been backed up in ages: I smack my head until I pass out. When I wake up I smack some more. I gnash my teeth as I lament the demise of my Diablo2 level 46 druid! Oh and all the pictures of both my kids.
The server at work: I start with a huge sigh as I restore data followed by snarls at users bugging me asking every ten minutes when the server will be back up.
The server at work that has bad backups that never got verified because everyone but me thinks the tapedrive is a magic box that never makes bad backups and I never get time allocated to manually verify them or time/money to come up with a better solution: I start smiling at the users as I fervently start hoping my home computer doesn't crash before I get home and print my resume. Where are the good backup tapes the users ask? Oh yeah, I took them home for offsite safekeeping, let me clean out my desk and go home to get them.....
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I support many many users who are by no means savvy. A common reaction is to simply burst into tears. I have yet to find a gentle way to tell them they shoudn't have saved to c: without them losing it totally. It always sounds like Ha Ha!
How the hell do you destroy a deep fryer? I worked at a restraunt, of all the stuff in the place the deep fryer was like a burning pit from hell. It was something that CAUSED destruction but never took it!
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
I hit/swear at/sweet talk my computer all day long...
The Answer
Yes:
"There was one restaurant manager who was so upset with his laptop that he threw it into deep fryer," Norman said.
Cave man throw laptop into deep fryer. No need use the.
Where does the computer's "mind" go when it "crashes"?
It uses it's last remaining CPU cycles to sing a song.
"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..
"I'm half-crazy, all for the love of you,
"It won't be a stylish marriage,
"I can't afford a carriage,
"But you'll look sweet, upon the seat
"Of a bicycle built for two."
Either that, or display the BSOD on Windows.
What do you do when or if your computer crashes? 1) Hit the computer 2) Swear 3) Coax computer into giving your data back 4) Sigh and reboot 5) drop into kdb 6) Call Cowboy Neal for Tech support Then the comments section could be flooded by Mac/Linux fanboys who say "What? Crash? What's that? My leet system is t3h sold OMGLOLROFL!1! " On second thought, maybe the poll's not such a good idea.
I was considering what could cause the deep fryer to become destroyed and came up with only one possible conclusion:
It was "The One Laptop". Only a deep fryer could really destroy the laptop being that it was the evil that the laptop was created from. And when the laptop was cast into the fryer the fryer erupted from the critical mass of evil and proceeded to destroy everything around it.
(apologies to Tolkien, Oppenheimer, and Jackson)
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Did he get the death penalty or just life in prison?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
What about us members of /. who are sick of stupid LoTR jokes? Where's our apology? :)
But 7 percent said their first reaction is the hit the computer, Johnson said, a step that's rarely productive.
That implies that sometimes it *is* productive? If there is any chance whatsoever of me getting my deleted files back (1 in a billion?) I'll hit the computer everytime!
Do you Gentoo!?
I once had a customer (back in my small computer business days) who had bought a brand new, top of the line 486 Acer laptop. It came complete with a cool-ass trackball and COLOR screen!
Anyway, after a few days, the trackball started sticking on the guy and he called us. We cleaned it, but it would still stick - and he was starting to get pissed. We called Acer and got the usual tech runaround where they insisted they would get back to us. The customer finally called them and they told him the same thing - they never did.
So one fine morning at breakfast, the guy sits down with his laptop and cup of coffee in the kitchen and the trackball sticks on him again. Not just a little glitch either, I mean the pointer simply isn't moving. With one sweep of his hand, the coffee cup goes flying and smashes to small pieces on the floor. His wife looks the mess with disgust and says, "Why don't you take out your aggression on your computer instead?"
And the guys yells, "Yeah? Well, I think I will!" And slams the laptop to the ground and starts JUMPING UP AND DOWN ON IT!
Sheepishly, the guy comes back to us with the laptop in many pieces and tells us this story (and we had to try not to laugh about it). We called Acer, and finally got through to the president of the company and explained what happened. Believe it or not, Acer profusely appologised and sent us a brand new model (sans trackball of course)!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
One restaurant manager who was so upset with his laptop that he threw it into deep fryer. That destroyed the laptop ... and deep fryer, too
Yes, but how did it taste???
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Never underestimate the power of percussive maintenance. Eons ago, back when the C64 was bleeding edge tech, I was in a school computer class. Our C64 locked up, taking with it everything we had done in the preceeding period. I head-butted the keyboard. It unfroze and worked fine for the rest of the period. True story. Used my head to solve the problem;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Funny you say that...my ex girlfriend's reaction to any computing problem was to press F5. Her logic was that if it fixed IE, surely it would work for Word and Excel and everything else as well...
:D
And when I challenged her on this her response was "No, I know more about computers than you do, F5 is the key to refresh the page and I know it is and it always works for me."
Can you guess why she's an ex?
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Here's the hardware abuse link, I don't think it's shown up here yet.
no anal?
I worked at a law firm once where one of the partners put his fist through the CRT after the computer ate his 150+ page brief;-) The best part of the story (which he tells with a ragamuffin gleam in his eye) is that it also happened to be the the first day in the office for a new legal secretary. She had just walked into his office to be introduced when he sucker punched the monitor. It was months, apparantly, before she would walk past his office again;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I have twice attacked a phone in my lifetime.
Once was when my girlfriend's mother caught us having sex in high school. The phone call that initiated the phone-bashing incident was about 2 hours after that when I got to hear her mother telling her what to say:
Mom: You can never see him again....
Ex-Girl: I can never see you again...
It was like a soap opera with the Jedi mind trick worked into it. Funny and distressing at the same time. The phone met with an unfortunate rapid deceleration incident after contacting a brick wall at a high rate of relative velocity.
The second phone attack was much more fun. I was sleeping in a twin bed, next to the wall, with my girlfriend on the outside of the bed next to me.
In the pitch black of night there is a terrible shriek. My mind is clouded, dim, and limbic from sleep; enraged and disoriented by this hideous sound that keeps repeating itself. It screams once, twice, then on the third keening screech I launch myself over my sleeping girlfriend and land on top of the offending THING. I have absolutely no idea what it is that is making the noise, but I am driven insane with anger that it won't stop. The room is pitch black so I have to feel the screaming thing to find a way to make it stop. I grab it wholly in my hands and start to roughly search for a weak point, squeezing it hard all the while in vain hopes that it will choke and stop. Suddenly I feel a small tail-like thing in my hands and realize with grim and ecstatic joy that I have discovered its weak spot. I grab it, and as it yells again I begin to yank furiously on the tail, over and over.
Unfortunately I have begun to wake up now and by the time I realize just exactly what is going on I am sitting there in the dark, naked, with a phone in one hand and a frayed phone cord in the other, grinning like a madman but with the dawning realization that I have just killed with primal rage...my telephone. My girlfrind turns on the light about this time and looks at me, starteled. Then she fixes me with that LOOK. You might know the one. It is like she is never, ever gonna consider me fully human again, but dosen't want to let me know that she is thinking this in, just in case I decide to fulfil her basest opinions of me.
It still cracks me up to think of how I slaughtered a telephone in my sleep.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.