Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I build my mom a pc.

Check in with her a week later to see how it's going and her Shift key is missing off her keyboard.

"What happened to your keyboard mom?" I ask.

Her reply....."I was playing Pogo and kept hitting the Shift key instead of Enter so I got a screwdriver and took the dam thing off"

I was trying to diagnose a user's problems with Word, so I opened a file called "Trex Proposal.doc". Sure enough, Word soon crashed. And the temp file it left behind was called ~$ex Proposal.doc Ooops!

PLEASE!!!! Please do not associate my name with this!! As far as I know there is still litigation pending on this. I did change enough of the story that only the participants would recognize the reference... IF they gave it some thought.

30 years in data processing and I still have not seen it all. But, this time I think I did. Or at least more than I wanted to!

A small Professional office that I service occasionally when they have odd networking problems gives me a call. The 'kid' that sold them their computers at such a great price had just installed a new machine and it was not running so well. Unbelievably slow! He said to them that he was unable to install their primary application on that computer and that there was a network error and that I should come in to fix it for them.

The first thing I see as I start in on the system is a telltale of some adware. So I load up the trusty S----t program and proceed to remove more than 400 components of ad and spy software. Then, on a whim, I check the antivirus settings. I see in the Program Files that there are both Norton and McKafee. Over kill, but I don't see any of their icons in the system tray, I do a little more checking. Nope. None of them are running. So, rather than fight with either of them, I load up my favorite AV program and proceed to be flabbergast at the number of virus files that it finds.

Okay... new machine. Hmmmmm.....

I go in and look over the system. WOW!! This hard disk sure is crowded for a new machine. So I change the folder options to allow me to see everything. My GOODNESS!! This machine is REALLY loaded.

I start digging into the folders that are out there and I find file after file of pornography, games with various different registered names, a strange mix of Office Suite type program - also licenced to various names. And then the item that ALMOST knocked me over..... The little tecky kid that installed the system and his girlfriend... him h

alf naked -- her completely so!!!

Now, I am ticked!!! How dare he do this to a customer!? I decided to open up the system and see if it was a new drive or if he had simply used it as a backup drive while rebuilding his own system. I was actually hoping that I could give him the benefit of the doubt.

Not so. The drive in the machine was more than a year old!!!!

And finally, the icing on the cake. When I confronted him, I got my arse chewed out by him AND his dad - an electronics repairman!!! The kid didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing and had done, and his dad seemed to be standing behind him!!

Yup... I've now seen it all.... and I didn't really want to!

And the moral of the story?? Morals? What morals?? We don't need no stinking morals!!

The standard for login names at my company is the first two characters of your first name and first six of the surname. Poor old Andrew Alcock has been petitioning to get this standard changed for a number of months. ;o)

I work for an ISP that manages well over 200 dedicated and co-located servers plus over 10000 Webhosting accounts and a reseller platform with over 30 Servers in the cluster.

9 out of 10 emails that come into our helpdesk read like this.

-------

My website is down, please fix.

bye

--------

What the f**k am i supposed to do with that.

How about include your domain name and maybe what is actually happening.

We now have an official policy that if we receive crap with no information then the request will be deleted from our support system.

I just received a call from a (l)user at one of our plants that I work at. I guess our buyer for our company had gotten some replacement ribbons for an (Very old) Okidata 390 printer.

She calls me up, and says the printer isn't working, unless the old cartridge is installed. Boy, that tells me right off the bat that someone either bought the wrong cartridge, or the new one is bad.

I didn't have the model # of the machine in question (at the time),and asked her (let's call her Lucy) what the Model was. She INSISTED it was an Okidata 130. I told her 2 times, I never heard of it. (It's possible they made that model a LONG time ago!). Anyhow, I then called the user of the actual printer, and turns out it is the 390, what I kind of originally thought.

Went down there and tested it out, and it was giving me some wierd errors. So I thought I'd run to our local office retail store, and see what they have in these ribbons. They had a generic one, so I thought that would work for now.

Went back to the plant, installed the ribbon, and off it went. Problem fixed - bad ribbon. Bad thing about this whole situation - she said they have been having the same problem for 2 WEEKS!!!!!! Wow. Don't you think someone would have said something long before that?? Come on, people!

I do ... well everything tech related for a medium company in Canada. My area is 'east of Alberta' so it's a pretty big call radius. Anyway, I get a call one morning on my way in to work. Apparently one of the job sites can't get their email. We use a web based portal to deliver the mail so I ask if he can get to any websites at all. Nope.

