“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by sdrothrock on Monday January 27, 2020 @05:51AM (#22158226)

Maybe you've already seen this one, but maybe there are some people who haven't... I get a kick out of it every time I reread it, anyway. :)

http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

Edit: And the FAQ: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by ascar on Monday January 27, 2020 @11:46AM (#22161020)

Fun to read. Thanks for sharing!

With the risk of sounding a bit arrogant, am I the only one who immediately thought about a timeout issue on the first description of the problem?

As a fan of online gaming I'm painfully aware that ping (and distance to server) matter. Especially when I was in Japan and tried to play with my friends in Germany, the fact that packets were routed over the US to Europe resulting in ~250ms pings was a constant annoyance.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by CathedralBorrow on Monday January 27, 2020 @07:19AM (#22158636)

Probably my fifth read through and still love it.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by horomeme on Monday January 27, 2020 @08:45AM (#22159106)

My first time. Absolutely hilarious!

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by torstenvl on Monday January 27, 2020 @08:36AM (#22159039)

Wait. How come it wasn't ~280 miles then?

EDIT: Never mind, answered in the FAQ.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by jaclaz on Monday January 27, 2020 @08:01AM (#22158844)

The best hardware related one remains the classic Magic/More Magic switch:

http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by gmfawcett on Monday January 27, 2020 @04:27PM (#22163966)

This one, and the 500-mile email story, are my all-time favourites. :)

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by numlock86 on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:32AM (#22158391)

I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were guessing it was about static electricity from the specific clothing(-style) or similar in the early process. Maybe someone else had heard of this or can find it?

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by stazz1 on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:43AM (#22158452)

https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-...

Also, some reddit makes it seem like a Titanium pin in his shoulder was to blame: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2rsivw/monitor...

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by DagAgren on Monday January 27, 2020 @07:33AM (#22158710)

At university, we once built a networked doorbell system for the offices. Lots of small displays with a button outside the doors, connected on a CAN bus to a controller, that you could configure, and another device in the office to make noise and control the screen.

We had a problem, though: The door display devices would randomly crash and require somebody to go over and reboot them. This was very annoying, and we could never reproduce it. We added monitoring for it, and after a while the problem mostly went away on its own. But half a year later, it was back. It seems the system worked fine in summer, but started crashing in winter.

We finally, after much testing and deliberation, realised it was caused by the devices having a metal front plate which would easily attract static shocks, which would crash the device. And in winter, the dry air and wooly clothing would cause a lot more static discharges.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by numlock86 on Monday January 27, 2020 @08:45AM (#22159110)

Wow, nice find. Although that is not the story I was looking for. Seems like it isn't as unique then.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by clmul on Monday January 27, 2020 @08:44AM (#22159102)

I have a similar issue with my desktop computer: when I suspend or hibernate it, it sometimes wakes up again when I'm standing, getting up from my chair or leaving the room. This also occasionally happens (when hibernated) after I have physically switched off the power of the computer and switch it on again. The issue occurred first a few years after I bought it, but right now I have just given up debugging it, as I have absolutely no idea what the cause could be. It's mildly annoying sometimes as I have to check that it's really staying put, but I can deal with it.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by verall on Monday January 27, 2020 @10:54AM (#22160411)

If you have a nicer mouse with a quality sensor, a pretty slight bump or vibration to the desk can cause it to move and wake the computer. Try disabling wake on mouse so you can only wake with the keyboard.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by LorenPechtel on Monday January 27, 2020 @12:32PM (#22161621)

Yup. I puzzled over this one for a while when it happened to me. My mouse was on a pull-out surface from the desk and thus any vibration was amplified. It was sensitive enough to wake the computer merely from walking up to it.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by paultopia on Monday January 27, 2020 @09:25AM (#22159480)

A very simple version of this: I used to find that my macbook was randomly going to sleep all the time when I was working with it. Eventually realized that it was because I was using my ipad pro right next to it, with its very strong magnets for the smart keyboard---and magnetic sensors are also how the macbook tells the screen is closed. Could probably put one to sleep by just waving a sufficiently strong magnet in front of it...

