Fun_People Archive
12 Feb
Win 95 in space!

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 98 01:56:43 -0800
To: Fun_People
Precedence: bulk
Subject: Win 95 in space! 

Forwarded-by: "Ford Prefect" <weed@bucket.pp.ualr.edu>
Forwarded-by: Chris Ausbrooks <causbrooks@acic.state.ar.us>
From: Dan Leighton <dan@uk.psi.com>

On Friday the 24th I was watching the NASA channel on cable TV to see how
the experiments and Shuttle crew were doing. The men onboard needed to send
instructions to the experiments in the cargo bay and were using a laptop to
do it. As some of you may have heard, there was a "computer problem" onboard
as reported by CNN. The exchange of information between the crew and the
Johnson Space Center (JSC) went something like this:

Crew: Urgent Johnson, we can't get a DOS prompt
JSC: Press C: enter.
Crew: Heck, we're not familiar with all this
JSC: What screen are you looking at?
Crew: It says 'My Computer', and, er, various other icons
JSC: Click on 'Start' and then shut down.
Crew: You click the 'Start' button to shut down?
JSC: Yeah. Isn't it obvious?
Crew: Somebody get me an aspirin
JSC: Just hit the damn 'Start' button.
Crew: We can't do that. It didn't load a mouse
JSC: Did load any mouse at all?
Crew: Well, yeah, a PS/2 or something. But we don't have one of those
JSC: Okay. Press Alt + Esc.
Crew: And what does that do?
JSC: It should help. Crew: Negative
JSC: Stand by, will replicate the problem down here.
Crew: Roger Long pause
JSC: Okay then. Double click the MS-DOS icon.
Crew: I don't have a mouse
JSC: Go to backup.
Crew: Which is what?
JSC: Dock with the Russians. They have a Unix Workstation you can borrow.

© 1998 Peter Langston