Or something like that

It's a typical busy Monday morning, and the help desk is shorthanded because one of the techs is away for training, when this pilot fish gets a call from the warehouse.

"The computer is not right," user tells fish. "I move the mouse here, the arrow goes there. I move the mouse there, the arrow goes somewhere else."

Fish knows something is really not right, because all his company's PCs are equipped with touch screens. Is the touch screen working? he asks. No, user says.

It's probably a calibration issue, fish figures. The users have been trained in how to run the calibration tool, but this user can't get it working properly. So fish resigns himself to a long walk to the far end of the huge facility -- about as far from his desk as he can get and still be in the building.

When fish arrives at the user's station, the user is nowhere in sight. But the mouse is there, and so is the mouse pad. And fish can see it's upside down: rubberized side up, reflective side down.

He flips it over. The mouse works fine.

"I see the user as I'm leaving the warehouse," fish says. "She asks me what the trouble was. I tell her with a straight face that it was an asynchronous peripheral lockout.

"She tells me. 'I have no idea what you're talking about, but as long as you do, everything's OK.'"

Let Sharky know when a framistat remodulates or a pibcak decouples. Send me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll snag a snazzy Shark shirt if I use it. Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

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