The downside of working in IT
Is that people seem to think we know everything. Last I checked, I'm not an IT God. I can handle HTML, CSS, Photoshop and Flash with arrogant ease. PHP, Ruby on Rails, ASP, C#, Cn, and everything else just leaves me going "Huh?".

/Never agree to do a website for a mate.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Tue 29 Sep 2009, 23:11, 3 replies)

I regularly
make fun of a South Coast naval city.
(Dr Teeth Who asked you, you fuckin' hobbit?, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 23:02, 2 replies)

This one time
I got so annoyed with someone in a supposedly lower business function than myself asking me to do my job that I totally verbed their noun LOL PWNED

Also, in college we verbed this adjective n00b for being such a douche LOL linux rox with gl0x

As legless said - don't like the work? change your fucking career. Oh, you may also want to consider not acting like a total knob-jockey all the time as well, k thx bye.
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 22:24, 8 replies)

While I was consulting
Me, to office PFY (pimply-faced youth, in this case six months out of college and in his first job): OK, please email the users to say the email server's going down at 12, and we'll let them know when it's back up.
PFY: Righto

Much installing of patches later.

Me: OK, PFY, please email all of the users and tell them it's back up
PFY: OK, no problem.

Lounging by the coffee machine, the blackened scar tissue of my heart was warmed slightly by overhearing hysterical laughter. It was the PFY's slightly more experienced co-workers explain the problem with that little mission to him.

He was a little aggrieved. So I explained that he wouldn't be falling for that one again, would he? He eventually agreed.
(purplegod counting down for Christmas!, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 22:19, 3 replies)

a call to ntl
due to total broadband failure got me this response
[ntl] the problem is your UDP is reversed
[me] sorry, did you say my UDP is reversed ?
{ntl] yes your UDP is reversed, turn your modem off for an hour then turn it back on and your connection will be working

5 mins later

[ntl] you are through to disconnections ...
[me] effing ffff ffffffff ffffffff ffff, a month free you say, yes i'm pulling my trousers down and bending over now
(danceswithferrets is leaking sanity, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 21:52, Reply)

tenuous at best
One morning I realized that my internet and cable TV was down and having tried all possible fixes I decided it was time to give the Virgin helpline a call. I also wanted to know why my cable box had taken such an offensive disliking to me:


Turned out they were carrying out maintenance in my area and the problem was sorted shortly, but they couldn't tell me why my hardware became so rude!
(Roopy all is not what it seams, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 20:17, 5 replies)

An unexpected customer
I used to work for a small web development company, now it has 12 developers but at the time I was the 2nd hire, and often was the only vaguely techie person in the office. The boss quite liked his toys, so we never had to worry about having to use crappy old equipment, but it did mean that old machines tended to pile up a bit. These would inevitably be sold on to mates dirt cheap or put on freecycle.

Anyway, one day a phone call comes through asking for the boss, as the guy had trouble with his computer. The project manager being fresh out of university didn't question this, and put them straight onto me as "one of Andy's friends". After greeting them, they asked for the boss Andy again, so I explained that he wasn't in today, and asked what was up. It seems he'd just bought a computer and he was having trouble with constant blue-screening. I'm thinking this is pretty odd behaviour, but if it's one of the boss's friends I'm not going to be rude, so play along, ask him if anything's failing at POST, tell him to reinstall windows, etc. He claims he's done all of this, and I'm getting quite pissed off at him interrupting my coding, so I tell him to just call the people he bought it from.

Him: "I bought it from you guys."

Bugger, I thinks, must be the shitty old fileserver we were trying to offload a while ago. So I say that I don't really know what's wrong with it, and we'd have sold it "as-is", and there are repair shops around, to which he got really pissy, and started complaining about how piss-poor our customer service was.

Me: "Well, we're not a computer shop, we're a web design company. All we did is sold you one of our old machines rather than throw it away."
Him: ".... so this isn't PC World?"

