6 ms·

Many years ago, in my first tech job, we converted our typewriter-driven office to networked DOS PCs, running on Netware. One day, one of the legal secretaries,

Many years ago, in my first tech job, we converted our typewriter-driven office to networked DOS PCs, running on Netware. One day, one of the legal secretaries, of self-described Roma ancestry, started complaining about her PC acting oddly...software not starting, spontaneous reboots ,etc. We replaced her machine to troubleshoot it, but the same thing happened with the replacement machine. We couldn't detect anything she was doing wrong. Finally, she got tired of our fruitless technology-driven attempts to help her and strung a few cloves of garlic along the tops and sides of her cubicle. Her problems went away, immediately. My boss, the director of IT, and I looked at each other, shrugged, and called it good.

nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
In some cases, waving a dead chicken over it works, apparently!
jamal-kumar 4y ago
One time I had a horrible roommate I hated immensely. She did shit like make a friend of mine cry on her birthday. Her boyfriend broke up with her cause she was obviously a terrible person, so her response to this was visiting a witch doctor (This is an incident that happened in the third world so bear with me for a moment). His recommendation was to cut an X into limes and put them in the corner of each room in the house. He said if they were intact when she came back home from work, but if they were black when she came back from work then he'd DIE. She told me this with a smile on her face. I was like wow you're an idiot who believes in bullshit which might actually kill someone, fuck you. Called in late to work, went to the store, bought limes, cut X's into each of them and DOUBLED THE LIMES she put in the corners of the house. She left while paying rent for like two months and I had the best time of my life which occurred staying there after.
- rescbr 4y ago
  > and DOUBLED THE LIMES she put in the corners of the house Now there's her problem. By doing that the spell changed from "kill ex-boyfriend" to "self eviction".
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    Magic is the manipulation of belief space. If you're too ignorant to understand that, you're liable to its effects.
    - BerislavLopac 4y ago
      I thought that magic is just sufficiently advanced technology.
- amatecha 4y ago
  What would be the case if she came back home from work and they were intact? Missing piece from the story! haha :)
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    She said he'd just get bad luck
mxuribe 4y ago
Little did they know, that those early computers were actually powered by garlic odors[0]! Like calculators that can be powered by light - the "magic" that we call solar power. So, of course, the user's implementatin of garlic cloves clearly "fixed the glitch". Happy pre-Halloween! [0] No, of course garlic isn't an energy source. ...At least, not one that we (yet) know how to harness. ;-)
- saghm 4y ago
  We can harness some of the energy by eating it! It's not particularly efficient given how little energy it gives though, and not particularly enjoyable without being combined with other energy sources.
  - mxuribe 4y ago
    Ah yes, much like oil, garlic has to go through its own "refinery process" in order to be most beneficial!
yrgulation 4y ago
Roma “treatments” are fascinating, in a very positive way (sadly in europe you need to mention this, as roma are very discriminated against). I knew of one where they do a trick with lit matches at door corners that “treats” mild colds and “curses”. Wondering if this wizardry originates from india, given their history [0][1], or they picked it up on the way to europe but i really wish there was a book on these practices and their origins. I am almost certain these involve psychology, somehow, but cant prove it. [0] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/roma-gypsies-in-prewar-europe https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/roma-gypsi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romani_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romani_people
hinkley 4y ago
The peculiar thing about having an aluminum cased laptop is that when the ground wires in the power adapter get frayed, or if the electrical circuit is hot garbage, you tend to get a little tingle when you touch the computer. Time to either throw away that adapter or get your wiring checked. But when you feed bad power into a computer, you get glitches, and quite often this 'haunted' equipment is just running in a bad way. For all we know this woman jiggled a wire and everything is fine. I've been on the other side of this: IT head says we're gonna swap a server out. It has nothing to do with the workload I/we have today so we say sure. Problem is that it's in the same rack as something with a deadline, and jiggling the wires causes a network connection to go down. I've had this happen three times and we've swapped the cables in each case. Because jiggling an ethernet cable should never be sufficient stress to lose connection. First time the manager threw the cable away on his own. Second one I had to make him give me the cable because 'it could still be good'. Third one started the same argument, then pulled out wire cutters, cut off the ends, handed them to me to shut me up. Bad equipment goes in the garbage, not into a drawer that means 'ticking time bombs'. Since the connectors are usually why a cable is 'bad', I was mollified.
- themadturk 4y ago
  We completely replaced the machine, so the chances of the power or ethernet cable being plugged in wrong in exactly the same way on two different machines seems vanishingly small. This being well over 30 years ago, I have no idea anymore whether or not we tried swapping either cable. At any rate, it was a least a day between the most recent machine replacement, which didn't seem to solve her problem, and the garlic placement. I'm sure there's a rational explanation in there somewhere...but problem solved, however it happened!
- 3np 4y ago
  Can confirm. Installing a UPS drastically reduced a class of errors at home.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nyc_data_geek1 4y ago