Okay, I detour and head to the job site first. Get there and notice that they've cleaned up a bit... well, the Master Electrician has anyway. Moved the DSL modem and both hubs on top of a filing cabinet, screwed their surge bar onto the wall, organised the cables, etc.

Quick look, no lights. Turn on the surge bar and leave.

Yup... master electrician you say? Electricity makes things go.

Her: Was it you I was speaking to five minutes ago?

Me: No it wasn't.

Her: Oh, it must have been somebody else then.

!?!

*** 09/02/2004 09:41:40 Helpdesk 1 ***

I have booted up my computer and re-booted a couple more times but the M Drive has still remained obdurate in not wanting to appear. It may have been the victim of a "bushtucker" trial or it may have been voted off the "I am a drive get me out of here" but I am not sure. Could you check around the first floor and see if you can find it, it could be in silicone valley, I am not sure if that is in Ireland, California or Jordan.

Could you let me know as I am really stuck without it.

Thanks,

Tony

For two years I worked as a help desk technician at my college providing support on just about everything. While I have a few classic stories this one is still my all time favorite.

I (M)received a call from one of the secretaries in the Admissions office (C), a very sweet older lady.

M: **** Computer Center, this is ****** how may I help you today?

C: ***** (Office Administrator) had to leave in a hurry and didn't shut down her computer properly.

M: OK.

C: Could you please kill her.

This is the point where I alternate between stunned silence and laughing with the phone muted while I attempt to regain composure.

M: I hope you mean her processes on ****** (the campus mainframe).

C: Oh, yeah.

M: Okay, I can do that.

After clearing out the orphaned processes, I called back the client and informed her that I had "Killed *****" and hung up.

Tech Support and contract killing are not mutually exclusive.

I work in a library computer lab.

I meet all types.

I was just visited, about 5 minutes ago, but 5 girls. I'd guess they were all between the ages of 11-14.

They were doing research, each of them looking up a different pieces of information about a country.

2 of these 5 used a very round-about method for getting information...Ebay.

To find images of clothing and jewelry from this country, they jumped on Ebay.

With all the available resources on the computer (Encarta, Google Searches, etc.), why would you pick Ebay?

And how do you cite your reference for something like that on a bibliography?

Those of us in the IT/Tech Support depratments, I am sure have noticed that IT department becomes the owners of everything lost.

i.e. *** "Who is responsibel for this?"

*** "I don't know, give it to IT."

Well we had the best call logged yet. One of the cell phone compnaies was having transmision problems, and thier service was being constanly interuptted through out the day.

We had a call logged on our system that day,"My cellphones says network not found. Please fix"

HELLLO :-$

Whenever I send I e-mail the following pops onto my screen. Personal Folders The path specified for the file H:/KarnL/personalmail/personal folder file.pst is not valid. Please fix sothat this does not pop up every time.

I am having extreme difficulty in finalising the company newsletter. 8 out of 10 times when I open it, it

is a read only file. No one else has access to the file, except ROokaya. When I make changes and save I get a

message at the very top of the screen (Blue bar) that it is not responding. I cannot make any progress at all. Please assist urgently

** The file was 131MB in size.

I need assistance with the copying and pasting of pictures onto the Leoni Corporate Newsletter template as supplied by ******. I need to show you what I want to do - as not to waste any time writing lengthy queries which you in the end may not understand. Thanks

** She said it herself Copy - Paste ????

The following presentation which is under LPS/Teamwork/Reviewed LPSplus Element1 Teamwork1 is not in the correct format when I use it on the beamer (** She means Proxima) in the boardroom. By that I mean the words are over each other. On my computer it is perfect. Please investigate and advise as we will be starting training this week Thursday. Please also check the beamer which is with Megan in the Social Block Training Room.

80% of my desktop is black. Please fix.

**Again

The background on my desktop is 95% black and 5% blue.

Please fix.

I was in my second year working on my colleges helpdesk and based on knowledge and experience was one of the senior techs (there were roughly twelve of us, half experienced, half new). I received a call from one of the new techs because he was having problems installing a new CD burner in his PC. I saw he was supposed to come in to work in an hour and I was there the rest of the day so I told him he might as well bring in the PC and if we stayed slow I would help him out with it in person.

At the beginning of his shift, he brought in a PC identical in case and configuration to out computer lab PCs except for the CD burner haphazardly installed. Upon a check of serial numbres, it was discovered that the computer had been stolen from the computer center a few weeks before. Suffice to say the thief had his CD burner returned and was fired.

