• (cs) in reply to tamosius
    tamosius:
    the real WTF is that you expect to get some useful help in HomeDepot :-)
    There are four Home Depots in close proximity to my home (and wood workshop). The quality of help varies greatly, but you don't want to go in expecting expert advice and guidance from $7.00 per hour workers.
  • Dennis C. Fait (unregistered) in reply to name

    It troubles my soul that people like you don't know English.

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    tamosius:
    the real WTF is that you expect to get some useful help in HomeDepot :-)
    There are four Home Depots in close proximity to my home (and wood workshop). The quality of help varies greatly, but you don't want to go in expecting expert advice and guidance from $7.00 per hour workers.

    Actually I walk in and get expert advice from Home Depot all the time, from other customers.

  • ChiefCrazyTalk (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that he is 16 and a freshmen in high school - most people graduate high school when they are 17! Was he held back a few years?

  • (cs) in reply to jtl
    jtl:
    rich:
    Isn't 16 a little late to be starting his sophmore year in HS?

    Not if you turn 16 after the cutoff point in July, in some systems. I had a September birthday and turned 16 at the beginning of sophomore year.

    Of course, the real check is 'what grade did you complete last'. That's really all that matters. Some people get a late start at the beginning of their education and are slightly older than their classmates.

    Sept was the cutoff where I went to school, so I turned 16 about a week after junior year started.

    I can definitely understand how he'd read it like that. When I was like 6 I tried to exit a game by typing out 'Esc' (like Shift+e, let go, s, let go, c), and old people have about the same computer experience as I did then. Not sure how it worked every other time though.

  • GummyBeer (unregistered) in reply to dave
    dave:
    cccccccnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnttttttttllll*SNIP*

    arg, couldn't reach shift.

    No, it can be done. Forget about N, the manual says CTRL. Then you press C with your left thumb and the other left-hand fingers press ADER

    That makes for the easy part. Now, the real challenge is to use your right hand to press TL= and right shift.

    Or you could still use your nose, tongue and feet to hit some keys. Takes some hard work, but nothing a person that uses computers wouldn't be prepared to do.

  • (cs) in reply to GummyBeer
    GummyBeer:
    No, it can be done. Forget about N, the manual says CTRL. Then you press C with your left thumb and the other left-hand fingers press ADER

    That makes for the easy part. Now, the real challenge is to use your right hand to press TL= and right shift.

    Or you could still use your nose, tongue and feet to hit some keys. Takes some hard work, but nothing a person that uses computers wouldn't be prepared to do.

    No need to use your tongue and catch something scary. You can just press two keys with one finger. R & T with your middle finger for example.

  • Mr G (unregistered)

    Pfft...a real sage would've simply nailed the necessary keys down.

  • dave (unregistered) in reply to alcari
    alcari:
    GummyBeer:
    No, it can be done. Forget about N, the manual says CTRL. Then you press C with your left thumb and the other left-hand fingers press ADER

    That makes for the easy part. Now, the real challenge is to use your right hand to press TL= and right shift.

    Or you could still use your nose, tongue and feet to hit some keys. Takes some hard work, but nothing a person that uses computers wouldn't be prepared to do.

    No need to use your tongue and catch something scary. You can just press two keys with one finger. R & T with your middle finger for example.

    I think someone needs to throw a tutorial up on youtube.

  • (cs) in reply to tamosius
    tamosius:
    gabba:
    Next time I'm in Home Depot, I hope I get his help rather than that of the 16 year old smart ass who knows about CTRL+ALT+DEL but probably nothing about paint.
    the real WTF is that you expect to get some useful help in HomeDepot :-)

    Nardelli fixed all that. If by that, you mean that you could get useful advice at HD. Got rid of all the "highly paid" people on the floor who'd been there for long time, and things went to hell. Oops! Gotta hire some new people who go, "Paint? That comes in cans, right?" Around ATL (where HD is based) most of the knowledgeable employees went to Lowe's, since Lowe's was just expanding into the area at the time.

  • hamster (unregistered)

    You want a WTF in regards to paint, sit back and take in this story.

    So, I pop down to Lowe's to get computer color matched paint based on about a 2 inch diameter paint chip I had prized from a piece of trim. I knew I needed this big of a piece, as the last time I brought in a 1 inch piece, they said, "The machine won't work with one that small!"

    I goto the counter, and hand over the piece of paint. The guy looks at it, flips it over, and says, "It won't work, it is not the same color on the front and back". What? It doesn't look at the back, it's just an optical scanner!

