Wed Morning Snicker

[honig.livejournal.com]

We do not have a decent e-submission system for support request so we get emails from users from time to time about whatever problems they are having. This morning I got this one from one of our nursing instructors:

$Honig, I hope you are the person that I need to address this computer problem. If not please direct me to the correct MIT person.

Computer problem: When I use my junk drive on this computer, the computer will "shut-down" without warning or power surge while my junk drive (e-drive) is in the computer. This problem began before Christmas break. It has consistently gotten worst. I am concern that I will loose all of my power-points. I work at home as well at work. So, I constanly upgrade from home-to-work then back again. Frequently I loose internet access well on this computer. (This is unrelated to the weather.) Please help so that I can safely use my junk drive. Someone suggested that since I have a lot of powerpoints that I do not have enough memory on this computer.
I do not have this problem on my home lap top.

For reference we are the MIS department. MIT is that school up north where all the people who have more sense than to get stuck working at a helpdesk for a community college in Alabama.

These are the types of people who are teaching the future nurses of the world. Well at least the future nurses that can actually pass their boards.

I am also surprised she did not work the word synergy in there somewhere.

Comments

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

I've gotta say though that there's a lot of very competent people in this world who don't understand technology. And that's fine with me. I don't care if highway engineers can't use Outlook - I care that the bridge I'm driving over doesn't collapse. I expect my dentist to be able to pull out my damn wisdom teeth that have made Vicodin my best friend - not if he can find the network printer without assistance. I don't expect them to have the best grasp of written English either - unless of course they work in your English department, in which case use the LART frequently and with authority :).

User stupidity along the lines of surfing porn at work or failure to check things like power cords is one thing. If they suck at their jobs that's another thing. But if their job is getting done even if they can't master Word, help 'em out. Long as they're nice about it. If not... LART.

[honig.livejournal.com]

It does make me worry a bit when the nursing instructors are not comfortable enough with technology to know the correct names for things. The nursing students depending on which hospital they go to around here are going to be faced with using a tablet PC to maintain their patient's records. It would be better if the students called things by their proper name and not "thingymabob". Just my thought on the matter, as I have friends who work in the IT department of that hospital. :)

That said, I'm sure she is a competent nursing instructor. This message is very different from the messages we usually get from instructors in general just because of the mistakes in terminology and word usage, so it made me laugh. I'd say the vast majority of our users would get a kick out of this message because they know that we are the MIS department and that USB memory keys are called generically called "jump drives".

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

I should also make clear that it does bother me when people in professions don't know how to competently operate the technology that is essential to their practice (if computerized heart monitors for instance are used I'd really want them to know how to use them).

Sometimes a little polite correction (it's a jump drive, although some could be called junk drives...) is appreciated and will set the tone for good relations between you and your departments. Other times they'll just keep on being lusers, but you can laugh all you like behind their backs once you've confirmed they're irredeemable. :)

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

One of my pet peeves on this subject is that sloppy terminology reflects, enables, and even propagates sloppy thinking, and sloppy thinking is the main reason most of us are working where we are. I tend to put up with it from end users who haven't had formal higher education, but there are times when I feel very strongly that it should be pounced on and corrected whenever possible, because in some cases sloppy language makes the problem even harder to understand than it would be just looking at it, when tackling the problem logically and using precisely defined and consistent language often contains the solution right there in the question.

How aggressive one should be about pushing the correction usually depends on how critical an accurate description of the problem is to solving it, but I've found when I can get people describing the problem accurately using precisely defined language, solving the problem itself is almost always trivial, and usually if I can get them to that point, they understand why I was pushing so hard. (But the "if" in that last sentence is a real whopper.)

[ateji.livejournal.com]

when tackling the problem logically and using precisely defined and consistent language often contains the solution right there in the question.

I find this to be true even outside of IT circles, so I very much agree. Trufax from work: there's a difference between "reward" and "award"--usually, a person hasn't done anything to be rewarded for.

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

We went through a few blown motherboards because of front USB ports. i finally stopped hooking them up.

