The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Spork · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Backup Data
Check Media
Restore Data
Wipe Media
More Cowbell

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

The Scanner one reminds me. . .

A new CEO was brought in to "Save the Company". One shortly after his arrival, he accused me of programming a Xerox 9700 Laser printer to print a 500-page perfect-bound report back-to-front.

I thought, "wow, would it every be cool if I could really do that".

It turned out the Bindery had bound the wrong side of the report; I had them cut of the old binding and re-bind.

This was a CEO who arrived at the job in a car with THREE child seats in the back seat -- and they weren't triples, or even a single and twins. My opinion of his ability to "save the company" walked off a cliff.

The company did NOT survive; fortunately, I did.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Captain Obvious:
To clarify the 'retarded'
My boss thought this was an entirely WTF-less issue, and that installing said wireless dongle inside the tower could become standard practice. He thought her complaint was valid.

The extra $ was, by his reckoning, an 'innovation fee'.

Well, he's right. If a company builds a bluetooth dongle into a laptop (cost of materials: < $5) they can add another $50+ to the price of the thing.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
RBoy:
timias:
My cousin had a similar problem. We have a service here called digger's hotline.
There's no need to be racist.
Digga please!

Well, I can give you digger instead, is that good enough?

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Dance Dance Disconnection.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

the line drops when I try to run the discothèque option!

Patient: Doctor, it hurts every time I do this.

Doctor: Don't do that!

Seriously, why is it that when a computer is involved suddenly people go mushbrain stupid? Is there any other place in our lives where people fail to learn that, even if they have no idea how it works, it hurts when I do this so don't do this again.

I blame Bill Gates and every GUI programmer who argues that users should be strongly encouraged to remain as stupid and ignorant (not the same thing) as possible.

Yes, we can hold their hands and help them along the way, but take every opportunity to teach them while you have their attention.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Ah, reminds me of the good ol' days (1996). The "power user" complained that his computer stopped working and demanded a bigger hard drive, claiming that his problems were somehow caused by the shortage of disk space.

Turned out, he tried to free up some disk space by deleting old documents - and by documents I mean every single file on his computer with a small notepad icon, including most configuration files in windows system directories ...

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

First I load the maintenance program, then click the first button. And then the second button. Then the third. And finally the fourth.

Once upon a time, computers were used to automate things instead of being glorified interactive TVs where productivity is measured in thousands of clicks between youtube breaks.

That's why nobody seems to understand, any more, that if the computer were always supposed to do the same steps in the same sequence every time, we'd just automate that and there would be nothing left for the (allegedly conscious) human to do.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

did you make your daily backups, as per the training?

Since the training obviously did not include the everybody-knows-it's-mandatory-for-just-this-reason step "Remove the tape and slide the write protect tab" this one is the teacher's fault, not the student's.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Captain Obvious:
Because the customer is retarded, our boss got us to drag her USB port into her tower, and plug in the dongle inside, and out of sight. This set her back: $100 dollars labour $50 for parts (read - a cable tie) $100 because my boss thought $250 total seemed about right.

FTFY

Mason Wheeler · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

boing boing:
This was a CEO who arrived at the job in a car with THREE child seats in the back seat -- and they weren't triples, or even a single and twins. My opinion of his ability to "save the company" walked off a cliff.

Waitasec. So having a bunch of kids makes you automatically inept at business? My boss would be thrilled to hear you say that. He's got a big family and he's probably the single most competent manager in the company.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

boing boing:

This was a CEO who arrived at the job in a car with THREE child seats in the back seat -- and they weren't triples, or even a single and twins. My opinion of his ability to "save the company" walked off a cliff.

don't see how one thing follows the other

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Gamil:
TRWTF is wiping a machine before determining that there's actually a problem.

