• JV (unregistered)

    This is my frist frist! Yes!

  • (cs)

    The "first frist" may well be deleted for having no content, so second or possibly first! Or possibly later, because I'm actually saying something and other people will probably do it faster!

    Anyway, I feel compelled to point out that in the last part of the last story, the wtf isn't the user. Or at least, not just the user - yes, you expect people calling tech support to not just scream incoherently for several minutes, and yes, if I got an error that mentioned a floppy disk, I'd probably want to check whether there's a floppy disk in the drive and what it contains, but... that error is still pretty much anti-helpful. Would be better if it actually told you why you were getting the error, like because you were trying to boot off a non-bootable disk, since you probably didn't actually mean to be booting off a disk in the first place. So I can see the confusion.

    (Hah! I can edit posts now. Second or possibly first later, indeed!)

  • (cs)

    Problem Exists Between Programmer's Keyboard And His (possibly her) Chair: does not understand that most lay people do not understand anything about BIOS, and will require error messages that tell them things.

  • (cs)

    Wow, PS/2 ports and floppies causing problems? Could have sworn the year was 2011.

  • (cs)
    ...on drugs, and need to be able to keep track of sent emails...
    Nuff said.
  • (cs) in reply to Power Troll
    Power Troll:
    Wow, PS/2 ports and floppies causing problems? Could have sworn the year was 2011.
    Perhaps you should read the actual article, then. Specifically, the part where it said:
    the article:
    Around the year 1998 or so, I worked in a large insurance company as tech support
    So I'd say the year was 1998 or so. There's this thing called "telling stories about the past" that people like to do sometimes.

    I've booted off a floppy at least a couple times in the past few years, though. It was off a floppy in a floppy drive connected via usb, because no computers come with floppy drives anymore, but, still booting off a floppy. (I got the usb floppy drive for free with... a laptop I bought like 10 years ago. Laptop's long dead, but that floppy drive has come in handy occasionally.)

  • Robb (unregistered)

    I have currently not much better than frist

  • (cs)

    Bob should have simply sent Prashant teh codez.

  • n_slash_a (unregistered)

    Wow, that thumb drive in a PS/2 port is just an epic fail. I think I found a new picture for my demotivational screen-saver

  • (cs) in reply to neminem
    neminem:
    Power Troll:
    Wow, PS/2 ports and floppies causing problems? Could have sworn the year was 2011.
    Perhaps you should read the actual article, then. Specifically, the part where it said:
    the article:
    Around the year 1998 or so, I worked in a large insurance company as tech support
    So I'd say the year was 1998 or so. There's this thing called "telling stories about the past" that people like to do sometimes.

    I've booted off a floppy at least a couple times in the past few years, though. It was off a floppy in a floppy drive connected via usb, because no computers come with floppy drives anymore, but, still booting off a floppy. (I got the usb floppy drive for free with... a laptop I bought like 10 years ago. Laptop's long dead, but that floppy drive has come in handy occasionally.)

    Perhaps you should read the actual article, then. Specifically, the part where it said:

    TFA:
    Coincidentally, my sister got a gig at the same company for tech support (although a different location in the same city). She had her own story to tell about one especially nice calling lady.

    So I'd say it's not actually clear at all. FYI, in the part you quoted, the floppy didn't cause a problem.

    Anyway, nice try, but keep working at it. You've got a lot to learn.

  • 2300 (unregistered)

    Well, TRWTF is of course cables which fit physically in a way that doesn't work.

  • Unchris (unregistered) in reply to neminem
    neminem:
    The "first frist" may well be deleted for having no content, so second or possibly first! Or possibly later, because I'm actually saying something and other people will probably do it faster!

    As we know there are frist frists. There are things we know are frist. We also know that there are unfrist frists. That is to say we know there are some frists which we know are not actually frists. But there are also unfrist unfrists, the frists we don't know are not frists.

    I believe you mean that this is an unfrist unfrist. You're welcome.

  • (cs) in reply to neminem
    neminem:
    Power Troll:
    Wow, PS/2 ports and floppies causing problems? Could have sworn the year was 2011.
    So I'd say the year was 1998 or so. There's this thing called "telling stories about the past" that people like to do sometimes.
    Ah, yes, that reminds me of the time when I got a call from a panicked user who'd dropped his box of punch cards just as he was about to feed them into the machine. Like he'd never heard of an IBM-80! What a maroon!
  • caper (unregistered)

    slotin drive ?

