My grandad
decided at the start of last year he would like a computer. I built him one and got him a desk and whatnot, christmas present for grandad. I go over to show him and his wife a little about how to use it.

Ok, so if you just move the mouse onto the picture where it says Grandad (XP login screen)...


"What's a mouse?"

I nearly cried
( MadAdamUk was last alive on, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 16:18, Reply)

My Nanna, bless her.
She turned 80 years old the other week and for 'safety reasons' my family gave her an old Nokia 3210 phone so she could ring them if she ever fell down or whatever.

I went to see her a few days ago. She was trying to figure out how to use the phone, ended up on the phonebook and found something called "My home". She rang it. The house phone started ringing (surrpriise).

She went on to ask me how to hang up her mobile phone; I told her; she eventually managed to figure it out. The house phone stopped ringing but she picked it up regardless and then started complaining because 'whoever it was, hung up'.

"Alright Nanna."
( TonyUNDERSCORE from the Internet, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 16:02, Reply)

My dad
is actually fairly competent on the computer, but not so long ago managed to delete an entire, very big national company's (the one he works for, not some random one) payroll two days before payday.

He did fix it the day after but I'd still love to know what would have happened if he hadn't managed to.
(and now for someone completely different, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 15:45, Reply)

My computers quite old

and a few of the keys are loose so whenever my dad uses the computer I always swap the 'c' and 'k' buttons to confuse him. After an hours use or so he always goes storming off saying "That internet's bloody shite, the searches are fucking useless"

With the use of autocomplete I've managed to find some of his searches, such as, kumshots, kunts, kolossal jugs, and women with kokcs.
(Lt Columbo, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 15:21, Reply)

Dirty Old Bastard!
As I stated previously, I'm kinda good with PC's, and nowadays, like a lot of you here, I get many phonecalls, asking me to sort PC's out from locals, who have caused themselves major problems, by running Windows XP instead of Linux.

Anyway, one chap who I have known for about 15 years, who is married, has quite a successful business, a 6 bedroom chalet bungalow and 4 quite fit daughters called me up one day last year.

Turns out he has a problem with one of his business PC's, that is in a particular room, and only gets used for a particular purpose, and that isnt connected to the 'net.

He couldnt make head nor tail of the problem, and I was off sick at the time, so I suggested that he unplug it, and bring the case round to me, so that I could plug it in, and get to work. An initial look, revealed that it was indeed something serious, and that he really ought to leave it with me for a few days, so that I could take my time, as it was going to be a toughie.

It was like it was infected with a virus of some description, but none of the scans would pick it up, so I had to try and locate the little bugger, and send it off for analysis, as I didnt have the brains myself.

Anyway, I was in and out of files and folders for most of the next day, and then I found it........

In a folder, within a folder, within a folder, within a folder..... all the folders looked like business related stuff. And what was in the offending folder I hear you cry??

39MB of pics...... TEH COCK PR0N!!!!!!!

Needless to say, that for upsetting my already fragile mind, and for being a dirty bastard, he just HAD to have a format c: :-)

So, Windows was reloaded (there was no data that needed to be saved, it was just full of programming software), and a phonecall was placed for him to come get it.

He arrived, I explained what was wrong. He asked me how on earth a virus could have got in there, if it has never been connected to the net..... I explained that it must have come in from another source... he then asked me where it was......

The look on his face when I told him it was in the folder named "xyz" (folder name changed to protect the closet gay).

He had a brief "Oh feck, I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole" moment, then opened his wallet, removed the entire contents, and thrust them into my hand, before blurting something about must hurry, dinner ready or similar, and bolting out the door.....

After he had gone, I smiled to myself, and turned my attention to the ball of crumpled paper in my hand.... 45 quid!!! just for a format c: and a few pictures of penises!

He's been very nice to me since that event.... he used to be a right grumpy fecker... but now he knows that his wife works at the same establishment as me...

I love blackmail :-)
(assistant commissioner terra blanche, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 15:20, Reply)

D'oh....
It was 1996. I was working for a "national" company (read main office, and offices in London & Birmingham with about 4 staff each).

The boss decides that is time to upgrade the sales computer system, and blow thousands on a network between the 3 offices, and nice new Windows 95 powered machines. Trouble was, as the young "whippersnapper" of the company, I was slightly quicker at picking things up, as far as computers were concerned, and every time anything went wrong, I was the poor soul who had to ring the support desk at the company, to try and get a "DIY" solution to the problem. And then sort it out.