Not at all. We have carefully trained the entire world to follow the "Three Rs of Microsoft":

Retry
Reboot
Reinstall

Just hope they never learn the fourth:

Refund

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

jdw:
Troy:
Wow, remind me never to hire William Blosch. Without ever actually _witnessing_ the problem as it occurred, he wasted his own time and his customer's time by eradicating a non-existent trojan then completely reimaging the computer. Anything to avoid actually talking to another human.
Actually, re-imaging the computer is often more cost- and time-effective than troubleshooting these sorts of issues. Re-imaging takes very little time at all; tracking down esoteric and uncommon issues like this can be a big pain, and in most large companies, if you find that some sort of virus is causing the issue, protocol will demand a format anyway. As long as the user is not storing essential data locally, re-imaging is the CORRECT form of troubleshooting.
But, hey, if you want to waste YOUR time chasing ghosts, go for it. I'll be sitting at my desk playing solitaire while you try to figure out what's going on.

Explain how a cracked screen is in any way esoteric or related to software, please.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Grumpy Sysadmin:
That's why you use network profiles in any "real" corporate IT. Your computer is completely interchangeable with any other. I shouldn't have to back up anything on a workstation in order to reimage it.

Yep thats why we have to spend the better part of 2 days restoring applications, that the bland/faceless/outsourced corporate it department cant handle.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Then I'd hate to have to deal with the competence of the rest of the managers.

"Lots of Kids" is not the same as having them so close together that they all need baby-seats.

Anyway, he died shortly after company did. . . and I can only guess as to the marketability of a Widow with three kids in, or barely out of diapers. I have no idea how the kids fared.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

I assumed the CEO just had one kid and couldn't figure out how to undo/move the kid seat so just have three installed and could put the kid wherever.

Jaime · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

jdw:
Troy:
Wow, remind me never to hire William Blosch. Without ever actually _witnessing_ the problem as it occurred, he wasted his own time and his customer's time by eradicating a non-existent trojan then completely reimaging the computer. Anything to avoid actually talking to another human.
Actually, re-imaging the computer is often more cost- and time-effective than troubleshooting these sorts of issues. Re-imaging takes very little time at all; tracking down esoteric and uncommon issues like this can be a big pain, and in most large companies, if you find that some sort of virus is causing the issue, protocol will demand a format anyway. As long as the user is not storing essential data locally, re-imaging is the CORRECT form of troubleshooting.
But, hey, if you want to waste YOUR time chasing ghosts, go for it. I'll be sitting at my desk playing solitaire while you try to figure out what's going on.

Correction -- re-imaging moves the labor from the tech to the customer. Instead of spending hours fixing it, the customer will spend hours putting his stuff back on it. Since most support is disconnected from sales, it is in support's best interests to save their own time, regardless of the damage done to the company's image. There are many cases where re-imaging is the right solution, but not nearly as many as the number of cases where re-imaging is done.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

jdw:
As long as the user is not storing essential data locally, re-imaging is the CORRECT form of troubleshooting.

No - that is the correct form of quickest repair... and it assumes that the users know enough to know where they are storing their data.

I always had the policy of an entire hard drive backup EVERY time before a re-image. We would remove the backups after x number of days but you do not know how many times this saved us. You never know where something critical to the company was.

For example - the time the administrative assitant to the CEO had all of her important documents saved to the office default folder from Outlook - which is in the temporary files. Not having a full back up of that system would have cost the company tens of thousands of dollars at least.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

boing boing:
This was a CEO who arrived at the job in a car with THREE child seats in the back seat -- and they weren't triples, or even a single and twins. My opinion of his ability to "save the company" walked off a cliff.

boing boing:
"Lots of Kids" is not the same as having them so close together that they all need baby-seats.

So what is the "correct" amount of time between children?

Here in Finland it's actually mandated by law that all children under 135 cm in height (about 4'5") must have a safety device, i.e. a child seat, in a car. That means my almost three year old travels always in his child seat and will do so for a good couple of years - so a child seat does not mean the child is "barely out of diapers".

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Fred:
Seriously, why is it that when a computer is involved suddenly people go mushbrain stupid? Is there any other place in our lives where people fail to learn that, even if they have no idea how it works, it hurts when I do this so don't do this again.

Because they don't actually know what they did, much less how they got to where they were in the first place. It would be like trying to learn that stabbing your leg hurts when you're only dimly aware of what a knife is, where your leg is, or how to tell your leg from the steak dinner in front of you.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

boing boing:

"Lots of Kids" is not the same as having them so close together that they all need baby-seats.