  • (cs)

    My best one was this: "It not wrok, pleace do teh needfull."

    No context to it, just that. The spelling is intact as sent, at least as I recall.

  • BentFranklin (unregistered)

    The thumb drive in the keyboard (or mouse) port is actually understandable and I'm kind of surprised it wasn't a common thing. It was just last year when I got rid of the last machine that needed that converter dongle.

  • Mel (unregistered)

    I worked in a call center for a very short span of time, and came away with pages and pages of customer stories. Here's my fave:

    I got a call from a polite-but-stressed type gentleman, who asked me how I was doing and waited long enough to hear an answer (always a plus). He explained his problem, I explained the solution – you need to change your date/time settings so they’re accurate. You’re off by a couple of hours, it’s the computer equivalent of a VCR flashing 12:00. (Yes, I did check which time zone he was in.)

    He said that he didn't have permissions to change it, which is not uncommon. So I explained to this guy that he’d need to contact their IT staff, get them to sync up his clock and calendar, and then our product would work fine.

    I heard him repeat the information to someone else in the room, and realized I’m talking to a subordinate with a boss breathing down his neck demanding an answer NOW. I heard them go back and forth a couple of times, and started to feel kind of bad for the caller. He might actually have a worse job than mine. He certainly had a worse boss.

    Then there was an explosion, loud enough that the phone picked it up and I could understand every word the Boss From Hell was saying. “That’s stupid! That is the craziest thing I have ever heard! This whole problem is caused by a clock? We’re a bank, you can’t get any more accurate than that!”

    I've been mentally inserting 'We're a bank, you can't get more accurate than that' as the tag line of every bank commercial I've seen since.

  • (cs) in reply to SCSimmons
    SCSimmons:
    neminem:
    Power Troll:
    Wow, PS/2 ports and floppies causing problems? Could have sworn the year was 2011.
    So I'd say the year was 1998 or so. There's this thing called "telling stories about the past" that people like to do sometimes.
    Ah, yes, that reminds me of the time when I got a call from a panicked user who'd dropped his box of punch cards just as he was about to feed them into the machine. Like he'd never heard of an IBM-80! What a maroon!

    Did he use one of those candlestick telephones you see in the talkies?

  • (cs)

    No of course there isn't and queue some more swearing and shouting.

    For the love of god, it's cue.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Power Troll
    Power Troll:
    neminem:
    Power Troll:
    Wow, PS/2 ports and floppies causing problems? Could have sworn the year was 2011.
    Perhaps you should read the actual article, then. Specifically, the part where it said:
    the article:
    Around the year 1998 or so, I worked in a large insurance company as tech support
    So I'd say the year was 1998 or so. There's this thing called "telling stories about the past" that people like to do sometimes.

    I've booted off a floppy at least a couple times in the past few years, though. It was off a floppy in a floppy drive connected via usb, because no computers come with floppy drives anymore, but, still booting off a floppy. (I got the usb floppy drive for free with... a laptop I bought like 10 years ago. Laptop's long dead, but that floppy drive has come in handy occasionally.)

    Perhaps you should read the actual article, then. Specifically, the part where it said:

    TFA:
    Coincidentally, my sister got a gig at the same company for tech support (although a different location in the same city). She had her own story to tell about one especially nice calling lady.

    So I'd say it's not actually clear at all. FYI, in the part you quoted, the floppy didn't cause a problem.

    Anyway, nice try, but keep working at it. You've got a lot to learn.

    Perhaps you should read the whole article, as it explicitly says "Neither of us stayed for a full year there." So it had to be somewhere between 1998 and 1999. Nice try, but keep working at it. In the meantime, I'm officially revoking your Power Troll title, you've been demoted to simple Troll.

  • First post (of mine today) (unregistered)

    I think my favorite support request was

    I did an oopsie on Chloe's duck
    Well, Chloe was the customer, and Chloe's duck was the icon she clicked when she wanted to log in. Turns out she had bumped the wrong key while typing her password, and was aware enough to recognize what had happened if not describe it all that accurately.