The stupid fooker had got the number for a small web design company (whose rather distinctive name has been confused with a fetish club before) and PC world mixed up. By chance, one of his mates worked at the local PC World, and had the same name as the boss.


Length? Not too bad for a first try, eh?
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 20:10, Reply)

IT support turned me gay
My family didn't get a computer at home until I was 17. As my parents were both total technophobes and my brother was a particularly dippy 12-year-old, I became the family IT expert by default. Many's the time my parents looked on in wonder at their genius child pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and magicking the machine back into life. They really didn't have a clue. They used it for emails only, which they typed with one finger.

My little brother was, as might be expected, a bit more savvy than them. And like any self-respecting 12-year-old boy, he quickly cottoned on to the fact that the internet was full of naked ladies. He spent A LOT of time "doing his homework" on the computer. However, although he managed to work out how to google "big tits", it never occurred to him to clear his history, or to turn off autocomplete, so unfortunately, I knew EXACTLY what he was up to. Every time you started to type "www.." you'd get a long list of helpful suggestions that gave me way more insight than I'd ever wanted into my younger sibling's sexual preferences. He was a dirty little bastard. However, there was one rather large problem standing between him and wanking heaven: the fact that the computer was situated in the hallway. How was he to crack one out when he wasn't alone in the house? Simple: print the stuff out.

One day, I was summoned by the parents to fix the printer. It was, like many of its kind, a temperamental beast, apt to crash and jam if you gave it too much paper, a big print job, or if it just didn't like your face. There was a big print job waiting - 64 pages, if I remember correctly - and the printer was throwing an almighty hissy fit. I switched it off, switched it back on again, gave it a good clip round the ear and the three of us watched in silence as it spat out 64 pages of hardcore lesbian porn in all its minge-tastic glory.

"Grandmasterfluffles," said my mother gently, "Is there anything you want to tell me?"

I tried to tell her it wasn't mine to no avail. She must either have been unfamiliar with the concept of men getting turned on by lesbians or disbelieving that her youngest could possibly be into that sort of thing - either way, she was convinced that I was gay for years. Thanks bro!
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 19:48, 3 replies)

We have a laser plotter at work
Prints A0 in a couple of seconds and smells of static mmmm

Today I printed a plan and it printed 1 layer (foundations) but not the other (pipes). Tried again and same happened. Closed the file and opened again, this time it printed a blank sheet.
Tried again - blank sheet
and again - another blank sheet
and again - the first blank sheet as I put it in the manual feed to reuse it
ditto

Something wasn't right so from my amazing IT skills I knew that turning the printer on and off would probably sort it out. I also rebooted my PC for good measure.

After the reboot, I opened the file and printed again, went to the printer, and there were 6 bastard perfect prints waiting for me.

Turning it off and on isn't always the answer....
( thistle, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 18:56, 2 replies)

I am my entire family's IT support
I am a project manager in a web agency and therefore everyone in my entire family seems to think that I can sort out all of their computer woes because I 'Work In Computers'. Don't get me wrong, I generally know my way around a PC and can even install new hardware if I have to. Each an every time I go to the inlaws, I am taken aside and asked to 'Work My Magic' on their respective computers.

The best was my father in law (RIP - he was a fantastic chap). Every 6 months his computer would grind to a complete halt and would take at least 15 minutes to start. Each time I 'worked my magic' on it, I would find hundreds of viruses and spyware programmes on it. Even those dodgy ones that pretend to be anti-spyware. He was one of those people who clicks on every single dodgy ad and pop-up he encountered.

He once confided in me that him and his mates (they were all Brummies in their 60's) would occassionally get drunk and surf porn, giggling like school girls, which would account for all of the crap that ended up on the computer. We was a retired head teacher the old perv!

