The 'blem wit' error messages When I was young I built up a collection of system error messages. Ok, look, it's not as sad as collecting stamps! It is? Really? Oh well, never mind. Anyway, my recent piece about Borland putting rude words in Quattro Pro got me thinking it was time to revisit that collection. Some of them date back to the days of the …
Not quite an error message, but one that wouldn't let me pass :
I was re-installing Windows XP Tablet Edition on my Motion Computing slate (i.e. no keyboard) Tablet PC.
The installation went fine, until the point Microsoft asked me to press F8 to accept the terms of the license.
It now runs Ubuntu.
Windows for Workgroups once took a perverse delight in telling me that drive C: was out of paper.
I think it was something terribly exotic like trying to use Beame & Whiteside's TCP/IP suite to print to a network printer...
You can't beat "BDOS ERR ON A:" from CP/M, though, can you?
And if you fancy a laugh, google "hodie natus est radici frater".
In the olden days of command driven green screen reservation systems, typing *RAPE gave the error message "ILLEGAL ENTRY"
I wrote a system using these green screens with just 32 characters for error messages. My first attempts were turned down as "Too terse and technical" and I was told to rewrite them to tell the user what to do, not what the problem was.
I set up a dummy system with the new messages and showed it to the QA guy for his OK, telling him that I had had to use the live production system with 3000 users. He entered a sequence he (and I) knew would pop up an error. It now said "PHONE JOHN xxxxxx ON 01nnnnnn" with his name and home phone number. Oddly he didn't find it funny that 3000 users now had (he believed) his home phone number. He saw the joke when I explained that only he had that version.
I sent a link to this lot to a friend. He responded with something so funny that I just had to share.
Many moons ago he did some customisation on a system for some users. Not having access to the code, this consisted of working out the function from the results and putting in some replacement modules in. To be 100% sure, he dropped in a little routine to check all the data afterwards and ensure everything was in order. It produced a couple of error messages thus:
"If you are seeing this message, the system is SERIOUSLY fucked. Call <xxxxxxxx> now....." and the usual "Press enter to continue" or somesuch.
Pressing enter gets you:
"You haven't called <xxxxxxxx> have you??? GO AND DO IT NOW!!!!"
One night, some time later, he was awoken by a user whose first question, asked in all seriousness was:
"How the hell have you managed to interface this software to our telephone system?"
Priceless!
Somewhat ironically, my first try at posting this with the title 0/10 resulted in the error "There are some problems with your comment: * A title is required."
"think it was when you tried to login to the "Nobody" system account like it was a normal user account: 'You don't exist. Go away.'"
I discovered this one when a root typo resulted in /etc being rm -rf'ed.
For trs err msgs, the Sinclair ZX81 is hard to beat, with such gems as "2/20" indicating an undefined variable (error 2) on line 20. I preferred the Speccy's "Nonsense in BASIC" error though. :)
"just one light on the dashboard which would light when there was a problem"
Sounds like he designed the instrumentation in the Ford Pinto. It has a single "check engine" light which could mean overheating or low oil. Experience tells me it's going to be low oil...
When I worked at a government site years ago one of the techies decided to name the database server "elvis". I tried to educate the users of my app to do basic troubleshooting before they called me, including the use of the ping command to see if they had connectivity. Of course on solaris when they ran "ping elvis" the response was "elvis is alive" :-)
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