If you are going to steal a computer from a help desk it is not a good idea to bring it back to the same helpdesk for service. Especially if you work there.

The other day, my daughter stopped by and wanted to use her mom's computer. Her school and work are relatively close to us, but she lives about 45 minutes away, and she didn't want to drive all the way home from work, do her homework, then drive back to school the next day, so she sometimes spends the night at our place. About 11:00 PM she woke me up and said "Mom's computer isn't working."

"What's wrong?"

"It says something's missing."

"Is there a floppy in the drive?"

"No."

I got up, went downstairs, saw "NTLDR not found...," popped out the floppy disk and hit enter. Once the machine was running, I went back to bed.

My uncle called me one evening with a very odd problem : whenever his screensaver went on, it lasted just a few seconds and stopped. And he could see the mouse cursor moving very very slowly.

When he bought his machine he signed up for tech support, and those bright people told him to reformat ! Thinking about that self-moving cursor I asked him if the mouse cord was hanging over the table and dragging the mouse, he replied : Yes, I just removed the tape holding it to the table, thanks a lot !!

Saved him a complete reinstallation.

Once upon a time I had a junior tech who screwed up his laptop (yes, Windows 98 is allergic to too much tampering)

and had no other alternative than reinstall the whole machine. So he did : reformat, reinstall Win98, and then :

Him : oops, I forgot my disket drive, so I can't reinstall my network interface.

Me : Well, all the drivers are on the server, just burn yourself a cd.

Him : It'll be quicker if I connect to the server and download them.

Me : As you wish, good luck ...

(guess he grew up a little after that)

User: I can't find the "my computer" icon.

Me : look in the upper left of your desktop.

User : I see paper, pencil, but no icon.

Me : On you screen !!!

A user complained about a software crashing, so I asked him to send me a hardcopy of the message box.

A few days later I received an e-mail with attached a picture of his screen he had taken with a digital camera.

User : If I print this Word document can you scan it for me so I can e-mail it to a customer ?

Me : Say again, you want me to do what ?

Luser (after a 5 second blank) : Er, sorry

User : Hi, I'm having problems connecting to the mail server with my laptop.

Me : OK, open up your remote connections settings and ...

User : Well actually I'm driving, guess i'd better stop.

Me : Yes, and get near a telephone plug, bye.

(yes indeed, he is a roaming user)

I just gave a good laugh to a very nice woman at IBM's tech support. I had just opened a new ticket, and of course, got dropped into the wrong queue. Before sending me over, since she had much more of a clue than the first guy taking the information from me, she was trying to clarify a few things. For the IDE, she asked me what version I was running - 4 or 5? I said "5, I think. The purple one, not the blue one..." (referring to the icon that identifies the program in windows)

And then we both cracked up laughing when we realized what I'd just said. A nice way to end a Friday, since she knew for sure then that I was using version 5, although she hadn't noticed the color change!

Another smart junior tech opens up his one year old laptop and calls me saying he can't see a thing.

Yes, the LCD screen is dead, it's surface is totally wrecked, like if it had been run over by a car.

I ask : what did you do to that machine ?

Him : Dunno, guess it must have been bumped.

Bumped !! I felt like smashing his teeth in. I gave him an old ruin as replacement.

In the good old days when 486's where the biggest configuration available, some moron asked a fellow IT why was the 5" disk drive so noisy while writing on a disk.

The answer was "that's because of the tiny dwarf in the central unit, he's engraving the file bit by bit on the disk".

Moron was amazed, and my friend quickly left the room to die laughing outside.

Mind you, he didn't ask how we fed the dwarf ...

Everytime I browse this site I get a good laugh and reminded of some of the most amusing moments from my two years on a college help desk.

Around the end of the semester, we the good people of the helpdesk would see several people come down with floppy disk which had gone bad. They of course had the only copy of their final paper and once their undergraduate thesis on said floppy. We had some disk recovery software and would attempt any data recovery possible to help people out.

One day, a senior came in with his and said he was having some difficulty accessing his final paper on his floppy. I asked him for the floppy so I could attempt to recover data and gave him the we may not be successful disclaimer. He then reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced a floppy. I insreted the slightly rounded floppy into my drive and started up Norton Disk Doctor. He then told me that he didn't understand why this disk was having problems, he had been using it since high school (this was his fourth year of college). I explained that floppies were not generally rated to last more then six months and gave him the floppy lecture (which I am sure everyone in tech support knows by heart).

