The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Zaq:
My similar support story to the keyboard random keys is as follows:
I re-imaged her PC anyways.

ROFLMAO! Serves her right.

Kuba · 2010-09-24 Reply Admin

timias:
\[...]After my cousin told me this story, and I figured my friend's dad who works for the water company, could elaborate on the story. (My cousin is known to BS)

corroborate is the right word to use here -- it means 'to back up the story'; elaborate means 'to describe/explain in greater detail'.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Bob:
Heron:
The Correcter:
Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

Actually I know a lot of people who do, myself included.

Addendum (2010-09-23 17:30): And before anyone makes any stupid jokes, I'm talking about married people (myself included).
The your a fool. No woman is worth being monogamous. At least not since the Feminist Revolution.

Actually Bob, one monogamous woman is a great deal better than your hand - but you'll just have to take my word for it.

PeriSoft · 2010-09-24 Reply Admin

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.
She still shops with us :-)

So, your boss is retarded because he made $250 of almost clear profit for doing nothing, and kept a customer in the process?

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Krenn:
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.

I've seen people standing at a pelican crossing (it's where you have to push a button before the cars get "red" and pedestrians get "green") for ages, wondering why the lights don't change. (When I reach the crossing myself, I notice that they haven't pressed the button. You can tell because once the button has been pressed, a little "Wait" message lights up.)

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

PeriSoft:
So, your boss is retarded because he made $250 of almost clear profit for doing nothing, and kept a customer in the process?

If her dongle happens to be dlink, the solution is retarded because that stupid piece of crap eventually needs to be unplugged and replugged. That shitty excuse for a hardware fails for no reason after a random time working fine, their shitty excuse for a driver stops acknowledging there is any wireless device at all, and the only ways I can make it work again are either to unplug the dongle or restart the pc.

Even worse, it seems that part of the reason it fails is that the dongle overheats (not always, tho). Guess how often will it happen if it is sealed inside the case?

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Took a under warranty laptop in for a yearly cleaning to KeeG Squad. I have a bios password and I dual boot.

I got a call a day later from them, thinking it was finished. They asked for my bios password. I replied why would you need it to clean it? They said we always need to be able to boot this system up to wipe it.

I said I would be in within 20 minutes to pick it back up not to touch a thing.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

A Betting Man:
I'll wager that 3 out of 4 of these stories involve alcohol.

Before or after? I bet both.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

MarkJ:
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.

Faking troubleshooting steps is not a good idea, either. Imagine travelling 90 miles to replace a monitor that wasn't working, after having the user tell you it was plugged in to the wall and it wasn't. Been there, done that.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

The Correcter:
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 from the same mother either.

FTFY.
Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

Around here, you're lucky if someone hasn't told you to perform autogamy.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Machtyn:
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.
She still shops with us :-)

I wouldn't say your boss is retarded... he fixed the problem to her satisfaction and the company made an extra $100 stupid tax on it.

I actually had to fire a customer becuase he took the last straw when he refused to pay for me to come out on a saturday night to plug his ethernet cable into his router. He specifically mentioned doing that three times during the phone call. (He had been quite annoying during other calls as well.)

You can fire customers? facepalm

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

fermion:
Hold the paper still and then turn the scanner around.

WIN!

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

method1:
Darth Dumbass:
I have hidden a wireless keyboard in your drawer...pray you don't put your purse on it.

I literally LOL'd. Is there something wrong with me?

Yes - now go re-image your computer :)

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Paul:
evilspoons:
As for the first story: it astounds me the lack of reasoning a lot of people have.
"Every time I press this thing (and I do not know exactly what this thing does) something I don't want to happen occurs."

Mayyyyybe you should stop doing that thing or figure out what it's actually for!

It's computers that seem to make some people excessively thick.

I bet doctors don't get patients complaining "There's something wrong with my leg! Every time I stick this knife into it, it hurts!"

(or maybe they do...)