I have just realised that the words 'porn', 'school girls' and 'teacher' should generally not be used in the same sentance, so please take extra care when reading the above paragraph.
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 17:48, Reply)

Old bat
I'm developing an unhealthy abhorrence towards the site secretary. She's
more annoying than being continually tapped on the head by a clown
sporting one of those  medieval jester hats you see 12 year old football
supporters wearing. She's a snob. A Daily Mail reader. Her sons aspiring
to become a Tory politician and worse of all she's a brummie, complete
with that horrific spastic accent, pronouncing the word laugh, 'larrrf'
instead of 'laff' and pronouncing the word year, 'yeeeeeeeer' instead
of, well......'year.' My hatreds becoming addictive, and like an ex
smoker craving for the taste of a sweet cigarette, I am literally
craving to smash her right in the centre of the face with my blunt but
hard fist. I didn't take much notice during Physics lessons at school,
but, the fact that I sit so close to the centre of the earth is quite
astonishing. The idea that the world quite literally revolves around
something so close to me is actually amazing, and as amazing as it is, I
really wish the centre of the earth would shut the fuck up.

Unlike an ex-smoker who slaps a nicorette patch on their arm and one of
those daft substitution sticks in there hand, I'm having to curb this
craving to smash her face via more imaginative channels.

For example, I know she is the only person to use the Dymo label machine
so every now and again I like to type the odd expletive into it, such as
'cunt,' and just leave it there. A sure-fi way to upset a Daily Mail
reader. It's petty I know, but she's one of the most materialistic
people I've ever met. My daughter earns this, my sons got a four bed
detached in London and 'I don't have to come to work you know, I could
have retired years ago'.

She can have all the money in the world though but she's still fucking
stupid.

Like always, any IT issues I send my problem to her and she follows it
through the pain staking and time consuming roots.

I can't believe the old bat fell for this email when I told her to
forward it on, on both our behalf. Dopie old bitch.

'Dean's 3.5" floppy dics don't seem to be working when you insert them
into my back end drive. When he initially tried to insert the 3.5"
floppy dics into my back end drive it didn't respond. He cleaned the
3.5" floppy dics and tried to insert it again but it still didn't work.
Apparently my back end drive is old and out of warranty, therefore,
could you please carry out some anal-ysis and advise of any virus I
might need to get rid of or treatment/ upgrade needed'.

I had a call about 5 minutes later off my pal in IT. 'You cruel bastard'
he said.
(Sir_Digby_Chicken_Caeser [email protected], Tue 29 Sep 2009, 17:13, 3 replies)

Other people's software
I have worked in IT for 12 years, mainly as a developer but I have done some support. The applications I've had to support, written by my fellow developers, can be a bit, well, shit. If you asked them to create a shopping till application, it would probably work something like this:

[scan can of beans]
"You have scanned "can of beans", is this correct?"
[click "Yes"]
"Would you like to add "can of beans" to the shopping?"
[click "Yes"]
...
"You have scanned "can of lager", is this correct?"
[click "Yes"]
"Would you like to add "can of lager" to the shopping?"
[click "Yes"]
"Are you over 18 years of age?"
[click "Yes"]
"Is the customer over 18 years of age?"
[click "Yes"]
...
[enter "carrots" in search box]
""carrots" not found"
[enter "carrot" in search box]
"Please weigh "carrot""
[weigh carrots at 300g, enter "300" in weight box]
"Invalid number"
[enter "0.3" in weight box]
"You have entered 0.3 tonnes of "carrot" is this correct?"
...
[enter "orange" in search box]
"How many "orange"?"
[enter "15" in number box]
"Invalid number, please enter a number between 0 and 9"
...
[select "print receipt" from menu]
"You must select "print receipt" before adding items"

and so on.

I pity the poor sods who actually have to use these applications every day.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 17:04, 3 replies)

1st line Support Call Monkeys
My CURRENT place, i often get jobs logged and 'workstation' is spelt with 3 words.

Go on, try it.

Each time it's different too.

Genius!
(TheManofScience, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 16:27, 5 replies)

Head of IT (1st post, woo!)
The head of IT at one of my old jobs (who had a PhD in computer science no less!) had a foolproof method of fixing any minor IT niggles you had (such as a non-working network printer). Be busy all morning, wait until lunch time then sneak in and FORMAT your entire sodding machine without warning (& no chance of a backup - "you should of done it this morning anyway").

