Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

When I was doing my GCSEs about nine years ago, our school didn't have a huge complement of IT teachers (in fact they had one proper one and several recruited from other departments, most of whom knew less than the students) but they did have a reasonable collection of computers, which weren't bad for the time. I can't for the life of me remember what they were, but at that time I was familiar with BBC Micros, Ataris and Amigas, and they weren't any of those.

Our IT class contained a small team of would-be hackers who were rather disappointed in these machines as there was virtually nothing you could do with them. The only thing you could do was get in and change the desktop, which was protected by a password.

This password, we soon discovered, was COCCYX.

One of our hacker types found this out and mentioned it to a few of his friends. As the news spread, people took advantage of it - myself included - to go into the desktop and mess about a bit; moving icons around, putting a personalised slogan at the top such as "Hi Everybody!" (yeah, I know) and then logging out - making sure, of course, to change the password before doing so.

And then the excretia hit the fan.

On arriving upstairs during our lunch break to do some work on our final IT projects (deadline looming) we found the computer rooms locked and the one competent IT teacher in a towering rage. Turned out that EVERY single computer in the place had been - er - tampered with. Every last screen had a dirty slogan across the top, icons renamed with libellous comments about students and imaginative sex acts, programs passworded so that nobody could use them, and of course a brand new password so no-one could go in and change it.

It took a week for this poor beleaguered IT teacher to get in to each computer and set the desktops back to normal. A week no-one was thrilled about as we had projects to do and nothing to do them on.

I don't know what the new password was, but I bet it wasn't COCCYX.

I just found this page while surfing the net.

check it out!

http://neil.fraser.name/hardware/trap/

I am not a tech support person, but this happened at my work. One of the groups in the department has a machine room with a various servers and alarge RAID array - a few terabytes or something.

One Friday, some workers came in to do some work in the room - I'm not exactly sure what. Anyway, they (in their infinite wisdom) decided to turn off the air conditioning, (because it was noisy), disable the temperature alarm (because it kept going off while they were working), and leave for the weekend.

On Monday, the temperature in the room had gone up just a bit, and the majority of the hard drives had crashed. Oops. Luckily, there were off-site backups of the data.

I don't know exactly how long the printer had been in use, I would guess about a decade. One day it was printing along and suddenly would only beep.

Diagnosis: The ribbon hit the end. This was one of the old carbon film ribbons, they're used once and that's it. The owner didn't even know what a carbon film ribbon was--when a ribbon wears out it gets too light (he only knew the ink type)! I called up Radio Shack (where the printer had come from) in the hopes that there might be a ribbon stuck in a warehouse somewhere. Turned out they actually had some in town.

The reason it had lasted so long is that about the only use that was being made of it was printing out stuff for school.

Here is a recent (last week (Today: 10/06/04) actually)

I am looking for a Micro-ATX Case. So, no problem, I call up the local computer store, and just because I'm 13, doesn't mean I'm a complete dumbass.

Brackets = ME thinking

M:Me

S:Salesman

S:

M: I was just wondering if you guys sold any Micro-ATX Cases.

S: .......I don't know what you're talking about, buddy (ass)

M: You know, instead of the usual 7 slots on the back, it has 4?

S: I still don't know what you're talking about.

M:*repeats info*

S: Oh, those. I'll call you tommorow around the same time

M: Ok, thanks *hangs up*

*BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG*

Come to think of it, he still hasn't called me yet...

I do second level support for a fairly large company and part of our way around staffing issues is to have our Desktop Support teams across the country take second level support calls from the Help Desk.

So, one day I'm sitting at my desk and I get a call. I see the name and recogize it as someone I helped train for the Help Desk more than 5 years prior (apparently not enough training).

Anyway. He informs me that the customer on the line is having problems powering down her laptop. She can't find the power button on the laptop and doesn't know what to do to reboot it (that in itself should be another story). The mouse isn't working so she can't go to Start, Shut Down, etc. I ask if she's tried using the Windows key on the keyboard. He says he's never heard of that button before, what does it look like. I tell him it's got the little flying window on it. He doesn't see it. I tell him where it is and he tells me that he's never used that before.

