Quote :

"not sinking up correctly"

when referring to Excel not syncing with the database. I love our help desk.

7/30/2009 1:42:34 PM

Ahhh, technical support.

It's becoming more apparent to me that error messages in programs are worthless. Every error should be handled with an alert box that just says "call support."

Our devs are pretty good about explanatory error messages. "Operation failed because user XXX does not have write access to path Y:\ZZZ". And yet our users still need me to ask them to give user XXX write permissions to path Y:\ZZZ. I guess I wouldn't have a job if this wasn't the nature of things, but oh well.

7/31/2009 11:45:50 AM

I've gotten fed up with sending an explanation to AutoDesk in the error report when ever something crashes, so I've taken to just writing the following:

"AutoCAD crashed again. What a surprise!"

oddly enough they haven't found a fix to this problem yet.

7/31/2009 6:15:02 PM

Yeah, I always write obscene shit in stuff like that

7/31/2009 6:27:41 PM

Quote :

"So she "sets the print area" as she says she's doing, only instead of actually doing that, she's only highlighting what she wants to print, but never actually setting it. She hits print preview. "

This is more of a Microsoft poor software UI problem rather than a user problem. MS is terrible at user interfaces, and your expectations have just been calibrated to expect UI to work in cumbersome ways.

7/31/2009 11:00:13 PM

Stop trying to use localhost on other machines and expecting it to work.

8/2/2009 11:21:43 AM

lol

8/2/2009 11:55:59 AM

Quote :

"you dont need an AV if you're careful about what you download. "

This one always makes me chuckle, especially with that announcement last week that the newest versions of Flash player had an unpatched vulnerability that was actively being exploited by banner ads distributed by major ad networks. Now it's right to say that your risk is incredibly low if you never download suspect things or open attachments you're not completely sure of. It's probably not actually worth an average person PAYING for anti-virus software either. Still, this one does always make me chuckle a little, espescially when I hear it from IT workers. There are plenty of ways you can get viruses even if you've patched regularly (sometimes BECAUSE you're patches are up to date) and don't visit any suspicious sites or download anything stupid. They're just not very likely.

Maybe it's just the fundamental attribution error cropping up in IT workers who deal with so many stupid people that they get used to seeing it as the root cause of most ills?

[Edited on August 2, 2009 at 1:26 PM. Reason : ]

8/2/2009 1:24:06 PM

To be fair, it is the cause of MOST ills, just not ALL of them.

8/2/2009 5:02:30 PM

There was one time when a fellow was trying to double click a mouse. I heard *clack* *clack*... he had lifted the mouse up and rapped it twice on the desk.

8/2/2009 5:18:46 PM

I am hosting a Scrum class for a Fortune 50 company Weds. The coordinator has complained that her employees in her group are terribly inefficient. This training will help, but they may have other problems...

Hi -

You can certainly stop by as we discussed to get into the classroom
early for setup..... Just give me a call and I'll meet you down at the
front desk for access to the classroom.

Wednesday morning, the best way to reach me is via pager -
***-983-3658 (input return/callback number) and I'll call you right
back.

-Kara

8/3/2009 1:36:02 PM

you can't make that shit up

8/3/2009 1:38:23 PM

Only thing I can think of is that they don't allow cell phones in the office...I haven't called a pager # in 8+ years. I haven't seen one in forever.

8/3/2009 1:57:14 PM

hospitals still use them on a large scale.

8/3/2009 2:03:02 PM

yep. we have phones people can use, but generally just use desk phones or pagers for emergencies. (note, you can still have a personal cell, but we dont give those out).

it works when most people in the company dont NEED a cell phone or things arent critical.

8/3/2009 3:12:51 PM

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2009/tc20090824_902851.htm

ha

8/27/2009 7:40:22 PM

wtf, it's business week.

And I still say thin client to refer to Citrix or Terminal workstations. suck it.

8/28/2009 7:27:04 AM

What if your'e one of the few that actually owns an HP IPAQ (I'm not, but I did briefly consider one) PDA?

Should you not call it what it is?

Lame article.

