 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Eddies in the Ether Dave Mitchell |
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0ne of you out there is guilty. No use denying it. So you might as well own up now and start organising your affairs. I warn you, I'm Irish and I know how to use it! " Guilty of what?" I hear the rest of you ask. Well, I got a new system a couple of months ago and it has been suffering a series of hard disk crashes ever since. Now, as I'm sure you realise, it can't be my fault so it's become obvious to me that one of you has been sneaking into the bunker while I lay in an alcoholic stupor and belted my hard disk with a hammer. Hang on! Why only one of you! It's probably all of you!
And stop calling me paranoid!!!
Setting Up for the Brain Dead
One of the advantages of frequent system crashes is you learn more than you probably care to about reconfiguring and restoring all those essential files (I thought I had lost DOOM for a couple of agonising minutes there). Anyway due to me getting my new whizz-bang 'puter I gave the Dragonlady my old machine to do her accounts on and to use for a course she is doing, etc. It is still working, of course.
When my new system came back with a new hard drive, etc I thought "Beauty! I'll just link the two together and transfer everything over!" The Dragon, precious little flower that she is, said "No Way, Sonny! You've broken yours! You're not touching mine!" Isn't she an angel?
Just let me explain that the Dragonlady uses Windows, which is fine for what she wants to do, but it provides opportunities for major mischief by me. So late one night I edited the AUTOEXEC.BAT and REM'd out the line that boots to windows. Hence next time she turned her machine on what she got was C:\>
Panic! Panic! (Meanwhile I'm quietly splitting my sides laughing.)
Her resident expert (me) was called in, with the appropriate amount of grovelling after the shabby way she had treated me, to fix the problem. I ushered her out of the bunker so I could perform my arcane rites in DOS and subsequently spent the next hour transferring everything onto my new box and five seconds re-editing her AUTOEXEC.BAT. I emerged with the joyous news that her machine was once again tamed and basked in her grateful appreciation for a while.
Now, that's how to reconfigure your system. B-)
Hicks and Hayseeds
In his ongoing quest to achieve a small part of the sophistication of us city dwellers our resident hick on the BBS, Glenn "Farma" Brown, posted his version of the old twenty questions. Now Farina and his one true love, Lullubelle the cow, live in some backwater called Darraweit Guim, which from all reports, is a flyspeck on a pimple on the left buttock of the universe but in his own retarded way he gets along quite nicely.
Funniest thing is he bags us city folk unmercifully but when he wants a question answered he rings me up because he knows if he asked it on the BBS he'd get bagged by everyone. B-)
Now what sort of questions would our man on the land want to know? Here's a sample.
- 4. How did our President get the nickname "Claude Balls"?
- 7. Does being called "Bonkers" mean he's insane?
- 8. What will Tom Coleman do when DOS finally dies?
- 11. Is sex better the second time around?
- 14. Does this constant pounding in my head have any significance?
Family Matters
Now that the Prez and the rest of the committee have OK'd family membership the rest of the tribe have been crawling up my back to join Melb PC (see Ash! I got it right!) So, I faxed off a list to Trish stating their full names and criminal records and their supposed relation to me. So, all of you lot on the BBS, here is your one and only warning! All of them are somewhat feralm so approach with caution and don't forget the tranquilliser gun!
Well, I suppose that's enough character assassination for one month. I'm off fishing this weekend so that should calm me down. On the other hand the resulting hangover won't help my mood at all. B-)
Addendum: See next month's Eddies for a full account of the fishing trip.
Here's the tag: ... Eat coffee straight from the can. Why dilute it?
Reprinted from the November 1994 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
