Tech Support South African Style!

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

This is from an e-mail sent to me by a South African Tech Support colleague. It's second hand information. Just thought I'd pass it on. :-)

'Hello, technical support, how can I help you'?

Customer: 'Last night my computer started making a lot of hissing noise at me so I shut it down. This morning when I turned it on the computer started hissing and cracking, then started smoking and a bad smell, then nothing'.

SUPPORT: 'I will have a technician come over first thing this morning, just leave the computer just like it is, so they can find the problem and fix it, or change it out with another computer. Give me your address; phone number and the technician will be there just as soon as they can'.

When the technician got there, the lady showed the technician where the computer was, said what happened to it; this is what the technician found.



Click to get a bigger image. :-)













It's a South African Spitting Cobra better known as a 'Mfezi' the 'Staffie'!

The worse thing I have to deal with is house spiders and dust. I love living in a temperate climate!

Comments

[claidheamhmor]

Heh. That email was going around a while ago. Luckily, snakes in urban areas of South Africa are really, really rare. :)

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

They're even rarer in the UK thank goodness. :)
I just got it off a South African friend and thought I'd share. Just makes me relieved to live in the UK. :)

[claidheamhmor]

Hey, I think you lot see more wildlife than we do! About the only wild animals we see here in Johannesburg are rats... :)

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

When I was in Jo'burg, the closest to wildlife I got was The Bunny Park. LOL

[soberloki.livejournal.com]

EEP!

I'm SO glad I live in Canada, and in an urban area. We really don't end to get critters in our machines like that. D:

[claidheamhmor]

I thought you guys got deer and things in your machines? :)

[heuteistmeintag.livejournal.com]

our polarbears avoid our pcs because they generate too much heat :-)

my roommate is from somewhere near johannesburg. i have to show him this post

[miertam.livejournal.com]

I thought Polar Bears used macs. :)

[soberloki.livejournal.com]

Hmm. So did I. ;)

[soberloki.livejournal.com]

That's only during the mating season, when anything making a low hum (even a subsonic one) is pretty much asking for it.

[heuteistmeintag.livejournal.com]

i guess it depends on what part of Surrey you are talking about. i don't consider anything southe of fraser hwy / east of 152 urban :-p

[soberloki.livejournal.com]

Heh. We're very close to KGH and 104 Ave, actually.

[heuteistmeintag.livejournal.com]

I see your Whalley and raise your my Guildford!

Goodness it has been ages since I've been back in Surry :-(

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

wait that the racoons come :-)

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

We took a VCR to a repairman once and (after he found a packing peanut stuck inside the mechanism) he told us about having found a mouse and a snake inside machines on separate occasions. It wasn't urban, but it was Canada (southeastern Ontario).

I'd expect to see more cases of critters inside machines in urban areas, just because critters live closer to humans there.

[heuteistmeintag.livejournal.com]

reason why I'm moving to Ireland. no snakes.

shit, i was just about to go to bed. now i have to stay up another hour and look at some pr0n or something so i don't get any nightmares.

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

Sorry. Mid-morning here. Bored at work. Hence the amusing/anecdotal e-mails bouncing around between us. :-)

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Hey, you could move to NZ. No snakes there either.

[heuteistmeintag.livejournal.com]

ooh la la sheeps!

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

Here's the Snopes entry relating to this particular email (http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/pcsnake.asp).

More disturbing for me are the stories of Fire ants colonising people's laptops. eep.

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

People take these things far too seriously. I think the photos look real but I doubt the situation is. It's just for the LOLs.

Anything that bites/stings/spits is to icky to think about. :-)

[edling.livejournal.com]

Heh- was just about to go look there, but you were faster than me.
Last time I saw this I had a poke round the net to try to find out the real story- couldn't find anything definite, but I concluded that it could have come from SA cos I think the voltage on the PC is correct, but the snake looked wrong for what the mail says it is - I think I decided it looked more like some kind of grass snake, but I know nothing about snake identification so I could be utterly wrong.
Still not what you expect to be poking out of a PSU though..

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

I wiki'd the snake type and it does look like a Mozambique Spitting Cobra. However, thankfully, I know nothing about snakes either. Yay!

[azurelunatic]

A former roommate of mine, before he was a roommate, had a computer fried by reason of ants. Granted, his room was a quite literal trash heap, and he saw the ants crawling in it and then chose to power it on.

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

Word. I love living in a part of the world where humans have lived and killed off anything nasty over the last couple of thousand of years ;-P

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

Civilisation, gotta love it. ;D

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

Word. Some species are still not endangered enough for my taste ;-P

[reanimated.livejournal.com]

ehhh civilization can't rid texas of rattlesnakes and scorpions.

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

Texas is civilized?

-
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

[reanimated.livejournal.com]

Ahaaaa. gotta love the yankees who've never been here. ;-)

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

/me feels loved...

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

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

her computer got hit by a Worm? ;-)

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

~rimshot~

[jecook]

I remember the first(?) time this went around- The country was listed as austrailia, but was essentially unchanged.

In any case, it's got nothing on the case full of mouse droppings I lugged back to the shop for the poor depot tech to work on... :)

(tagged and added to memories.

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

Eeeeew. Gross. I think some things go above and beyond, poor depot tech. :(

[meijhen.livejournal.com]

You know, when I first read this, I thought it said "moose droppings."

o.O

[crazylazylurch.livejournal.com]

A moose bit my sister once...

[hopefulnebula]

My dad was remote-supporting someone in Hawaii when I was little whose keyboard wasn't working. The thing was, half of it wasn't working, and then it would be fine but the other half wasn't working, etc. etc. etc.

First thing he had her do was turn the keyboard upside-down and give it a good, hard shake.

He had to take the phone away from his ear shortly afterward, as the woman started shouting "THERE'S A GECKO IN MY KEYBOARD!!!!"

(The point being, even if the story in the original post isn't true, stuff like it has happened before.)

[falnfenix]

HEEE!!! i'd be tickled to BITS if there were a gecko in my keyboard.



...then i'd keep it and love it and hug it and call it George.

[miertam.livejournal.com]

Some of our fist shipments overseas had problems like this. The volunteers were not putting the slot covers back on. We are not sure if it was the heat the vibrations or what but in South America the bugs would get in and kill themselves and the box.

By the time I joined the problem was well known and anything that has a gap of more than 1/4 an inch gets rejected.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

Brilliant. I'd have laughed my head off - hissing, indeed!

I prefer the feral alligators in the toilet (New York City, 'tis said)

[marylis43.livejournal.com]

My sib forwarded your anecdote. Our late mother (of blessed memory) nurtured horror, fear, hatred, and unremitting homicidal intent toward any and all snakes, and used a garden hoe to take out any so unfortunate as to meet her -- everything from garter snakes on up. The service tech's visit would have been superfluous except to unsmash the computer.

I did have a small mouse (4 legged variety) trapped in my printer and had to disassemble almost all of it to get him out, alas, injured. He went to join the feral alligators. Humanely, of course.

Snake

[lolad.livejournal.com]

Yeah it is from Australia

Thats a Red Bellied Black Snake, Pseudechis porphyriacus, that is a venomous species of snake native to eastern Australia.