8/28/2009 8:27:09 AM

wtf else do you call a god damn thin client? THAT'S WHAT IT IS

8/28/2009 9:01:20 AM

just because no one uses long-distance calls doesn't mean they don't exist

8/28/2009 4:26:52 PM

I cannot believe this..

I assigned some data entry work to 4 people today, each got an excel sheet with a list of about 1500 things to enter. obviously they couldn't finish in a day, so at the end of the day, 3 of them (75%!!!!) asked me how to save it so they could work on it in the morning.

How to save.

File -> Save.

These people are in their teens/20ies. Didn't they learn this in 2nd grade?

10/19/2009 7:35:00 PM

Not to be a smartass, but were they asking simply what to title the file or were they really that clueless?

10/19/2009 8:52:00 PM

yea to be fair, I'd be ridiculously surprised if they were truly how to save a computer file...I could be wrong, but ^ is what I thought they might have been asking as well because I ask people that all the time.

[Edited on October 19, 2009 at 9:10 PM. Reason : ]

10/19/2009 9:08:24 PM

So, I recently found out that my dad, while generally being able to find his way around a computer and figure shit out without any help, could absolutely not grasp the difference between Browser, Search Engine, Home Page, and Website. (he'd asked me to install firefox because he'd "heard it was good")

I can only guess how many times the phrase "so it's like Yahoo" was uttered, despite my insistence that Yahoo is not a program like IE or Firefox, but is just a website like any other website, and that it is completely unrelated to the browser or operating system that one is running... and I just completely gave up while trying to explain that Google is actually a company that makes all sorts of things, like a search engine and a browser, and that running Google Chrome does not mean that you are not allowed to use Yahoo as your homepage...

10/20/2009 4:03:53 AM

I did some 1st tier tech support yesterday for a woman who did not know what the following was:

-Start menu
-Desktop
-Shortcut
-Taskbar

It was a long call....

10/20/2009 8:53:41 AM

yikes.

10/20/2009 8:57:57 AM

At least 4 times a day I have to say "Your taskbar is that gray or blue bar at the bottom of your screen where all your programs are. Right-click somewhere on that where a program is not sitting and choose Task Manager. No, you can't click on a program, you have to click on a blank area. Ok, instead of that click start, run, and type taskmgr and then hit enter. No, that's t-a-S-k, not F. S as in Sierra.

You know what, let's just do a WebEx."

10/20/2009 12:52:28 PM

^^ I finally got her to minimize the windows she had open, and I was trying to get her to open a program from a shortcut that I knew was on her desktop (since we had built the laptop). She should have seen a shortcut to the Recycle Bin and WinDVD.

Me: "So, click on the shortcut that says WinDVD."

Her: "I don't see anything!"

Me: "What is on your desktop?"

Her: "Ummmmm I see a recycle bin and something that says 'shortcut to Windvd.'"

Me: "That thing that says 'shortcut to Windvd?' that's the shortcut to Windvd. Double Click on it."

:carlface:

10/20/2009 12:55:09 PM

I am very fond of telling people keyboard shortcuts to do things if I can't actually see for myself what's on the screen.

of course I don't do tech support for a living, just for friends/family/work.

10/20/2009 2:17:30 PM

Quote :

"Stop trying to use localhost on other machines and expecting it to work."

I got this exact issue today from a System Administrator from a major government agency! Dude did not understand that he had to point to the SQL Server Staging system, since the machine he was installing the software on did not even have SQL installed on it, let alone house the staging DB. I ended up connecting into their system and doing it myself on the fly, and then dude turns around and asks how I was able to access their system without being granted a Key Token. You would think he'd be grateful, but no. Instead I explained that his old connection methodology from 5 years ago was still active, which I found with a little leet digging. He immediately disabled it and asked me to try to get in another way, lol. idiots.

10/20/2009 4:35:24 PM

^x4- ha, next time just tell them to hold ctrl+shift+esc. Boom task manager but I'm sure someone would screw even that up

[Edited on October 20, 2009 at 4:39 PM. Reason : ]

10/20/2009 4:38:02 PM

^^^ The problem with that is that it's difficult to tell people when to hold, when to tap, etc.

For example, if I tell you to press ALT-Tab, you would just press both and release, right?

Well, I've told someone to press ALT-Tab, and then realized that they're just sitting there holding it down.