Nothing like coming back from your sandwiches to watch 6 months of research slowly dissappear before your suddenly tearful eyes...
(Robot_Lover loves robots, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 16:12, 3 replies)

Heres one for you
Laptop works fine with an external drive to play dvds. Laptop crashes, I reinstall windows, the drivers and all the service updates from microsoft. Now the dvd doesn't work. Says I need a hi-speed hub or port or something. Strange thing is it worked fine before I reinstalled windows. Help!
(Podgirl, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:55, 14 replies)

Final one that I can think of...
I've mentioned elsewhere on this QotW that our IT helpdesk is staffed by idiots with no IT skills...

They put a call through to me the other day with the description:

Please call Maria on extension 1234, she needs some help putting a CD onto PowerPoint

Putting a CD onto... eh?
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:41, 6 replies)

Microsoft Word
Everyone's favourite word-processing software. Or not.

There was a helpdesk call put through to me recently along the lines of "Someone else has been using Lisa's computer and now Word has funny symbols all over the screen".

"Ah!", thinks I "Formatting marks. Easy!"

And so I phoned the user.

"Hi, it's Kenny from IT. You're having a problem with Word?"
"I thought someone was supposed to be COMING DOWN HERE to sort this out?" (my, she sounded angry)
"Well I could do, but it's one mouseclick to sort it. Have you got Word open?"
"Hang on a minute..." *opens Word* "...yep, it's still got those symbols everywhere..."
"Okay, now in the bar across the top, where all the buttons are, can you see one that looks like a backwards P with an I next to it?"
"..." *couple of seconds pause* "...there's one that looks like an I with a backwards P next to it, is that the one?"

O_o
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:37, Reply)

Little help?!
Any IT spod types on here from Stockport way? I am gash with computorz and need my router installing... Cheers!
(The Boy Monders I have ginger bits in my beard., Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:35, 6 replies)

The IT Tiger
Was two pints into a drinking sesh with some of my workmates. The IT fella, Dave, sidles up to me and asks me for some advice. Strange, it was usually the other way round after I’d spent several frustrating minutes mashing my paws on a keyboard trying desperately to get something to work through the awsome power of brute force and rapidfire swearing.

But Dave was asking for advice on something he really knew fuck all about. He told me his little scheme. I blinked, digested the info, nodded and said: “That’s a sure-fire, solid-gold, cast iron cert to work, Dave.”

Pleased, Dave goes ambling off. He looked quite pleased with himself. He approached the two Leeds girls he’d had his eye on – either of them would do, I imagine; in hindsight I imagine Dave thought his amazing scheme would land him a kinky threesome with these two porky slappers.

Anyway, Dave approaches the girls like a stealthy, slinky, rather too gangly and awkward panther, then he bellows: “RRRRRRRRRR-OOOOOOOO-AAAAAAAAA-RRRRRRRRRRRRR !!!” The entire pub fell silent, even the volume on the piped Peter Andre craptacular tape seemed to be lowered. Dave then said: “I’m a tiger... errr... you know... ... ... ... ... in... ... um... ... errr... ... ... ... the sack...”

The taller, fatter, sweatier of these two Yorkshire beachball impersonators regarded Dave for a moment, squeezing out spilled pernod and black from her sleeve, then she replied: “Fuck off you ginger twat.”

Dave came back to our table, sat down, and sulked for an entire round, muttering how about how much of a bastard I was under his breath. Ahhh, Dave – whizkid with the computers, complete fucking loser with the ladies.
( SpankyHanky, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:23, 3 replies)

What is it about being male
that makes people assume you can fix things? (Apologies to the lady-interweb types who've posted their stories on here; I fully appreciate that most of you are far more competent/ more qualified / less of a liability than I am)

I took a French Evening Class last year which turned out to be absolutely awesome. The class was mainly geared towards conversation, and the building-up of our confidence therein. The class was mostly female, and after the first couple of weeks, I was the only one of the guys that was still regularly showing up.