You want to group them as tightly as possible. You don't want to get out of the changing diaper phase and then have to restart. Get it all over at once. I'm not kidding.

boing boing:
Anyway, he died shortly after company did. . . and I can only guess as to the marketability of a Widow with three kids in, or barely out of diapers.

Marketability?

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Franz Kafka:
jdw:
Troy:
Wow, remind me never to hire William Blosch. Without ever actually _witnessing_ the problem as it occurred, he wasted his own time and his customer's time by eradicating a non-existent trojan then completely reimaging the computer. Anything to avoid actually talking to another human.
Actually, re-imaging the computer is often more cost- and time-effective than troubleshooting these sorts of issues. Re-imaging takes very little time at all; tracking down esoteric and uncommon issues like this can be a big pain, and in most large companies, if you find that some sort of virus is causing the issue, protocol will demand a format anyway. As long as the user is not storing essential data locally, re-imaging is the CORRECT form of troubleshooting.
But, hey, if you want to waste YOUR time chasing ghosts, go for it. I'll be sitting at my desk playing solitaire while you try to figure out what's going on.

Explain how a cracked screen is in any way esoteric or related to software, please.

Are you saying you've never dealt with call-in support before?

Customer: My screen is cracked. Them: Is the laptop turned on? Customer: Of course not! The screen is visibly cracked so there's no use turning it on. Them: Please turn your laptop on. Customer: facepalm

If such a call actually happened, I would not be a bit surprised.

Yes, chasing down the error and fixing it without a full wipe and reimage is nice. I do that for friends on a regular basis. But if I were to make a business of it, I would likely have to charge more than a new computer just to make ends meet from the time involved. There's always that new spyware that installs but gets erased by AV without proper cleanup, so that Windows greets the user with a black screen instead of the Welcome screen or desktop. You can track it down to where it installed itself as an old-style NT MIDI driver, the loss of which halts the entire desktop presentation process, eventually; or you could just wipe and reimage the system and have it back in half an hour.

But keeping a drive backup for a few days for the just-in-case is also a sensible precaution. Then send the incompetent user to the reeducation facility to learn the proper way to store files in the network share.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

I second the featured comment request

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

The Judge:
Sir Twist:
Captain Obvious:
Because our boss is retarded, he got us to drag her USB port into her tower, and plug in the dongle inside, and out of sight. This set her back: $100 dollars labour $50 for parts (read - a cable tie) $100 because my boss thought $250 total seemed about right.
He managed to charge a customer $250 for calling him a dipshit, and you call him retarded? There's more than one retard in that story, but your boss isn't one of them.
I demand that this be made a featured comment.

I second the feature comment request, this time with comment!

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

joe blow:
boing boing:

This was a CEO who arrived at the job in a car with THREE child seats in the back seat -- and they weren't triples, or even a single and twins. My opinion of his ability to "save the company" walked off a cliff.

don't see how one thing follows the other

Anti-breeder?

frits · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

n_slash_a:
The Judge:
Sir Twist:
Captain Obvious:
Because our boss is retarded, he got us to drag her USB port into her tower, and plug in the dongle inside, and out of sight. This set her back: $100 dollars labour $50 for parts (read - a cable tie) $100 because my boss thought $250 total seemed about right.
He managed to charge a customer $250 for calling him a dipshit, and you call him retarded? There's more than one retard in that story, but your boss isn't one of them.
I demand that this be made a featured comment.
I second the feature comment request, this time with comment!

Pro Tip: Flames are not usually featured— no matter how accurate, clever, or funny they are.

smbarbour · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

whiskeyjack:
He must have been related to the people who worked in the chop-shop that sold me my first computer. They had apparently had some difficulty getting the modem PCI card to seat properly in the motherboard, so their solution was to take a hammer to that little L-shaped bracket at the end of the card until it was in the proper shape.
I was really mad when I discovered that. What other shortcuts might they have taken? I shudder.

While helping my brother move his motherboard into a new case, I discovered that the case had a rivet that was interfering with installing the audio riser for his motherboard (a dedicated slot on the motherboard was used for it, so it couldn't be moved to another location). We fixed it by taking a pair of diagonal cutters to the mounting bracket and removing a corner.

