^^ yea sry i'm not fluent in my web maintenance / it support

12/11/2007 9:01:57 PM

Quote :

"nor do i often use 2 monitors (though i do have 2 at work)."

probably because you haven't used 3 yet

12/11/2007 9:02:02 PM

Quote :

"^^ yea sry i'm not fluent in my web maintenance / it support"

well I suppose if you were it still wouldn't help you in this situation since web maintenance and it support have nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

and yes, I do realize that you are just trolling and baiting.

[Edited on December 11, 2007 at 9:06 PM. Reason : .]

12/11/2007 9:04:50 PM

come on guys - not everything I say is a troll

I love this thread, but it really annoys me when people come on here flabbergasted that someone doesn't check 4 email accounts from an iPhone or use 2 monitors.... shit like that has nothing to do with their technical competence and reeks of this guy:




Don't be that guy

12/11/2007 9:17:56 PM

lets try this again

started training this guy to take over my old job which consisted of database admin/programming, web application management, and standard IT support. Three things gave me pause:

1) he asked me why i had two monitors setup next to each other. said he couldn't figure out why someone would want two monitors hooked up to one single computer.

2) he said he heard that i had an iphone, and said he would have no use for an iphone. i mentioned one thing i use it for is to check 4 email accounts so i don't have to log into 4 different websites to get my email. he said he would have no use for reading email on a mobile phone.

3) he says he's never replaced any parts inside a computer, but he can "use computers real well." (he's responsible for supporting 80+ users and fixing/upgrading/replacing their computers)

this could bad [for my old employer]

12/11/2007 9:37:10 PM

^are you sure you aren't training ^^

12/11/2007 9:38:56 PM

My grandmother once had a problem with her DVD player. Granted, she is almost 80, but she had the DVD in upside down.

12/11/2007 9:49:51 PM

sorry roger - you tiger now!

12/11/2007 9:50:27 PM

^^i wouldn't say thats technically inept but rather poor vision. A lot of DVD's are dual sided for widescreen/fullscreen or bonus features etc.

[Edited on December 11, 2007 at 9:51 PM. Reason : .]

12/11/2007 9:50:57 PM

I wouldn't really consider the iPhone 'locked down'.

12/11/2007 10:10:27 PM

didn't you get the memo

we're moving along

(but neither would i)

12/11/2007 10:11:14 PM

I'm just saying.

12/11/2007 10:13:33 PM

so i'm sitting here with my laptop next to my desktop and i'm using the mouse on the desktop but reading on the laptop. i need to switch windows on the laptop but i can't get the mouse cursor to move to the laptop screen wtf oh right...durr. i'm too used to dual monitors

12/12/2007 10:59:16 AM

I just hooked my laptop up to my desktop monitor... nobody at work understands why this is useful and much more efficient. i forgot how nice it was, and with vista it's so easy to set the offset between the two monitors to adjust for the height difference... now if I could just get the taskbar to go all the way across

12/12/2007 11:03:01 AM

Quote :

"with vista it's so easy to set the offset between the two monitors to adjust for the height difference"

you can do that in xp. for the taskbar thing, get multimon

12/12/2007 11:24:19 AM

^ i've always used ultramon. does multimon do anything better (besides being free?)

12/12/2007 11:42:03 AM

I haven't used ultramon, myself, but I've heard good things about it. If you have to pay for it then yeah, prolly the freeness of multimon is its primary distinguishing feature

12/12/2007 12:35:20 PM

ultramon has a lot more options but hell, multimon is free and gets the job done... so that's what i'm using now.

12/12/2007 12:47:02 PM

i just reinstall ultramon when it expires... it takes less than a minute.

12/12/2007 1:42:24 PM

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

When you fill out the bug report form there, it bounces you back an email saying the address doesn't exist (the form sends an email with your email address as the return).

12/13/2007 4:07:25 AM

Quote :

"i certainly dont feel the need to check my email on my phone either, nor do i often use 2 monitors (though i do have 2 at work)."

if i did not have the ability to check email on my phone, i would most likely lose my job

also i couldn't live without 2 monitors on my desk at work, i have too much stuff going on at once.

and p.s.: i love ultramon, it's basically the shit

12/13/2007 5:36:26 AM

^Yeah, but I don't think whether or not someone does those things is enough to label them as technically inept. It's not even proof that someone isn't technically inept if they do them.

1) I saw a guy that wasn't using an optic mouse. It had a roller ball instead!

2) There was this one guy that was still using an AGP video card. AGP!

12/13/2007 8:34:30 AM

Quote :

"Yeah, but I don't think whether or not someone does those things is enough to label them as technically inept. It's not even proof that someone isn't technically inept if they do them."

i'm not saying the dude is definitely inept, just that he might be. given the requirements of the job, i would expect him to at least recognize the usefulness of dual monitors and mobile email...whether he chooses to use them is a different thing. and the third item made me worry more than the other two combined. i would expect anyone providing IT support would have at least a little experience with their hands inside computers.

so the jury's out, but it looks bad.

12/13/2007 8:52:54 AM

12/13/2007 10:15:25 AM

my favorite was my grandmother gluing the video out cable for her PC on the TV and complaining when it wouldn't work

12/14/2007 7:10:21 AM

wait, WHAT?