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

I did that to a radio station server once...

once.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

And the difference between you and most lusers is that you *learned* from it. :D Learning curves are OK as long as there is *learning* involved.

(Is my frustration with people who ask "How do I do that?" the *fifth or greater* time they're told to do the exact same thing they've been walked through *four or more previous times on the same call* showing?)

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

one should design a tech-support bingo with keywords from lusers in a grid. each time it appear, strike it. the first to get a line win :-)

[margaretc.livejournal.com]

What does 'power surge' mean in this context?

[honig.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. I'm thinking maybe its her generic term for brownout/blackout?

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

It is almost certainly a message coming up on her computer. I can't remember the exact wording, but I've seen a number of instances where the computer will pop up a message from the system tray saying something about a USB hub having experienced a power surge. Seems to generally indicate the USB port going bad from my experience, sometimes physically bad where the port itself will feel "loose" when you plug into it.

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

When she said 'junk drive' I thought she meant the trash, though i do have a junk drive at home, it's labeled "Stuff", it's where I put junk that I probably won't need but if i do i know where to find it. :)

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Me, I call that the recycle bin...

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

I have my system set so it gets emptied when I shut down...and make a habit of checking in there before doing so. 9 times out of 10, stuff gets deleted... but just occasionally...

but then, I'm a former network admin, if I didn't follow all the good habits I kept trying to pound into the resilient skulls of the users, I'd never have heard the last of it! I mean, I got enough grief about the occasional typo.[yeesh, I'm dyslexic for gawds sake, like I'm going to notice if spell check doesn't catch it!]

Like the idea of a junk drive though... I'm imagining a trash-can shaped jumpdrive you use to store temp files so your main drive doesn't get cluttered.

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

No, that's where you're supposed to store your files.

I have a user that has

Trash
|- Trash 2005
|- Trash 2006
|- Trash 2007

in their mail client.

One day I'm going to forget, and click Empty trash...

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a network drive...

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

I'm frequently tempted to reprimand lusers for "loose internet access".

[gremlingirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, its a pity internet access can't keep it in its pants. LOLZ.

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

Its nice that her connection isn't affected by the weather, or the national GDP.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

You'd be surprised...in the days of dial-up, the phone lines were frequently affected by weather, wind blowing lines so they briefly shorted, cold terminals causing higher resistance and so on..all degrading the signal and thus bandwidth.

[kalifla.livejournal.com]

What the helling hell is a junk drive?

[honig.livejournal.com]

I think it is a synonym of Jump Drive which has become a generic name for USB Memory Keys around here.

[jjjiii]

Or, possibly a chinese boat that stores data.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Now I want a USB drive (or hub, maybe) shaped like a little Chinese boat...

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

what is the bandwidth of a Chinese junk full of terabyte hard drives....?

*looks thoughtful*

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

"To all users: Please do not stick Junk in computer."

[jjjiii]

When I read "power-points" I immediately thought about video games, and then "WTF?"

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Ok .. um ..

"junk drive" .. truth in advertising?

"power surge" .. WTF exactly? .. vs "shut-down"?!

"loose" vs "lose" .. LOL because otherwise I'd cry

"upgrade" vs "update", when she probably meant something more like "sync" or "transfer files" .. :&

"memory" vs "HD capacity" vs "RAM" .. a lot of "powerpoints" would fill up HD capacity, not "memory" ..

Yikes. What's scary is that most if not all of us are probably good enough at deconstructing and translating this sort of gibberish on the fly that it took actual effort to look closely at this and see what kind of mush she was actually speaking ..

[ateji.livejournal.com]

"junk drive": sounds almost Freudian. Amusing, minus its imprecision.

It also reminds me of how much teacher licensure students from my school terrify me.

[devilkitty0.livejournal.com]

It's the nursing students at my university who are the most computer illiterate, can't figure out Word, or the online registration system.

Every time one of them calls the help desk I pray I never have to have them as a nurse when I'm sick

DK

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

ah, you are from the... Other... Alabama sports town...

:-D