There is irony in getting around a dozen disk recoveries a semester from people who had their only copy of an important paper on a floppy. The campus provided 50MB of space automatically mapped at log-in and accessable from every on campus computer including personal computers on the network to everyone. This space was backed up daily and stored on a fault tolerant server.

A guy called my ISP helpdesk to ask some advice on how to setup his PC. When I tried to help him with the internet connection it turned out that the pc was still in the box...the guy called himself not so good with computers, and carefull. The word hopeless came to my mind...

I'm now just hoping someone else on the desk will get his call for internet support...

Oi. I'm in college and our Helpless Desk seems to be as pathetic as they come. Normally I give a lot of slack to people in these positions, but after 4 semesters of the same problem, I'm about to tear my hair out.

For some reason, my computer doesn't like the T1 we are stuck with for the dorms. Every semester I have had the same problem: My computer will see the Network, but won't see the Internet. For some reason, without changing ANY settings, this problem occurs between my boyfriend's house and my dorm room. Also, what fixed the problem doesn't ever work the next time we try it.

In college these days, Internet is a necessity, so I call up Tech Support as soon as my Boyfriend tells me (ironically he is 3rd level tech support) that he couldn't help me over the phone.

I really hate my schools tech support. Last time, they set up my computer to look for a proxy server, when the school doesn't use them. But when I'm assured the only way for my boyfriend to fix it is 3 weeks away, I begrudgingly call the help desk.

I tell them what's up, that this has happened before, and I know that it would probably happen again. They set up an appointment for later in the week, and I say that's fine, as long as they don't try to set up a search for proxy servers like last time.

Them: "But... we don't USE Proxy Servers"

I told them my story, and they assured me everything would be taken care of.

I'm skeptical, but hopeful, so I bid a cheery adieu and hope for Internet in two days time.

Well, the appointed time for them to show up came and went without anyone showing up. I called and they tried to solve it over-the-phone. When that failed, they set up yet another time for a in-room-consult.

Me: "But weren't you supposed to be here TONIGHT?"

Them: "Well, we think we know what the problem is, but neither of us know how to fix it. How about an Appointment in two days time with Ed?"

It happens I know Ed, he's in one of my clu

bs, and I trust the guy.

Me: "Fine, whatever."

I set up a time, but talked to him at club and he fixes the problem the next day. I made him a sandwich as payment, as he apologized for his co-workers ineptitude. The server apparently doesn't like people who don't run the Windows 2000-or-later OSes, and doesn't allow IP Addresses to be found. By running 98, I was causing problems for myself.

And I thought when my computer had started off with Windows ME I had issues...

One of my printer techs was working on clearing a paper jam from a laser. He couldn't reach it with hit hand, so tried to use his pen to pry the paper out. He ended up dropping the pen into the laser, wedging it under some gears. Instead of messing with it further (and planning to come back later) he threw up a sign:

DO NOT USE PRINTER

PEN IS STUCK

I received 7 complaints about obscenities before I noticed how little space he's left between the "N" in pen and the "I" in is.

As a preface, I've been working with computers, in multiple OS's since PC's were a new thing, before the web layer, yadda-yadda-old-guy-yadda. Today, I've got several boxes (SunOS, Irix, Linux, MacOS 10.3) but I use the Mac the most, as I get more done in less time, and it has more horsepower than the others. I gave up on Wintendo machines years ago, but... enough religious talk.

This is just to prove that anyone, no matter how competent or experienced, can make really dumb mistakes. To be fair, I was ill and sleep-deprived at the time...

I'm using an app I've used for years, very familiar with it. Too familiar, in fact, so I always expect it to behave/look/feel a certain way. One day, one of the app's windows doesn't look right - it's much too small. I can't figure out why. I've never seen it look this way before. I poke around in menus for a while, look through preferences, RTFM, etc. Nothing mentions this.

I post on the manufacturer's discussions forum. Within 30 minutes someone writes back with the solution: un-minimize the window. D'oh.

Nobody in that discussion forums (where I have posted technical advice to others many times) was more red-faced than I that day. Now you know why I didn't post this under my real name!

One night while enjoying a quiet night at home I received a bazaar call from work. It appears that a production process, which normally takes 8 hours to run, was killed by the operations staff after more than 18 hours. While investing the logs it appears that the process stopped all CPU and disk access after the first 6 hours.

This particular application displays error messages in a two line area at the bottom of the screen. When a third line is required the system halts and prompts the user the press the spacebar to continue. I inquired if any error messages were display and was told, not since we started using the stapler .

What stapler I foolishly inquired.