In some cases, waving a dead chicken over it works, apparently!

jamal-kumar 4y ago

One time I had a horrible roommate I hated immensely. She did shit like make a friend of mine cry on her birthday. Her boyfriend broke up with her cause she was obviously a terrible person, so her response to this was visiting a witch doctor (This is an incident that happened in the third world so bear with me for a moment). His recommendation was to cut an X into limes and put them in the corner of each room in the house. He said if they were intact when she came back home from work, but if they were black when she came back from work then he'd DIE. She told me this with a smile on her face. I was like wow you're an idiot who believes in bullshit which might actually kill someone, fuck you. Called in late to work, went to the store, bought limes, cut X's into each of them and DOUBLED THE LIMES she put in the corners of the house. She left while paying rent for like two months and I had the best time of my life which occurred staying there after.

rescbr 4y ago
> and DOUBLED THE LIMES she put in the corners of the house Now there's her problem. By doing that the spell changed from "kill ex-boyfriend" to "self eviction".
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  Magic is the manipulation of belief space. If you're too ignorant to understand that, you're liable to its effects.
  - BerislavLopac 4y ago
    I thought that magic is just sufficiently advanced technology.
amatecha 4y ago
What would be the case if she came back home from work and they were intact? Missing piece from the story! haha :)
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  She said he'd just get bad luck

mxuribe 4y ago

Little did they know, that those early computers were actually powered by garlic odors[0]! Like calculators that can be powered by light - the "magic" that we call solar power. So, of course, the user's implementatin of garlic cloves clearly "fixed the glitch". Happy pre-Halloween! [0] No, of course garlic isn't an energy source. ...At least, not one that we (yet) know how to harness. ;-)

saghm 4y ago
We can harness some of the energy by eating it! It's not particularly efficient given how little energy it gives though, and not particularly enjoyable without being combined with other energy sources.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  Ah yes, much like oil, garlic has to go through its own "refinery process" in order to be most beneficial!

yrgulation 4y ago

Roma “treatments” are fascinating, in a very positive way (sadly in europe you need to mention this, as roma are very discriminated against). I knew of one where they do a trick with lit matches at door corners that “treats” mild colds and “curses”. Wondering if this wizardry originates from india, given their history [0][1], or they picked it up on the way to europe but i really wish there was a book on these practices and their origins. I am almost certain these involve psychology, somehow, but cant prove it. [0] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/roma-gypsies-in-prewar-europe https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/roma-gypsi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romani_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romani_people

hinkley 4y ago

The peculiar thing about having an aluminum cased laptop is that when the ground wires in the power adapter get frayed, or if the electrical circuit is hot garbage, you tend to get a little tingle when you touch the computer. Time to either throw away that adapter or get your wiring checked. But when you feed bad power into a computer, you get glitches, and quite often this 'haunted' equipment is just running in a bad way. For all we know this woman jiggled a wire and everything is fine. I've been on the other side of this: IT head says we're gonna swap a server out. It has nothing to do with the workload I/we have today so we say sure. Problem is that it's in the same rack as something with a deadline, and jiggling the wires causes a network connection to go down. I've had this happen three times and we've swapped the cables in each case. Because jiggling an ethernet cable should never be sufficient stress to lose connection. First time the manager threw the cable away on his own. Second one I had to make him give me the cable because 'it could still be good'. Third one started the same argument, then pulled out wire cutters, cut off the ends, handed them to me to shut me up. Bad equipment goes in the garbage, not into a drawer that means 'ticking time bombs'. Since the connectors are usually why a cable is 'bad', I was mollified.

themadturk 4y ago
We completely replaced the machine, so the chances of the power or ethernet cable being plugged in wrong in exactly the same way on two different machines seems vanishingly small. This being well over 30 years ago, I have no idea anymore whether or not we tried swapping either cable. At any rate, it was a least a day between the most recent machine replacement, which didn't seem to solve her problem, and the garlic placement. I'm sure there's a rational explanation in there somewhere...but problem solved, however it happened!
3np 4y ago
Can confirm. Installing a UPS drastically reduced a class of errors at home.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]