I've also had this happen when trying to quickly get someone to "My Computer." You can access it by doing WINDOWS-M, however an idiot will just hold it down... and then complain that they have like 400 copies of "My Computer" on their screen.

10/20/2009 10:09:59 PM

We had someone call in the other day asking why his company laptop couldnt get wireless....while on vacation in FL....while trying to connect to the company router back in OH...ugh

[Edited on October 20, 2009 at 11:16 PM. Reason : i cant spell apparently ]

10/20/2009 11:15:03 PM

i know it's not the worst thing in the world but...

i tried to explain to a lady at work today over the phone how to burn a CD from an audio file. She does computer work every single day, most of which is copying cds/dvds and other related activities

[Edited on October 21, 2009 at 12:32 AM. Reason : oh and she couldn't do it. I had to drive up to work and do it for her]

10/21/2009 12:31:42 AM

Windows M isn't the shortcut... I forgot what it is. But you get the point.

10/21/2009 8:31:54 AM

good call on ctrl-shift-esc. Usually if I'm asking an end-user to open task manager it's probably time for a WebEx anyway.

-------
People in the thread complain about vague error messages, but even extremely descriptive error messages are pointless to most users. I get calls from users asking what to do about their "Your windows user does not have permission to modify the file C:\..." errors. I'd say 40% of my calls I have to refer them back to their own network support (if they even have it).

10/21/2009 9:50:43 AM

Quote :

"1. Intranet Popular in the mid-90s, the term "intranet" referred to a private network running the Internet Protocol and other Internet standards such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It was—and still is—sometimes used to describe an internal Web site that was hosted behind a firewall and is accessible only to employees. But today, the term typically is no longer used to refer to the network itself. So you can just use the term virtual private network or VPN to describe a private IP-based network. "

lolwut

10/21/2009 10:42:03 AM

HAHA

10/21/2009 11:10:36 AM

^^ seriously? hmmm.... strange... this contradicts my understanding of network terminology, which certainly is limited.

10/21/2009 1:18:26 PM

How about just internal network, local network, or *gasp* intranet?

10/21/2009 1:21:44 PM

Windows E. Some of the errors may seem vague, but my end users are IT Professionals with years of experience, so it's a little more frustrating considering they should know this stuff by now.

10/21/2009 8:41:21 PM

Don't forget windows+d for instant desktop.

10/21/2009 9:08:01 PM

So this morning there are 20 emails about the same topic. The chain goes like this:

A: Blah blah blah scheduled job failed blah blah blah
A: Woops, please disregard previous message
B: Please take me off distribution list
A: Disregard the message...
C: Please take me off the list
D: STOP REPLYING ALL
E: Please take me off this distribution list
F: STOP REPLYING ALL
G: Please take me off this distribution list
H: STOP REPLYING ALL
I: Please take me off this distribution list
J: Please take me off this distribution list

10/27/2009 7:39:27 PM

10/27/2009 8:03:06 PM

ok... here is a question from one of the inept ones...


my C drive is 220ish gigs, 203 of which are being used
my D drive is 9 gigs, 3 of which are being used (recovery files)

I need 20 gigs free on C drive.

Is there anyway to move over some of the gigs from D to C without totally repartitioning my HD (which I assume would make me lose the recovery files)

10/27/2009 11:39:09 PM

yes, zip up some of your porn and move it to the D: drive.

better yet, delete it... you know some of its probably questionably legal anyway.

problem solved.

10/27/2009 11:50:07 PM

already have the porn off... only things left I dont want to move.

10/27/2009 11:56:36 PM

then you're crap out of luck. but srsly, wtf are you doing with 203 gigs of non-porn non-mp3 data on your hdd...

10/27/2009 11:59:03 PM

Buy an external hard drive, use it.

10/28/2009 12:03:01 AM

I need 20 gigs on C, not 17 on there and 3 elsewhere.

most of the C drive is music files, but I dont want to move some of them to an external drive and have to worry about plugging it in everytime I want to sync (unless I dont understand how that would work)...


hmm, could I move some songs from C drive to D drive without Itunes freaking out?

10/28/2009 12:12:26 AM