I was told that numerous errors had been showing up as of late, and instead of informing IT of these errors, the operations staff came up with an ingenious solution. Why keep pressing the spacebar, wouldn t it be easier to place an object, say a stapler on the keyboard?

All went well for the first few MONTHS when, it seems someone needed to connect two pieces of paper together. Can you guess what they decided to use. Yep, you guessed it, the all-mighty stapler.

Have you ever had one of those days when you felt that the id10t filter was placed on your phone?

A few years back, I purchased a Compaq Presario computer that ran windows 98. After a while I installed the second edition of this program.

After I installed it, my computer restarted when I told it to shut down.

I phoned up Compaq Technical Support to see if they knew what might be causing the trouble; they thought it was a computer problem, said they would send me a disk which would make a change to my drive.

I received the disk, followed the instructions, the problem persisted.

I phoned back to explain this, and asked if it was possible that this is a software problem rather than a computer problem, since it started after I installed the update, and if it is a software problem, is there a patch or anything to fix it?

The Compaq person said no, its a computer problem...they sent someone over to look at it who wasn't able to fix it either. They suggested taking the computer down to their Sydney office, to do more tests. I said not yet because I had university assignment work to complete.

One evening a few days later, I was searching online and browsing my university site, which included some computer downloads. I noticed a fixes and patches section. I clicked on Windows 98 2nd edition. The first link that came up was "Windows 98 second edition shut down patch". I installed the software, problem solved.

!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I wonder if computers have replaced plain old fashioned common sense and logic ;-)

female user had been given temporarily access to the server because she made sweet eyes to the admin.

after one hour of sitting almost idly in front of the computer she complains that she is getting no messages.

comes up she has never sent an e-mail to nobody. Never. she only controls e-mail but never has sent any.

her excuse: "But i want to be contacted, i don't want to contact anybody."

Apparently the world must revolve around her too.

Recently I upgradeed a user from NT4 to Windows 2000 Professional. While he was out of the office I added his local printer and a new mouse driver, just to get everything back the way he liked it. I restarted the machine and left.

A few hours later I received this call from him in my office. "Hi Robert, this is Chris, and I am at the new computer you brought me. I need your passsword."

Now users like to try to guess the admin password as a lark, but I never had anyone up and ask me for my password directly! I asked why he wanted my password. His reply: "Well I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and saw your name on the top line instead of mine, so I know that I need your password and not mine to logon."

I politely explained to him that all he had to do was change my name to his name and logon with his account information.

This is the email my supervisor had me send to 3Com Tech Support:

"Hi 3Com Technical Support,

I have two 10/100 LAN CardBus Model 3CXFE575CT cards.

The wire connectors in the pop out slots where the network cable connects have been bent, broken and misaligned by users enough that the card no longer functions. I have tried to bend the wires back, but of course it does not work. Also I cannot make the broken, missing wires be unbroken or unmissing.

Is this covered by warranty?

Thank you,"

I'm a support tech for "Big Blue".

Seems one of our really smart customers decided to change his Processor himself...only problem was the thermal paste wouldn't let the CPU loose from the fan.

we told him to "Warm it up a little bit, it should come loose easily"...he called back an hour later...seems he was heating it up with a SOLDERING IRON!!

"No Sir, not at all...heating your CPU to three hundred degrees won't hurt it at all"

I wish I could have told him, "Here's your sign"

I once had a trouble ticket that read something like this:

Client Info: ***...

Client called and complained of her mouse not working. Also, her keyboard and printer will not work. She also sayes that she connot get any programs to work. When she turns her computer on, the screen stays blank. Can you go take a look. Also, she sayes that the computer will not turn on.

- I took one look at the ticket, and said to myself, gee, if it doesn't turn on, it is odd that her mouse, keyboard, printer, and monitor don't seem to be working, isn't it. Then i proceded to call the client only to find out, she figured out how to plug it in and turn it on.

Last month l was in a computer hardware store while an oldman - aroud 60 years old - holding his pc and asking the sales man about the warranty and the following dialogue happened:

the sales man: hello sir, how can I help you ?

the oldman: yes please, a week ago I bought this pc from the store it`s woking very well except the cup holder it has been broken yesterday but it`s still in the warranty , I guess , seems to be not good quality...

the sales man: bardon!!! what cup holder you mean sir?

the oldman : the cup holder ...that accessory inside the

pc.. you don`t know it?

the sales man: sorry sir but we don`t sell any cup holders in the store!!!

the oldman become very angry : ooh my god, ok let me show you..

so he turn the pc on and shows the sales man the broken cup holder.....guess what?!!!

it was the CD Driver ....can you belive it??!!!

he was using the cd driver as a cup holder!!!