    I showed her the backspace key.

    Considering that she was three years old, I think she did a better job of reporting the problem than half the users I've dealt with in my time. Even acknowledged responsibility for the condition. Imagine that!

  • David Chappelle (unregistered)

    TRWTF is not using the PS/2 mouse port to USB to thumb drive adapter.

  • C-Octothorpe (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    simple Troll.

    Ouch! Lower-case too...

  • (cs) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Power Troll:
    neminem:
    Power Troll:
    Wow, PS/2 ports and floppies causing problems? Could have sworn the year was 2011.
    Perhaps you should read the actual article, then. Specifically, the part where it said:
    the article:
    Around the year 1998 or so, I worked in a large insurance company as tech support
    So I'd say the year was 1998 or so. There's this thing called "telling stories about the past" that people like to do sometimes.

    I've booted off a floppy at least a couple times in the past few years, though. It was off a floppy in a floppy drive connected via usb, because no computers come with floppy drives anymore, but, still booting off a floppy. (I got the usb floppy drive for free with... a laptop I bought like 10 years ago. Laptop's long dead, but that floppy drive has come in handy occasionally.)

    Perhaps you should read the actual article, then. Specifically, the part where it said:

    TFA:
    Coincidentally, my sister got a gig at the same company for tech support (although a different location in the same city). She had her own story to tell about one especially nice calling lady.

    So I'd say it's not actually clear at all. FYI, in the part you quoted, the floppy didn't cause a problem.

    Anyway, nice try, but keep working at it. You've got a lot to learn.

    Perhaps you should read the whole article, as it explicitly says "Neither of us stayed for a full year there." So it had to be somewhere between 1998 and 1999. Nice try, but keep working at it. In the meantime, I'm officially revoking your Power Troll title, you've been demoted to simple Troll.

    Not so. Your premise assumes that they started in the same year, which is not confirmed by the article. For example, she could have gotten the job in 2005 and left before 2007.

    I eagerly await your retort, sir.

  • (cs) in reply to Cujo DeSockpuppet
    Cujo DeSockpuppet:
    My best one was this: "It not wrok, pleace do teh needfull."

    No context to it, just that. The spelling is intact as sent, at least as I recall.

    The least you can do is reply with a message of similar eloquence and precision and see how they like it:

    I jsut did, pleas to try it now.
  • (cs)
    Christian Riesen:
    There was a size able scratch on my arm, but nothing that needed more than to wipe it clean. Curious what the hell that was, I opened it up.
    Seriously? You opened your arm, right there in the support lab?
  • Wonk (unregistered)

    <obligatory>askimet bashing post that is not really spam.

  • (cs)

    Seriously, who hasn't not done something like this? [image]

  • (cs)

    What kind of CD drive isn't completely enclosed?

  • Jack (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Cujo DeSockpuppet:
    My best one was this: "It not wrok, pleace do teh needfull."

    No context to it, just that. The spelling is intact as sent, at least as I recall.

    The least you can do is reply with a message of similar eloquence and precision and see how they like it:

    I jsut did, pleas to try it now.
    That's pretty much how I respond to all "send me teh codez" requests. Something really complicated and obtuse that almost compiles. The idea is to milk them into investing more time fiddling with it (to no avail of course) than it would have taken them to just do it right the first time.
  • (cs) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    No of course there isn't and queue some more swearing and shouting.

    For the love of god, it's cue.

    Well, yes, but perhaps there was also a line of people waiting to swear and shout at the tech support reps.

  • (cs)

    My father recently got asked to fix a broken PC. The cause? USB hub with printer and other various stuff plugged into PS/2 adapter. Again, I think it was plugged into the mouse connector.

    From the description I was given over the phone, it managed to blow the motherboard.

  • Herby (unregistered)

    If you want some interesting Tech stories, go to http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.html. Always good stuff. Recently "reactivated".

  • (cs)
    ...the broken pieces aligned and slingshot a few of them out, grazing my arm in the process...

    Alan Bradley would like his disc back, please.

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    "Christian Riesen" really, really needs a copy editor.

