http://www.engr.wisc.edu/~ballard/excuses

[Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>]

clock speed
solar flares
electromagnetic radiation from satellite debris
static from nylon underwear
static from plastic slide rules
global warming
poor power conditioning
static buildup
doppler effect
hardware stress fractures
magnetic interferance from money/credit cards
dry joints on cable plug
we're waiting for [the phone company] to fix that line
sounds like a Windows problem, try calling Microsoft support
temporary routing anomoly
somebody was calculating pi on the server
fat electrons in the lines
excess surge protection
floating point processor overflow
divide-by-zero error
POSIX complience problem
monitor resolution too high
improperly oriented keyboard
network packets travelling uphill (use a carrier pigeon)
Decreasing electron flux
first Saturday after first full moon in Winter
radiosity depletion
CPU radiator broken
It works the way the Wang did, what's the problem
positron router malfunction
cellular telephone interference
techtonic stress
pizeo-electric interference
(l)user error
working as designed
dynamic software linking table corrupted
heavy gravity fluctuation, move computer to floor rapidly
secretary plugged hairdryer into UPS
terrorist activities
not enough memory, go get system upgrade
interrupt configuration error
spaghetti cable cause packet failure
boss forgot system password
bank holiday - system operating credits  not recharged
virus attack, luser responsible
waste water tank overflowed onto computer
Complete Transient Lockout
bad ether in the cables
Bogon emissions
Change in Earth's rotational speed
Cosmic ray particles crashed through the hard disk platter
Smell from unhygenic janitorial staff wrecked the tape heads
Little hamster in running wheel had coronary; waiting for 
replacement to be Fedexed from Wyoming
Evil dogs hypnotized the night shift
Plumber mistook routing panel for decorative wall fixture
Electricians made popcorn in the power supply
Groundskeepers stole the root password
high pressure system failure
failed trials, system needs redesigned
system has been recalled
not approved by the FCC
need to wrap system in aluminum foil to fix problem
not properly grounded, please bury computer
CPU needs recalibration
system needs to be rebooted
bit bucket overflow
descramble code needed from software company
only available on a need to know basis
knot in cables caused data stream to become twisted and kinked
nesting roaches shorted out the ether cable
The file system is full of it
Satan did it
Daemons did it
You're out of memory
There isn't any problem
Unoptimized hard drive
Typo in the code
Yes, yes, its called a desgin limitation
Look, buddy:  Windows 3.1 IS A General Protection Fault.
That's a great computer you have there; have you considered how 
it would work as a BSD machine?
Please excuse me, I have to circuit an AC line through my head 
to get this database working.
Yeah, yo mama dresses you funny and you need a mouse to delete 
files.
Support staff hung over, send aspirin and come back LATER.
Someone is standing on the ethernet cable, causeing a kink in 
the cable
Windows 95 "feature"
Runt packets
Password is too complex to decrypt
Boss' kid fucked up the machine
Electromagnetic energy loss
Budget cuts
Mouse chewed through power cable
Stale file handle (next time use Tupperware(tm)!)
Feature not yet implimented
Internet outage
Pentium FDIV bug
Vendor no longer supports the product
Small animal kamikaze attack on power supplies
The vendor put the bug there.
SIMM crosstalk.
IRQ dropout
Collapsed Backbone
Power company testing new voltage spike (creation) equipment
operators on strike due to broken coffee machine
backup tape overwritten with copy of system manager's favourite 
CD
UPS interrupted the server's power
The electrician didn't know what the yellow cable was so he 
yanked the ethernet out.
The keyboard isn't plugged in
The air conditioning water supply pipe ruptured over the 
machine room
The electricity substation in the car park blew up.
The rolling stones concert down the road caused a brown out
The salesman drove over the CPU board.
The monitor is plugged into the serial port
Root nameservers are out of sync
electro-magnetic pulses from French above ground nuke testing.
your keyboard's space bar is generating spurious keycodes.
the real ttys became pseudo ttys and vice-versa.
the printer thinks its a router.
the router thinks its a printer.
evil hackers from Serbia.
we just switched to FDDI.
halon system went off and killed the operators.
because Bill Gates is a Jehovah's witness and so nothing can 
work on St. Swithin's day.
user to computer ratio too high.
user to computer ration too low.
we just switched to Sprint.
it has Intel Inside
Sticky bits on disk.
Power Company having EMP problems with their reactor
The ring needs another token
new management
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
SCSI Chain overterminated
It's not plugged in.
because of network lag due to too many people playing 
deathmatch
You put the disk in upside down.
Daemons loose in system.
User was distributing pornography on server; system seized by 
FBI.
BNC (brain not  (user brain not connected)
UBNC (user brain not connected)
LBNC (luser brain not connected)
disks spinning backwards - toggle the hemisphere jumper.
new guy cross-connected phone lines with ac power bus.
had to use hammer to free stuck disk drive heads.
Too few computrons available.
Flat tire on truck with tapes.  ("Never underestimate the 
bandwidth of a truck full of tapes hurling down the highway" 
Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
Communications satellite used by the military for star wars.
Party-bug in the Aloha protocol.
Insert coin for new game
Dew on the telephone lines.
Arcserve crashed the server again.
Some one needed the powerstrip, so they pulled the switch plug.
My pony-tail hit the on/off switch on the power strip.
Big to little endian conversion error
You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish (from 
most tunefs man pages)
Dumb terminal
Zombie processes haunting the computer
Incorrect time syncronization
Defunct processes
Stubborn processes
non-redundant fan failure
monitor VLF leakage
bugs in the RAID
no "any" key on keyboard
root rot
Backbone Scoliosis
/pub/lunch
excessive collisions & not enough packet ambulances
le0: no carrier: transceiver cable problem?
broadcast packets on wrong frequency
popper unable to process jumbo kernel
NOTICE: alloc: /dev/null: filesystem full
pseudo-user on a pseudo-terminal
Recursive traversal of loopback mount points
Backbone adjustment
OS swapped to disk
vapors from evaporating sticky-note adhesives
sticktion
short leg on process table
multicasts on broken packets
ether leak
Atilla the Hub
endothermal recalibration
filesystem not big enough for Jumbo Kernel Patch
loop found in loop in redundant loopback
system consumed all the paper for paging
permission denied
Reformatting Page. Wait...