will england :: humor : Userology

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 10 Sep 1998 17:13:48 +0200
From: Calle Dybedahl
Subject: Userology

USEROLOGY
=========

On Different Kinds of Users and How to Spot Them

The Common Idiot
----------------
The basic user. Mostly just sits in front of its monitor and drools
over some pornsite.

Typical dialogue:
U: "Machine no work."
S: "What's wrong with it?"
U: "Machine no work."
S: "Ok. Which machine do you use?"
U: "Machine no work."
S: "Right, I heard you. Where is your machine?"
U: "Machine no work!"
S: "*sigh* I'll come with you back to your room."
U: "Machine no work?"
S: "Go back to room."
U: "Go back. Room."

Frequency of appearance:
*Much* too often.

Suggested treatment:
Kill.

The Mumbler on the Treshold
---------------------------
Appears at the sysadmin's doorstep and speaks very, very softly.
Sometimes it's possible to get it to speak up a little. Very often,
it'll go away at the slightest provocation.

Typical dialogue:
U: "mumblemumblenetscapemumblemumblemumble"
S: "Excuse me?"
U: "mumblemumblemubleservicepackmumble"
S: "Sorry, I can't hear you."
U: "...can't start Netscape..."
S: "Try clicking on the Netscape icon."
U: "mumblemumblemumblemumblemumblemumble"

Frequency of appearance:
Much too often.

Suggested treatment:
Kill.

The Rabid Guesser
-----------------
Barges into the sysadmin's room and starts spouting nonsense, usually
in a quite aggressive fashion. Has picked up a technical term or two
somehow, and blames everything on those terms.

Typical dialogue:
U: "You have to do something about the collisions on the SCSI
channel!"
S: "What?"
U: "It can't go on like this, you must fix it, now!"
S: "What was the problem again?"
U: "The SCSI doesn't work, that's what. And it's slow."
S: "How can it be slow if it doesn't work?"
U: "I don't know, you're the expert, not I."
S: "What's the problem?"
U: "It's slow. Didn't you listen when I told you?"
S: "*What* is slow?"
...and so on until the sysadmin grows tired, follows the user to
its workplace and discovers that it has pulled the network cable
out of the workstation. Why it started talking about SCSI is
never revealed.

Frequency of appearance:
Much too often.

Suggested treatment:
Kill.

The Economist
-------------
This is a *really* nasty one.

Typical dialogue:
U: "So, what are the options for the new server?"
S: "Well, first we have the Dungheap MT. It's larger than our
computer room, needs the Niagara Falls to power it, it's
ugly, it laughs evilly if you get too close to its console,
it reeks of brimstone, Greenpeace and Exxon have made a
joint statement cursing the moment it was created, it's
illegal to import to most of the civilised world, it has a
habit of sending nasty email to CEOs, its mother was a
hamster and its father smelled of elderberries. And it
doesn't do what we need anyway. Secondly, we have the
Frotzpock 3000. It's small, elegant, doubles as a coatrack,
draws its power from the Earth's magnetic field, it sings
cute little songs, spreads happiness wherever it goes,
cleans the floor, washes the dishes, rubs your back, reminds
you of your wife's birthday, does everything we need
perfectly and without error and it only costs $5 more than
the Dungheap."
U: "Ah, the choice is clear, then. We go with the Dungheap MT."
S: "WHAT?!"
U: "Well, you *did* say it is cheaper, didn't you?"

Frequency of appearance:
A handful per company, usually.

Suggested treatment:
Take off and nuke the site from orbit (it's the only way to be sure).

The Firm Believer in Trade Magazines
------------------------------------
May be difficult to tell apart from the Common Idiot, but the
differences will be apparent if it ever ends up in a discussion about
what sort of equipment to purchase.

Typical dialogue:
S: "...so you see that the Frotzpock is the natural choice for us."
U: "I read a very bad review of the Frotzpock in a trade
magazine. The reviewers had great problems opening the box
it came in."
S: "Well, that won't be a problem for us. I *do* know how to
open cardboard boxes."
U: "They much preferred the Dungheap 89. That one didn't need
any stupid box, it just oozed in under the door."
S: "Er, the Dungheap doesn't even do what we need the new
machine for."
U: "...and DungUser Magazine said that the new version's father
only smelled *slightly* of elderberries!"