It's still better than the old case I had... The screw holes for the expansion slots did not go all the way through, so no cards could be secured to the case.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Foo:
Fred:
Seriously, why is it that when a computer is involved suddenly people go mushbrain stupid? Is there any other place in our lives where people fail to learn that, even if they have no idea how it works, it hurts when I do this so don't do this again.

Because they don't actually know what they did, much less how they got to where they were in the first place. It would be like trying to learn that stabbing your leg hurts when you're only dimly aware of what a knife is, where your leg is, or how to tell your leg from the steak dinner in front of you.

Your analagy is apropos because when most people use a computer, their brains do turn to mush and they really do become so mush-brained that they can't tell the difference between their leg and the steak dinner, or that pushing "Wipe" will wipe the disc. Or that the disc drive was made for only one disc at a time.

But she's still without excuse because she kept pressing discotheque even though no discotheque ever appeared and she always lost her connection after that. So that's TWO reasons not to do that anymore.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

"When I had the laptop at my office there were never any problems because it was out of the docking station that the keyboard receiver was plugged into."

Oh, so that's what it was.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Dan:
Are you saying you've never dealt with call-in support before?
Customer: My screen is cracked. Them: Is the laptop turned on? Customer: Of course not! The screen is visibly cracked so there's no use turning it on. Them: Please turn your laptop on. Customer: facepalm

If such a call actually happened, I would not be a bit surprised.

Yes, chasing down the error and fixing it without a full wipe and reimage is nice. I do that for friends on a regular basis. But if I were to make a business of it, I would likely have to charge more than a new computer just to make ends meet from the time involved. There's always that new spyware that installs but gets erased by AV without proper cleanup, so that Windows greets the user with a black screen instead of the Welcome screen or desktop. You can track it down to where it installed itself as an old-style NT MIDI driver, the loss of which halts the entire desktop presentation process, eventually; or you could just wipe and reimage the system and have it back in half an hour.

But keeping a drive backup for a few days for the just-in-case is also a sensible precaution. Then send the incompetent user to the reeducation facility to learn the proper way to store files in the network share.

Of course I've dealt with callin support, and I'm not stupid enough to leave the HD in a laptop when sending it for repair. The point here is that many repairs are hardware, and obviously so, so wiping the disk is pointless and borderline malicious.

davedavenotdavemaybedave · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Dan:
Franz Kafka:
jdw:
Troy:
Wow, remind me never to hire William Blosch. Without ever actually _witnessing_ the problem as it occurred, he wasted his own time and his customer's time by eradicating a non-existent trojan then completely reimaging the computer. Anything to avoid actually talking to another human.
Actually, re-imaging the computer is often more cost- and time-effective than troubleshooting these sorts of issues. Re-imaging takes very little time at all; tracking down esoteric and uncommon issues like this can be a big pain, and in most large companies, if you find that some sort of virus is causing the issue, protocol will demand a format anyway. As long as the user is not storing essential data locally, re-imaging is the CORRECT form of troubleshooting.
But, hey, if you want to waste YOUR time chasing ghosts, go for it. I'll be sitting at my desk playing solitaire while you try to figure out what's going on.

Explain how a cracked screen is in any way esoteric or related to software, please.

Are you saying you've never dealt with call-in support before?

Customer: My screen is cracked. Them: Is the laptop turned on? Customer: Of course not! The screen is visibly cracked so there's no use turning it on. Them: Please turn your laptop on. Customer: facepalm

If such a call actually happened, I would not be a bit surprised.

Yes, chasing down the error and fixing it without a full wipe and reimage is nice. I do that for friends on a regular basis. But if I were to make a business of it, I would likely have to charge more than a new computer just to make ends meet from the time involved. There's always that new spyware that installs but gets erased by AV without proper cleanup, so that Windows greets the user with a black screen instead of the Welcome screen or desktop. You can track it down to where it installed itself as an old-style NT MIDI driver, the loss of which halts the entire desktop presentation process, eventually; or you could just wipe and reimage the system and have it back in half an hour.

