The Intelectual Black Hole!

[Spattison]

**WARNING**
This is an attempt to blow off steam on my part.

Have any of you ever had a week where EBKAC(error between keyboard and chair) runs rampant through out your place of employment?!
I have just had such a week. The same guy came up to me 7 different times with the exact same problem. "My 10-key pad on my keyboard isnt working!" The solution as many of you know is to simply depress the Num Lock key and it will funtion again.
The problem I have is that normally intelligent people seem to be stuck by an intelectual black hole on occasion. I am usually the recipient of thier lack of wisdom at these times though so dont really appreciate the severity of their problem. Its like all of thier knowledge about life and their jobs gets sucked out of their heads for the duration. Is it just me or does this happen around the country as well? Please tell me it does and that I dont work with a bunch of socially retarded people!!

[wizofid]

Yuo don't - I've watched techs mess for four hours with a machine that needed a new mouse - and the operator had gotten the mouse - tried it - and then called tech support.

wiz;)

[alexj]

Quote: "Is it just me or does this happen around the country as well? Please tell me it does and that I dont work with a bunch of socially retarded people!!"

Nope. It does not happen around the country... I happens around the world. But don't worry, only a very large percentage of the population is afected. :D

I am a student/worker at Faculty of Sciences Of the University Of Lisbon in Portugal (http://www.deio.fc.ul.pt). More precisely, I work for D.E.I.O., the Operations Research department of the institution. I wanted to get a degree on something computer related but, through a great turmoil, ended up in applied math and being a network administrator for the department. (I hate math!)

I'm surrounded by very high IQ people, young students that have an enourmous ability to accquire knowledge and understand a lot about computers (ICQ and IRC anyway:) ), but they all have a big problem... as far as they are concerned, a system crash is when you throw two or more monitors up and they smash in mid-air.

You can't believe how dumb these guys can be! I cope with everything from printer malfunctions (not turned on) to more serious problems... like when the user comes screaming that the system he was using malfunctioned while he was trying to print something. You go to the system and there's a message on screen that says something like 'The printer is out of paper. Insert more and press the feed key on the printer' (oh, i forgot, this message is in portuguese, they don't... can't use their brain to translate from english...).

For Christ sake, If there's a little warning sticked to a system saying 'This computer is temporarily out of order' someone removes the sticker, tries to use the system, and calls me or some other sysadmin to warn him that the system is out of order!!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

OK, I'm back to my normal self again... breathe deeply... OK...

[AzKidd69]

PEBKAC...

All the time I see this.. My computer won't turn on.. (power strip off, unplugged etc)

people who turn off auto-update on anti-virus, and then don't manually update. and then get a virus and blame us because we did not protect them and we told them the AV software would minimize the risk of infections..

computer runs slow (more icons in system tray than entries on start menu)

I can't connect to the internet (phone line unplugged or plugged into wrong slot, and they can properly hook up a answering machine !)

display doesn't fit screen... (can't figure out how to adjust monitor)

etc etc and it's only wednesday.. You should see a saturday when people aren't working

BTW I am a partial owner at a computer store.

[newclockr]

It's all due to the depletion of the ozone!

[alexj]

And it's getting worst. Here at DEIO it's the end of the period and there are lots of exams to be made on (always malfunctioning computers) and a lot of other things to do. And to make me even happier my girlfriend left me after dinner friday night (we've been together for seven years now, everything seemd fine, and we were becoming serious about a home, kids, marriage and stuff). She said she was no longer capable of seeing herself in the future with me because I'm falling behind on my studies!!! (She really knows how to love someone, don't you think?)

Here I am now (tuesday) at college hoping someone doesn't come up with some real life problem like 'my mouse doesn't work when the comp is off!! Why?'
One thing's for sure: When I die (many years from now) I will certainly go to Heaven and back on earth I'll be canonised! :D

[Spattison]

I can empathise with the girlfriend situation. I had one leave me because she said she "felt to safe". And if that wasnt bad enough, a week later she marries one of my friends and moves back to mommy and daddys in NoCal because she was afraid that I might become violent. I am not a violent man and the fact that she felt to safe with me would indicate, from a 3rd party view, that she never would expect any violence from me.
Well you know what they say, Women: you cant live with them and you cant bury them in the back yard.

[alexj]

When a woman says "I need some time on my own/to think" she means "I have someone else."

[Jimstep]

When I was working technical support many years ago, one of the managers, who is responsible for the financial reports for the company, came up to me one morning and said his terminal was not working and he couldn't signon to the mainframe to do his work.