I swear it`s a true story

me: "techsupport this is matt. how can i help you?"

him: uh, yeah. once i get on the internet, my phone doesnt work no more.

me: "do you have just one line?"

him: yep

me: "oh, ok. when you connect, you wont be able to get on the phone because your computer will use it."

him: but when i disconnect, it still dont work

me: "after you disconnect, your phone still doesnt work?"

him: yep

me: "do you disconnect or just close the window?"

him: i close the box thing i got open

me: "alright. you will need to right click on the computer screens and click disconnect."

him: well i did that and it still dont let me on my phone. i unplug the phone cord, plug in the computer and connect. when i disconnect, it dont let me use my phone.

me: "you need to plug the phone cord back in the phone if you want to use the phone."

him: so you want me to disconnect now?

me: "you're not on the internet are you?"

him: nope

me: "you dont need to disconnect then."

him: well to talk with you and get on the internet is impossible.

me: "i understand, but when you *click*...hello?...hello?"

he then proceded to unplug the phone cord from the phone, and plug it into the modem (at least i believe thats what happened)

oh yeah, he never called back either.

I foibled a tad in my history so I'll start with some self-deprecation...

About 15+ years ago, an ex - Jane, NHRN - was hired on by a former employer to manage his medical practice. Dr W. spared no expense at anything so when Jane suggested a complete office system, he dropped $25K on a state-of-the-art PC (a 286-10, IIRC), 15" monochrome monitor, a sweet 24 pin wide carriage NEC printer and medical practice SW package. They weren't planning on having the practice up and running for at least 6 months, so the system would stay at our apartment. It'd give Jane a chance to familiarize herself with the app, etc.

I was home from work by 2PM every day, so I'd boot that bad boy and play around with DOS commands. One particularly yawny afternoon, I came upon format ("magnetically maps sectors and tracks on a hard disk or other magnetic media"). WHOA! Sounds cool...

So, the rep from the medical SW firm is asking me if I "knew anything about this situation" (he was exceedingly unaccusatory if not out-and-out engaging). I whipped up my best extemperaneity, including mentions of a thunderstorm that was going by, and how it just started counting up.

I searched this site from hither to thither to see if he may have posted that.

Over the years, I became pretty stealthy around a PC (never wanted to be in THAT situation again!) and garnered a local reputation for t-shooting and fixing all kinds of problems.

One day I find a business card wedged in my door jamb. It was from this absolute drop-dead knockout who lived up the hall from me: ~50, beautiful figure, always dressed to the nines (never saw her in anything less than Tahari), a great mane of long-flowing reddish-auburn hair. She's an executive with some PR firm and looks it. MBA, PhD, I'm talkin' diploma wallpaper. And neighborly to boot. On the reverse side, it implored me to call her "as soon as humanly possible". There's a heartbreak...

Computer conundrum. Her PC is dead-dead-dead. Hit the power button and no

thing. Please could you come over right now? Please?! I wasn't able to - No, I wasn't being coy - because of a previous engagement but maybe I could run a few things by her while I was getting ready, just to narrow down some of the more mundane possibilities.

I asked her if it was plugged in. If you've perused this site at all, you'll note that this is a question that stirs the wrath. Suffice to say, this sceanrio was no different. I further stuck my foot into the abyss by asking if it was plugged in at BOTH ends. If I ever killed my chance for a date, this was that defining moment. Then I asked if the power button had ever given her a problem before, i.e. doesn't always turn the machine on or intermittently. She said that she never recalled it being "iffy" when she pressed it. I went through a few other questions (circuit breakers, burning smell) ad nauseum until I had completely gotten dressed. I said I'd take a walk over 'cause I could spare a few minutes.

She answers the door fervently and lets me in, leading me to her office. I could smell a faint hint of Angel (probably my favorite perfume) as I followed. I'm thinkin', "beautiful woman, classy crib, right up the hall", my mind is a-racin'. Until the fateful moment arrives...

I check the IEC connector into the power supply and found it to be snug. As I took my hand away, I felt an on-off switch, ya know, one of those serendipitous toggle switches with an 0 and a 1 on it? I peek around and see it's in the 0 position, flip it up and power up the machine.

She pondered out loud: "What did you do?!" I told her that I turned the power on from the switch. She said, "You couldn't have! It was already on!" I told her, no, it wasn't, it was set to the 0 position. Then the piéce d' resistance:

"I thought that meant 'ON'..."