Frequency of appearance:
Much too often.

Suggested treatment:
Kill.

The Incessant Talker
--------------------
Appears at the sysadmin's door, starts describing some sort of problem
and just never stops.

Typical dialogue:
U: "Hello I hope I'm not interrupting you I have this problem
you see I can't print pictures from Netscape anymore even
though I could do that yesterday and the day before and even
the day before that but not last Wednesday for some reason I
think it may have had something to do with the blackout that
day don't you printers don't usually work very well without
electricity do they neither do computers for that matter I
couldn't log in at all until the power came back I must have
tried at least a million times I think well maybe not quite
that many but ten thousand at least my keyboard was all worn
down so I couldn't see what it said on the keys any more so
the day after I went down to Office Supplies to get a new
one and they said I couldn't just get one I had to fill in a
form first have you heard anything that stupid don't they
realise that I'm very important to the company and do a lot
of valuable work here without me nothing would get done I
tell you and of course I told them in no uncertain terms but
they just wouldn't listen to me and kept insisting that I
needed that stupid form so in the end I went to get a form
but discovered that in order to get the form you had to send
a mail to someone and I couldn't send mail since my keyboard
didn't work can you believe that eventually after two days I
managed to type out the mail using only my nose you can't
believe how hard that was it took almost a whole day and
after I sent the mail I was told that I didn't really have
to send it anyway since our departement has a stack of those
forms lying in the tray between the printer and the copying
machine so I went over to Bob and asked him hey Bob do you
know where we keep the printer and the copying machine and
he told me that he thought they were being repaired at the
moment so I couldn't use them anyway but I told him that I
weren't going to use them I just wanted to know where they
were so that I could go here and get..."

Frequency of appearance:
Much too common.

Suggested treatment:
Let it be. It's fairly easy to ignore, and as long as it's there
no other users can get in.

The Fixer
---------
Suffers from the delusion that it is capable of fixing problems by
itself, thus turning mishaps into fullblown disasters. Often
masquerades as a sysadmin.

Typical dialogue:
U: "The mailserver was running slowly, so I thought I'd have a
look at it. I saw that it was really busy relaying mail, so
I thought I'd remove some old processes that nobody used any
more. But as soon as I killed this really old process kalled
'init' the machine crashed!"

Frequency of appearance:
Much too common.

Suggested treatment:
Kill.

The Drone With The Write-Once Brain
-----------------------------------
A fact once got stuck in its brain. Since then it uses said fact for
everything.

Typical dialogue:
U: "My machine is slow. There is a large process running on my
system. Kill it."
S: "Um, that's your X server. Do you *really* want me to kill
that? And it's not really that big, it's just fake memory."
U: "Yes. Kill it."

U: "My machine has crashed. There must be a large process
running. Kill it."
S: "How would I do that if the machine has crashed?"
U: "Yes. Kill it."

U: "My machine is on fire. There must be a large process
running. Kill it."
S: "Don't you think it'd be better to call the fire brigade?"
U: "Yes. Kill it."

Frequency of appearance:
Much too common.

Suggested treatment:
Kill.

The User
--------
If you find one of these, consider yourself *very* lucky.

Typical dialogue:
U: "Excuse me?"
S: "Yes?"
U: "I have a slight problem. I hope I'm not interrupting you?"
S: "Not at all. What's the problem?"
U: "It's the BogoGraphics package. I'm trying to use one of the
new functions in version three, but I can't get it to work.
I've checked that there is enough memory, the permissions on
all the files look correct and I installed it exactly
according to the instructions in the README file. I do get
an error message. It's not very informative, but I wrote it
down for you anyway. I tried looking it up in the manual,
but it's not there. And the FAQ doesn't say anything about
version three yet. Do you think you could have a look at it?"
S: "Marry me!"

Frequency of appearance:
Believed to be mythical.

Suggested treatment:
Don't let him/her get away!

--
Calle Dybedahl, UNIX Sysadmin

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