Gustav's tech support job became a whole lot easier when remote support technology took off. Instead of having to slowly describe the remedy for a problem to a computer-illiterate twit, he could connect to their PC and fix it himself. The magical application known as TeamViewer was his new best friend.

Vnc-03

Through Gustav's employer's support contract with CAD+, a small engineering design firm, he came to know Roger. The higher-ups at CAD+ decided to outsource most of their IT work and laid off everyone except Roger, who was to stay on as liaison to Gustav and Co. Roger was the type whose confidence in his work did not come close to matching the quality of it. He still felt like he could accomplish projects on his own without any outside help. Thanks to that, Gustav had to get him out of a jam several times early in their contract.

Roger's latest folly was upgrading all of the office workstations from the disaster that was Windows Vista to the much more reliable Windows 7. "I had such a smooth rollout to Windows 7, I tell ya," Roger bragged over the phone. "I brilliantly used this cloning process to avoid installing the same things repeatedly!" Gustav rolled his eyes while wondering if this was a support call or if Roger just needed someone to talk to. "Well anywho, I had two system images - one with the basic software everyone gets, and one that included SolidWorks for our CAD designers. Seems they don't have SolidWorks even though I installed it. Can you do your support wizardry and take a look?"

Gustav agreed and was transferred to Dave, their lead CAD designer. He figured Dave just didn't know where to find SolidWorks on the new OS and it would be a quick call. He got Dave's TeamViewer ID and connected to his PC in no time. He decided to ignore the fact that Dave had a browser open to an article about the twenty greatest Michael Bolton songs of all time.

"Thanks Dave, I'm in. Are you able to see me moving your mouse?" Gustav asked. He wasn't. "Ok then, there must be some lag here. I'm going to look around to find where you have SolidWorks and make a shortcut for you." Gustav spent the next few minutes looking at the places any sane person would install SolidWorks. Since Roger wasn't sane, he didn't find it in a logical directory. He then went to Programs and Features and noticed that it wasn't installed anywhere.

"Hey Dave, bad news," Gustav informed. "It seems like your PC got the wrong image from Roger and your CAD software isn't on there."

"Bummer. I didn't know if you were doing anything, on my side the computer screen was just sitting there," Dave replied, just as an incredible ruckus broke out behind him. Gustav could hear doors slamming and someone cursing at Roger in the background. Dave chuckled quietly into the phone.

"... is everything ok there?" Gustav asked, concerned.

"Oh, that's just Old Lennart throwing a fit. He's our cranky old Vice President. He's super pissed because Roger keeps hacking his computer and messing around on it."

Gustav suddenly had a suspicion. "Dave, don't take this the wrong way, but were you reading an article about Michael Bolton's greatest hits?" he asked cautiously.

"Hell no, why would I be doing that?" Dave shot back, almost sounding insulted. Gustav apologized and quickly ended their call.

Once Roger was done getting chewed out by Old Lennart, Gustav gave him a call. In their discussion, Roger revealed how he'd installed TeamViewer before making his system clones to save time. Gustav explained how that caused every system image to have the same TeamViewer ID, which was bad. Since Old Lennart was always the first one in the office each morning, any remote connection through TeamViewer would connect to his PC. Thus, whenever Gustav or one of his cohorts connected for remote support, it seemed like someone was hacking in to Lennart's computer.

Roger remedied the problem over the next couple days by reinstalling TeamViewer and bringing in a series of "I'm sorry" baked goods for Old Lennart; but it wasn't enough to save his hide. By the end of the week, he was informed that their IT department would be further reduced from one employee to zero. With his computer and Roger problems addressed, Old Lennart could return to researching his favorite performing artist.