Nations around the world continue to try socialism, despite the fact that every time and place it's ever been tried it produces economic stagnation and loss of freedom. But it MUST work, so let's try one more time ...

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Jay:
Paul:
evilspoons:
As for the first story: it astounds me the lack of reasoning a lot of people have.
"Every time I press this thing (and I do not know exactly what this thing does) something I don't want to happen occurs."

Mayyyyybe you should stop doing that thing or figure out what it's actually for!

It's computers that seem to make some people excessively thick.

I bet doctors don't get patients complaining "There's something wrong with my leg! Every time I stick this knife into it, it hurts!"

(or maybe they do...)

Nations around the world continue to try socialism, despite the fact that every time and place it's ever been tried it produces economic stagnation and loss of freedom. But it MUST work, so let's try one more time ...

No, really! It'll be different when I'm running it! Vote for me! Hope and change!

(captcha: populus)

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Jay:
Nations around the world continue to try socialism, despite the fact that every time and place it's ever been tried it produces economic stagnation and loss of freedom. But it MUST work, so let's try one more time ...

Are you extremely bored?

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Paul:
evilspoons:
As for the first story: it astounds me the lack of reasoning a lot of people have.
"Every time I press this thing (and I do not know exactly what this thing does) something I don't want to happen occurs."

Mayyyyybe you should stop doing that thing or figure out what it's actually for!

It's computers that seem to make some people excessively thick.

I bet doctors don't get patients complaining "There's something wrong with my leg! Every time I stick this knife into it, it hurts!"

(or maybe they do...)

Well, we do smoke...

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt9j80Jkc_A

Then this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpmLrz_lSuE

Then this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnPMZgeBLWk

Apologies if you've seen it before

2010-09-24 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.

Way to miss the point that there could be any number of reasons that three car seats do not an inept executive make, and focus on one contrivation by responding with another.

0_o

2010-09-25 Reply Admin

Two Monitors Discothèque?

That's a nice place, actually.

Dance like a nerd boy, dance like a nerd girrl. Dance, dance, dance...

2010-09-25 Reply Admin

Mm. Just like it's logical to always push the "off" button right after pushing the "on" button? Or to always try to order (and eat) all 103 items from the local chinese takeaway menu?

2010-09-25 Reply Admin

Installing a WiFi dongle inside of a metal case sounds very Faraday cage to me...

A big tinfoil hat for you wifi dongle!!!!

PS: CAPTCHA "plaga"··· WTF! http://infinitecoolness.com/galleries/hackers/hackerswallpaper08.jpg

2010-09-25 Reply Admin

Poochy.EXE:
My opinion on re-imaging is that the procedure should be as follows:

Attempt to diagnose the problem. If it's a hardware failure, I doubt re-imaging is going to fix it, so don't bother. If you can't get a diagnosis after a reasonable amount of time, or you find that nothing short of a re-image will fix the problem, proceed.

Make a backup of all the existing data. Never, ever, EVER re-image without doing so.

Re-image and sent the user(s) on their merry way.

Keep the backup somewhere just in case (say, the user complains that some critical company files disappeared)

Use a copy of the backup to further attempt to diagnose the original problem (now that you won't keep a user waiting in the process), and if possible, make changes to prevent it from occurring again in the future. As the old cliche says, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Inspect the files on the copy of the drive, find something you can blackmail the user for.

2010-09-26 Reply Admin

the beholder:
PeriSoft:
So, your boss is retarded because he made $250 of almost clear profit for doing nothing, and kept a customer in the process?
If her dongle happens to be dlink, the solution is retarded because that stupid piece of crap eventually needs to be unplugged and replugged. That shitty excuse for a hardware fails for no reason after a random time working fine, their shitty excuse for a driver stops acknowledging there is any wireless device at all, and the only ways I can make it work again are either to unplug the dongle or restart the pc.
Even worse, it seems that part of the reason it fails is that the dongle overheats (not always, tho). Guess how often will it happen if it is sealed inside the case?