The company I worked for was too cheap to buy additional drives for their server, so I enabled NTFS file compression on the data drive.

I soon started receiving complaints from users that their files were turning blue.

I work at a very large software comapny. Because of my job, I have a special Internet connection which is outside the corporate firewall; there's just a router that restricts which TCP/UDP ports can connect to the machine inbound.

I'm also a Ham operator. During my lunch hour I decided to look up some mobile Ham antennas made by a company named Hustler. As I normally do, I guessed their URL (if they had one) would be www..com. I guess I'm the only male in the US who has made it to nearly age 50 without knowing there's an "adult magazine" named Hustler. The instant the page showed, I realized I'd made a mistake and closed the browser window. I then called my boss and explained what had happened. His response was: "Don't worry. I'm not even sure our IT people monitor direct Internet connections, but in case someone mentions it to me, can you give me a URL to a company that sells their products? I sent him the URL (as well as the googled URL for Hustler Antennas). I never heard anything about it, but at least I gave my boss a good laugh; I have a rputation for knowing all kinds of arcane things about computers, electronics, etc. and I didn't know that.

I work for a large Internet service providor in the uk and I took these 2 calls within 20 mins of each other.

Call 1:

me - hello thank you for calling --- can i have your screenname please

customer - S.A.M.G.S.U.N.G

me - *bangs head on desk*

Call 2:

me - hello thank you for calling --- can i have your screenname please

customer - M.I.C.R.O.S.O.F.T

You just couldn't make it up

Hello all,

This is a story showing the stupidity of some customers. This customer called in saying he has a problem with the internet.The error he was getting was error 691. I check his ADSL accont to find that he has lots of bad logins . I told him it was a problem with his password and ask him for the password he is using and tell him that I am going to reset the password for him . so I reset his password and I tell to try to connect . His internet browser was set to auto-redial, so it gets connected automatically.so he tells me ; reading what he sees on his screen" connected at the speed of 288Kb/s "... and stops for one moment thinking then proceeds to disconnect the internet and says :" ok. now I should type in my password again and try to connect,shouldn't I" .............shouldn't he??!!!!!

My fiance loves his gadgets, and his latest one is a rather hot little digital camera. He had been showing it off at his parents' house a lot and the end result was that they decided they were going to get the same model themselves.

A few days later we got a phone call from them saying that their new camera wasn't working properly. We went over there and F had a mess around with it for a while before concluding that they should take it back and get a replacement - every time they took a picture it came up with lines across it.

So F's mother went down to the electronics store and explained the issue to the guy behind the counter, who said "No problem" and went to get someone who could help her - this place has specific clerks dealing with specific items. He returned with a girl, who listened to the description of the problem again and then cheerfully replied "Oh, that's normal. Mine does that!"

Huh???

Fortunately F's mother is not the type of woman to take this sort of crap from sales assistants. She also had the security of knowing that F's camera worked perfectly and that this girl was talking rubbish. After some back-and-forth arguing she got her replacement - but I don't think I'll be shopping in there again with support like that.

You can probably guess which company this is...I have one of their Inspiron laptops, purchased in January. About 3 weeks ago, the HD began making some odd sounds. I opened an email ticket, and then discovered a few days later that my external speaker system had a ground fault; the volume control and speakers were pretty close to the computer and they were giving a lot of feedback, so there was probably something there that the laptop didn't like.

Now, at this point I had emailed my update, but requested a new HD just in case as it was still making some noises after the speakers had been disconnected.

This is what little help I got from overseas tech support:

Round 1 (discovery, opening of ticket): Reinstall XP

Round 2 (problem discovered and partially solved, new hardware requested): Reinstall XP

Round 3 (during which the fan started rattling after a friend nailed my comp with a beanbag toy): Reinstall XP.

