That's not what they should be learning from you!

Flashback to the 1990s, when this server vendor is also offering system administration classes to customers, and this pilot fish is on the team.

"At the conclusion of the course, we handed out a 'Certificate of Completion' to each student, thus saving us from having to mail it out later," fish says. "The instructor would borrow someone's desktop PC with a printer, type each student's name, the class title and date into a template, and then print that out on fancy certificate stock.

"Fred, one of our regular instructors, had a wicked sense of humor. At one field office he asked to use a PC for certificates. The secretary stepped aside and Fred sat down and put the diskette with the template in the PC's floppy drive.

"Then he punched open the CD-ROM drive, set his soda can on the tray, and commenced to create the certificates.

"The secretary exclaimed, 'I didn't know you could do that!'

"I don't think Fred ever came clean that this was nonstandard use of a CD-ROM drive..."

Sharky loves a good "learning experience." So send me your true tales of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll score a sharp Shark shirt every time I use one. Comment on today's tale at Sharky's Google+ community, and read thousands of great old tales in the Sharkives.

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