I need my space...

[brutalentropy.livejournal.com]

So... interesting day at work. Had one call where I spent only about 10 minutes troubleshooting the actual problem, then spent the next 30 minutes bullshitting with the dude about politics. Very nice.

My second call of the day, however, was not as fun. I work tech support for computers that run a BSD based OS. Lady calls in, her machine boots to a blue screen right before where the login window should be appearing. So, we do the normal things... try starting up in safe mode, no go. Ran fsck -fy on the volume, nada. So, we booted to the command line, and I made a terrible, terrible error. I said "ok, now if you type something incorrectly, this may damage your system. Be sure to type everything exactly as I say."

So, it of course took 15 minutes just to even get the file system mounted:

Me: Me.
ASL: Annoying space (bar) lady.

Me: OK, I need you to type the following: mount -uw / (spelling it out all easy for her... 'm as in mike, o as in oscar, etc... SPACE hyphen uniform whiskey SPACE forward slash.')

ASL: Wait, is there a space after the hyphen?

Me: No.

ASL: What about after mount?

Me: Yes.

Imagine this repeated for every command. Unfortunately, after we removed some of the preference files, we had to reboot to see if it worked, and then reboot back to single user mode. We had to do this a total of 3 times. You can not imagine how frustrating it was to explain to her and that she is using a case sensitive operating system, and yes it does matter when I say "type preferences with a capital P" I really meant it, and wasn't just fucking around for the sake of proper English.

One. Motherfucking. Hour. By the end, I was trying to force choke her through the phone. Unfortunately, the force is not strong with me. Thankfully, it was actually fixed at the end.

Someday though, I will stretch my hand towards the phone and hear a choking sound coming out the headset.

Someday.

Although, now that I think about it, I'd rather be able to just wave my hand and say "This is the answer that you were looking for" and just have them hang up and go bother someone else with their stupidity.

Comments

[shifuimam.livejournal.com]

There's a typo in your userpic, unless "morans" is slang for something or is someone's name...

[sketchydave.livejournal.com]

I think he's just being ironical :-)

[shifuimam.livejournal.com]

Yeah...someone else told me the same thing.

I'll retract that comment...but has anyone else noticed how bad the grammar and spelling can be in this community?

I'm a grammar nazi. Sorry. :)

[brutalentropy.livejournal.com]

I haven't really noticed issues in this community... although I get angry at work because people put stuff like "customer had kernal panic" or "incompatible modual" in their notes.

I wish I could point and laugh at them.

[brutalentropy.livejournal.com]

It's not a typo, it's meant to mock this guy:

http://photos1.blogger.com/img/127/2948/640/get%20a%20brain.jpg

I'm quite capable of spelling 'moron' correctly, were I so inclined. ;-)