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  • #16
    Quoth Gilhelmi View Post
    "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

    I know I read that somewhere but I can not recall where.

    Extra cookies for knowing where it came from.
    One of Clarke's three laws.
    When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

    The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

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    • #17
      Quoth Mikkel View Post
      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
      And Agatha's Corollary-- "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology."
      PWNADE(TM) - Serve up a glass today! | PWNZER - An act of pwnage so awesome, it's like the victim got hit by a tank.

      There are only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because I choose to walk!

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      • #18
        Quoth earl colby pottinger View Post
        Too often in this situation the user never saved their work as they progressed along.
        I used to do tech support and training for users of QuickBooks and Sage/Peachtree. These products, essentially being fancy GUI's on top of databases, save as you went along, each time you completed an entry or transaction. Thing is, you still needed to backup the database files (which was so simple even a customer could do it!) on a regular basis. This minimized the data reentry time in case of file corruption.

        Generally, the first question I asked anyone who had had a messed-up data file was "How often do you guys back up the file?" Another, when THEY asked how often they should backup, was "What is your tolerance for re-entering missing data by hand?" ==> The response to this was invariably, "OK. We'll do daily backups, then." Good client. Have a donut.

        I wanted to hug the users who said "daily" or even (for busier places) "twice a day." I just walked them through a prior Restore, and had them re-enter the missing transactions. Quick, easy, 15 minutes, bada bing, bada boom, happy customer.

        I was pretty OK with the ones who said "weekly," as long as they only did a dozen transactions a day or so. Same basic idea, they had the option of re-entering a week or two worth of data, or having us bring in the big guns to have their database rebuilt. This took longer either way, and the latter wasn't cheap.

        I was even calmly patient with the ones who said that their IT guy backed up the whole server frequently -- while this is better than nothing, both of these programs are...odd in this regard. Both incorporate files from multiple locations into those backups, so an incremental server backup might not contain everything needed to produce a functional database file.

        Then, there were the people who responded with "...Backup?!? " ....I can't tell you what I wanted to do with them. We have rules about sort of thing around here >_>

        On the upside...for us...those were more expensive to fix, because they took longer. We had ways of making computers talk when it came to that sort of thing. Only once, IIRC, did one of those go so badly that we just billed them a base fee for coming out because we couldn't do anything. That was the Peachtree customer whose **FORMER** IT guy had been doing regular tape backups on an automated timer. When I tracked down the files, they had Last Modified dates marked as the early 2000's. This was in 2009...
        "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
        "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
        "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
        "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
        "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
        "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
        Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
        "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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        • #19
          Quoth EricKei View Post
          Backups
          Ah, backups. Obviously, The Client backs things up regularly. (At least twice a day, maybe more often depending on the department.)

          But I managed to help save a user's work earlier. Their computer had crashed and she was having various problems after booting it back up. All her desktop icons were missing. Fortunately, her files were still safe in the "desktop" folder on her network drive.

          Part of the "fix" for the issues she was having included rebooting again. Before she did that, I had her save copies of her "desktop" folder files into a different place on her network drive. Good thing I did so, because after the reboot, her "desktop" folder was empty. So she was able to just copy-paste or drag-drop her files back over.
          PWNADE(TM) - Serve up a glass today! | PWNZER - An act of pwnage so awesome, it's like the victim got hit by a tank.

          There are only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because I choose to walk!

          Comment


          • #20
            Quoth EricKei View Post
            Then, there were the people who responded with "...Backup?!? " ....I can't tell you what I wanted to do with them. We have rules about sort of thing around here >_>


            Please do not cause me any "historical" nightmares PLZ

            that was my world about 15 years ago when external HDDs were few and expensive and external/internal tape drives were still around and expensive. Yes floppies were a viable option but the way said floppies were treated........
            I'm lost without a paddle and headed up SH*T creek.
            -- Life Sucks Then You Die.


            "I'll believe corp. are people when Texas executes one."

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            • #21
              Quoth EricKei View Post
              Then, there were the people who responded with "...Backup?!? " ....I can't tell you what I wanted to do with them. We have rules about sort of thing around here >_>
              There was one customer of a IT firm an employer once used that said they had the backups and didn't. They weren't running. After much time spent trying to work out why he went to their offices and sat there from closing until when the backup was supposed to run. Or was going to until he found them switching off the main server as they closed up...

              I am so SO glad I was not present for this. There would have been an unpleasant duct tape incident. - Joi

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              • #22
                Quoth Racket_Man View Post
                ... the way said floppies were treated...
                Stapled into file folders.
                I am not an a**hole. I am a hemorrhoid. I irritate a**holes!
                Procrastination: Forward planning to insure there is something to do tomorrow.
                Derails threads faster than a pocket nuke.

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                • #23
                  Quoth dalesys View Post
                  Stapled into file folders.
                  Just...wha....huh?!?!?!

                  "If we refund your money, give you a free replacement and shoot the manager, then will you be happy?" - sign seen in a restaurant

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                  • #24
                    Quoth Racket_Man View Post
                    Yes floppies were a viable option but the way said floppies were treated........
                    Quoth dalesys View Post
                    Stapled into file folders.
                    I've heard various forms of floppy disk abuse:

                    - Rolled into a typewriter to type the label
                    - Taking it out of the jacket before inserting it in the computer (NOT the paper envelope - the actual plastic jacket)
                    - Keeping an emergency floppy handy by sticking it to a file cabinet using a magnet
                    - Backing up to a single floppy - when the backup program asks for the next disk, they just hit enter, so the information from disk N of the backup set is overwritten with the information from disk N+1
                    Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

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