Sounds like a recipe for another $250 in tech support every few months. Brillant!

Captcha 'ingenium' - this is an ingenium way to make a lot of money, that boss should get a bonus!

2010-09-26 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Bob:
Heron:
The Correcter:
Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

Actually I know a lot of people who do, myself included.

Addendum (2010-09-23 17:30): And before anyone makes any stupid jokes, I'm talking about married people (myself included).
The your a fool. No woman is worth being monogamous. At least not since the Feminist Revolution.
Actually Bob, one monogamous woman is a great deal better than your hand - but you'll just have to take my word for it.

Exactly....the woman should be monogamous. But we were talking about whether or not the man should be. Personally I vote 'no' -- as Bob said no woman is worth it. Certainly not my first wife, nor my current one.

2010-09-27 Reply Admin

Working in Europe, where English is often a second language, we often get some interesting support calls.

Actually, the introduction gives the story a very different meaning. As a European myself I know that in most European languages the words "disconnect" and "discotheque" are really much more distinct than they are in English. (The "e" vowel before the "que" is long. There is no way to confuse the words in non-English.)

My guess is therefor that the caller didn't confuse the words but the support person did.

2010-09-27 Reply Admin

PITA:
You can fire customers? **facepalm**

You may wonder, but there are settings, where you really can (even if it is not exactly in the written wording, it could have the same effect)

Consider enought small willage, with one serviceman of kind and no similar near. And customer who is not traveling to other cities regulary, for example. Once you "fire" him/her (stopping to taking his cases), he is in big problem.

(Depending on the field of expertise, the "enought small willage" could be even in size of modest town)

2010-09-27 Reply Admin

Andrew Brehm:
Working in Europe, where English is often a second language, we often get some interesting support calls.

Actually, the introduction gives the story a very different meaning. As a European myself I know that in most European languages the words "disconnect" and "discotheque" are really much more distinct than they are in English. (The "e" vowel before the "que" is long. There is no way to confuse the words in non-English.)

My guess is therefor that the caller didn't confuse the words but the support person did.

I am not sure about that - I had seen (and heard) many creative ways, how to pronounce english words in local language (well, at least some characters could be traced back to the originating word) and having decisions based on similarity of the result with something waguely similar in that local language (sometimes even with long and elaborated reasoning about it)

2010-09-27 Reply Admin

Great Stories. I love reading those here, keep it coming :-) I had some similar experiences over the years. The best one was someone in a shop with a cashier connected remotely to our network. "I can't get into my program" she said. I wanted to have a look using somewhat remote control software, which didn't work. No ping would work, so I pinged the router - it was there. So I asked her, if the computer was turned on. "What exactly is the computer?" she replied. I decided to drive to the shop and have a look. It turned out, that she always used the button on the monitor to "switch off the computer". Someone else must have done that properly before. Oh, well.

2010-09-27 Reply Admin

chauvinist_pig:
Anonymous:
Bob:
Heron:
The Correcter:
Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

Actually I know a lot of people who do, myself included.

Addendum (2010-09-23 17:30): And before anyone makes any stupid jokes, I'm talking about married people (myself included).
The your a fool. No woman is worth being monogamous. At least not since the Feminist Revolution.
Actually Bob, one monogamous woman is a great deal better than your hand - but you'll just have to take my word for it.
Exactly....the woman should be monogamous. But we were talking about whether or not the man should be. Personally I vote 'no' -- as Bob said no woman is worth it. Certainly not my first wife, nor my current one.

Holy screaming bat-balls, you are such an incredibly chauv....checks username...oh.

...

Well never mind, then, carry on...

2010-09-27 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.

Yeah, I remember reading some of the higher requirements and thinking,I would have been in a car seat in middle school. I didn't break 80 lbs until I was about 12, maybe later. I know I finally broke 100 at 16. My nickname as a child was "Peanut" because I was so small.