I have the new HD now, so we'll see if this fixes the problem. Geesh. Three bloody WEEKS for them to realize that my problem had nothing to do with my OS, it was a hardware issue.

My mom is learning computers, but she's still not the sharpest tool in the kit. Over the summer, I had to clear a buttload of spyware off her machine, update virus defs, renew AV subscription, etc, etc.

At that time (July), I decided to install a router for her cable modem so I could use the connection on my laptop with the card I had. All's well UNTIL...desktop can't get out, but my laptop with the card can. Much yelling ensues, during which she claims it MUST be the router (er, if it was the router, I wouldn't be able to connect either). Her actual problem is that she connects to the modem through a USB dongle, as her 4-year-old Dell desktop doesn't have an Ethernet card. She refuses to let me touch the computer to install one (the tower is shoved right up against the back of the desk and can't be moved because some genius jury-rigged the clamp holding it to the desk with three lag bolts into the desk so the clamp will not come loose). She knows that the dongle connection falls out if you look at it, and I suspect that the dongle itself may be defective.

Eventually (after I leave, so I have no idea how she came to this conclusion), she finds out from a friend that the culprit is...ZoneAlarm. The very same configuration that I have, and it was working fine. The router was also working fine before a massive power outage...did she think that may have had something to do with it? NO.

So, she's been firewall-less on a script kiddie haven ISP since August. What puzzles me is, how did she get it so that ZAP was blocking all traffic; for that matter, how did she uninstall it? It requires a password, and I didn't give it to her on install...

Not a recent story, I used to provide 2 level support for a Large ISP.

This ISP was owned by the countries phone network supplier. This customer/looney tune calledn saying that she has lost her password and could I change it for her. Fair enough - She gave me her username and I found the account on the system. I then asked her for her telephone account number (This is a seperate and longer number than the phone number.) The call started going down hill fast. The customer gave me her phone number, So I asked for her to access her phone bill and read the account number. She replied that it wasn't billed to her account and that the phone number was suffient ID for me to change her password. I replied that as any one could have looked up the phone number from the phone book I needed account holder to call. Now the fun started. The Customer started chanting in a sing-song voice her phone number. This lasted 20 minutes (The only reason I didn't hangup was that calls were randomly recorded and If I was caught hanging up on a customer I got a chewing out.) Any after minutes this old hag said she couldn't be bothered with my unhelpful attitude and was going to watch 'Days of our lives' and hung up on me.

Since then I was given some sage advice - If you are going to hangup on a customer - Do it while you are talking, I mean who would interupt themselves,

A regular call was a customer ringing to say that they kept getting the same e-mails. Invariuably when I looked at the mail server, There was a large 2-3MB e-mail waiting for them. When it came to download the large e-mail it appeared as if the e-mail program had stopped, So the customer logged off the Net (only occured with Dial up Connections). Hence the reoccuring e-mails that proceeded the large e-mail. My advise was - Click on send/receive and then go and make yourself a large hot cuppa - the hotter the better, and not to touch the computer till they had finished.

This was a perfect resolution as it made my supervisor laugh, Didn't frustrate the caller and most of the time I got a call back saying that the cuppa worked a treat.

Ian

This is not a tech tale, but it's similar to a tale I read a while back, and it involves user ID10CY anyway.

I was playing Warcraft III while engaged in a light chat about something with another forumgoer on Battle.net. Another chatter keeps asking the same question: "How do I set up a custom game?" except with slightly worse spelling.

After a few minutes of the same message, I respond: "Hold ALT and press X." Alt-X is the hotkey for "Exit Battle.net." I watch his name disappear from the list and silently chuckle.

A few minutes later, he's back, annoying us all again with "How do I start a custom game?" I tell him the same thing again and he starts spewing expletives at me.

Another silent chuckle and I tell him it's ALT-Q. No, that's not "Quit," but, "Start Quick Game." His name disappears from the list again, and then less than a minute later, he's bitching about how his rating went down after he disconnected mid-game.