So basically, most Monday nights, I had an hour and half in a room full of some incredibly attractive young women*, with free licence to talk complete and utter crap** so long as it was in French.

But it got better: every time our teacher wanted to show us anything that involved anything from a combination of laptop, projector, TV, DVD player, VHS player, etc., she would invariably prod the wrong button and the media in question would disapper. As if the gender stereotype was just crying out to be reinforced, she looked straight to the only mancreature-with-a-knob in the room.
"Le Corbeau, est-ce que tu peux le faire marcher?"

And so I'd stride up, prod a few buttons on the remote control or keyboard, as if I knew exactly what I was doing, and suddenly the listening exercise or film clip would magically reappear. I had gambled and won. I had "fixed" the telly. In the eyes of a room full of REAL WOMEN, I WAS A MAN. WITH BALLS AND EVERYTHING. HEAR THE ROAR OF MY HONDA ACCORD. OH, YEAH.

*_{Women. Real live ones. I shit you not.}
**_{EDIT: Seriously, complete and utter crap. We all had to do a short presentation as part of the course, so I did one about crows. They all thought I was a bit odd after that for some reason.}
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:18, 5 replies)

It is a very metro colour
This company I was working for provided help desk for a wide range of companys such as M$, major Aussie ISPs and some networking hardware providers [guess where I was]

It was great. First real full time job. Shame it was 2 hour round trip by car, most of it through tunnels that had me reeling from the gas. My car was shite and the fumes would just pour in. The length of the tunnel was so much, I had just made it out the other side while seeing stars and on the verge of passing out. Add on top of this tolls and the rent from the beachside pad I was renting [with a broke uni student from London mate and a chickie from Essex]

Below is a few notables from my time there:
1. Finding out how to hook up the PC so it's sound goes through the headset you are wearing. Queue me laughing my ass off to youtube or humming along to a tune, forgetting the silence was because the user was patiently waiting for his computer to boot up.

2. Getting through three seasons of Jack Bauer reversing the polarity of a terrorist's colon

3. Seeing my boss, 3 years my junior, passed out at his desk.
4. One department buying an xbox 360, which I'd play until the afternoon traffic died down

5. Myspacing hot sounding chicks. Some were incredibly hot. Queue their call being escalated and one of us calling them back. Other guys would call them even when she said 'my issue is fixed, stop calling me'
6. Forwarding callers to team leader's mobile phone. Mid conversation.

7. Colleague flinging chair against wall in a fit of rage. This happened often. He was addicted to pot.


But there were some pretty crazy times as well...
1. WINDOWS VISTA - NO WE DON'T HAVE DRIVERS AVAILABLE FOR YOUR BRAND SPANKING NEW VERSION OF POO! The people who can't grasp the fact that not every computer hardware/software manufacturer sits down around the table and goes: this new product has been quality tested and approved after many long months of quality assurance checking blah blah de blah. Windows does what it wants bitch, your fucking my KPIs.

2. The woman crying because I couldn't fix her internet. She lived in the bush and was far away from town. Not cool.

3. The tech in another department hearing a woman shoot herself over the phone.

And then there was the odd non IT Support related incident. A chick's bf coming to the reception and demanding he get let upstairs to beat seven shades of shit out of a guy in my team. Security was called.

Word to your mother for not being tech savvy
(lemonadegame, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:16, Reply)

All these posts seem to be much the same.
What it was right, was I got a job fixing computers and that, cos I know how to do it. When I started everyone else at the work axed me how to sort out their computers cos they didn't know how to do it when they should of have knowed how to do it themselves then I could of have just got payed for eating crisps and watching south park and going for extra long poos.