But keeping a drive backup for a few days for the just-in-case is also a sensible precaution. Then send the incompetent user to the reeducation facility to learn the proper way to store files in the network share.

My preferred solution, which I've never been allowed to implement:

Two hard disks in each PC. Mirror one onto the other every night. When user experiences issues, swap drives over. Troubleshoot from the disk whilst user continues working from the copy.

Obviously this doesn't help if the problem doesn't show up until after the mirroring, but generally that's not an issue.

Properly set-up roaming profiles are a good start, but a good chunk of the problems we're talking about are profile-specific corruption issues, so simply loading the profile on another PC doesn't fix anything. A good set of profile exporting scripts is a big help.

Ultimately what matters is the total work-time lost by the end users. It's nice to track down a problem, but unless it's a recurrent issue, there's no benefit if it takes longer to do so than to reinstate the starting point.

In an ideal world, the effort has been put into preparation and set-up so that you can create a new profile, move the user to another PC, and then investigate without great urgency. It's not even that hard to set things up that way, but you have to start from scratch to make it work.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Trying to help me figure out what is wrong is a good thing, but some of tech support people need to learn how to read/listen and think.

Recently we had a Blade type server die in the middle of the day. Looking at it, it had no power. Not just the front panel lights, but we could see past the cooling vents that unlike the other blades, the internal status LEDs were all off.

We tried a different slot in the enclosure and a few other things. Wrote this all up and put in a hardware call to the vendor.

Then we get questions back like...

Get all the hardware logs from the server.

To which we tell them again, the thing is completely dead please send out a person with parts.

Then they ask us, to connect a terminal to front of the Blade and get the hardware logs that way.

This time we tell them please read what we sent you, it is dead no internal power, not lights, not nothing. Dispatch the ticket the field or let us talk to your manager.

30 Minutes later the local guy called and told us when he would be in with the parts.

MarkJ · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Fred:
the line drops when I try to run the discothèque option!
Patient: Doctor, it hurts every time I do this.
Doctor: Don't do that!

Seriously, why is it that when a computer is involved suddenly people go mushbrain stupid? Is there any other place in our lives where people fail to learn that, even if they have no idea how it works, it hurts when I do this so don't do this again.

I blame Bill Gates and every GUI programmer who argues that users should be strongly encouraged to remain as stupid and ignorant (not the same thing) as possible.

Yes, we can hold their hands and help them along the way, but take every opportunity to teach them while you have their attention.

There are many people that expect a personal computer to be just like any other consumer product - you just plug it in and it works without having to think much about it. Unfortunately, personal computers definitely don't fall into this catagory...

MarkJ · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

PG4:
Trying to help me figure out what is wrong is a good thing, but some of tech support people need to learn how to read/listen and think.
Recently we had a Blade type server die in the middle of the day. Looking at it, it had no power. Not just the front panel lights, but we could see past the cooling vents that unlike the other blades, the internal status LEDs were all off.

We tried a different slot in the enclosure and a few other things. Wrote this all up and put in a hardware call to the vendor.

Then we get questions back like...

Get all the hardware logs from the server.

To which we tell them again, the thing is completely dead please send out a person with parts.

Then they ask us, to connect a terminal to front of the Blade and get the hardware logs that way.

This time we tell them please read what we sent you, it is dead no internal power, not lights, not nothing. Dispatch the ticket the field or let us talk to your manager.

30 Minutes later the local guy called and told us when he would be in with the parts.

It sounds like the vendor's tech support was working from a script. It is sometimes impossible to get them to deviate. In that case, you would hook up the a terminal (or pretend to), and tell them "I hit enter but I get no response", and so on until they exhaust the script and grudgingly send the local guy with the parts.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

John Galt:
I assumed the CEO just had one kid and couldn't figure out how to undo/move the kid seat so just have three installed and could put the kid wherever.

And that is but one of ooooooh so many plausible options...

Could be the wife's sister's family is in town with her twins, and they just got back from a daytrip over the weekend, and didn't have time to pull the car seats.

Could be expecting to pick up his kid plus the neighbor's from daycare; his turn this week. These things happen in real life.