2010-09-27 Reply Admin

Sam:
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.

Here, Here! I was helping test software, and it was suppose to be an https connection. Some users were complaining that the whole screen wasn't coming up, but I could not reproduce it. So I sat with them and watched. Turns out, that in XP, the screen pops up with "This page has secure and unsecure items, do you wish to continue" and everyone usually presses yes. However, in Windows 7, the question now is "Do you want to only show secure content". No one was reading the new message and thus were just, by rote, hitting yes. Thanks Microsoft. Oh yes, the true bug was that we did have unsecure transmission, but I digress.

2010-09-28 Reply Admin

Gamil:
Glad to see, in the comments, at least, that some people still believe in at least determining what the problem *is* before wiping a system. All the big-name manufacturers are good at doing things like re-imaging a notebook with a cracked screen.
TRWTF is wiping a machine before determining that there's actually a problem.

If it's going to take 30 minutes of your time to determine and fix the problem or 5 minutes to start the re-image process, which do you think is better from a cost/benefit perspective?

2010-09-28 Reply Admin

The Discothèque one reminds me of a caller I once got.

"My nescafé is not working!" "Sorry, you called the IT helpdesk, we don't support coffee machines." "No my nescafé on my computer! To open the Internet!" "Do you mean Netscape?"

Not to mention the occasional request for magnet toner cartridges (magenta).

2010-09-28 Reply Admin

gilhad:
...small willage...

gilhad:
...waguely...

Awesome, this totally gets my Chekov fetish fired up! Would you mind saying "nuclear vessels" for me?

2010-09-28 Reply Admin

The Real WTF in the first one is having both the OS and Customer Support in a different language than the user's.

2010-09-30 Reply Admin

Miksu:
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".

here in the UK, it's up to 12 years.

Captcha: damnum. damnum, that's a lot of money on child seats.

2010-09-30 Reply Admin

Bob:
Heron:
The Correcter:
Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

Actually I know a lot of people who do, myself included.

Addendum (2010-09-23 17:30): And before anyone makes any stupid jokes, I'm talking about married people (myself included).
The your a fool. No woman who will date me is worth being monogamous. At least not since the Feminist Revolution.

FTFY

2010-09-30 Reply Admin

Frank:
davedavenotdavemaybedave:
Frank:
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.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you simply haven't the faintest idea what a roaming profile is. Basically you've said 'roaming profiles are rubbish, because they don't [do what roaming profiles do]'.
No, roaming profiles roam. They follow you around wherever you go. They are stored on a server, yes, but they get copied (wait... wait... wait...) to the computer you're using today (wait... wait... Oops! Disk full! Randomly destroy something!) and if you're actually smart enough to keep more than one computer busy at the same time (kinda like how a manager assigns different tasks to different workers) things get really nasty when you log out (wait... wait... wait...) and the second logout overwrites stuff from the first one (wait... wait... Randomly destroy lots of things!!!)

Truly, roaming profiles are the devil's spawn.

When I went to MCSE training 10 years ago, the trainer told us that many companies stopped using roaming profiles because of the massive network traffic.

Reason: The "desktop" directory is part of the profile and gets copied around. Turns out that many users happily drop massive amounts of data there. Now when office hours start, that massive amounts of data get copied from the servers to the desktops. Major delay until the network load drops back to resonable levels, and people can actually work.

Now if Microsoft had chosen to keep roaming profiles on the server instead of copying them around, it might or might not have worked better. But roaming profiles were not their first and not their last example of lousy design ;-)

2010-10-10 Reply Admin

I don't get it. Why do you even have a wife then? Is it so hard to you to get sex when you're not married? I mean, either you have a wife and be monogamous or don't and sleep with who you want. I just don't get it.

2017-11-11 Reply Admin

"Discothèque Option" reminded me of a story: "when i switch it to "official", the damn screen goes blank!" "sir, OFF is NOT short for "official"!

The Discothèque Option and More Support Stories

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