• DQ (unregistered)

    Ah, space, the final frontier

  • Little Bobby Tables (unregistered)

    Ah yes, the good old "one of the keys held down by accident" bug.

    And as soon as he touched down back home, the irate client rings again with the same problem: some impatient SoBs has rammed the keyboard back into an ill-fitting cubby. Fortunately, this time they know what to do about it.

  • Ben Warre (unregistered)

    I had a similar probkem once. Turned out the user was a fan of jam doughnuts.

  • that other guy (unregistered) in reply to Ben Warre

    So the keys were "jammed?" :P

  • Zach (unregistered)

    In connection with the previous article, the image on the top right of this article is 404 not found as of right now

  • Supersonic Tumbleweed (unregistered) in reply to DQ

    Thanks for making my day

  • Supersonic Tumbleweed (unregistered) in reply to DQ

    Thanks for making my day

  • my name is missing (unregistered)

    Clearly the work of a space cadet.

  • Church (unregistered) in reply to DQ

    First comments are usually terrible, but that one did it for me. +10 internets to you.

  • Joe (unregistered)

    In my head while reading this, I was thinking they put the old server back because the new one wasn't working right. If it didn't start working right UNTIL the old server was put back, why did they put the old server back? I know this is a dumb question with a WTF answer, but I just gotta know.

  • Bill (unregistered)

    I was skeptical of stories like this until I flew half way across the country for a problem that I fixed in 10 seconds.

  • Jeff Dege (unregistered)

    I got called out on an emergency weekend call, once, because the enter key on the number pad of a user's keyboard had stopped working and the user was tired of reach all the way across the keyboard to reach the enter key on the alphabet pad.

    They hadn't told me what the emergency was, of course, so I hadn't brought a spare keyboard from stock.

    So I swapped the keyboard with the one from the manager's office, then replaced that with one from stock when I made my usual Monday morning visit.

    (And billed them for the 4-hour minimum off-hours support call.)

  • snoofle (unregistered) in reply to that other guy

    Is that a Spaceballs reference?

  • that other guy (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    It's been a very long time since I've watched that. So I might be, but it wasn't intended on being.

  • robby the robot (unregistered)

    Amusing, but it's really something that anyone with experience would have checked. So the WTF is flying to a site rather than talking to the user.

  • X (unregistered) in reply to robby the robot

    The client did insist that nothing had been changed, so short of asking for a picture would've revealed this.

  • sunnyboy (unregistered)

    I've had almost the exact same issue with a client long, long ago. They complained the machine was "making a funny noise". They could not describe it but held the phone nearby. Sure enough - a constant kind of whine (hard to tell with old phone tech).

    I had to go to the site as there was no-one capable of assisting at the client site. Once there, I verified the noise, but couldn't quite put my finger on a cause. To diagnose, I had to open the cover of the fancy desk that hid the keyboard drawer. Noise stopped.

    Sure enough - the wedge shape of the "fancy, custom" keyboard cover mashed on the spacebar, making the "key repeat" noise (they left the machine logged in because... they did.)

    Problem fixed, but at least I only had to drive downtown.

  • Bob (unregistered)

    Sounds like the old "O-N switch is in the OFF position" trick

  • Blakeyrat (unregistered)

    Alex i love u but please ur website is so bad now the comments are a police state and the website is so dead in comparison alex papadumbass pls delete ur website it is the only way 2 save ur soul

  • (nodebb)

    I'm intrigued by all the possible reasons for connecting a screen and keyboard mouse to a server. I'm willing to bet 25 cents the receptionist wanted to play solitaire.

  • Tim (unregistered)

    Had a similar case but at home with a spare machine. My nephew was using it, and it was having bizarre behaviour.

    Turned out there was a second, wireless keyboard plugged into it, and that keyboard turned on, with working batteries, and was in the middle of a pile of peripherals ...

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    reminds me of several stories where a tech made a visit just to plug the computer in or turn it on!

  • Boyd (unregistered)

    Castle Wolfenstein 1985, hold down the space key and open chests in 1/2 the time.

  • masterX244 (unregistered)

    Blakeynope script fixed. https://github.com/masterX244/BlakeyNope Had to ad the https url to the triggerlist

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to X

    Well, someone's never done support...

  • (nodebb)

    My initial diagnosis was that they put a screen saver on that was using all the CPU, or someone had not "not exploited" the administrator login and had installed unauthorised software.

  • Scott H. (unregistered)

    At a previous job in the Classic Mac OS days, we were using a spare iMac as a server for something internal. It'd randomly stop responding, and every time someone would go over there it'd be working again by the time they got it going. Finally realized that the mouse (one of those puck mice, of course) was getting shoved up under it and getting clicked down, which made it go into the drag-a-box-around-desktop-items mode. This locked up every other process running on the box while the Finder held the input queue. Naturally the first time anyone did when they went over to poke it was pull the mouse out, so it took awhile to notice. Mac OS X, being properly multithreaded and multitasking, didn't suffer from this

  • Mr. Numlok (unregistered)

    Had the same experience once with a num lock key being jammed. O the fun we used to have back in those days.

  • Reminds me of why I quit desktop support (unregistered)

    The second time I was called to a Director's office for a non-working printer, I turned it on again, and switched fields.

    People like that don't deserve a job.

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