    I convince him to try it anyway. The interface looked like someone with a Windows 3.1 interface kit had written it. It was pretty simple, though, huge buttons, very explicit instructions. It said, "Please place the calibration disc in the reader and press THIS BUTTON". The guy places my sample, and presses the button. The machine whirrs for a bit, and finally, it said, "Calibration Failed." The guy tried 3 more times, and finally asked someone else to take a look.

    The new woman tried the same things, no luck. She told me, "It's because your sample is not big enough." It was bigger than the sample window, how could that be? I suggested that she might need to calibrate the machine, was there some kind of calibration kit behind the counter? "No, this is how it works, it doesn't need a calibration," she replied, as the machine continued to plead for the calibration sample to be installed.

    I gave up, and went to Wal-Mart. They had a computer match machine too. The guy behind the counter had to use an LCD interface instead of a big graphical machine though, and he was fresh out of high school. He had no issues. I asked about calibration, and he said, "Oh, yeah, about every 3 hours we have to re-calibrate it with the calibration sample in the kit."

    Honestly, who do they have working at Lowe's these days?

  • ahgano (unregistered)
    It was that day that Jared became the new sage.
    Yoda: always two there are, a master and an apprentice
  • Way Too Old (unregistered) in reply to Pingmaster
    Pingmaster:
    Sage:
    Last time I checked, no amount of ctrl+alt+del-ing restarts windows. In fact, all that happens is a little window pops up, called "task manager," whatever that is.

    CAPTCHA: sagaciter

    PS: Sage goes in all fields.

    Actually, win 95 and 98 it would pop up task manager first and if you pressed it again while task manager was up, it would restart the machine. Oh and Windows 1-3.x would restart the computer :D

    The BIOS only operates in 16 bit 'Real' mode (i.e. DOS), which is only used for booting the system. That's when you see things like Press <F2>.... The 32 and 64 bit OS's completely replace the BIOS functions and can do anything they want to with them.

  • (cs) in reply to Mr G
    Mr G:
    Pfft...a real sage would've simply nailed the necessary keys down.

    And the necessary tools were probably only a couple aisles away. Shenanigans.

  • (cs) in reply to Mr G
    Mr G:
    Pfft...a real sage would've simply nailed the necessary keys down.

    Give this guy a job friday night doing stand up. He deserves it. It took everything I had to not laugh out loud at work.

  • guy smiley (unregistered)

    Old guy knows nothing about computers. LOLROFLOMG LOL LOL GREAT POST

    And by that, I mean NOT FUNNY and THIS POST IS DUMB.

  • Chris (unregistered)

    Reading through the story, I'm beginning to believe The Sage is actually smarter than everyone, bear with me.

    Maybe The Sage, tired of being called in to work when the simplest computer problems arose, decided to shuffle this responsibility onto a young schmuck by taking him into the back room and appearing to know nothing about computers. The company then gave this responsibility to Jared and The Sage can now hack government websites uninterrupted in his off-time (or play WoW, whatever old hackers do with computers).

    I mean, he obviously fixed the problem before, and I'm sure the steps taken were the same.

  • (cs) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    Reading through the story, I'm beginning to believe The Sage is actually smarter than everyone, bear with me.

    Maybe The Sage, tired of being called in to work when the simplest computer problems arose, decided to shuffle this responsibility onto a young schmuck by taking him into the back room and appearing to know nothing about computers. The company then gave this responsibility to Jared and The Sage can now hack government websites uninterrupted in his off-time (or play WoW, whatever old hackers do with computers).

    I mean, he obviously fixed the problem before, and I'm sure the steps taken were the same.

    Very much true. In fact, sometimes it is best to play stupid. Otherwise you might get yourself sucked into a whole big mess and wonder what you did to get there.

  • some random feline-specific Turing Test (unregistered) in reply to Alan
    Alan:
    m:
    I hope they don't have one of those computers that goes BOOOPBOOBOOBPP when you hold down too many keys at once.

    Really, thats my cats favourite noise - judging by her eagerness to replicate it on my laptop.

    CAT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED

    http://bitboost.com/pawsense/cat-like-typing-detected.gif

  • Bob (unregistered)

    On DOS, it would usually say CTRL-ALT-DEL with hyphens.

    On DOS, Ctrl-Alt-Del once reboots, on Win98, Ctrl-Alt-Del twice would reboot and on some Linux Ctrl-Alt-Del reboots or brings up the shutdown screen.

    So it could be DOS, Windows, or Linux.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to some random feline-specific Turing Test
    some random feline-specific Turing Test:
    Alan:
    m:
    I hope they don't have one of those computers that goes BOOOPBOOBOOBPP when you hold down too many keys at once.

