Yo

[tovasshi.livejournal.com]

I was told to post this here as you folk love these things. I work in a store that sells and fixes computers, and we even help people over the phone. My boss actually told me this one. I have more to share later.

*Phonecall*

Boss: "Hello, *boss* speaking how may I help you"
Guy: "Hi, aren't these RAM sticks supposed to be guaranteed for life?"
Boss: "Yup."
Guy: "Okay, its just that mine is broken in half..."
Boss: "Broken in half?
Guy: "Yeah, it says here on the box that the RAM is expandable... So I tried expanding it..."
Boss: *Slow Facepalm*

Comments

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

oh my. that was hillarious.

"I void warranties".

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

I'm calling bullshit on this one.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I would have called BullShit on a past experience like this if I hadn't seen it myself. Exhibit Stoopid: the guy who took home a new VL video card and expansion ram for it, had problems, took out the expansion ram, still had problems, then put the expansion ram back in after prying the on-board ram off the board. Surprise - he still had problems. THEN he tries to return the card as defective...

Or the secretary who "fixed" the out of memory errors by 'adding' memory -- sliding 5.25 floppies into the slot between the drives...

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Both of those make considerably more sense than this story.

"Expanding" the RAM physically? In a way that breaks it in half? Nope. Not buying.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

I suspect if you actually tried to do that you'd discover it was ABOMINABLY difficult to reproduce the claimed scenario that way - you'd end up chipping bits off where the pliers gripped, not magically breaking the RAM in half.

edit: not to mention that you'd also need to come up with some sort of slot the user saw that looked like it would fit a DIMM if only it were longer.

[tovasshi.livejournal.com]

What makes it so unbelievable? You are assuming too much here. For all you know the guy could have tried bending it in half thinking thats how you would expand it. Its not that complicated.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

Ahh, stupid user tricks. I've got a million of 'em.

1. Back in the dark ages of my early college career, 5.25" floppies were still fairly commonplace items. I discovered that somebody cut down their 5.25" disk that had a Very Important Paper on it in order to fit said disk into a 3.5" drive as that was all the machines in this particular lab had on it, then they had a meltdown when it wouldnt work.

2. PCI != ISA. I saw somebody cut the back out of a PCI slot in order to fit an ISA card in the slot and was absolutely amazed that it would not work.

3. Had a notebook checked in that would not turn on. Removed the keyboard, and there was a pool of strongly smelling yellow liquid underneath it. The tech called the owner to find out WTF was up, and the customer was adamant that she hadn't spilled anything on it. After going back and forth with the tech for a few minutes the story was eventually brought to light. She apparently regularly cleaned the keyboard with lysol in order to "avoid getting those nasty computer viruses". How it managed to stay running as long as it did before it died, we have no idea.

[tovasshi.livejournal.com]

Uh, its like a guy we had who took a hack saw to his ram to make it fit.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Back in the bad old days of SIMMs and poor manufacturing tolerances, I pretty frequently DID end up whittling the center notches in a SIMM because the damn things were slightly off center of the hump in the slot. (And, yes, they worked fine afterwards.)

Fucking ridiculous how frequently you'd have to engage in sheetmetal work to get cards to fit properly in cases/motherboards, as well. I am SO SO GLAD that manufacturing tolerances have improved so greatly since then (and for that matter that case manufacturers have started smoothing the edges of the damn pieces in the cases. no more bleeding profusely when I work on cheap PCs, yay!)

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

I would too, except for one thing: Never, ever, -ever- underestimate the stupidity of users. They will bring new and entertaining dumbassery to your attention when you're least expecting it, in forms you have never seen before.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Don't.

Never underestimate the levels of human stupidity.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

I've never actually had to call tech support, but then I worked on my own (and other peoples') cars for YEARS, plus worked in metal shops in the Navy, so...

Don't get me wrong though, I'm feeling you on that, and it has taken me upwards of ten minutes on more than one "innovative" case design.

I REALLY hate the ones that are all plastic and stick so hard you literally have to grab the whole fucking thing and SHAKE IT LIKE A BRITISH NANNY SHAKES THE BABY over a couch or something until it suddenly comes apart.

[exor674.livejournal.com]

user bought laptop memory, and has a desktop.

[jokergirl.livejournal.com]

Quoting the Doctor:

"What? WHAT? WHAT?!?!?!?"

[jokergirl.livejournal.com]

Or the guy that drilled a new hole into his MB because it wouldn't fit the screws in his case... but he "did make sure there weren't any circuits on the front and back before he drilled!"

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

+ eleventy hojillion

[ateji.livejournal.com]

Think of dining room tables that expand with a leaf.

[zendequervain.livejournal.com]

At which point you panic and pray you can catch it all, because even falling onto a couch could be disastrous.

:D