He could have noticed that pressing ALT-A would cancel the game search before the game started. Again, I silently chuckle. I'd hate to see him use other programs.

: how do I do this?

: Alt-F4.

I'd have helped him if he were less annoying, or using another program, but when it comes to annoying gamers, I have no mercy.

When I was in high school, the IT department was not exactly the greatest. It consisted of one proper IT teacher and several hopeless people who taught subjects like home economics but had been roped into covering the classes. Kids back then were not always as knowledgeable as they are now - the BBC Micro and the Atari were quite big but not everyone had used one - but God knows none of us could have been worse than those bloody teachers.

At the time of this particular tale I was about twelve years old, but had been using a computer since the age of about five (my father being a computer engineer, he liked to have a few around the place, so I grew up surrounded by various models) so was easily able to handle the sort of stuff we were covering. It really wasn't that complicated, anyway - just follow the book. We had just finished a section on opening and editing a file, and were now on to a section on creating them. The book told us to hit New, add some text and save it as Effects2.

So I'm typing away in my new file when I was nudged by a girl next to me. This girl wasn't stupid, but had never had a computer and so took a while to get the hang of anything new.

"What do we have to open?"

She was staring at the wrong screen, which of course only had one option of a file to open - the one we'd worked on in the last section.

"You don't. We're creating a new one."

"Is it Effects2?"

She continued to stare, presumably in the hope that Effects2 would appear on the screen.

"No - we're CREATING one."

Another blank look. She then grabbed the teacher.

"What do we open? I can't find it."

"I've told you before," the teacher snapped. "Effects2!"

And to make matters worse, I could hear this being repeated by half the class on her circuit of the room. Anyone who couldn't figure out that they couldn't open a file they hadn't created yet was just getting more confused thanks to this lamebrained woman, who was going around barking the name of this file without even CONSIDERING looking to see if they were on the right screen.

With teachers like her, how any of our generation grew up to be computer literate I'll never know.

Was approached by a teacher in one of the schools I work in. "My computer is broken. The thingy on the you know isn't working."

Took 4 minutes (and 500 pounds of steam escaping through my ears) to discover the default homepage on IE had been changed. Nothing else was wrong with her "broken" computer.

cust: I'd like to set up my mail

tech support: yes what do you use as mail client?

cust: what?

tech support: how do you view you're mail?

cust: outlook express

tech support: ok open OE click tools go to accounts

we got to the server page

tech support:ok could you please type in lower case mail.pop3.net.au and same in the outgoing mail server, click next

cust: ok getting error incorrect pop3 would you like to continue anyway

tech support:no, click back and could you please read back to me what you have in the incoming mail server

cust:mail.pop3.net.au

tech support: ok click next

cust:still same error

10 min l8r

cust:do you want me to put a space between the lower and case

Original Description

10/14/2004 09:19:10 AM Email Incident

My UNIX server took a hit in the head - on top- this morning and the amber attention light is on the front of the box. I gave it a cold pack, aspirin, and a hug, then rebooted. The light is still on. The server is an IBM p Series model 7029-6E3.

Information Request

10/14/2004 12:58:24 PM Alix M -

Did you send it flowers and apologize? If that doesn't work either, give me a few more details about what happened while I telnet in and run some diagnostics.

(End of story -- a piece of equipment fell from a shelf above the server. Other than a scratched case, it's fine.)

I work as a Systems Analyst in and office with about 100 users all using Windows workstations. One afternoon I wanted to see if I could send a "net send" to the domain.... so I typed "net send domain This is a test message please click ok to ignore thanks (myname)"

Easy enough?

Yeah to you and me maybe, the phone rings its one of the girls from the office - we can call her Rita.

Rita> Hello ***** Ive just had a message pop up on my screen and Im not sure what to do.

Me> (by now realised that I can play along) Really Rita? What does the message say?

Rita> It says "This is a test message please click ok to ignore thanks (myname)" Im just not sure what to do?

Me> Try clicking ok......

Rita> Brilliant thanks.