I still ogle but the intensity has ebbed a bit...

Sometimes I HATE my job... Well.. not my job.. but some of the DICKS I have to deal with. Not talking about my co-workers.. or at least, those in the Ops section. I'm talking about some of our customers. Or.. more specifically a certain company we have to deal with.

They contract us to do international stuff all the time but they usually provide us with the wrong info. At any rate, this customer gives us parameters for a digital feed. Then 5 minutes BEFORE the feed (5 minutes after we've already gone up on the satellite) they call to change the parameters. We make the change. Go up on the satellite.. just as I'm about to leave, they call again complaining that ONE of the recieve sites (out of about 30) is having problems.

Him: what do you have wrong?

Me: What do I have wrong? You have multiple downlink customers (recieve sites), all of them have a lock except for one and you think WE (the transmit site) have something wrong?

Him: Yes.

Me: What makes you think that we're having a problem here?

Him: My customer cannot see your transmission.

Me: But your other customers can?

Him: Yes.

I wait for the light to switch on in the cavernous depths of his stupidity.

Him: So what is the problem?

Me: The problem is that your customer either has the wrong parameters or is looking at the wrong satellite.

Him: My customer says he is on the right satellite and has confirmed the parameters.

Me: Sir, this is just like a radio transmission. Picture this. You are in your car with the window open and listening to the radio. Someone pulls up next to you with their radio on and you can hear that they are on the same station as you are. All of a sudden, your radio stops playing music. Just static comes out of your speakers, but you can clearly hear the radio in the next car. Would you think the radio station has gone off the air or would you think something is wrong with your radio?

Him: I would think something is wrong with my radio, but..

Me: This is JUST like that

. WE are the radio station, your customers are the radio's in the cars. All your customers can "hear" our transmission, just fine. All of them except that ONE station. Now, if you have their phone number I can help them troubleshoot the problem.

Him: Yes I have his phone number but he only speaks Farsi(sp?).

Me: No problem, one of my engineers speaks Farsi, too.

Him: But I still think the problem is on your end!

Me: (mute button ON) YOU ****ING IDIOT!!!!! (mute button OFF) Sir, please give me the downlink station's phone number and we'll get this straightened out.

After getting Sean (the Farsi speaking engineer) over here and calling the downlink station, it turns out that they were on the wrong satellite.

I call the guy from the unnamed company back.

Me: So have you talked with your customer?

Him: Yes, he said you were on the wrong satellite.

Me: No.. HE was on the wrong satellite.

Him: That's not what he said.

Me: So you're saying that I and all the rest of your downlink sites were on the wrong satellite? That the satellite controller let me up on the wrong satellite even though they have a booking for that space from YOUR company?

Him: Uhhhhh. You're not going to charge us for this uplink are you?

Me: Sir, I have no control over determining whether or not you are charged for services. That is up to our booking and billing departments. However, I can tell you that I have done NOTHING to warrant our not charging you for these services.

I had to repeat myself three times before he would give up. By the time I got out of work after writing up the incident to my supervisors, I was 2 hours late getting out of work. The director of our part of the company believes in the adage "The customer is always right." I don't think so.

me (trying to describe the system tray): do you see a group of icons down by the clock?

customer: i don't have a clock. i see the time, but there is no clock.

A customer calls in to our (LARGE) computer company one day demanding to know why she can't get AOL to install. In fact, she says -- she's unable to get ANY programs to install. She says she's unable to even get disks to go into the drive. Perplexed.. I ask her if her cd-rom drive opens, she says, "Opens? I've just been trying to stuff it in the slot."

What slot?

"The little one I put the square disks in."

Really. See that button on the top right hand corner of the tower? Press it.

"Oh my god, I think it just broke. A piece came out!"

Yeah. That's the cd tray. Put your cd in there and close it. That's the cd-rom drive.

Ladies and gentlemen, yet another display of incredible human brilliance!

The company work for has a short promo video (about 20 minutes long) it hands out to every prospective customer. Recently the PHBs (there's two of them) decided they want it on DVD as well as VHS.

Not a bad idea in itself, of course, seeing as how many people now own home DVD players. But I pointed out a VCD was just as good and would be cheaper. We could also burn copies at the office should the need arise.

The PHBs, as is their wont, reacted as if I had propposed handing out our promo written in Sumerian and wrapped in a puzzle. Never mind how many times I explained 99.99999..99% of all home DVD players can handle VCD, they still thought I was proposing something only "computer people" would know what to do with.