Could be he's so fucking successful, that he has three mistresses, each with a kid. (What, if you want/have kids, would you rather restart that 18 years with each new kid, or run them all concurrently? Thought so.)

Could belong to a mormon offshoot sect that still practices polygamy.

None of these things bespeak his executive level proficiency. Either provide information that does, or turn the smug douchey attitude off, OP.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

cynical cynic:
!NNNEEEKKKOOORRRBBB !NEKORB SI TNEMMOC YM

Let me fix that for you

¡uuuǝǝǝʞʞʞoooɹɹɹqqq ¡uǝʞoɹq sı ʇuǝɯɯoɔ ʎɯ

done!

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

MarkJ:
Fred:
the line drops when I try to run the discothèque option!
Patient: Doctor, it hurts every time I do this.
Doctor: Don't do that!

Seriously, why is it that when a computer is involved suddenly people go mushbrain stupid? Is there any other place in our lives where people fail to learn that, even if they have no idea how it works, it hurts when I do this so don't do this again.

I blame Bill Gates and every GUI programmer who argues that users should be strongly encouraged to remain as stupid and ignorant (not the same thing) as possible.

Yes, we can hold their hands and help them along the way, but take every opportunity to teach them while you have their attention.
There are many people that expect a personal computer to be just like any other consumer product - you just plug it in and it works without having to think much about it. Unfortunately, personal computers definitely don't fall into this catagory...

OMG, will you fuckers please stop underlining words you mean to emphasize? You're driving me batty thinking you've posted some clever relevant link, but when i get there?

                              *nothing*

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

The classic support WTF : http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/wordperfect.asp

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Fred:
the line drops when I try to run the discothèque option!
Patient: Doctor, it hurts every time I do this.
Doctor: Don't do that!

Seriously, why is it that when a computer is involved suddenly people go mushbrain stupid? Is there any other place in our lives where people fail to learn that, even if they have no idea how it works, it hurts when I do this so don't do this again.

I blame Bill Gates and every GUI programmer who argues that users should be strongly encouraged to remain as stupid and ignorant (not the same thing) as possible.

Yes, we can hold their hands and help them along the way, but take every opportunity to teach them while you have their attention.

Sadly, it has nothing to do with computers. They're as jaw-droppingly clueless elsewhere, you just don't interact with them except when a computer is involved.

Case in point: people that cannot figure out how the damned back doors on the bus are opened. Anyone with a modicum of observational capability will notice the doors open with the other passengers do "X", but these people stand in front of the closed doors, baffled, and yell "BACK DOOR! BACK DOOR!" until the driver hits an over-ride.

They're also ignoring the instructions written on the door, six inches in front of their face.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Sergej:
... "power user" ... tried to free up some disk space by deleting ... configuration files in windows system directories

OK, if you're really a "power user" you should know how not to shoot yourself in the foot, and/or how to put the system back together yourself once you fubar it. Thus, if you come to me for help undoing your own self inflicted brain surgery, by definition you are no longer (and never were) a "power user" therefore when you get your computer back you won't have the permissions you'd need to install or delete software and other system stuff.

If you beg and cry that you must have your admin rights back, I'll restore the backup I made of your fubar'd system and return it to you, admin rights and all.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

The UI design "We'll mark the ZOMG NUKE THE WORLD!!11 button the same as the buttons for the standard tasks, and even put it in an ordered sequence with it" is a little retarded. Logically, the user does step one, then two, then three, then four.

This is at least partly a surprising UI.

Heron · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

sino:
Could belong to a mormon offshoot sect that still practices polygamy.

You don't need polygamy (or even twins/triplets) to need three car seats, and you don't have to have the kids all that close together either.

You see, in the U.S., most states have laws requiring car seats until your children are both 4 years old and 40 pounds, and some go so far as to require car seats until 8 years old and 80 pounds.

