Extreme tech support

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Don't you love tech support in adverse circumstances? Mine yesterday was two hours of troubleshooting my parents' wireless router while making sure my sister's ten-month-old did not reset the desktop computer or eat the cords of the two laptop computers, and the last half hour of which was spent with my sister telling me it wasn't worth troubleshooting, that they should buy a new router, and that it was probably "all Comcast's fault anyway."

Now, I'm all for blaming Comcast when they're at fault, like the 239842398744 times a day my Internet connection goes down, but how on Earth could it be their fault if any computer connected to the router with a cord works just fine on the Internet, but wireless isn't working?

I seriously wanted to shut her in the bathroom.

And just in case anyone wants to feel my joy vicariously, the WLAN light was on on the router, but both portable computers (Dell Latitude D630 and Thinkpad T60) insisted there was no wireless network to be discovered, and Linksys's own diagnostic program run on both laptops insisted that both laptops' radios were off (verifiably untrue as they could detect all our neighbors' wireless networks). GRRR.

I was there till 10:30PM getting harangued about how it was all Comcast's fault and how I should just give up and go home and that I was wasting all my time and all my sister's time. Yeah, spending my whole evening punting around a router is my idea of a good time.

Microsoft certifications FTW!

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

I haven't dealt with lusers in awhile so today I hate something else instead.

I don't know if this is nationwide or regional or just peculiar to Atlanta, but do you guys get those radiocommercials for computertraining.com, where they assert that if you're not making at least $50,000 a year, then you need to spend six months getting a MCSE and become ABSOLUTELY OMG INDISPENSABLE to any company in teh world!!!!!1111one

God, I want to throttle the people who make those ads. "A Microsoft certification is your key to a fast-paced and exciting career!" indeed.

Oxymorons in support

[ianhess.livejournal.com]

If you say "mission critical" and "no backups" in the same breath, you lose all protection against being laughed at.

If you say "I have no backups and the server has to be working immediately", likewise.

If you claim to be a m$ sql admin, and then ask how to invoke the enterprise administrator, I reserve the right to mock you in public.

Space Case

[nem0.livejournal.com]

PRE STORY INFO: My company does CADD work. When we spec new file servers, we get them built BIG, because this industry lives and dies on BIG EFFIN' FILES.

Branch Office Manager: We're going to start scanning all of our incoming correspondence to PDFs, so we should get something to store that on. You know, like a computer with a whole bunch of hard drives or something.

Me: You mean like... A FILE SERVER?

BOM: Yeah, one of those!

Me: Walk down the hall and take a left at $EMPLOYEE's office. See that big, noisy thing with all the blinkenlights?

BOM: Uh... yeah?

Me: That's the bloody file server I installed a year ago.

BOM: Is it big enough?

Me: Let's put it this way. Everything your entire office has done in the past, oh, year? Is taking up about 6% of the space.

BOM: So... that's big enough?

Me: Yes, BOH. That's big enough. And if, for some UNGODLY reason it isn't, like you decide to scan every letter at 1200 DPI in full photo color at 11x17 and nobody manages to stop you for several years, we have a whole another file server on the other side of your T1 where you can put stuff.

BOM: What's a DPI?

Me: Don't worry about it.

BOM: So what you're saying is that's big enough?

Me: YES. YES, IT'S BIG ENOUGH.

BOM: Okay, thanks! *CLICK*

One of the ladies in the production office just said something about there being tequila and margarita mix downstairs. I think I'm gonna get in on some of that before I have to choke a bitch.

Dear $bossguy.

[arinoch.livejournal.com]

I understand you're too busy/good/whatever to be bothered to talk directly to a lowly support person like myself. However, if you're going to slap the phone into $secretary's hand and say "call them for me", it might help if you give $secretary something to work with. The error your getting with an AOL email program I technically shouldn't be supporting would help loads. So would the relevant information (username, passwords) so we can actually troubleshoot said email error. I was gonna be a nice guy and support it even though you should have told her to call AOL. But now, you can go die in a grease fire.

Burn in hell,
$me

Your Emergency Room has no internet? Tough luck.

[ofstarstuff.livejournal.com]

I was this close, today, to throttle a customer through the line.

The line 'Excuse me, sir, are you blackmailing me with the lives of your patients?' (paraphrased from a previous entry on this community) comes to mind.

No, kind sir. It's not MY BLOODY FAULT if you have no internet. If you are an hospital, please to be getting more than one DSL connection?

Just FOaD. In a fire, please.

He sounded about 12...

[cybirea.livejournal.com]

Today I had a third party 'network engineer' who, for some reason was changing a fibre fly lead on one of my VLAN switches. I had to talk him through a ping...

"Start, Run, CMD, ping, space 10.201 etc"

I think I just managed *not* to cry when he asked if he needed to put the dots in between the numbers... o.0