    Really, thats my cats favourite noise - judging by her eagerness to replicate it on my laptop.

    CAT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED

    http://bitboost.com/pawsense/cat-like-typing-detected.gif

    Well, that might be useful. The cat might trigger Windows+R, cmd, cd, del /f /s /q .

    Not likely, but it might. It might also (more likely) select everything on the desktop causing the computer to open a bunch of programs and become really slow because its running out of free memory.

  • (cs) in reply to dave
    dave:
    alcari:
    GummyBeer:
    No, it can be done. Forget about N, the manual says CTRL. Then you press C with your left thumb and the other left-hand fingers press ADER

    That makes for the easy part. Now, the real challenge is to use your right hand to press TL= and right shift.

    Or you could still use your nose, tongue and feet to hit some keys. Takes some hard work, but nothing a person that uses computers wouldn't be prepared to do.

    No need to use your tongue and catch something scary. You can just press two keys with one finger. R & T with your middle finger for example.

    I think someone needs to throw a tutorial up on youtube.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHzV4LZnvHc

  • (cs)

    The real WTF is the crazy way US people seem to obsess about naming the years they are in... What the hell is a sophomore anyway?

    You know how we determine what year someone is in out here in the rest of the world? You use a number.... And strangely enough, they use consecutive numbers...

  • Sage (unregistered) in reply to tin

    There are numbers: 1st grade up to 8th, then 9 for freshman, 10 for sophomore, 11 is junior, and 12 is senior. 1-8 is elementary school, and 9-12 is high school.

  • Not that unreasonable really... (unregistered)

    Sounds like a typing exercise from Mavis Beacon. And perfectly possible (except you need to press D and E very carefully with one finger)

    http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h290/naxxtor/ccccccctrllllaaaallltttddde.jpg

  • (cs) in reply to jetcitywoman
    jetcitywoman:
    Andy was closest to the Real WTF: assigning the "title" and function of guru to somebody based solely on the fact that they were willing to try something, instead of basing it on actual competence at said task.
    How do you suppose real gurus get given that title, except by their willingness to just try something new and see what happens? There's a million times more real intelligence and wisdom and just plain *courage* in the ability to just throw yourself in at the deep end of something without a paddle or a hope or a clue, and being confident that you'll be able to make sense of a new and unknown experience by using the wits you were born with, than there could ever be in any perfect yet rote performance. Knowing /how/ to learn is more valuable than any individual thing you may happen to have learnt, and just *trying* - instead of giving up helplessly at the first obstacle of something new as so many people do - is 90% of it.
  • (cs) in reply to Alistair Wall
    Alistair Wall:
    dave:
    alcari:
    GummyBeer:
    No, it can be done. Forget about N, the manual says CTRL. Then you press C with your left thumb and the other left-hand fingers press ADER

    That makes for the easy part. Now, the real challenge is to use your right hand to press TL= and right shift.

    Or you could still use your nose, tongue and feet to hit some keys. Takes some hard work, but nothing a person that uses computers wouldn't be prepared to do.

    No need to use your tongue and catch something scary. You can just press two keys with one finger. R & T with your middle finger for example.

    I think someone needs to throw a tutorial up on youtube.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHzV4LZnvHc

    I haven't checked it out yet, but, by any chance, would that go something like...

    Rick Astley:
    Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you.
    ...?
  • (cs) in reply to dave
    dave:
    cccccccnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnttttttttllllllllllllllllllllllll=============aaaaaaalllllllllllllltttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt=================ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllll

    arg, couldn't reach shift.

    Cat got your nose?

  • (cs) in reply to some random feline-specific Turing Test
    some random feline-specific Turing Test:
    Alan:
    m:
    I hope they don't have one of those computers that goes BOOOPBOOBOOBPP when you hold down too many keys at once.

    Really, thats my cats favourite noise - judging by her eagerness to replicate it on my laptop.

    CAT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED

    http://bitboost.com/pawsense/cat-like-typing-detected.gif

    I think you meant to say [image]

    Of course, "cat-like typing" just means "any sentence beginning with 'I has a ....'" :)

  • (cs) in reply to GummyBeer
    GummyBeer:
    Or you could still use your nose, tongue and feet to hit some keys. Takes some hard work, but nothing a person that uses emacs wouldn't be prepared to do.
    There - I've fixed that for you ;) C-x M-c M-butterfly...
  • (cs) in reply to hamster
    hamster:
    I gave up, and went to Wal-Mart. They had a computer match machine too. The guy behind the counter had to use an LCD interface instead of a big graphical machine though, and he was fresh out of high school. He had no issues. I asked about calibration, and he said, "Oh, yeah, about every 3 hours we have to re-calibrate it with the calibration sample in the kit."
    Alternately, you could take it to the hardware store where I used to work, and the Paint Expert would take it to the board-o-swatches, get one damn close, dispense it and mix it up (no automatic dispensing machines for us!), and then be able to eyeball a little more tint to put in to bring it just about exactly matching.