Theres always one.......

I'm generally fairly computer literate being a web programmer, but in this instance I was definately the (l)User.

I have a wireless network with a router/wap/dsl modem. It was destroyed in the fiercest thunderstorm that I remember, the flash was spectacular and it melted the case with my hand about 6 inches from it aiming to remove the cables!

Anyway, I am sad enough to have had a spare router and microfilter lying around, so I plug it all together and redo all the configuration.

My network is fine, but I can't access the internet and spend a couple of hours in fruitless troubleshooting. As far as I can see, everything is set up correctly.

I decide to admit defeat and call my ISPs tech support. Now these guys are brilliant and will usually (in my opinion) go way beyond the call of duty to help out a customer.

We go through the usual palava of checking all the settings, they are all fine, so the tech runs a line check and reports that there is a problem on the line.

{ba_DING} the bells go off and I remember that I hadn't swapped out the microfilter....

Did so and it was fine.

Sigh

** kudos to all the Tech Guys and Gals at Demon Internet **

This is a stupid user tale (and, possibly a stupid tech tale as well) *_*

Recently, I had to replace the HDD in my Dell laptop. This is the drive that I was told earlier this month by overseas techs would require nothing more than a Windows reinstall to function perfectly (er, no, even a non-tech could tell that the drive itself was failing and I had described the exact symptoms to TS).

Reinstallation went well, until...no Ethernet. The Firewire was recognized, but the Ethernet was not. Cue at least a dozen attempts at locating, uninstalling, and reinstalling the Ethernet driver from the utilities disk interspersed with various colorful epithets directed at the computer itself. XP still refused to recognize its existence.

After half again that many tries, I got fed up and actually decided to contact Dell TS (see above why I am somewhat hesitant to contact them unless all other avenues have been exhausted). I'm told boot into safe mode and reinstall. Which is all well and good, except that for some reason I am not able to boot into safe mode on this laptop.

So, this morning (10/17), I once again attempt the exact same operation that had frustrated me to no end the night before.

IT WORKED. I still cannot figure out exactly what I did that made it work this time. Maybe the computer got scared at the prospect of succumbing to tech support? (no offense to any Dell techs here, but my experiences with overseas support have never been good)

why oh why???

i am a developer, and myself and a colleague have developed this huge system... so there are people being trained on this new system in our lovely new computer training room... now in order for them to use the system, they have to log into the computers as themselves (i.e. NOT the training room user accounts). so the lady training the people comes rushing into my office (why me????), "they can't log in!!"

"is everyone logged in as themselves on the computers?"

"yes!"

so my colleague goes to investigate. she comes back... "it's fine now. they weren't logged into the computers as themselves..."

why people, why??? did i not ask you if you were logged in as yourselves??? aarrggghhh!!!

hi,

i work as tech support in local ISP for 3 years

one day call comes from eldery femail client

client: hello my grandson was on Internet yesterday and you told him that he is 1 milionth th user, so we won free trip to bahamas, i wish to inquire when we will be able to use this

me: ?! mwhat do you mean, we told him ...can you explain a bit

client: well, he logged on your Internet and there was a window that said we won free trip because we are 1 milionth customer

me: that must be some pop-up spam window wich opened when you surfed to specified web site, it has nothing to do with us as your ISP

customer: i dont know what are you saying, it said that we won!!!

and we use your Internet, are you saying we dont have this trip, I want to speak to your supervisor

me: you are doing that, i am in charge of tech support,and trust me, first of all your problem has nothing to do with tech support, and secondly, Internet is full of such pop-up spams, you just need to educate your grandson about using Internet, i can even recomend you nice books for that if you like

client: you are trying to cheat us, I will sew you

me: please feel free to do that

client: hangs up furiously, swearing...nice elderly femail

aditional info: our ISP offers only connections localy, since country has only 4 milion people they realy thoguht that we as small local ISP have 1 milion customers..LOL

and that everything they see on Internet while connected through our access server is our property

I just announced to a customer that I intend to do a remote control session to solve her problems with our application.