Thus, I quickly earned the title of "IT Support Officer" (without the extra fecking pay, that you would think a post of this nature would attract).

So, as if it was bad enough having to deal with all the self inflicted problems of the staff at Kimbolton, I started to get phonecalls from the Harrow & Birmingham offices too, with dorks on the other end of the phone, expecting me to be psychic, and diagnose and fix the problem before they had even told me the symptoms.... sometimes they werent even intelligent enough to describe them... but I digress.

One morning, I had a phonecall from one of the other offices (names and locations witheld, to protect the dumb).

Me: "Good morning, how can I help you this time".

Twit: "I've got a problem with my PC"

Me: "Yes, ok, nothing new there then, what's the screen showing this time (this was a regular idiot).

Twit: "Oh, it's not the screen.... it's the big bit, that sits under my desk......"

Me: "yes, well, what's wrong?"

Twit: "The little coffee cup holder has snapped off, spilling coffee all over my shoes. I need you to order a new one, as it's dead handy... stops me from getting a ring on my desk"

Me: "Eh?? coffee cup holder? what?"

Twit: "You know, that little thing that comes out... you press the button on the front, and the cup holder slides out......"

Oh dear. Cue one instantly terminated call (I had to, I was about to piss myself!), and fits of near on fatal laughter. On explaining to the rest of the sales office what had happened, the entire sales operation collapsed for a good 20 minutes while the guys and gals recomposed themselves.

Cue the entrance of the MD, who came to see what was going on, as he could hear it from his office down the corridor.

I briefly explained, he went bright red and started seething. A quick phonecall to the offending idiot ensued, in which all kinds of profanities were screamed down the phone. At the end of the call, the MD joined us in our laughter.

The plonker ended up getting a written warning for misuse of company property!

It still makes me chuckle 10 years later.... especially now, as I have a mug of coffee here on the desk, and I've just opened the drawer to put a CD in... yes, it was tempting!

Length? Girth? you love it, you know you do!
(assistant commissioner terra blanche, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 13:46, Reply)

My GREAT Grandfather
of 91 years of age...still sends me emails.
(Arse Biscuits The question is not who, but why?, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 13:43, Reply)

@scumbum
Translation:

The company in question stores all of its critically important information in a database. Every day, the contents of this database are put into a secondary database, so if the main one dies, they have a database that is a maximum of 1 day out of date.

To do this, they first delete all of the contents of the secondary database, which is done with the command "drop database", and then the contents of the main database are copied across.

The databases are stored on two completely seperate computers. The screen, keyboard and mouse ports on these computers are connected to a single monitor, keyboard and mouse through a box with a switch.

Dionysian was working on the backup computer and left the terminal switched to it. Someone else switched to the live database to do something and left it on there.

Dionysian came back and thought the box was still switched to the backup machine, and was about to wipe the database.

This would no doubt have caused all sorts of mayhem until the database was restored (things like online ordering, customer records, payroll, all sorts could be affected by this sort of mistake).

Dionysian noticed the mistake mere nanoseconds before hitting the enter key and thought "oh no!".

The end.
( Lumpbucket tekcubpmuL, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 12:48, Reply)

Wrong plug...
I was helping a lady over the phone as her WiFi had gone down, and first things first as always, asked her to reboot the router. Explaining VERY carefully that by that I mean turn it off, then back on and not to press that little button, I ask her if she can see an on/off switch... Nope.

No problem I tell her, you can just cut the power at the wall. Follow the cord back then pull the plug, wait a few seconds and put it back in.

Lots of struggling noises ensue as I sit there tapping my fingers...

"Ok, I think I've got it, so I just pull it out yeah?"
"Yes, then replace it in about 30 seconds"
"Alright, here go...."
-line drops dead-

I had only just recovered from laughing when the phone rang again, this time from a mobile number, I could barely speak when I picked it back up!
( NomDePlume fo shizzle my nizzle old bean, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 12:45, Reply)

Parents, eh?
Was having a problem where the mouse cursor wouldn't move left or right, it would only go directly up or down. Father notices I'm having frustrations and checking the mouse ball, so asks what's up.

"The cursor won't move left or right, look, it only goes up and down."

His hand reaches out and twitches nervously above mine, so I let him take a look. He proceeds to rotate the mouse ninety degrees and pushes it sideways...

And I apologise for being pedantic, but no matter how many times my brothers and I use the word 'uninstall', he still says 'deinstall'.

