(no subject)

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

I work at a college help desk. It's finals week and my last final was on Monday, so I volunteered to work evenings.


Tonight someone asked me if he was in the library. When I asked him to repeat his question (because honestly, I could have misheard it), he asks "this used to be the library, right?"

I pause then tell him that the computer center was built a few years ago and that the library was actually *over there.*

That makes the second time since I've started working here that the ETC has been mistaken for the library. (In the future, books are obsolete and computers are everything!) Like the last time, this guy was an older man and probably was a former student.

Last night, someone had a question about his ID card (which also allows access to buildings on campus). It wasn't allowing him access to a building which it should have. I told him that he would need to talk to the [guy in charge of the cards] who should be here in the morning.

"He's not here now? Why not?"

Because it's almost 9 pm. Just because the library's open 24 hours doesn't mean everything else is.

Last Thursday afternoon, someone called to ask if we had any loaner laptops. I told her that no, we did not and that she had missed the laptop lottery. Last night a woman comes by and asks the same question. Like the first caller, she said that she was a senior and her laptop had died in a permanent fashion. Wait...I didn't ask if she was the same one who called earlier, but I wonder. If she was, why didn't she believe me the first time? Do I not sound credible over the phone? I wonder if she's going to come by again. I gave her some unofficial advice about where to find cheap laptops, as she was considering biting the bullet and getting a new one.

Last month, we killed the old email program Blitzmail and switched to IMAP. Last week I was in the lobby of the computer building and overhear my coworker have the following exchange:
S: Computer User Services, this is S. You can't get into Blitzmail? We shut off the server last month. ...Are you on leave? [...] We've been sending out warning emails for months.

And for the love of all that is holy (or not), back up your thesis! I've had four people tell me that their computer was stolen or is as dead as a dinosaur, but only one of them actually backed up her thesis. You have worked (theoretically) for the better part of a semester, why don't you have it anywhere else?

Boy was I happy to have backups of my thesis when my hard drive died. Because it's not if your computer dies, it's when your computer dies. I think it senses impending finals and dies preemptively.

Sunday night, one of my other coworkers arrives at work to find the following note so nicely left on the desk: Borrowed ethernet cord. Will return. ~~Sunday~~
No name, of course. When the person returned, my coworker resisted her urge to strangle him with the cord and instead gave him a stern talk about how we no longer lend out cords because they have a way of walking off, and that most cords have a specific purpose (dorms subnet, sandbox) so we really don't lend out those. Also, there are a bazillion jacks under the desk, most of which are empty. We can't just put the cord back in the "only open jack" like the guy suggested. This particular cord was the one to the sandbox, which obviously has to go in a specific port. Which we can't ID readily in the darkness of under the desk.
The guy reportedly was chagrined and offered to plug it back in, but still didn't apologize.

People also need to shower. Just, you know, sometimes. Because boy do the IRCs smell. At least people are using the Purel kept at the desk to sanitize their hands.

Comments

[abstrak-tokatl.livejournal.com]

damn right!

[dirtymatt.livejournal.com]

I could never figure out the students who only have one copy of some major paper, usually on a beat up floppy disk. Yes, that disk is going to die one day, and when it does your paper dies with it, and no amount of getting angry, trying to bribe me, or flirting with me will change the fact that your disk is dead. I'm not some kind of IT messiah with the ability to raise lost files from the dead.

[thalionar.livejournal.com]

wow... when I was in college a few years ago, after any major revision, I had a server copy, an email copy, a copy on disk, and possibly a hard copy. My senior thesis I kept a copy on my best friend's hard drive and on a second floppy. (This was before readily accessable CDR)

[alysania.livejournal.com]

I did 3 years at my university's helpdesk and I cant tell you how many times I'd have to tell a sleep-deprived, nearly-in-tears grad student that everything they had worked on for the last year was gone. All gone. Worse still was that every student got an account with plenty of space to store backups of files to, and very few of them used it.

[dirtymatt.livejournal.com]

For a programming project I had this term I had a Subversion repository setup, which basically meant I had a copy on my laptop, my desktop, and a server of every single change I made to the project over the entire term.

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

i normally keep at least two copies of everything i'm working on. i started to do this when i began work on my final 3d modeling project this term but failed to continue doing it as i worked. *headdesk* you'd think after all these years doing tech work that i would remember these things. i guess even the most paranoid of us can slip up occasionally *sigh* thankfully, though quite annoyingly at times, 3d studio max has a default autosave setting that happens every few minutes. the autosave normally annoys the crap out of me but lets just say that it saved my ass this term when the file i was working on became corrupted midway through the project. i now have 2-3 copies of the damn thing in various places on my hard drives and USB drive.

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

I would have scared the asshat who stole your cord and said you called security regarding a theft. Borrowed without asking is stealing. Then thank him because you now have his name and that security will be contacting him.

Just make him sweat.

[neferde.livejournal.com]

Gah! >.> Exactly! I eventually just set the autosave features (after getting permission to install them because they weren't considered vital enough to install when the programs were installed) to save into the student's network drive on the PCs and to a safe folder on the Macs. The number of times I had to just find the backup copy for them that autosave created to get the student back up and running boggled my mind. It sure made my reputation as a Super Genius SA though!

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

that would have been awesome. But my coworker and I are too nice. Or maybe too passive-agressive.