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by wtracy on Monday January 27, 2020 @03:31PM (#22163466)

There was a story on HN at one point about laptops that would immediately go dark when placed on top of another laptop.

The magnet in the lid of the bottom laptop would put the top laptop to sleep.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by nkrisc on Monday January 27, 2020 @02:16PM (#22162728)

Depending on how it's configured to wake, my guess is it's your mouse. When you stand you move the desk just enough to cause the mouse to wake it. Happens to me all the time when I bump by desk when getting out of my chair.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by clmul on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:36AM (#22167828)

Unfortunately, I can still reproduce it when the mouse is disconnected completely (tried it in the past as my first guess)

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by kimjongtrill on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:34AM (#22158396)

That sounds like a feature if I could somehow tie it to my boss

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by adwww on Monday January 27, 2020 @11:31AM (#22160835)

I have a pair of Trickers boots with a rubber sole that give me and everyone who touches me massive static shocks when I'm in the office.

It never happens anywhere else, so it must be something about the office carpet, and maybe inadaqute earthing of the desks or something.

But every single time I wear those boots to work I will shock myself a dozen or more times that day.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by devilbunny on Monday January 27, 2020 @12:06PM (#22161293)

Useful tip: carry a metal object (keys, soda can) with you. Grab it with as much surface area as possible (holding the twisting part of the key, or the whole of the can) and use the tip of the key or lid of the can to touch metal. Because you've spread out your contact over a much larger area, you won't feel the shock. You can use this to get some really impressive sparks - I've gotten as much as 5-6 mm long.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by aidenn0 on Monday January 27, 2020 @12:35PM (#22161664)

My most recent one was that 3 minutes after someone else would SSH into my workstation, my X11 session would crash, but when I would SSH into my workstation, there was no error.

It turns out the default configuration for systemd-logind is to sandbox it away from networking; it's an NIS setup where I am, but I had a local passwd entry for myself so that my home directory would be local. There was a 3 minute timeout on something NIS related, which would cause an error. Then systemd-logind would restart system-wide, including my local login.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by nabla9 on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:03AM (#22158272)

My favorite one is the one where engineer notices that he can login on terminal only when sitting down. When standing up, login fails.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by willvarfar on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:13AM (#22158316)

Not the same one, but very recently, this problem has been cropping up for real all over the place! https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/1214162400666103808?s=... People having screens that turn off when you sit down or stand up.

SPOILER: its the gas compression in the shockabsorber causing an EM spike or something like that.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by sixonesixo on Monday January 27, 2020 @08:41AM (#22159077)

it happens to me all the time with a colleague that sits in front of me. every time he stand up, my monitor start glitching. i found that cause a couple of weeks ago, and now i find it hilarious

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by arcturus17 on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:06AM (#22158284)

Ok don’t leave us hanging here what was the cause?

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by drewbug on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:09AM (#22158302)

> Turns out that some joker pulled out two keys from the keyboard and switched their places. [...] They were both relatively good at typing and didn't look down at the keyboard when typing when sitting. But typing when standing is something they weren't used to and had to look down at the keyboard which made them press the wrong keys.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by mark-r on Monday January 27, 2020 @11:45AM (#22161010)

Once in college, somebody thought they'd be clever and remove all the keytops on the only CRT in one small timesharing computer lab. Didn't bother me, because I was a touch typist - didn't need to see the keys at all.

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by geoah on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:10AM (#22158306)

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...

Not as interesting as initially hoped for :D

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by philefstat on Monday January 27, 2020 @06:05AM (#22158280)

wait really?

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by the_watcher on Monday January 27, 2020 @01:37PM (#22162349)

Last Friday's xkcd happens to be very relevant! https://xkcd.com/2259/

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Re:“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print ... by AceJohnny2 on Monday January 27, 2020 @04:40PM (#22164103)

And that XKCD reminded me of a couple other seminal debugging stories:

- "The Case of the 500-mile email" https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

- Brendan Gregg demonstrates the effect of screaming at hard drives: https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4

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