Psh. Now where's that post message button?
(Dyslexic Pidgeon, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 12:21, Reply)

I know you don't like complaints about the Question of the Week
But I really wish you young folk would stop typing in all of this jargon.
(Chickenwire social lubricator extraordinaire, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 11:37, Reply)

The OhFuckSecond ...
Or ... the penalties of running a KVM Switch.

At work we used to run 2 SQL databases - Live and Reserve. Part of the weekly procedure was to flatten the Reserve database and rebuild it from the Live one.

Got most of the way through the checks on both databases and was on the Reserve screen when I got called away to deal with an 'on-air' issue.

Returned some minutes later to continue. Unbeknownst to me MeColleague had been in the room and worked on the Live database, which he had left on screen. Verily did I type Drop Database and had my finger on the Enter key when I noticed the green DB Connected light in the corner of the window.

Backspace backspace backspace backspace. That's the OhFuckSecond.
(Dionysian Aut viam inveniam aut faciam, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 10:59, Reply)

Really should be cleverererer than this...
Ex-colleague of mine who shall remain nameless, lets call him Baber, no, no, er, Mr Shah, was a consultant/programmer for an IT firm in London.

Whilst trying out his new PC he asks borrow one of my blank CDRS and waving it around asks "what side do I write on?"
"The side thats a bluey colour" of course...

...30 minutes past and he bring the CDR back to me claiming it doesnt work, on closer inspection he'd "written" 'Babers disk' on the side meant for data and had been trying to burn to the CD label side. The rule? Don't ask someone a question where the verb is ambiguous ;)
(Timothy Claypole the Second, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 10:41, Reply)

My rapidly ageing father...
sets up an msn account, as he's abroad a lot and thinks that free worldwide communication is "fucking amazing". Anyway he gets msn and his first message?

"Hey P.N am I doing this right? Lots of love from dad."

I laughed so hard I died that day.
( Paedosmile service with a grin., Sat 23 Sep 2006, 10:26, Reply)

old farted
Or was it a brain fart!!!
After reading quite a few Oldies messages trying to get to 'post' I forgot the story I thought of.
Ho!!! I just remembered it, which is quite something as I'm 70.
My son wanted to set me up with High speed internet but I liked my not-so high speed dial-up and told him to fuck off and leave me alone or I would leave him alone with out my money I was saving not useing HIGH speed anything when I went to the great hard drive in the shy. After going to California (I live in AZ UASS) I came home hoping to get my E-s after about 5 minutes nothing came up, I had as allways gone to the can got caffee and looked to my mail (in english, went to the luve(sp) had tea and looked to the post) and still I did not get anything online. I called my son and asked if he would come over and fix it. He asked me what I see and I saw a page which I had no reasion to know of and told him so. He asked me what I was doing 'right now' and I said I was talking to him on the phone,so what?
Just think he told me.
Then it came to me he had set me up with High speed other wise I could not be talking to him on the phone. I canned the high speed and returned to slow speed dial-up.
(theemailman, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 7:11, Reply)

Accountants should only be allowed pen and paper
Me: Hello, IT

CFO: I've got a CD stuck in the CD-rom

Me: It happens, I'll take a look.

CFO: It's one of those mini-CDs and it's stuck in the mini-CD holder

Me: (scratches head) Um...ok.

Arrives at CFO's office, checks CD-Rom, all clear.

CFO: No, no. The Mini-CD holder.

Me: (removing mini-CD from floppy drive with pliers) You might want to try it in the large CD holder.
(rockstar, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 6:24, Reply)

Government Spin
I did a year of support in parliament - all I can say is that those people who are entrusted with the safekeeping of the country...

...when you're asked for the 100th time "how do I install the internet?" you begin to lose faith in democracy.

God help the UK when the PM needs to unleash some atom bombs - I can just see the call script now "CeeTRaall, ALt and Deteleete? then enter my launch codes?"

Kudos to a certain un-named Lord who got us to fix his laptop after a massive pr0n session, then took the engineer and the rest of us 'real' people out for a few drinks in the Lord's Bar to say thanks...
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 4:07, Reply)

My boss
Asked me to set up his internet in his office for him. He insisted on using AOL, which is fair enough, so I put in this router for him for *one* computer...

Everything is set up. I load up the page of the router in internet explorer to check the wizard hadn't left the wireless networking on. He comments:
"why can you use the internet through internet explorer? I *only* want you to be able to access the internet through AOL...."