  • (cs) in reply to Zolcos
    Zolcos:
    What kind of CD drive isn't completely enclosed?
    One in a desktop computer from around the year 1998 or so, according to the story. Rather than a tray that slides out, there is just a slot for the CD.

    It doesn't have to be a desktop though; I had a tower from those days with the same sort of CD-ROM drive. Never thought to put broken CDs in it. I would have had I realized it'd make for such an effective weapon.

  • A Gould (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    No of course there isn't and queue some more swearing and shouting.

    For the love of god, it's cue.

    Well, queue does work in context, if he keeps some sort of list of reactions, and he's added "more swearing and shouting" to the bottom of it.

  • (cs)

    We have implmeneted single-sign-on called SSO for short for serveral clients. Unfortunately all of these dimwits keep asking same stupid questions all the time to the user analysts at client location, who are even more dumber.

    They keep sending these mails to me. Everyday I get 4 - 5 requests from user analysts who are finding so tough to comprehend SSO model implemented by their own company.

  • (cs)

    Okay, I've had this one happen three times now - and for the record, I am NOT tech support.

    I had an executive call me to tell me he wasn't getting any emails. Since I knew this wasn't so, I logged into his email account and, sure enough, no new recent emails were in the inbox. A LOT of deleted items though. I basically called him back and told him to look in his deleted items folder.

    "Oh. Okay, they're there. [click]"

    This happened with another executive a month later. Same resolution.

    That same month, I got the same issue - no new emails showing up. This time, it wasn't an executive. I went into this lady's Outlook Web Access and checked the deleted items - nothing. Then I go back to the inbox and lo and behold - she's got the filter set to "Unread Messages". Naturally, when she opens an email, it disappears. TRWTF there was that she lied to me and knew damn well she was getting her emails - the problem was that they were disappearing on her.

    Solving the problem was enough for these users. Some users, though, get all bitchy with me and copy their managers and their managers' managers. (In the corporate world, this is known as a declaration of war.) They have some misimpression that I don't report directly to the CTO and CEO, and that their lowly managers can actually pressure me to do anything at all, I guess. Depending on the p[bitc]H concentration of the conversation, I often end up humiliating the lot of them.

    If the parties involved had enough clout, I would probably send them to a bureaucratic hell of my own creation, but I haven't needed to do that yet.

  • (cs) in reply to n_slash_a
    n_slash_a:
    Wow, that thumb drive in a PS/2 port is just an epic fail. I think I found a new picture for my demotivational screen-saver
    Like.
  • C-Octothorpe (unregistered) in reply to hoodaticus
    hoodaticus:
    Okay, I've had this one happen three times now - and for the record, I am NOT tech support.

    I had an executive call me to tell me he wasn't getting any emails. Since I knew this wasn't so, I logged into his email account and, sure enough, no new recent emails were in the inbox. A LOT of deleted items though. I basically called him back and told him to look in his deleted items folder.

    "Oh. Okay, they're there. [click]"

    This happened with another executive a month later. Same resolution.

    That same month, I got the same issue - no new emails showing up. This time, it wasn't an executive. I went into this lady's Outlook Web Access and checked the deleted items - nothing. Then I go back to the inbox and lo and behold - she's got the filter set to "Unread Messages". Naturally, when she opens an email, it disappears. TRWTF there was that she lied to me and knew damn well she was getting her emails - the problem was that they were disappearing on her.

    Solving the problem was enough for these users. Some users, though, get all bitchy with me and copy their managers and their managers' managers. (In the corporate world, this is known as a declaration of war.) They have some misimpression that I don't report directly to the CTO and CEO, and that their lowly managers can actually pressure me to do anything at all, I guess. Depending on the p[bitc]H concentration of the conversation, I often end up humiliating the lot of them.

    If the parties involved had enough clout, I would probably send them to a bureaucratic hell of my own creation, but I haven't needed to do that yet.

    ... and this is EXACTLY why I contract. I can't stand this kind of posturing/office politics bullshit.

  • (cs)

    I wouldn't be so hard on the person who stuck a thumb drive in a USB-to-PS/2 dongle. Seriously, the thing fits in there, why shouldn't it work?

    There's a huge gap between "stupid" and "non-technical" and it's sad that so many technical people don't realize that.