She wrote back: "What is remote control? Do you have to come over here to do that?"

I wonder if she walks up to her TV to change channels...

At the Community College I go to, they have a babysitting software on the computers that allows the instructor to take over your screen; view your screen; broadcast your screen to everyone else's screen; or, of course, lock and take control of your screen.

It's the first day of my A+ class being taught by a lady who usually teaches in the GED program of the school, so naturally, she doesn't take sh*t.

I was sshing into my Linux box at home, happily using a cli-based IM program and updating some packages when she tells us all that we're not to browse the internet while she's teaching or there WILL be trouble.

About 5 minutes later (while I had su'ed), she takes control of my screen and types the following two commands: "cd /" "rm -r *". She then opens Notepad (school's boxes are 'Doze, naturally), and types "I told you no browsing!"; then shuts down my machine. Naturally, when I got home, EVERYthing on my computer (and my nfs shares too) were GONE.

The best(worst) part was when I told the network lab admin (who curses a blue streak a mile long whenever any student does anything even resembling outside of his rules), his reply was (in condensed form) "GOOD!!! I DON'T WANT YOU PULLING THAT MF'ING SH*T FROM MY COMPUTERS ANYWAY!!! NOW GET THE F*CK OUT OF HERE BEFORE I BAN YOUR MF'ING ARSE FROM MY GD LABS FORF'ING EVER!"

Only a few weeks later a 'Doze loving lowest-level lab tech caught me running Knoppix on the school's machines. I still haven't been banned from the labs.

1:

(M = me, F = friend)

F: 'Well, I'm trying to connect to a web site and it worked before but now all I get is a blank page with an error. Could it be because of the hurricane?'

M: 'Maybe, what site is it?'

F: '********.be'

M: 'Um, that would be a site in Belgium'

F: 'So?'

M: 'You are using a Belgian isp to view a Belgian webpage from a Belgian computer, and the hurricane was in America'

F: 'But the internet is Microsoft and Microsoft is an American company, right?'

I'm the support for a busy team, and one of the attorneys whom I support, although a brilliant person, is not so computer savvy. One day she handed me a floppy and asked me to save something on it; when questioned by her supervisor why she couldn't do it herself, she responded: I don't have one of those. Of course she did. She frequently has trouble docking her laptop and gets very impatient when she can't minimize the application in which she's working.

But today was the most amusing. She had some junk emails she wanted forwarded to spamshark; however, she didn't want the emails to open while she forwarded them (because she was worried about a virus). I informed her that typically a virus isn't activated by the email itself but by the attachment, but she insisted I contact the help desk to verify. After receiving the message that there's no way with our system setup to forward a message without opening it and that viruses aren't often spread through email, she happily went forward with reporting the spammers.

My roomie is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. She and I were Instant messaging each other and she wanted to send me her credit card. I tolld her not to send it over IM as it was very insecure.

"Oh,", she said, "can I email it to you then?"

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

I worked in Dell Customer Support several years ago when our management staff announced that we were now selling a new cover-it-all warranty. It was apparently expensive but the rule was that as long as the damage was not deliberately caused, we would replace anything on the laptop that broke for any reason.

Shortly thereafter, I got a call from a customer and could tell from the tone of his voice that he didn't hold out much hope for his computer.

You see, he was in a hurry, put the laptop on top of his car and forgot about it. He didn't think about it again till he was backing out of the driveway and heard a loud crunch! Apparently, the laptop slid down the back of the car and he backed over it ... but he *did* have our super-duper warranty.

I knew that this warranty covered parts ... but the entire computer? I checked with my manager and she assured me that as long as the damage was unintentional, we would replace anything that was broken. So, with her approval, I sent out one copy of every part that goes into a laptop, plus a tech to put it all together, and the customer got a brand new laptop out of the deal. Boy was he surprised!

Customer: "Oh, so now that the pictures are downloaded, I can just delete them, right?"