*sigh*

I don't really want to explain that Microsoft have been in court for several years over this issue... So I set AOL as the default brower and change the router settings so it'll only connect when it "dials" on the AOL application as opposed to dialing up as soon as the computer turns on ( its PPPoE anyway, thank god in this situation )

Then, once I've set the names up and AOL is the default browser...

"wow, look how fast it dials up!"

Also, the website for the business. I find out the domain name... And crack up laughing. I then regain composure.

"Why have you called it hollywoodhollywood.co.uk?"
"because our company name hollywoodnails.co.uk was taken"
"ok, what about the slogan, bringing beauty to your fingertips? or beautifulnails.co.uk?"
"nah, too far away from the name."
"ok, what about using a hypen?"
"too complicated"

Ah well. He's a great business man, and a nice guy. Just... if you ever wonder why your local whatever has a pencil and paper appointment system, they're probably owned by a guy like him.
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 3:56, Reply)

My mother, god bless her
I left home and there were *5* computers in the house. 6 months later and they were all gone... one shorted because she put it in the side room that had a leaky roof... the rest... I have *no* idea. Maybe she's eating them or something.

I had this great broadband-cable deal with Homechoice at the time, and no other company did on demand tv - the idea of being able to watch episodes of Spaced on demand was still very very new. Which meant every time she wanted the tv her question was "can you put on the REAL telly please?" and take the remote and switch it to analogue tv, despite the standard channels being available on the set top box by pressing "1", "2" and so on. I came back one weekend to find a giant dent in the METAL remote where she'd got annoyed with it and thrown the remote across the room.

Even digital displays on microwaves seem to worry her: ever since she split from my father she has insisted on using microwaves with a manual dial on them.

This would be endearing in a little old lady... but she's 42.
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 3:44, Reply)

My mother..sigh.
For about three years she would keep closing windows because "the bar at the bottom was full."
And this one isn't computers, but at my birthday party last Sunday, I unwrapped a new camera. Along with it I got a memory card, one of those xD cards, which are about the size of a postage stamp, maybe 2 or 3 times as thick.
She gasped. "Is THAT the camera? Wow, it's so small!"

edit: Might I add that she's an intensive care nurse(a fantastic one at that). Complex life support machines that cost several hundred thousand dollars are no problem, but give her a television remote and she'll cry from frustration.
( trintrin has jam for blood, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 2:19, Reply)

My mate is a twat
While using my computer a mate of mine noticed i had downloaded some software (through legitimate sources i assure you), he asked if he could borrow a blank CD and copy it for himself, I said yes and he burned the disk.
The next day he's back at mine saying "your disks are shite mate!, tried it last night, when i double clicked it nothing happened", i put the disk in my PC and it turns out the reason it never worked, He had just burned the desktop icon to disk.
He replied "I did wonder why it only took up 3kb of space on the disk"
( SolidGoldChimp, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 2:05, Reply)

Which Aerial?
Not one of mine directly, but recounted from a friend.

His father, just retired, had decided to take up the "internet" bug and become proficient enough to surf the web and send emails to his friends and family around the world.

Anyway, one day my friend gets a call from his dad, the conversation goes a little something like this:

Friend: Whats wrong?

Father: I've got a problem with my emails

Friend: What is it?

Father: Well, I'm trying to use outlook with my hotmail , and I think I might have cracked it, but I'm trying to send an email , and I just wanted to know which "aerial" I should use to transmit it with?

Friend: Aerial? eh?

Father: Well, its asking me which aerial to transmit the message over, you know, I'm not used to this sort of thing, what should I say?
it never asked me before:

Friend: (Disbelief) Err, right, I'm coming over


So the guy turns up and asks his father to reproduce the problem, His father starts up outlook express and selects "Create message"
at which point the message composer appears,
ready to compose a rich (html) e-mail
and lo and behold, there was a toolbar at the top with a font selector dropdown on it.

The first item on this list was the font "Arial".
(lochii, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 1:42, Reply)

"Emergency - please respond now..."
I like fixing computers for colleagues at work. I say ‘fixing’ – it’s usually something really simple that requires little actual tech skills, but I usually score a bottle of wine or some scratch cards as a thank you so it’s all good.

