(no subject)

[moopet.livejournal.com]

So this guy comes in complaining that his laptop keeps printing everything in capitals. I suspect a dodgy keyboard or a loose keyboard ribbon connector, which seems to be common in some of the cheaper craptops. I fire it up, open notepad, slide across qwertyuiop, hit return, turn on capslock and run QWERTYUIOP. Repeat, try with shift keys. Seems fine. I ask him to show me the problem if he can and am speechless when I see him type. He's holding down the capslock key while typing.
me: why are you holding down the capslock key?
him: I'm typing my name. I always have my name in capitals.
me: uh. Ok, but why are you holding it down? It's a toggle - like shiftlock on an old typewriter?
him: I always type my name in capitals. It's just after that everything stays in capitals unless I type my name again, then I can't get any capitals at all!
me: excuse me, this problem seems a little out of my area of expertise. Let me go consult with some of my co-wokers in the back room.
him: ok.

Comments

[the-ninja-style.livejournal.com]

NU-UH! Omg that shit is too funny!! Sadly, I think my mom would do such a thing as well. We have a conversation about how to close things on her desktop about once a week.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

That one is pure goal.

You should give him etch-a-sketch and tell him that sometime it needs to be rebooted it by flipping it upside down and shaking.

[mouse-from-marz.livejournal.com]

LMAO to that and the OP

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

I meant "pure gold". Looks like I also have keyboard issues :-)

[moopet.livejournal.com]

I quite like "pure goal" and am thinking of using it in conversation.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

maybe that was a freudian slip. Or just computer intelligence fixing the user dumbness........

be my guest.

[jill-idle.livejournal.com]

WHY ARE YOU MAKING FUN OF HIM? IT'S A REAL PROBLEM. I HAVE IT TOO. JUST WATCH.

jill idle. see.

now my capitals are gone, but my name wasn't in capitals. i'm going insane with this bug.

But seriously, soda pop came out my nose when I read this one. Too funny!

[ateji.livejournal.com]

*absolutely boggles*

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I do believe you've found the mysterious end user we all see out of the corner of our eyes and hear on the other end of the phone line. You know the one... The one made out of Pure FAIL!

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

Why on earth does he always type his name in capitals? That right there is bizarre enough to contemplate, without thinking about the secondary question of why he holds down the caps lock key to do so.

(A related question is, why on earth do computers still have caps lock keys?)

[adamjaskie.livejournal.com]

I'd gladly switch it, and have switched it, for a CTRL key.

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine once did that in hardware. He physically rewired Caps Lock to be Control, in order to solve that annoying problem FOREVER.

[moopet.livejournal.com]

As an aside, you know how capslock can screw people up when they're trying to put in their password? Some OSs have a warning saying capslock is on, but the real solution to my mind is to check both the password they entered AND the sam password with all the cases reversed. That'll make their password 50% easier to guess, you say? Well, ye-es, but that's like lowering brute-force odds from 1000000000 to 500000000-to-one :)

[harmer.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, when I was a kid and learning to use computers, nobody told me about the shift key so to type a capital letter, I always hit caps lock, the letter, then caps lock again. I've tried converting to shift+letter, but I've got the caps lock thing down to only taking a fraction of a second.