The funny thing is the company they contacted to do the DVD also told them VCD would be the same only cheaper. But no. They want DVD and they'll get DVD.

On my very first day of work the senior PHB told me to copy all the .doc and .xls files from one PC to "a floppy" (their words) and transfer them to the new PC.

Seeing as we have four PCs in a LAN, it struck me as unnecessary. I tried to explain that all the files in any PC were accessible to al the other PCs in the LAN, therefore we don't need to have copies on every HD.

Well, the luser PHB (no other way to describe her, unless we pile on induhvidual) told me we do need to copy all files to all PCs because "We want all the computers in the net to ahve the same information!"

It gets better. I did burn all the pertinent files to a CD-R and put them on the new PC. Fine. Then I tried to find the same files on the PC they had come from. I found them. Ten times. And on the toher two PCs as well.

Yup. They have about 30 or 40 different copies of all their everyday work files scattered all over the LAN. As you can guess, one employee will modify a file, then the next day another employee will look for the same file and find it unmofified.

I kid you not. I found two people doing the same work on two different versions of the same file. And yelling and carrying on because one said the file was suitably updated and another didn't find it so.

Well, I've been trying to untangle that mess for the past four weeks. To keep the "real" files apart, I'm renaming them (just tagging them with a "c" for "current" at the end of each file name). Guess how many copies of filenamec.doc have I found? Go on, guess!

The company I work for has a 4 PC LAN. You must understand the LAN was set up and configured before I started to work there.

Ok, they use Outloook Express for email. But the company only have one email account. The lusers working there don't seem to understand why email sent from one PC with that account gets replied to in another PC witht he same account.

I disabled the email on two PCs and told them to check mail only in one of the two remaining ones. Why two remaining ones? Naturally ebacuse the PHBs don't want to wait to send "urgent" email.

So of course the email is split between two machines now instead of four. That's an improvement, but everyone now jumps on me to find their email

The ISP, interestingly enough, told me we can have as many as 10 email addresses without additional charge. Great! So what's the phone number the account is bileld to (this ISP is owned by the phone company) and what's the user loggin. Well, I foudn the number, but no one knows what loggin means, much less what the actual combination of alphanumeric characters it is.

But they do know how to yell for their email. That they ahve no trouble doing.

I've never had any trouble with BlueYonder's tech support over the phone - they've always known what I was talking about and don't talk down to me.

No such luck with the email support. Recently, my boyfriend's colocated box (which I've had my own domain running on for a couple of years now) moved locations. Now, quite what happened we're not sure, but once it got to the new location, (which has a bigger pipe and lower costs) the thing won't run. The two SCA drives aren't detecting. I got fed up with waiting for someone to sort that out, set up my own mail and web servers on my g4, got an account with dyndns and transferred the domain. Alright so I'm now drowning in spam because I've not set up SpamAssassin yet, but hey, I'm not losing valid mail. Anyway, I noticed that while a lot of my friends on IRC were showing up as coming from their own vanity domains, I wasn't, so I thought I'd ask if BlueYonder could set this up for me - I didn't think it would be a problem, seeing as several other ISPs are happy to do this.

I got an email back stating that they didn't support IRC clients, that the domain you appear to be coming from has nothing to do with them, and must be in the settings. *bangs head on desk*

*** 26/02/2004 09:27:13 Will ***

Recommend 3-4 minutes on Defrost.

*** 25/02/2004 16:34:40 Helpdesk 1 ***

PC keeps freezing, when user attempts to freeze

While running my own business, years ago, I was on the phone troubleshooting a user's machine.

We got to the point of editing AUTOEXEC.BAT. DOS kept returning "Bad command or file name". We went round for over an hour, trying various things.

I finally realized that he was typing "AUTOEXECDOTBAT".

Cheers,

PGM

Part of my job involves taking reservations for hotel rooms. There is the occasional person who, when presented the price, goes "But it was cheaper on the Internet!"

That's when the INNER MONOLOGUE replies "Of course it is! We don't have to pay the internet a salary! It works 24-7, and it never calls in sick or with a dead granny! We purposefully make the internet rates cheaper so you won't bother us. Also, people who are smart enough to use a computer usually don't steal things, trash the room, or assault other guests. So if you use my time to make this reservation, you're going to pay my percentage."

Someday the inner voice will come out. And I will lose my job. But oh, what a sweet day that day will be.

When I'm doing a service call the user often shoulder-surfs to see what I'm doing. My favorite thing to do is then search for *.jpg because it really puts them in their place.