Randomness

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

I have discovered that the odds are much higher that your home machine will BSOD during the 9 hours of the day your at work and need to RDP into it, rather than when your at home.

The odds are also high that your roommate will unplug your room from the network and and complain that he cant get on the internet, not realising that the router happens to be on your switch, ah, the beauty of VLANs. Oh, and why is he unplugging you? Because he constantly blaims you for bad "ping" times on WoW. Yes, WoW.

If you cant get a DeviantArt clone to work on a dual Xeon 2.whatever, you need to be shot.

Also, the likelyness of a user complaining about an outage is the inverse of how much they paid.

"This isn't in English"

[greylady.livejournal.com]

I get an astonishing assortment of comments from users who probably shouldn't have jobs that require them to use a computer.

Today's gem: "I can't type this password. It's not possible, it's got an upside-down lowercase 'i' in it. There's no key for that!"

It took me a minute; the system-generated password includes special characters. She was referring to an exclamation point.

I very carefully didn't laugh.

(no subject)

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm pushing a cart

Yes, I'm pushing an empty cart

Yes, I've been subjected to your kind of empty cart comment on the elevator before

Just because my cart is empty now doesn't mean my cart has been empty the whole time

No, I'm not just pushing around a cart

No, I'm not too lazy to take the stairs

No, I'm not just using the cart as a cupholder/toolbelt

You wouldn't have peeped a word if you were on the elevator with me on the way down when five computers were stacked on my cart

I'm sorry I haven't contacted Scotty to magically beam the cart to its storage closet, and so I have to push an empty cart there

Please leave your comments to yourself

Let them eat cake(d on thermal compound)

[brutalentropy.livejournal.com]

So I was working on this guys computer... it sounded like a small child getting sucked in to a jet engine every time you turned it on. Woot, time for new heatsink/fan and case fans. So I pop off the old bugger, and lookee what I found:



Kind of amazing that he managed to get the thermal compound everywhere EXCEPT the die. He's lucky the thing didn't fry.

Another one that comes to mind... we popped the case off the front of a PC, and the fan holes in the front were COVERED in cat hair. I mean, you couldn't tell holes were supposed to be there. It looked like someone had shaved a cat and then shoved its hair in the front of the case. I'm not kidding when I say there was enough in there to make a small sweater. Thank god we have an air compressor here.

What's the craziest thing you've ever seen inside a computer case?

(x-posted)

paper thieves!

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

A minor part of our job (tech support at a college campus, where I'm a senior) is to make sure the dorm printers have paper. One hall is having a problem with paper mysteriously disappearing, and the dorm mom has taken to buying paper because she did not know that she could just call us for more. Seriously: I put a new ream next to a full printer on Thursday, and ALL of it was gone by Monday. The dorm holds maybe 80 students and there were no paper deadlines to my knowledge.

One of my coworkers suggested taping a note to the inside of the paper tray (just inside the lip, where it hopefully wouldn't interact with any machinery) that just said HONOR PRINCIPLE. (Our college is big on the honor principle, although obviously its efficacy varies.) Or maybe STOP STEALING PAPER YOU FUCK.

Short of padlocking the tray or making the poor dorm mom hold onto the extra reams, any ideas?

Also, on my last printer walk, I found half a ream of inkjet paper sitting next to the laser printer. I flipped out and gave a short lecture to the kids in the social room, but I doubt they were responsible. AUGH. Maybe we need signs that warn of how the paper might MELT in the super hot laser printer and gum everything up.

Guys, call us if you're out. And look, there is a REAM OF PAPER RIGHT THERE. USE IT. But don't take it all to your room and, I don't know, use it as rolling paper.

OMG it's a sign!

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I should not have to post a sign next to a computer that's acting as a print server saying "THIS COMPUTER IS ACTING AS A PRINT SERVER. PLEASE DO NOT DISCONNECT IT FROM THE NETWORK OR STEAL ITS NETWORK CABLE TO USE FOR YOUR OWN. IF YOU NEED ASSISTANCE WITH ANYTHING, PLEASE CALL THE HELPDESK AT (EXTENSION)."

I should not have to do this. It is a computer that is quite obviously running, and quite obviously doing something other than just sitting there. All you have to do is look at the screen to see, big as hell, "[NAME OF BIG HONKING COMPUTER USED BY ENTIRE ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT] Print Spooler Application Window." And a flashing green icon that says CONNECTED.

But apparently I must do this thing, as the cable has disappeared twice in the past four days, and been left unplugged twice more.

My God, save me from them.