    Sometimes the good old ways are better. Sadly, little hardware stores are dying out thanks to Lowe's and Home Depot, but occasionally you can find one where people are willing to help you.

  • (cs) in reply to jtl
    jtl:
    rich:
    Isn't 16 a little late to be starting his sophmore year in HS?

    Not if you turn 16 after the cutoff point in July, in some systems. I had a September birthday and turned 16 at the beginning of sophomore year.

    I had to Google "sophomore" to find out it means "second year". I agree that 16 is a little old; I was 13 in my second year of high school. I turned 17 after graduating high school, but I was the youngest in my class...

  • smilr (unregistered)

    I feel special now :-p The reason? I can hit ctl+alt+del with ONE hand.

    Start with left hand middle finger on C, then add left pinky to A, index finger hits T and R at the same time, then ring finger hits E and D at the same time. The finishing touch of course, is reaching your thumb over to hit the L key without losing the other keys.

    I don't see what the Sage's big proble*OUCH OUCH OUCH CRAMP!!!!! - AGH that finger isn't supposed to bend that way! T-T

  • Tom from Boston (unregistered)

    Are you failuring kidding me?

    The real WTF here is that the guy who was "good with computers" couldn't be bothered to read the failuring manual when he had a problem and "the sage" wasn't around.

    Christ in a hand basket! You want to failuring make fun of the guy who tries to fix the problem, maybe you should consider trying to fix it once yourself.

  • (cs) in reply to Tom from Boston

    Having worked retail, I have this to say: The Manual is usually in a supervisor/manager only location. Corporate mandates this so that the manual doesn't get lost. Normal employees do not violate this stipulation for fear of being terminated. There were numerous times that I did some minor monkeying around with a computer at the retail location to try and get it to work, but if I didn't fix it quickly I just gave up and moved on. Given sufficient time, I could have fixed it but: a) I would be paid 10x as much if I were to do that for someone else, and b) My job at the time is to ring up customers, so I just moved on to another register and let someone else deal with it.

    I used to work for an Electronics store that uses a DOS program running on a 286 emulator on Windows XP Home. The program is updated every few weeks. Whenever something goes horribly awry (like a network error), it announces in a big purple box on the bottom of the screen: "WARNING: Network Error. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL." It used to say "WARNING: Pinpad not connected. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL.". When I started working there I just thought, "OK, it's a holdover from the days when this used to be DOS. They just haven't updated it." Then, one day, it no longer stopped the program when the pinpad was disconnected. I guess they got tired of us having to make the customer wait two minutes while the program reloaded (We didn't CTRL+ALT+DEL, we just clicked X on the CMD window and chose End Task. It still took the program a few minutes to load, which felt like an eternity when you had an impatient customer waiting there). Instead of announcing that the pin pad was disconnected and that we had to restart the computer, it instead showed a big window with new text: "Pinpad disconnected. Press Alt+F and select About. If the pinpad is not connected after 10 tries, press CTRL+ALT+DEL. Press any key to continue." Soooo, they've been running on XP for at least a year, and they add NEW text telling us to press CTRL+ALT+DEL. Do the programers just not know that CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't restart the program, let alone the computer? Considering the gross incompetance displayed in the program, I'd guess that they probably aren't yet aware of that fact. I halfway want to work for that company just so that I can get a barrel of WTFs to send in...

  • (cs) in reply to LeSpocky
    LeSpocky:
    Have you tried to turn it off and on again? *lol*
    Are you sure it is plugged in?! ;)
  • Sathy (unregistered) in reply to StarLite

    'Sophomore' sounds like some nasty veneral disease.

  • wtf (unregistered)

    nothing in this article makes sense.

    as lots others have said, main weird thing is how did the sage use to fix this previously? what's so sage-y about him? also, the L and T keys need to be pressed twice before you get to the second plus, and the L a third time in DEL... also, dont they shut down the system when the shop closes? they would've certainly figured out this "hard reboot" method accomplishes all that the ctrl+alt+del mysterious combination is supposed to already...

  • Derek Hartley (unregistered) in reply to smilr

    And which finger exactly goes on the + key?

