#176521 - 2007-05-26 09:25 PM
Too stupid to own a computer?
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Les
KiX Master
Registered: 2001-06-11
Posts: 12734
Loc: fortfrances.on.ca
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At work we have our usual inside joke remarks like BMW, BDU, ID10T (spoken as ID ten T), PEBKAC, and "did you keep the boxes". The latter refers to the urban legend recounted at http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/wordperfect.asp which tends to dismiss many other tales as also urban myths.
I have personally experienced a few of those purported myths, the "any" key, the mouse in hand like a TV remote, the photocopied (and stapled) disks.
I also witnessed a coworker on a couple of support calls.
Caller: "what does it mean when the computer says I have an invalid pair-a-meters?" (to make a long story short) turns out it was "invalid parameters".
Same user having trouble executing from the commandline.
Caller: "doesn't work"
Helpdesk: "what does it say"?
Caller: "bad command or filename"
Helpdesk: "you typed it wrong"
Caller: "I typed it *exactly* as you told me"
Helpdesk: "OK, try again and this time read the line back to me before you hit [enter]"
The line read back was not only missing the spaces but also missing the last letter of the command and some of the parms. Turned out the caller could not find the [space] key so he used the [backspace] key instead.
A user bought a WordPerfect upgrade on 5 1/4" floppies. He offered to go to her office and install it for no addition charge but she told him she was "quite competent" to install it. Later she called to complain that the second disk was bad. To make a long story short, when she got to the place in the instructions to insert disk 2, she failed to first remove disk 1. She was vehement in her own defense that "it didn't say to remove disk 1"!
To this day, we still cannot trust users to tell us the truth. When I get a call, I always check their uptime before I ask if they tried rebooting before they called. Either they lie like a rug, or they don't know what "reboot" means. We got so fed up with it that we now task schedule a reboot every weekend.
Take this board for instance... we had problems confusing the shout box with the search box so we moved search all the way up to the top. You'd think that would have been the end of search terms shouted. Supposedly, this board is frequented by sysadmins, not BDUs. What do you think of a sysadmin that cannot even navigate a search box? Would you hire one to manage your network?
_________________________
Give a man a fish and he will be back for more. Slap him with a fish and he will go away forever.
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#176712 - 2007-06-04 10:01 AM
Re: Too stupid to own a computer?
[Re: Jack Lothian]
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Arend_
MM club member
Registered: 2005-01-17
Posts: 1896
Loc: Hilversum, The Netherlands
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Seems weird to me that your wife buys the laptop and then lets those guys touch it in the first place 
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#180745 - 2007-09-20 02:51 AM
Re: Too stupid to own a computer?
[Re: Mart]
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vivster81
Lurker
Registered: 2007-09-20
Posts: 1
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hehe, I am a school sysadmin (amongst my many roles in life!) and yes, while I do have some "special" stories of some of my staff, I generally give the laptop users more headroom than my workstations here at school. I definitely wouldn't trust any of the kids as far as I could throw em, but I do feel that staff members need to be given some leeway to do their jobs efficiently! It is always hard to find a middle ground between giving too much leeway and not enough!
_________________________
I wonder if other dogs think that poodles are a member of some strange religious cult?
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#180780 - 2007-09-24 09:28 AM
Re: Too stupid to own a computer?
[Re: Jack Lothian]
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Björn
Korg Regular
Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 953
Loc: Stockholm, Sweden.
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Now Jack, I know how you feel. I've changed ISP twice because of tech-support that does not listen and ONLY walk you throw the basic steps they have on paper. I acctually had the energy to withstand that list a few times, and to finally get to the point were they divert me to a real tech (with knowledge, not just a paper...). It's then great to hear that 'oh, yeah... sorry can't do anything about it.. our network is to be upgraded - so you'll have to live with it (cable-net then)...' :).
And no, tech's with no real experience nor knowledge doesn't seem to have a fence here in Sweden at least :).
Regarding your wifes lappie - how can you do unauthorized changes, if she hopefully don't have rights to do 'em? Ah, never mind, if the school agrees with her getting a new laptop each year - it's great! She'll always have something new at least ;).
@ Mart - now that was a fun approach to say at least with laptop users. I wish I could do the same sometime. At my current location - only five ppl have local admin rights on their workstation/laptop - the it dep :). Solves a lot of issues (but yeah, creates others..) but no one is complaining and it's more or less all CEO's that have laptops ;).
Edited by Björn (2007-09-24 09:32 AM)
_________________________
as long as it works - why fix it?
If it doesn't work - kix-it!
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