Well today, I was blown away and had to correct myself and redo one of my sayings. Lets set up the context. There's a complex at the University of Montréal for the Maths and Computer Science branch, and that's where I spend most of my time. There's also a lab with about, I'd say... 100 computers. All pretty nice and new with flat pannels and high tech boards and stuff. Anyway, I was in there doing my things when this girl comes in. Oh I also have to tell you. The machines all runs on Linux, which is a Unix based machine. Which is a multi-user OS. Which is also uncrashable (is that even a word?). No Vanessa, I'm sorry, after some research, you can NOT crash linux. There's a background process that makes you go back to the main menu whatever happens, I just found out recently. So anyway, this girl comes in and she sits at one of the computer. She "re-activate" the screen. BAM! She meets the user selector. Don't know what to do, click here, click there, bad password, bad login, select the "weird" (only if you don't know what to do with it) session. She gives up. Now she's stuck there because she don't know what to do to get out. Changes computer. She meets the user selctor again. She tries the same thing 3 times. Computer logs as "bad user" and black screen. She gets mad. She goes to yet another computer. She ask someone how it works. The person tells her to use a code and to log on the first user selection. She does. SUCCESS! Or so she tought. Screen appers, netscape opens (yes yes, netscape) and that's all you have access to. I suppose it wasn't what she wanted because she took her things and left. Final score: Computers 3, Lady 0.
Now I think to myself that was weird. And to answer to my remark, the unspeakable gods send me another "sacrifice" to watch being devoured by the Sacrificial Computers. This guy comes in, sits right next to me. Mwuhahahaha it's the computer that the girl logged in the black screen. Guy boots the computer. Not a bad move when nothing else will respond. So I watch. Machine boots.... RedHat loads.... here comes the user selector.... guy boots the computer. Question marks on my forehead. Machine boots... guy hit the BIOS menu key... miss it... RedHat loads....guy boots the computer. More question marks for me. Machine boots... guy hit the BIOS menu key... guy gets the setup password screen (like the computer guys would leave any morron to play with that). OH MY GOD! HE TRIES! Of course, he's denied, tries again, denied. Boots the machine (yawn). gets to the user selector... studies the thing for about 10 minutes and logs in. Oh well....
So to get back to my saying, I'm always the first one to say "Don't be afraid to try." Ok, from now on I'll say "Don't try if you really don't know what you're doing." I mean it's funny to watch, but you could really hurt someone or something in the process. I mean it's ok to playing with firecracker, but it doesn't mean you can play with rockets because you know how to handle the firecrackers. So it's ok to play with your computer at home and do whatever you want, but don't screw with the computers at school, especialy the ones at the University, especialy the ones connected on the Network, and SPECIALY the ones in the Computer Science lab. Actually, go, it entertains me.
So that's about it. The joys of school...
