Too slow

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

The previous talk about users trying to run XP on a too slow computer brought back an amusing memory. A few years ago I worked as an in-house technician at Best Buy (long before they bought Geeksquad). We once had a customer who brought a computer in wanting to upgrade it so he could play I think it was Quake. This was about 8 years ago when a PII/450 was the new hotness and there was much debate if the K6-2 or the PII was a faster CPU.

Anyways, this guy brings his system in inisting on having us upgrade it. It took a bit but I finally managed to convince him that there was no possible way to make that computer play Quake or Quake II maybe. Quake, if you don't recall, would barely play on a 486 and would bring even a Pentium to it's knees pretty handily. This guy was running an old Packard Bell 386sx/16. Sorry, not happening.

Uhhh

[dudeitsawesome.livejournal.com]

Where I work, we have some sales reps who work from home. There's a guy who's moving from working in the office to working from his home.

At home, he has no computer and no internet access.

This guy just called wanting to know if he could just take his office PC home and, you know, "hook it all up" and connect to our network.

Uhhh.

I just had a very long conversation in which I had to explain to him that what he is talking about doing is akin to never turning on home phone service but buying a telephone and hooking it up and expecting to get a dial tone.

I still don't think he understood.

I need a smoke.

Ah, the life of the tech

[mashteh.livejournal.com]

For those that didn't know, I work at one of the generic call centers that support dang near anyone..

on one contract, we get about a hundred calls a day from people who tele-commute, mad as spit that they can't connect.. only to find out, they're on a router, and it's connect to the internet has dropped..

client: But.. my computer says it's online!

me: yes.. it IS.... to the router.. that's all that monitors...

client: That's so inconvenient, you're going to change that setting for me so it shows when I'm connected to the internet.....

Me:...... *takes his knife and puts another cut across his arm before smiling good naturedly and explains the facts of microsoft life to the client*

client: So.. what are you trying to tell me?

(no subject)

[kestrelct.livejournal.com]

I work tech support at a college. Orientation starts next week, but right now we're still taking random summer calls from the faculty. I just got the following:

"Hi, I'm SomeDude in the IForgetWhich department, and I just got back on campus and the new wireless wants me to register my computer. Can we get this sorted out over the phone, or will I need to bring my computer in?"
Me: "So, what happens when you try to connect?"
SD: "Ok...let me go check...ok, it says "Welcome to OurCollege wireless, please register with your username and password. What should I do?"
Me: *headdesk* "Ok, you should put in your username and password, the same one you use for email and all our servers."
SD: "Is that my Unix login?"
Me: ...and yet he can't follow directions "Yes, yes it is."
SD: *typetty type* "It says 'Registration sucessful'! Ok, thank you."

Is our registration page somehow unclear? Is "login with your OurCollege username and password" not a good way to tell people to login? *beats head on laptop*

OK, this is making me pull my hair out...

[jecook]

So yeah. yesterday I can't get our GhostCast console to even _talk_ to a machine remotely.

Today? works just like cake. the only thing I've changes is that I deleted and recreated the task for it in the attempt to make it think it was executing as a user who is here, and not the user who left and imparted me with his knowledge of the process (however small that was)


This is annoying. More annoying then 1000 lusers all screaming at me asking why the POS server is down, and how long it'll be before it's back up. Not My Problem, someone else is wielding that whip and cattle prod.


Ah Rage and annoyance, My old friends. And here I thought I had Recovered.

my first rant

[margaretc.livejournal.com]

I'm a sysadmin at a major university. (In fact, my job title says 'Systems Programmer', but whatever.) Recently my department began absorbing the support for a small research unit that is in the process of being disbanded. Actually, that statement makes it sound much more organized than it actually is, but I digress. I was at this small research unit today, migrating users to the campus email system from their small RH 7.something box running sendmail. I spent a lot of time at the desk of a user who happens to be married to the recently-fired previous sysadmin for that group. This guy has no job, so he drives his wife to work (yes, his previous place of employment) and hangs out with her all day in her office. I was trying to figure out why the user's .forward file from her old email account was not working, and since I have zero experience with sendmail, I asked the ex-sysadmin if he had any ideas. He had so little sysadmin skill that he didn't even know that the server he was formerly in charge of was running sendmail. It turns out that the user's /home directory was group-writeable, and that's why sendmail ignored the .forward (which I found in about 20 seconds worth of googling). Not only did this guy not understand the fix, he didn't understand how I had *found* the fix. No wonder he got fired! Pitiful.

Yup, pretty accurate.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1442129488139523775