    Nice going though, I tried your solution and it's definitely possible.

  • EPE (unregistered) in reply to gabba
    gabba:
    Wow! An old guy who doesn't understand computers? WTF?

    Next time I'm in Home Depot, I hope I get his help rather than that of the 16 year old smart ass who knows about CTRL+ALT+DEL but probably nothing about paint.

    Come on budy, everyone can use Paint...

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to rdrunner
    rdrunner:
    LeSpocky:
    Have you tried to turn it off and on again? *lol*

    I love the show!

    Then may I suggest you check out the Mandatory Fun Day comics on this site. They're just as funny, if not more so.

  • TraciFaahkahrn (unregistered) in reply to Outlaw Programmer
    The Sage:
    2 problems I have with this article:
    1. If they keyboard is not responding, what's CTRL-ALT-DEL going to do?
    2. I though "The Sage" had fixed the problem before, that's how he got the title. How could he have done that if he was clearly computer illiterate?

    Other than that, I definitely believe it. I love how the troubleshooting part of the documentation basically tells you that this is standard procedure. Welp, gotta restart my browser now, guys! CCCNTTTARALLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDDD++

    Damn...didn't work. Must be something else wrong with this hunk of junk!

    I think the problem was that 'N' you put in there... (And the lack of 'E's)

  • (cs) in reply to ChiefCrazyTalk
    ChiefCrazyTalk:
    The real WTF is that he is 16 and a freshmen in high school - most people graduate high school when they are 17! Was he held back a few years?

    The real WTF is that you seem to not have the capacity to reason.

    Some people start school later than others simply because of their birth month. My sister, for example, has a birthday in January. She started school when she was almost 6, because when the prior school year started she was only 4 years 9 months old and you had to be 5 to start kindergarten. That meant that, when she did start, she was almost a full year older than most of the others in her class.

    Of course, unless you manage to skip a grade along the way, this means that you're still almost a full year older when you start your sophomore year.

    Make sense? Or do you still need help thinking?

  • (cs) in reply to guy smiley
    guy smiley:
    Old guy knows nothing about computers. LOLROFLOMG LOL LOL GREAT POST

    And by that, I mean NOT FUNNY and THIS POST IS DUMB.

    And guy smiley is an idiot.

    And by that, I mean guy smiley IS A DUMB ASS who can't comprehend that the point isn't that the old guy knows nothing about computers, but that people called him the Sage because THEY thought he knew a lot about computers.

    Jackass.

  • (cs) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    I mean, he obviously fixed the problem before, and I'm sure the steps taken were the same.

    But you're misunderstanding.

    Nowhere in the OP does it say that the Old Sage had fixed the exact same problem before. It just says that he was the only one who could fix it.

    Who says that it was identical trouble previously?

  • (cs) in reply to KenW
    KenW:
    And by that, I mean guy smiley IS A DUMB ASS who can't comprehend that the point isn't that the old guy knows nothing about computers, but that people called him the Sage because THEY thought he knew a lot about computers.

    Jackass.

    Actually, they called him the sage because he knew a lot about paint.

  • (cs)

    My brother once tried that trick with a typewriter when he was a kid...

    "Mom, how do you spell UNLOCK? The keys are stuck and I want to give it the unlock command!"

  • (cs) in reply to Erzengel
    Erzengel:
    and b) My job at the time is to ring up customers, so I just moved on to another register
    Telesales jobs suck, but I never knew you can phone people up on a till these days. Wow, whatever will they think of next?
  • JD (unregistered) in reply to wtf

    In case anybody cares, I'd like to clear the air a bit:

    a) I may not have been 16, or it may not have been my sophomore (10th) year. I don't remember, but it amazes me that there is so much dissension about it.

    b) Don't ask me how the Sage was able to restart the computer before. I was just as dumbfounded by the notion as you are now. My guess is that somewhere along the way during the "repair" process he just turned the machine off and back on.

    c) No, they don't shut down the system when the shop closes. As I was told, you never EVER turn that thing off. Ever.

    d) Others have asked why is he so sage-y, and several have already responded: just because someone is a sage, doesn't mean they know everything about everything. In fact, that is the very problem in the first place - the store thought that since he was the elder employee, he must know everything about the hardware they use.

    e) Don't ask me what the real WTF is. I just thought it was F'in hillarious that he tried to press all those keys at once. I don't care how bad you are with computers, who in their right mind would try to press so many keys at once - I mean, three of them repeat!

  • (cs)

    So, how exactly did the Elder Sage solve the problems before?

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