Wouldn't it seem obvious that if they had to hire IT support staff they couldn't all fix their computers, and that of all those users, some would be right at the bottom of the bell curve and have to be shown how to switch them on?

www.rathergood.com/demon
(rampants, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 15:06, 7 replies)

Can I Just Say
That people who work in IT, IT/Support and hate their jobs? Fuck off and get a new career.

I've now got over 25 years service in and I can't think of a better career....

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Sun-servers on fire over the shoulder of Ryan. I watched tape-reels glitter in the dark near the Mailgate. All those backups will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Time ... to die.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 14:52, 13 replies)

Last week's online notification from IT services:
"Some users will currently be unable to access their email. The cause is being investigated and we hope to resolve this problem as soon as possible.
If you wish to be e-mailed whenever messages are added to this page, send an e-mail consisting of the word subscribe to [email protected]"
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 14:28, 3 replies)

I hate computers!
I have worked in IT support for the past six years and it has done nothing but erode my faith in the rest of humanity.

I used to work for a large broadband supplier answering the phones as first line support. This was my first real paying IT job and was the first and only time I will work on a telephone help desk.

The people I worked with were mostly idiots who were split into two catagories:
1. The smart arse tossers that thought they knew everything about computers but were actually thick as shit.
And
2. The people who are just thick as shit.

I spent most of my day fielding calls from pissed off members of the public because they got hung up on or they were told to call back with the excuse "it will fix itself, just wait 24 hours".

I have had to deal with all sorts of crap sent my way. Examples include:

1. Posh lady who bought a Mac purely on the grounds that it looks "adorable". She doesn't use Macs at work but that didn't stop her. She said she needed a bit of help as she was stuck. She had managed to switch it on and then got lost... it took four long hours to get her on the interwebs and to show her around the machine where to find office how to load itunes, add music to itunes. On a side note she didn't even own a fucking ipod as they were "gahstly". I nearly cried.

2. Bloke can play CounterStrike because when he wanted to play, at 6pm!, the like slowed down to a crawl. Three hours of being called every name under the sun he hit upon a good solution. He asked me to phone all the other people on the street who were using our service and ask them to kindly switch off their modems so he could play CS. Seriously, wtff!!! I had to grit my teeth on this one. Retard.

3. A gentleman who was complaining about being sent a letter that he was in breach of the companies fair use policy. Normally this was nothing, every so often one gets sent out and nothing else is done about it. He had a few, so he called me up to see if I could help him. He swore blind he was just running one pc, just one, ok a couple of machines, ok five machines, and a server, actually two servers, two web servers, hosting porn, lots and lots and lots of porn!!! After convincing him to move to a business line he asked me to help him setup his new ftp server so he could stream more porn.

There are more cases but most are of the "My internet ain't workin' wot ya gunna do about it?" These people were treated like crap and thoroughly deserved it.

I also remember one of the trainees getting fired on his first "live" call. He asked a lady to reboot her machine, whilst waiting he thought it appropriate to ask what she was wearing because she had a nice husky voice and if she liked lace underwear!

I still work in IT support, now in education.

Sorry for rantyness and lack of funny but I'm sitting in a class of year one students and it's like a fucking oven in the IT Suite.

Length? Fucking huge.
( Aenesis, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 14:25, Reply)

IT support for the public
First post ever!!!

Many years ago, I once worked for an IT company that decided to branch into a retail outlet in a small town.

Some of the highlights included:

One woman brought in her family PC, wouldn't boot, hung at windows98 splash screen, etc. After checking all the usual things, dug a bit deeper and it turned out her 14 year old son had aspirations to be some kind of hacker, so he had downloaded a virus writing kit off the web, wrote a particularly nasty virus....then unleashed it onto his own PC.

the guy who couldnt get his PC to reboot when it hung, so instead of pressing the reset switch on the front, he decided to flip the voltage selector on the back of the power pack from 230v to 110V. Bang! 1 dead PC!

The woman accompanying her 12 year old son who, when we listened to his PC problems and reckoned a clean install was the best course of action, asked what we were going to do.
"We'll format the hard drive and re-install windows".
"Format?" she asked.
"We'll wipe the drive" we replied
"Do you get a special cloth for that, son?"

