PC poison

[xdownfornowx.livejournal.com]

OK, I'm really hoping that everyone here has one of these people around. Its a bad thing to want, but I hope I am not the only one feeling this pain. The pain I talk about is PC poison. A person that with out any intention or ill will towards technology can destroy it with out trying. Its like Marvel should make a super villian based on this person. I had a friend in college who would turn any PC to dust just by touching it. She would walk past your dorm room and the computer would just black out No error, no warnig, no blue screen, just poof... and your shit is dead. Well, where I am working now I have found another of her kind. I'm guessing they have a gene that not only causes great stupidity and uselessness, but also gives them some kind of biological EMP. This user is one of my banes here. Thinking of her gives me a cold shiver, for real. She makes me want to cry for what she does to computers. They didn't ask for such abuse it just comes to them at random... Like an act of god contained in a single spark of static eletricity that wreaks havoc. During my time here she has done the following:

- shattered a cd in the drive because of a sticky label on the disk causing an inbalance and breakage
- killed explorer with shitty burned CDs
- has got too many for me to count floppies stuck in a drive
- put floppies in backwards and upside down
- put floppies in zip drives
- put labels over the slide of a floppy
- left several floppy slides in the drive
- somehow completely currupt software resulting in reinstalls
- has no idea why she can not login when it clearly says Administrator or another eser name in the box
- wiped out other peoples files causing restores to be done
- killed our very expensive shade scanning software.
- Do I need to mention viruses on a NON-network PC? (don't ask how)

The worst part is that I can not lecture her about doing bad things because I never see her do it and she has no idea what she did to break it. "I don't know, it just happened." Unreal. Then today, I actually witnessed it. It confirmed my supisions, she is PC poison. While setting up a laptop for her to go offsite tomorrow to do some scans she killed the laptop. She didn't fuck up the scan, or the software,or the scanning device. She killed the fucking laptop. I was amazed. I set everything up and it was fine. I then had her go through a dry run to work out any bugs because getting her to do anything on a pc correctly is like teaching a monkey to drive. She logged in, plugged in the device and cradle, and started the scan software. She did a scan and then placed the device into the cradle and POOF! the screen goes black. Huh?!? I spend a few minutes trying to get the laptop to boot again. No dice. nothing, just a quick blip on the LED for the power button. This crazy bitch has just fried the laptop. All she did was put the scanner in the cradle. It defies logic. I was successful in setting up a second laptop for her. I can't wait for the calls I will be getting from her tomorrow about this when she is an hour and a half away and it all fucks up there.

Should be a fun call to Dell tomorrow to get on site repair for this. A half hour of stripping HW and listening for beeps when I know the mobo is toast. Grrr!

Comments

[cairea.livejournal.com]

That . . . is my mother. And she's careful with machines because she knows they hate her. Walk past the room the computer's in, screen goes blank. Walk past the TV, reception fucks up. Use my cell phone which oridinarily gets surprisingly good reception for Western Washington? Yeah, suddenly we're out of the service area. I just got a call from her asking to come fix her DVD player because it's holding a DVD hostage.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

I have a coworker, competent tech, quite savvy. Buch technology hates him.

He has the wierdest shit break on him. His desktop, his personal stuff, etc.

anything belonging to someone else seems immune though.

[wyrdlinks.livejournal.com]

Pauli effect... http://www.technoccult.com/archives/2004/11/17/pauli-effect/

:-)

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

the scan thing sounds like a static discharge.. Palm pilots used to have a big problem with their USB cradles for that reason.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Printers have been known to start working the moment I leave the room.

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

try this, just for a laff:

remove all power from the laptop. battery and AC.
hold down the power button for 15 seconds.
plug the AC back in.
hold down the power button for 15 seconds. no matter what it does here, keep holding it.
wait 30 seconds.
power on.

works sometimes. the stupid animals, especially when docking/undocking or idle, get stuck in a hibernate loop due to the nature of hibernate. This empties the capacitors on the planar and effectively resets it.

if this don't work, then yes. the mobo is toast.

IV
laptop tech for 4 years and counting who this has saved tens of thousands of dollars for.

[gnostalgia.livejournal.com]

Give her an amethyst crystal on a keychain or something.

Hey...it can't hurt.

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

I wear an amethyst necklace. Computers seem to fix themselves around me. Maybe they're just scared :).

[gholam.livejournal.com]

However, this is not always a boon, because once you leave, the error comes right back - but everything will work perfectly while you're actually present, thus denying you the chance to actually see what the hell is the problem.

[klytus.livejournal.com]

I knew a lady like that a few jobs ago. Not only was she utterly incompetent for the job she was hired for, she could not get her laptop and docking station to work to save her life. The stupid laptop would always come loose from the docking station when she was in the middle of something, and it would drop her from the network, causing her to lose work. The IT department got to hate this matron really quickly. No matter how many times they gave her a new laptop or a new docking station - or both - it never solved the problem. They kept showing her how to make sure there was a solid connection, but for one reaosn or another, the trick to it always eluded her. They couldn't refuse to replace her equipment because she was a chronic complainer, she refused to have a desktop PC, as she wanted to take her work home with her on her laptop, the help desk refused to plug the network card directly into the laptop, as this was in the days of PCMCIA NICs with dongles and she'd already trashed a few of those, and yet and for one reason or another, the Powers That Be ™ shared her delusions of adequacy, so getting rid of her was not an option.

[trazan.livejournal.com]

> wiped out other peoples files causing restores to be done

One of my former bosses did that once, and I don't think there was a backup. The technician ripped him a new one.
Wombat

[sigurther.livejournal.com]

Gotta try that amethyst trick. I'm the type of person who walks past a streetlamp and it shuts off. Hell, I DRIVE past 'em and they go out. Needless to say, it makes being a freelance tech troublesome at best. Thank Bob I learned how to fix the problems I 'cause', else I'd be some other tech's worst nightmare. ;)