So if you live in, say, New Jersey, it's entirely conceivable that you could have three kids spaced apart fairly far - say, three years - and still be required by law to have them all in car seats.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

My similar support story to the keyboard random keys is as follows:

While working at a government institution, I was called by a user saying that any menu she opened up was promptly closing. (Unlike the other keyboard guy, I didn't immediately re-image the machine)

I went to her office and had her show me what was happening. Sure enough, every menu she clicked on was closing just as fast as it had opened. Looking at the keyboard, it was on one of those under desk keyboard trays. I suspected a stuck key of some sort and swapped spots with her to see if that was the case.

I sat down and moved the tray to a comfortable position for me. I clicked on the first menu and it stayed open. All menus I clicked on stayed open. "Must be the Geek Aura" is jokingly suggested.

She sat down and re-adjusted the keyboard tray, tested some menus and they started closing immediately again.

A little headscratching and deductive reasoning, turns out when she sat down, she would push the keyboard tray back underneath the desk, just a little bit, causing the ESC key to be firmly pressed in the down position.

I re-imaged her PC anyways.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Dan:
when most people use a computer, their brains do turn to mush and they really do become so mush-brained that they can't tell the difference between their leg and the steak dinner

Yes, I know we've all had the user who insists they never clicked that dialog box, they've never even seen that dialog box, and when you ask them to walk you through it, the dialog box pops up and they hammer it away and when you stop them in their tracks they still swear there wasn't a box and they didn't click it.

They literally don't know what they're doing. They're not conscious. Aware. Awake. The brain is off and the muscles are moving automatically. I don't know how or why this happens but it certainly does. Most people operate a computer as if they were playing whack-a-mole.

Perhaps the only solution is to make sure the buttons change location every time, and the captions, and the defaults too, so that you have to stop read and think before you can get past it.

Nope, they'd still defeat that. I don't know how, but they would.

Captcha - tation: what taxation looks like after you take an ax to it.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

davedavenotdavemaybedave:
Properly set-up roaming profiles are a good start

Proper roaming profiles don't exist. The very idea reeks of so many design mistakes layered on top of ignorant kludges that it makes me ill. Just like your documents belong on a server, your "profile" belongs on a server. Where it is backed up. Where there is only one copy so things don't get out of sync.

Oh and it helps if the software you're using doesn't insist on keeping a copy of a few megabytes of language files, document templates, clip art etc. in every user's workspace.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Captain Obvious:
I think support contracts need to include an idiot fee, which is added for each query that invokes a /facepalm/ reaction.
I'd say $5000 a pop would be adequate...

The inspiration for this - I once had a customer at a PC retail/service store return a wireless desktop package as not-working. Upon investigating, it would seem she did not plug in the wireless dongle to the computer. She accused us of false advertising, as "I shouldn't have to plug anything in - its WIRELESS you dipshits".

Because our boss is retarded, he got us to drag her USB port into her tower, and plug in the dongle inside, and out of sight. This set her back: $100 dollars labour $50 for parts (read - a cable tie) $100 because my boss thought $250 total seemed about right.

She still shops with us :-)

In a lot of service and repair businesses, this is called the *sshole tax.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Backup Data
Check Media
Restore Data
Wipe Media
FILE_NOT_FOUND

frits · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Heron:
sino:
Could belong to a mormon offshoot sect that still practices polygamy.

You don't need polygamy (or even twins/triplets) to need three car seats, and you don't have to have the kids all that close together either.

You see, in the U.S., most states have laws requiring car seats until your children are both 4 years old and 40 pounds, and some go so far as to require car seats until 8 years old and 80 pounds.

So if you live in, say, New Jersey, it's entirely conceivable that you could have three kids spaced apart fairly far - say, three years - and still be required by law to have them all in car seats.

I'm from the Great Garden State, and I thought the OP was off his gourd. Turns out we're the crazy ones.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

I was surprised when my dad announce that he got wireless internet at his house. He's not terribly tech-savvy, so I asked him how he did so.

"This computer I just bought came with a wireless router!" -- he said. I congratulated him on it, and left it at that.

A couple years later I helped them move back to my town. My dad needed help with his network as "for some reason now, it is suddenly asking me for a password." So I came over to reset the bios on the thing, and found the router had never even been taken out of the box.

That's right, folks. He had been using the neighbor's network all along.

The Discothèque Option and More Support Stories

Leave a comment on “The Discothèque Option and More Support Stories”