| THE | E | LIST | N | EWS |
| by Mr. E | ||||
As I was typing this issue, my friend Zeph Bender of Neo Solutions forwarded me the following link, which is quite useful on a stressed-out day. (Please do not hold it against him that he is a Macintosh consultant. I have friends among all sorts of minorities. It’s still a great link!) Read carefully. Only supplement with psychotropic medication if under a physician’s care.
(If you don’t mind some nicely done ELO background music on an attractive web page, you might want to also try their home page with the speakers turned on.)
Like many humor pieces that one receives by email, the following has been floating around the Internet for years. It is usually attributed to Dr. Seuss (despite the transparent style disparity and the fact that Dr. Seuss never, to my knowledge, wrote hip-hop). In any case, it is always good for a chuckle, and some of it is good technical diagnosis. The rest... well, all I can say is: Enjoy! (PS – I must admit to having made small changes to improve the scansion.)
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the mem’ry makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash.
And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
Then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well just reboot and go out with one big bang,
’Cause as sure as I’m a poet (ha!), the sucker’s gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary RISC,
Then you have to flash your mem’ry and you’ll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!
Have you ever had little Felixy pets sauntering around your desktop (and actually taken pleasure from them!)? Do you always make sure to change that darn paperclip in Microsoft Office to the much more endearing orange cat, Links? If so, then you (like me!) just might enjoy visiting the Dutch WebCat site at http://www.webcat.westvillage.nl/. Just move the mouse and watch. (I recommend eventually starting near the cat’s feet and moving slowly straight up.) Thanks for this item go to AumHa Forum member BastKity.
A correspondent, L.C., sent the following this week. As I always like to share valuable life-wisdom with my readers, I thought I would include it here:
A couple goes on vacation to a fishing resort in northern Ontario. The husband likes to fish at the crack of dawn. The wife likes to read. One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and continues to read her book. Along comes a Forestry officer in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says, “Good morning Ma’am. What are you doing?” “Reading a book,” she replies (thinking, “Isn’t that obvious?”). “You’re in a restricted fishing area,” the officer informs her. “I’m sorry officer, but I’m not fishing, I’m reading.” “Yes, but you have all the equipment. I’ll have to take you in and write you up.” “If you do that,” the woman says, “I’ll have to charge you with sexual assault.” “But I haven’t even touched you,” says the policeman. “That’s true,” she admits, “but you have all the equipment, right?”
MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It’s likely she can also think.
MS-MVP Mariette Knap (SBS) recently shared with us the following list of undocumented Windows XP error codes. I must admit that I’ve never seen any of these in any Microsoft documentation, so this was a real find! The list is published here with Mariette’s permission. I hope you enjoy them!
000 - Unknown Error Occurred But Was Lost. Windows Will Try To Remember
001 - Intimidation Failed; Attempting to Crash Repeatedly
002 - Erroneous Error; No Error Occurred (Yet)
003 - RAM Depleted; Annex Japan (Y/N)?
004 - Deluxe Error. Please Send $75 to Upgrade Your Error
005 - Long File Name Error; Tape Erased to Make Room for Filename
006 - Insufficient RAM to Crash Properly; Attempting Fake Crash
007 - Alphanumeric Sequence “OS2” Prohibited
008 - This License Has Expired; Please Purchase Another Copy
009 - Error Buffer Overflow; Too Many Errors
00A - Non-Microsoft Application Encountered
00B - Push Error; Removing Files to Make Room for Advertisement
00C - Windows Loaded Correctly This Time
00D - User Error; Lemming Not Found
00E - Open Standard Encountered; Attempting to Redmondize
00F - Reserved for Future Coding Errors
010 - Virus Error — Other Applications Will Be Closed Instead
011 - Orwell Not Found; You Must Use MSN
012 - Cash Underflow — Credit Card Number Will Be Assimilated
013 - Keyboard Error; User Must Learn to Slow Down
014 - User Error; Reading License Agreement Mandatory to Continue
015 - Error Message Deleted
016 - Expected Error Did Not Occur; Attempting to Restart Error Sequence
017 - Multitasking Attempted; System Confused
018 - Network Error — Your Crash Will Be Replicated to All Stations
019 - Freedom-of-Choice Error; Select a Microsoft Browser To Continue
01A - Insult Detected — Your Bill Gates Joke Will Be Deleted
01B - Error Removing Temp File; a Permanent File Will Be Substituted
01C - Wrong Disk Formatted. Sorry About That.
01D - Mandatory Error Inserted to Meet Error Quota
01E - Please Insert Your Favorite Error Here
01F - Error In Progress; Please Wait...
020 - Unexpected Intelligent User Detected; Please Reload Everything
021 - Error Parsing Error List; Please Wait For Next Error
022 - Upgrade Error; Please Format Your Drive And Reload Everything
And now for another E-List News exclusive! Yesireesir, this is big! There hasn’t been a hint of it in the technical press until now, so you get to read it here first — more than that, you get to see it with your own eyes!
Thanks to the undaunted E-List News espionage team (that’s me, assisted by the beautiful and talented Windows Shell/User MVP who prefers only to go by the nom de guerre of “Sharon F.,” and who loaned me her camera), we are able to bring you the following. It’s no secret that Microsoft has big plans for forthcoming generations of SQL server data base software but... well, you judge for yourself.
Truth: The picture below, taken by me in mid-February, is of a work site just across the road from the Microsoft Conference Center. Nobody would tell me what they were working on. You decide!