This was back in the days when we just replaced all the dumb terminals with pc's with 3270 emulators installed.

I walked over and looked down at his computer on his desk and then looked at him and said "Did you try turning it on?".

It baffles me that some people can find their way to work every day. Actually, we had gal that was nicknamed "rain woman" because she got loss going to work about once a week, but that's another story...

[danee]

I presume everyone's heard the 'ol tech support joke about the woman using the mouse as a peddle (as in sewing machine idea)

[alexj]

How about the guy that calls at tech suppport about some dificulties with a 3 diskettes program instalation ?

"The first one went ok. When the computer asked, I inserted the second one. But now with two disks in the drive I'm unnable to insert the third one. How can I complete the program instalation?"

Even worst...

Tech: "Ok, we'll need you to send us a copy of the disks to see wat's wrong, ok?"

User: "Uhhh... OK."

Severeal days later the thechnical support department received a photocopy os three diskquettes...

:D

[Jimstep]

And then there was the support help desk that received a call from a woman who said she was having problems accessing her program on her computer. She said that it just went away and the screen is blank.

After a some basic questioning:

Technician: What is the model number of your computer?

After hearing some scrurying around:

Caller: I can't read it.

Technician: Why is that?

Caller: Because it's dark in this room.

Technician: You don't have any light.

Caller: Well, no, the power went out in the building....

[alexj]

God is dead... :D

[Ammok]

From God, reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

Anyway, I havent yet met atechie with an ounce of sense. My current IT manager thinks that DOS is still run by Digital. And that all users are thick as two short planks and why they want pentiums higher than 25mhz God alone knows.

Anyway there plenty of ways to take the p*ss of the supreme being at your place of employment.

Tell the buyer the problem with her Access query can only be solved by the Great Tech and then stand over the other side of the desk while he tries running the query on the afored mentioned P25 with 4mb ram(2 woulda been enough) and then pontificate on how your 9 year old daughter has a pc that could do the query in fifteen seconds. Finish coffee twenty minutes later, smile and then wander off sayings "looks like it CRASHED" at the top of voice just as the MD comes in.

Alternately, when he off sick due to the pressure of working with BOFH's, strip three of his most ancient offering to peices rebuilt one that works and then tell the MD you have saved the company £100,000 and when comes back in to find his beloved 286's completly trashed and goes running to the boss for justice screaming "that ******* has just cost the company 100 bucks" you smile and offer to buy him a coffee and then show him the letter of thanks.

To all you techies who don't know how to treat your users well, beware the B*stard Operator From Hell

www.theregister.com

PS I have more stories and I think my techie hates me.:D

[mentat_void]

LOL! When I read the title of this post I thought it was about Atlanta Georgia! Hehe. I know how you guys feel even though I am not in IT biz (even though I should be with all the idiots currently in it ):cool:

[mushroom]

while my brother was geeking at help desk for windo$98 someone called him to ask where the "any key" was humph :rolleyes:

[Ammok]

"Lisa, where's the any key"

Been watching too much Homer Simpson.

[Gobi]

Hi guys!

Well, not sure if this adress has been posted here before, but
I saw you mentioned BOFH (******* Operator From Hell) in a previous post here, and I would like to give you the adress
to the site where the complete story is:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~bofh/

I guess most of you have read this, but for those of you who
hasnt, and are dealing with users (lusers) this is a must. :-)

C'ya around.

Gobi.

[dna_level_c7]

I can't beleive how some people actually overlook some things. We'll I was young once too...but come on:D

I'm not in the IT bussiness, But I do resell a lot of older computers, and it surprises me how someone can call you up and say they can not get online....When they haven set up an ISP account.....:)

[pmasley]

Here is a good one for you.

I had a user call me today and ask me for the login and passwords as they could not get on the internet.

I have my network set up where I can backdoor into any desktop and actually see where they are.

While on the phone with this user and watching her travel around (by the way, she was on the net), she kept hitting a site that ask her for a login and password. It was wanting her private login and password. Talking about blonde roots showing. I do not know personal logins and passwords.

I later found out that she had her system setup to remember all internet passwords and logins.

The weekend before, the company Gods were on a rampage about missusing the company resources so I ran a system/network cleanout script that I wrote and it removed all temp/cookies/and *.pwd files from the users machines. It did not remove the user login scripts to the network.

This one little five minute run program actually caught 35 people when they complained about missing logins and passwords. It reminds me of a comment I heard in a TCP/IP class about users are losers and they all get 0's.