(no subject)

[diseased-idiot.livejournal.com]

Hi there. Thouroughly enjoying this community so far.

Thought I post a quick on ethat has just happened to me. It happens far too often.

One of our users needed to be connected to her departments colour printer. I like to do these jobs remotely as I'm lazy.

I always ask the user to log out first, this way I can be sure I'm not going to close any documents they may have open and not saved.

Time after time, I go over how to LOG OUT three or four times in the call before eventually they come out with "OK, it's off now." Cue me chewing the phone and plotting a violent death for the user in question.

They often don't realise why I can't do anything if the machine is powered off. "Why do I need to turn it back on if you're installing a printer from there?"

This goes along with the Laptop USB floppy drive that "doesn't work even though it's plugged in." The USB plug was diagonally forced into the Ethernet port on the back. It took some effort on my part to rip it back out again.

These people are teaching our next generation of psychologists, nurses, pharmacists and so on and so forth.

I fear this, I really do.

Comments

[catmmo.livejournal.com]

I've gotten so tired of people shutting down their computers instead of just logging off that I now will just remote in, ask if they have anything open they need saved, and do the logging out myself.

Funniest instance I've ever seen of someone plugging in something wrong - luser complaining he had no power & the power strip was plugged into itself.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Simple solution. Just tell them, "If you do not follow my instructions as requested, you obviously do not wish to the work to be done."

Worked wonders when dealing with people for me. Pissed some off enough to hang up on me, and others realized that things have to be done *VERY* specifically, and in a *VERY* specific order.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

This goes along with the Laptop USB floppy drive that "doesn't work even though it's plugged in." The USB plug was diagonally forced into the Ethernet port on the back. It took some effort on my part to rip it back out again.
WTF?!?

Thanks to the IBM T4x-series laptops, I discovered that the ethernet port is just as wide as a USB port. I had a user accidentally put a flash drive in the ethernet port--an honest mistake since the USB port is on the same edge, and not that far away. Caused some interesting connectivity issues since it was in the dock, and the reaction I got after pulling it out was priceless...
...but someone putting it in at an angle?!? That is pure stupid...

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

I had a user plug their monitor cable into their ethernet port. Perfectly reasonable, it was a Mac IIsi, and a DIX port, same big 15 pin connector, only the locking method is different. Not much of a display though. It's a Mac, if it fits, it should work.

[karopanda.livejournal.com]

Shrinks are always a little off to begin with. Though, I gotta say, shoving a USB plug into an Ethernet port is pretty impressive. I mean, most people would try to push it in and just whine it doesn't fit (why did I just laugh at that?) then give up.

[arashikurobara.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a biochemistry major (hey, I'm still good enough with computers to understand most of the posts here even though I'm probably not qualified to actually do tech support =P), and thus surrounded by pre-meds, and having lived in a dorm with a ton of nursing students freshman year... even with posts about profs like this, I am far far more scared of the next generation of medical staff themselves than about dumb profs. Because the next generation isn't just stupid, they're a bunch of the most arrogant, self-centered people I have ever met. (There are exceptions here and there, thankfully - I've got a couple friends who've graduated and are in med school, and one of my roommates is a pre-med.)