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Sharky's picture
Sharky

Shark Tank

And will she appreciate it? Not a chance

User in this office constantly complains to anyone who will listen about how busy and underappreciated she is at work, reports an IT manager pilot fish nearby.

"I knew what she was doing all day because a had a pretty good view of her screen through my office window," fish says. "It was true that she was quite busy all day -- playing solitaire. Her gaming skills probably did go unappreciated."

And when fish gets a new remote-access application, he knows just how to test it in stealth mode: He joins this user's Solitaire session, moving some cards into play, undoing the user's moves and taking cards for a trip around her screen.

From his vantage point, fish can see the user struggling to take back control of her mouse -- and looking around the office to see if anyone else has noticed.

Later that day, as fish walks past the user's desk, she asks him if anything weird is going on with the computers.

"What do you mean by weird?" fish asks innocently.

"Oh, I don't know, the mouse moving on its own or something," user says.

Fish replies, "The only thing I heard of lately was the solitaire virus. It takes control of your computer and eventually reformats your hard drive while you play solitaire. But we're too busy here to play games, so we shouldn't see the problem."

After that, fish notices that the user stays off solitaire for the next few days.

"She stayed off it completely when I created a little custom dialog box called Solitaire.exe," says fish. "When a user tries to call up Solitaire, a dialog box pops up and says, 'Shouldn't you be working instead? Click Yes.'

"I omitted the 'No' button, of course."

Sharky would really appreciate getting your true tale of IT life. Send it to me at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll score a sharp Shark shirt if I use it. Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

Now you can post your own stories of IT ridiculousness at Shark Bait. Join today and vent your IT frustrations to people who've been there, done that.

What People Are Saying

I PYLAED SLOTTAIRS TO

I USDED VDC TO PALYD SOLTRARRS ON DRIFERENT PROSENS CONPUTRERER WONCE TO OHH WAHT IT MITE NOT BEN VD IT MIGTH BEN BRACK ORFRISK 20000 BY SLCULTS OF TEH DRED CROW... WIAT WASN'T TAHT TEH SAMEM THIG?

Do you come with subtitles?

Do you come with subtitles?

subtleties

Just run it through spell checker.
I used VNC to play solitaire on different persons computers once too. Oh wait! It might not have been VNC, it might have been back office 2000 by sculls of the dried crows...
wait wasn't that the same thing.

Close enough - have a cigar

"Back Orifice" by the "Cult of the Dead Cow".

Seconded, he's no JIM. The beauty of JIM's writing is that you can actually comprehend it, even if you have no idea how.

"impurest McGovern" - contains less than 10% actual McGovern; the rest is apple juice

Check

Stop shouting and get a spell checker! Who do you think you are, JTB?

reCAPTCHA: mahicans of the upper Hudson valley

I know JTB

I know JTB and he is no JTB!

I'll say

He doesn't even know how to spell COPUMTER!

Besides...

...he's not FLATULENT IN LATIN.

CAPTCHA: Vanderbilt banquet -- what they have after another 3-8 football season

No JTB today EXPALINATION

JIM's creator had to make some major IT stuff moves right before he took five blessed days off. Don't worry, he'll be around every day that CW does a new Tank :-)

EX-PALIN-ATION - Get it?

EXPALINATION

What happens to the nation when a former governor writes books instead of runs the nation.

CAPTCHA: languid $3.2-billion -- chump change for an EXPALINNATION