this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Programmer Humor
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Random computer quirks always fascinate me. The strangest one I had involved a computer that shouldn't have existed.
One time in the early aughts I had a patchwork computer that I put together from the junk pile of a local computer store that a buddy of mine ran.
It was barely holding together in a rusty frame, with zip ties and wood glue.
Its modem was temperamental as hell. It would only stay online so long as it was pinging a website via command prompt. It was only some websites, too. Like I could ping Geocities, but not livejournel.
I remember many weekends doing Mephisto runs in Diablo II, praying that my command prompt doesn't bug out anytime I'd get anything worthwhile.
I have a theory about how that may have happened...
I'd be very interested in your theory.
I thought it had something to do with the distance to the server or ping timeout, but that is more of a guess.
I've not experienced that problem again despite working as a network engineer for 20 years
Based on the highlighting they did, I believe their theory is that "livejournel" didn't work because it should have been "livejournal" with an "a" and you presumably made the same typo all the time.
Got it in one!