One day whilst transporting an extremely sick person in my ambulance (this will become relevant soon) I received a radio message from communications to "urgently contact Officer XYZ – repeat: urgent".
I had an elderly and very sick relative living with me at the time and felt that the other officer must have some bad, perhaps even tragic, news for me given that they were also rostered on that day.
After all, such messages over an emergency channel are almost unheard of.

I checked on my patient and decided they would be okay for a minute and, hands trembling, I phoned the other officer’s mobile with great apprehension. The following conversation ensued:

"Hi XYZ, you needed me to call you urgently. What’s wrong?"

"Hi emadex. You remember that PC you reformatted for me recently?"

"…umm, yeah."

"Well you accidentally deleted my modem. I need it fixed."

"Was this the reason that I call you urgently?"

"Yeah!"

"I’m on a case right now. Did you not realise that?"

"Well of course I did! Why else would I get you called on the emergency channel?!"
(She knows I don’t answer my personal mobile phone when I’m on a case).

"As I said, I’m with a patient now. Good bye XYZ."


The same officer is the first to whinge about time wasters and hoax callers, but could see nothing wrong with her actions because, as she later told me, her computer problem was an "emergency" because she had an assignment to finish and needed internet access.
You’d think an emergency paramedic would have more sense…

By the way, her modem wasn’t "deleted" (as if!) – she’d forgotten to recharge her pre-pay dial up account.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 1:11, Reply)

my gran
worked as a cleaner, one day the boss was working late so when my gran went in to clean his office he went off to get a coffee but first told her not to touch the mouse, my gran’s reaction was to run shrieking out the room
(frozen_ginger_beer, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 1:04, Reply)

OMG ... it's Excel!
I was moving on to greener pastures within the organisation and was asked to train someone to track certain files after I'd gone. Piece of pie, methinks.

"Ok," I tell the aged dear when I get to her desk, "Just open __ file and click on this spreadsheet." She does so. Silence.

(Worried voice.) "It's Excel."

"Yes. Yes it is. Now, just..."

"Well, we're in trouble."

"We... pardon?"

"I don't know Excel. What do I do?"

One of two things happened next.

"You mean to tell me, you baby boomer menopausal hippie, that you work for _____ and you don't know how to use a basic Excel spreadsheet?! And I was cleaning office buildings after I got my degree because you and all your baby boomer friends took all the good jobs so it took me 20 years to get hired on here and now you're all going to retire to your bloody cabins at the bloody lake in a year because you've got your 25 years in while I was cleaning toilets and you can't even use a basic bloody Excel spreadsheet??" And then I bashed her with the mouse repeatedly.

Or:

"*Sigh* Ok, that's ok, well, no, don't worry, here's what you do..." and then I spent 30 minutes explaining how to type words and numbers into the little boxes and click Save.

Yes, of course it was Option 2, because I am a decent human being and a law-abiding citizen. But oh, how I wanted to dish out some verbal abuse that would have got me called up before an anti-harassment committee and we'd still be having meetings about it. But who wants that?
(socialised_medicine quietly returns to Saskatchewan for Lurkfest 2007, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 0:54, Reply)

Mouse problem
I told someone once to click on a button with their mouse.
So they picked it up and pressed it on the screen.....oh dear!

and don't you just love the error message that says 'mouse not detected' click OK to continue!

it just makes you wonder sometimes......
(Zuffle farts silently in lifts then leaves the warm aroma, Sat 23 Sep 2006, 0:30, Reply)

I'm fucking sick of my dad confusing RAM with ROM

and finding him in the morning with his floppy inserted in a sheep.
(Lt Columbo, Fri 22 Sep 2006, 23:53, Reply)

Ah yes
I used to work for PC ServiceCall, on the customer services side. This old Chinese bloke rang up, saying "Windows not working, Windows gone". So I asked him what the problem was, to be answered by the same response. Somehow I don't think he understood I was transferring him to our tech support department.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Fri 22 Sep 2006, 23:36, Reply)

not a computer but
An audio-cassette player (yes my family is stuck in the dark ages).

I was sitting upstairs when I heard a very strange noise, like plastic hitting plastic and air escaping. Go downstairs to see my dad getting very angry with the tape player. It turns out the tape isn't playing. He presses the play button, it plays for like 5 seconds silently. He is really annoyed, as it "should change over by itself" and all that blah. I press rewind (for a bit), then play. the tape plays.
Dad had never thought that it was the end of the tape.
I'm always right in my house.
(RooRooRasputin Lover of the Russian Queen, Fri 22 Sep 2006, 23:21, Reply)