h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, just a temporary glitch - as so often before, complaining about it suddenly made it work again. Is there a name for this kind of phenomenon?

The same type of phenomenon when you report an error to the internal IT service desk and when someone shows up in person, looking over your shoulder, it suddenly works again.

And not because said person did something behind the stages - as system administrator of our financial and travel expenses systems there have been numerous times I've been standing next to a user trying to show me what their problem is - and it works perfectly. It must be my magical presence

But, considering how often that seems to happen, there must be an awful lot of beings out there with a 'magical presence'...

The flaw could be caused by a race condition, in which multiple threads are accessing the same memory location, so that the software misbehaves sometimes, and behaves correctly at other times, depending on which thread got to the memory location first.

Which is in Chapter 1 of Why I Hate Developers Who Use Global Variables Because They Are Lazy

You mean the same developers who will fix it by adding yet more spaghetti code to lock out the other threads in the event of a clash, thus leaving you with even more, but different reported faults.

I feel my ears burning

The same kind of only-when-I'm-alone phenomenon like not being able whatsoever to make a keycard open your hotel room door (and yes, it was my door*) and then when a smiling and friendly lady from the reception comes along, same card works like a charm?

*albeit temporarily

Ah, but there's a certain technique to open a hotel room door using a keycard - not too fast, not too slow, not too aggressively, not too timidly.

Gently but firmly does the trick. Believe in yourself

*thinking of maybe forming a new religion around keycards, with the top rank being Master of Keycards*

"not too fast, not too slow, not too aggressively, not too timidly."

Amen

I guess that advice can applied to many things besides keycards...

[GDZ]

I may be a keycard dominatrix.

Absurd product, fun reviews http://www.amazon.com/Quirky-Eggminder-Internet-Connected-Tray/dp/B00GN92KQ4/ref=sr_1_46?=UTF8&qid=1395593270&sr=8-46&keywords=egg+tray Totally and completely safe for work.

There may also be a *very* good reason why this hasn't already been done! I can't remember but I'm sure Pasty's aware of it!

Why what's not already been done?

Eggminder?

Seriously?

If you can't remember how many eggs you have at home or how long ago they passed the best-before date, then you need to get a life. Unless you're compulsively obsessed with gadgets that purportedly offer to give you more time left over to do other things.

Ah, sorry, it was the reviews rather than the product - and the reviews are excellent!

These days people tend to mob those reviews and all try to be witty, so it can be difficult to find the really funny stuff.

I still laugh when I think of the banana slicer, a simple banana-shaped thing that works on the same principle as the gadget for slicing hard-boiled eggs. One reviewer was extremely unhappy with the product; he complained that the slicer curved from left to right, and all his bananas curved from right to left.

Between breakfast omelettes (bananana, peanut butter and chipotle. Try it.) and baking we never have any problem knowing how many eggs we have.

I suspect an eggminder is intended for people who have eggs just because eggs are something you have rather than something they actually regularly use.