Me: "I would recommend deleting them ONLY if you will NEVER need them, ma'am."

Customer: "Okay "

(Customer mutters to herself for a few minutes I hear her say 'delete okay, now that's done.')

Customer: "Okay, how do I attach them?"

Me: "Did you delete the images, ma'am?"

Customer: "Yes "

Me: "Now that you've deleted them, you can no longer attach them, ma'am."

Customer: "Well THAT would have been useful to know."

Me: "Yes, ma'am, that's why I said to delete them ONLY if you will NEVER need them again."

Customer: "Oh right."

I'm the SINP tech support for my neighbourhood (Same Idiots, No Paycheck) and I have seen many weird things, but this is the best.

My neighbour, that I know as Bob the Builder, is a modelling nutcase. So, of course, he didn't need a someone with any remote knowledge to assemble a computer. I gave him the motherboard, powerpack and case myself with some instructions, and let him at it, as he refused any professional help, and I prayed that he wouldn't get it too wrong. Anyway, he calls me around to his garage when (surprise) it wouldn't start, and I was expecting to see loose cables, broken cards etc, but not what I saw.

You guessed it, modelling glue. Absolutely everywhere, on every connector. Not outside, but on the pins. The Captain, being a professional and very neat modelman, it was very hard to see, and only obvious when you tried to remove the components. It took me a little while to realise the problem (to his credit, it was perfectly put together.) and when I did, I broke down in tears. The good kind. I told him that he wasn't meant to use glue, and he said this...

"I wanted one that stood up. It stops the bits falling out."

I started working at an ISP in April 2004. Since then, I've began talking in my sleep, attempting to solve imaginary problems, and creating a lot of

laughter in the processes. Two examples:

Me, still living at my parents house, sound asleep after back to back overnight (1:30am to 10:30am) shifts, staying late on both.

My brother knocks on the door, I mumble to come in.

H=Him

M=Me

H: Dude, you got any shorts I can borrow?

M: I dunno man, their probably getting caught in our spam filter.

H: What?

M: Have them send a message to <address> and I'll whitelist the server

H: What the hell are you talking about?

M (now actually awake): Dude, what are you talking about? Why did you wake me up?

I have no memory of any of that conversation up until the last line. Two days ago I had another episode. No longer living at home,

I crashed after a couple of long shifts. G=Girlfriend

M=Me (again, sound asleep)

G: Do we have any more milk?

M: I'm not sure, let me check...

Minutes go by with my laying face down on the floor, her staring at me

G: Well?

M: I'm not sure right now, I'll open a trouble ticket with our provider.

G: (kicks me in the side) You aren't at work

M: Huh? (again, waking up)

I'm horrible :(

I do tech support for a software company. If people using our software has a problem, they call us.

I should preface this by saying our software company is throwing a big gala in Vegas to tout our new software. All the Sys Admins at companies using are software are there. The people left in charge are the lackies.

In comes the call.

Lacky: No one can login to your program. Once they type in the login/password, it just hangs.

I let him know that we validate the user login/password off the PDC and if it just hangs at this point we might need to reboot the PDC. I ask him to do that, but he says he can't. He explains the he unplugged the PDC and is in the process of moving it. Therefore he can't reboot it.

Hi love the site gave me many a titter on alongnight ,

anyway I dont do tech support for aliving anymore but i do do it for friends and family anyway my story I recieved a phone call from a good friend of my wifes asking for help with a minor problem her dvd disk wouldnt play in her kids computer now i built this machine for her and was pretty sure i hadnt put in a dvd drive but she insisted i had so after a rather strained phone call i got her to check in system and hardware hummmm guess what NO dvd drive shed spent over 3 hours trying to run this dvd on a standerd drive even installing dvd playing software .....this is the same women who after i installed anti virus and ad aware didnt bother to update them and i had to remove over 60 virus's and god knows how much spyware ....oh lord save me from pc owners who dont even read instructions

sorry this was long but sometimes its nice to take the rise out of friends.....lol

gruf69