God bless them, we'd be out of a job otherwise
(boogibassist, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 14:20, 2 replies)

Word v.6.0
Back in the days of Windows 3 we had a brand new shiny machine come in for the manager of our Studio department.

It was a DX2 66mhz 486 - the likes of which we could only dream of having. This beast also had 8meg or RAM, as opposed to our lowly 2 or 4 meg machines.

Still, made no f'ing difference.

I was called to this blokes desk about 10 times a day, each time explaining that he didn't need to open MS Word 6 for each and every document he wanted to view.

The most times I found it open was 146 - yes, I did count! How the hell that poor 8meg managed I'll never know.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 12:06, 1 reply)

Clueless Professors
So, I like my computers, and figure I'm fairly well versed it most common issues (although I bet if anyone asked me to solve one on here it would be one I haven't encountered), and this landed me a work study job at uni this year with IT. We have one particularly technologically clueless professor who seems to think they can do anything.

I was in her Ornithology lecture and lab (I showed up to the first class, went online 50 minutes in on my phone and dropped it), and she decided that she wanted to do a class project. When I told the guys up in the IT office about this, they just shook their heads and laughed. She decided that she wanted to build a falcon platform, since they have specific nesting requirements, and habitat loss has endangered them here in the US. The basic idea is a three foot wide circular platform, mounted on a forty foot pole. She's planning on putting this somewhere along the beach, between 300 to 1500 feet from the nearest computer she could commandeer.

To make this better, she wants to put a camera up there with a 24/7 wireless video feed to a website. Now, she's either going to have to set up a wireless router and several relays to further the signal (along with hundreds upon hundreds of feet of power cables for these relays and the camera), or run several hundred feet of ethernet cable and power cords down the pole and underground to the nearest building. On top of this, her birds of choice are endangered, so if something goes wrong with they camera, say the bird knocks the power cord out and the battery dies, the tech sent to fix it will have to do so while fighting a pissed off falcon, since they legally can't move the things.

Last year in one of her lectures, class was delayed for 20 minutes, because sound wasn't working on her power point. A tech walked over, and after chatting for 20 minutes waiting for the class to start, we heard the tech kindly tell her speakers need be plugged into a power source to work properly. I feel bad for my friend who got stuck with the web cam project there.
( Ithyphallophobia, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 11:07, Reply)

Alternative repair strategy
I worked for a large university that broadcasts on tv.... you know the one.

We had about 4000 staff users on site so IT support was covered by several solutions. Helpdesk for "I can do stuff" queries, our dept dealt with system faults (typically software or upgrades) then we escalated hardware faults to an onsite third party company who tendered for a fixed price repair to all hardware.

I learnt the ropes from Paul who was on occasion rather lazy. His solution in dealing with a persistent users software problem was this. He could have formatted the hard drive and reinstalled all the software etc taking a few hours... OR, take a pair of side cutters and nip one pin off a soldered on controller chip on the drive causing it to fail. Then phone the other company to let them replace the drive. He called it a free upgrade....
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 10:09, 1 reply)

This one gave me a hard on...
Our personnel director lady was very sexy. Not overly attractive, but the type who looked like they could suck the chrome off a towing hitch.

She did a lot of work from home as she lived a fair distance away and one day when I came into the office and was told she called and I should ring her back.

Well, I did so, and started talking laptops to her. She interrupted me saying that she'd just got out of the shower and was dripping wet, and said "Just a sec, I'll get a towel".

It took a while to remotely connect to her PC and as she sat there I imagined her with wet hair and the dampness of her body slowly soaking into the towel. To pass the couple of minutes it took to connect she told me that she had been shopping and the reason she'd taken a shower was that I'd caught her just about to try on her new lingerie.

I did try desperately to get the webcam working but some other idiot hadn't installed the software when her PC was built...
(horrgakx, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 10:07, 5 replies)