  • (cs) in reply to n_slash_a
    n_slash_a:
    Wow, that thumb drive in a PS/2 port is just an epic fail. I think I found a new picture for my demotivational screen-saver
    They went to a lot of trouble to fail. The presence of an eSATA port tells me it's a pretty recent desktop that must have USB ports on the front that would have been a lot easier to reach. But noooooo, they had to go for the fail.
  • C-Octothorpe (unregistered) in reply to smxlong
    smxlong:
    I wouldn't be so hard on the person who stuck a thumb drive in a USB-to-PS/2 dongle. Seriously, the thing fits in there, why shouldn't it work?

    There's a huge gap between "stupid" and "non-technical" and it's sad that so many technical people don't realize that.

    Are you telling me that the average user DOESN'T know about IOC, bit-shifting, and all the other bits of knowledge that it takes your average software development professional half a lifetime to amass?

    :P

  • (cs) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    No of course there isn't and queue some more swearing and shouting.

    For the love of god, it's cue.

    Not necessarily. Maybe the caller was pushing obscenities into a FIFO data structure. It would act as a buffer in case the caller was swearing faster than the listener could comprehend.

    A stack would not be appropriate here, by the way, because in a really creative outburst of profanity order matters. The listener might end up hearing something like "fker! squirrel chimp-faced you throat fking your down keyboard f*king this jamb to going I'm".

  • anonamouser (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    We have implmeneted single-sign-on called *SSO* for short for serveral clients. Unfortunately all of these dimwits keep asking same stupid questions all the time to the user analysts at client location, who are even more dumber.

    They keep sending these mails to me. Everyday I get 4 - 5 requests from user analysts who are finding so tough to comprehend SSO model implemented by their own company.

    I thought you said it was implemented by your company. Or, are you saying the more dumber user analysts work for your company but at the client location?

    Either way, maybe it's the user documentation that's the most dumbest.

  • HenkVos (unregistered)

    The cases from the sister remind me of my time when I worked as "the computer guy" for the university. The chair I was assigned to worked on projects in developing countries all over the world, so most of its money would be spent on plane tickets and the computers were still from the bronze age.

    One of the panicked calls was from a professor whose screen had just gone blank, and she had a lecture in twenty minutes. On my way over to her office I asked her what she had done when that happend. "Nothing, I just plugged in my USB thumb drive."

    The computers, as mentioned, were quite outdated and had only two USB v.1 sockets on the back. While turning around the tower casing under her desk to reach the port on the back, she had stretched the monitor's power cable to the extend that it appeared to be still in its socket, but had been pulled out just enough to break the electrical contact.

    In other words: It was a green-light-on-the-monitor-problem.

  • eric76 (unregistered)

    At my first job out of college, I was a programmer at an engineering company. Our computer was a PDP-11/70.

    At one point, for a period of about three weeks after we put a VT-100 terminal in her office, she called up every morning to tell us it didn't work -- she would type the keys and nothing showed up on the screen. Every morning I'd go down to her office and press the "No Scroll" button on the keyboard for her. I was quite happy when she finally learned how to press it herself.

  • (cs) in reply to anonamouser
    anonamouser:
    Nagesh:
    We have implmeneted single-sign-on called *SSO* for short for serveral clients. Unfortunately all of these dimwits keep asking same stupid questions all the time to the user analysts at client location, who are even more dumber.

    They keep sending these mails to me. Everyday I get 4 - 5 requests from user analysts who are finding so tough to comprehend SSO model implemented by their own company.

    I thought you said it was implemented by your company. Or, are you saying the more dumber user analysts work for your company but at the client location?

    Either way, maybe it's the user documentation that's the most dumbest.

    We did implement, but the design came from client. It is their plan. Tomorrow if you ask me to build approval rules in your system and then your employee (system user) call me to complain, I will have right to get mad at him.

  • (cs) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Zolcos:
    What kind of CD drive isn't completely enclosed?
    One in a desktop computer from around the year 1998 or so, according to the story. Rather than a tray that slides out, there is just a slot for the CD.

    It doesn't have to be a desktop though; I had a tower from those days with the same sort of CD-ROM drive. Never thought to put broken CDs in it. I would have had I realized it'd make for such an effective weapon.

    Nice!

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