http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
Surely a lot of this stuff has to be made up?
I have a difficult time believing some of this.
Surely a lot of this stuff has to be made up?
I have a difficult time believing some of this.
Computer stupidities
- Thread starter K.I.L.E.R
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K.I.L.E.R said:http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
Surely a lot of this stuff has to be made up?
I have a difficult time believing some of this.
Having worked for 4 years in tech support, and another 8 as a systems administrator, I can say I have personally delt with many cases that are very similar to those stories. Some people aren't computer savy, and some people are just downright dumb.
Cartoon Corpse
Veteran
DiGuru said:
yeah, some of it looks to me like immature pseudo 'experts' who have no idea how to deal respectully with people who have no experience with PC's...as if it's some sort of common experience.
of course i also noticed some 'customers' who liked to 'think' that whatever misunderstood tidbits they picked up around their own lives were absolute gospel.
guess it goes both ways.
"it's got 8 megadrives"...."i need the megabytes AND the gigabytes"
a bit disconcerting who they're allowing to teach intro computer courses in school though.
i volunteer teach an intro computer course at the public library. you get a good feel for what it means to be a beginner that way. i always tell them, im certain there are skills they have, that im clueless about, so they don't get discouraged.
i also say things like, "hey you don't have to build the washing machine you use, or the car you drive"
People have asked me for computer advice while standing in line at a Microcenter. I tend to steer them in the worst, most wrong direction humanly possible. While I am knowledgeable on the topic of computers, there are MANY things I'm incapable of figuring out, and this forum only makes me feel inadequate at times while being constantly in the company of people with arcane brilliance on the topic.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
I can see all of them happening. College was my first time actually working a help desk and I've heard plenty. I was surprised the first time I learned the hard way that the "cup holder" story was not an urban legend. For that matter, that the "where's the any key" isn't just a story... and I've gotten the call about whether or not you should use the delicates cycle to clean your mouse... People actually called to ask if their cell phones can be used as vibrators (which ensued in a conversation finishing on the note of "If someone has to dial the number, shouldn't I pick it up?".... "It would be better if you didn't."). We've had things with a guy who tried to steal a big gigantic 21" CRT and actually attempted to walk out of the building with it hiding it under his jacket. Worst of the stories involved a lab where half the terminals had problems with stuck keys -- after a little investigation, I told them to throw those keyboards away because there had apparently been a person using his account to visit porn sites, which he'd... enjoyed thoroughly. Oh, and of course, there are lovely little ones like people asking for copies of the university's Internet access.
This is why our office had posters with photos of us wearing angry sneers explaining the symptoms of "Post Technical-Support Disorder."
As you can probably guess the creature gave me its fair share of weird requests, except those were face to face, so it was all the more annoying. I would occasionally get bug reports assigned to me in our bug tracking database that said "I'm having trouble cracking Maya. The image grid thingy won't work." I eventually realized that when it said "image grid", it was referring to "lmgrd.exe"
This is why our office had posters with photos of us wearing angry sneers explaining the symptoms of "Post Technical-Support Disorder."
As you can probably guess the creature gave me its fair share of weird requests, except those were face to face, so it was all the more annoying. I would occasionally get bug reports assigned to me in our bug tracking database that said "I'm having trouble cracking Maya. The image grid thingy won't work." I eventually realized that when it said "image grid", it was referring to "lmgrd.exe"
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One of my main issues with communicating with people about their computer problems comes from a truly screwed up way of naming things. I'm seriously pissed off that the tower kept getting named the CPU. That alone has caused so much headache is painful to even think about now.
The problem comes up when you've just helped someone who calls the tower the CPU, so you're set on the mind. Then the next person has a small amount of knowledge and knows what the actual CPU is, and it just snow balls from there.
The problem comes up when you've just helped someone who calls the tower the CPU, so you're set on the mind. Then the next person has a small amount of knowledge and knows what the actual CPU is, and it just snow balls from there.
Calling "the box" a CPU is actually one of the smaller problems for me. Back in the mainframe days, a CPU would be the whole box so they could even claim that it's historically correct. And I haven't heard any good name for it that clearly states that you mean the case, all the components inside it, and nothing more. To me, "the tower" sounds like just the case.
(I usually refer to it as "the computer". Ie, I see keyboard, mouse, and monitor as accessories to the computer, not a part of it.)
I'm much more irritated by people writing "mb" for megabytes.
(I usually refer to it as "the computer". Ie, I see keyboard, mouse, and monitor as accessories to the computer, not a part of it.)
I'm much more irritated by people writing "mb" for megabytes.
K.I.L.E.R said:http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
Surely a lot of this stuff has to be made up?
I have a difficult time believing some of this.
Although you don't need Arabic graphics card for Arabic Windows, there was many "Chinese" video cards for PC. Back to the days when harddrives were expensive, Chinese fonts are too big to fit into a diskette (not to mention how slow it is to read them from a 360KB disk!), and it takes a lot CPU cycles to draw them. So there were "Chinese" graphics cards which has fonts stored in its on-board ROM and can directly show Chinese characters on screen, by detecting the frame buffer for BIG5 codes. Such products existed till about the time of 486 and VGA.
Werent there alot of Text-Mode only GFX-Cards back in the QDOS-Days, which had a hard-coded charset? This was rather the norm 20+ Years ago.pcchen said:
The worst I have seen was a guy who couldnt figure out how to use its Credit-Card online, but evidently he found a hole to fit it. I was standing in line at a shop and could barely hold my laughter as a technician poked a card out of the Floppy-drive.
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