12/14/2007 9:21:33 AM

memo to users: HELP ME HELP YOU

if the field says "city," do not type in the city,state

thx




although from now on they won't be able to so i guess i can cancel that memo

12/14/2007 11:09:02 AM

we have network drives that get automatically mapped when a new user account is created and logged into for the first time. they also get remapped upon the next login if someone manages to disconnect one.

anyway we have a new employee, about 30-35 year old female who claimed she was a "computer whiz". she's been here for a couple of months and has been nothing but trouble. she uses remote desktop from her home to do her work and she called me recently and said "i can't find the W: drive. i've looked in my my documents, on the desktop, in (what she calls)the remote, and everywhere. it's gone."

i remote controlled her remote desktop account and double clicked my computer and it was right there where it should be. she said "i didn't even think to look there!"

wouldn't be so troubling if she hadn't used it about 5000 times in the time she's worked for us.

[Edited on December 14, 2007 at 11:31 AM. Reason : *]

12/14/2007 11:31:26 AM

yeah if i was looking for a mapped network drive, "my computer" would be the LAST place i looked!

12/14/2007 1:04:34 PM

to answer the question before, i do technical training. i actually do use 2 monitors quite often because we have a projector that does both and it is useful for presentation. at work though i generally just toss outlook on the second screen.

[Edited on December 14, 2007 at 1:39 PM. Reason : at work meaning in my cube]

12/14/2007 1:39:05 PM

oh yeah im the same way. at work two monitors is a necessity. at home though its practically useless

12/14/2007 1:45:16 PM

work spoiled me enough that i picked up a cheap used 19" 4:3 screen...now i use it like i do at work, which has really helped while making presentations or writing research papers or allowing me to watch full screen television while working

i like having two monitors

12/14/2007 1:56:00 PM

my tale is about about this last page and a half and how the people posting might actually think these are tales of the technically inept - get back to the funny

12/15/2007 10:48:20 AM

I don't expect people to be technical wizards or anything, but some of the stuff I deal with is ridiculous

if you're getting paid out the ass to be a sysadmin, you should at least know not to run fsck on a mounted partition

"ya, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and reinstall" [/lumberg]

12/15/2007 11:11:27 AM

wow, you have two monitors? wow! WOW

12/15/2007 11:18:48 AM

my neighbor asked me if I was good with cell phones because her screen wasn't working and she couldn't make or receive calls...

I held down the power button or all of about 2 seconds, the screen turned on and the phone was functional...

12/15/2007 12:11:15 PM

Quote :

"so i'm sitting here with my laptop next to my desktop and i'm using the mouse on the desktop but reading on the laptop. i need to switch windows on the laptop but i can't get the mouse cursor to move to the laptop screen wtf oh right...durr. i'm too used to dual monitors "

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net

Great software project - try it out

12/15/2007 1:03:59 PM

^ one of the best utilities that have ever been written

I will often have my laptop next to my desktop, and with this program I just use my desktop mouse and keyboard to control the laptop. It will work with your clipboard, too, which is just icing on the cake.

12/15/2007 1:13:53 PM

Damn how did I not hear about this earlier, awesome utility

12/15/2007 4:05:52 PM

synergy ftw

scud showed it to me back in the day

I used to have it set up at home, have 3 monitors and a kvm switch hooked up to the left one, so I had to rewrite some of the code to adjust. All in all it was pretty easy and worked great.

12/15/2007 4:31:08 PM

I used to use synergy when I had 2 desktops. Don't really need it anymore though.

12/15/2007 5:31:09 PM

when we first got an "internet" connection, my parents also bought this book that was like "good websites" and it was pretty big, maybe it was like, "internet yellowpages" or something similar, so i thought that was all the websites on the internet

and i didnt really see the big deal at the time

12/18/2007 3:21:42 PM

I got a copy of the internet yellow pages for free from the library many years ago. But I was also aware that it was not a complete list and there were such things as search engines.

12/18/2007 3:40:24 PM

i mean this was back in the mid 90's (like 94/95, maybe even earlier), before there were really any good search engines available that were worth a damn

12/18/2007 3:41:41 PM

Yahoo and Altavista were pretty much the only choices back then

Both sucked balls.

12/18/2007 4:16:12 PM

yahoo wasn't a search engine

12/18/2007 8:06:08 PM

I remember using dogpile back then.

12/19/2007 8:05:07 AM

i used cnet search.com

12/19/2007 9:08:32 AM

Not really a tale here but... IMO - users are allowed to be inept or ignorant. They are not specialists who work on computers. I do have some fun stories that have been both hilarious or absolutely aggravating... but I don't have the time to dig up all those at the moment.

My only gripe though really is with two groups of people. Technicians who cause more trouble than they are worth and non-technicians who try to fix their own computer. If you are worth your salt as a troubleshooter, you know exactly what I mean.

Also... if you ask me what is more important in a skill for troubleshooting, knowledge of the machine or communication skills... it is easy... communication skills. If you don't have the knowledge, you can research it or escalate the problem to someone who does. If you can't even communicate well enough to figure out the problem, you are going to just cause more harm than good by pissing off your users or clients.

If you find yourself still doing desktop support via phone, you will seriously want to focus on how you obtain information and ask questions of your users/clients. I guarantee your life will become much happier and stress levels will drop tremendously. Also... if the user/client actually caused a problem that could be a potential repeat in the future, inform them of how to avoid said problem.

One last thing - thank god for remote desktop support and moving up in the world beyond troubleshooting.

12/20/2007 10:05:10 AM

new vocabulary learned from people at work:

-Jigabyte. Ghetto term for gigabyte

-Megaplexel. Ghetto term for megapixel.

Guess the age/race of each customer= you won't win anything.

12/29/2007 9:26:28 AM