A ticket came in...

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > A ticket came in...

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Here's one I just remembered. I got called out to an older lady's house because her PC wasn't working. She had moved it from the downstairs bedroom to the upstairs and now it doesn't work. She even bought a new computer and that one didn't work upstairs.

She would turn the computer, the screen would come on, but then the screen would immediately turn off again. The computer kept humming along, but the screen was dead.

Turns out the LCD she was using and her cable modem both had 12v adapters with the same size plug. The one for the cable modem provided .5A, the other did some 3A. The LCD wasn't getting enough juice, so it would turn on for a split second and then die. Once I swapped the connectors, it worked again. She had been on the phone for 3 hours with many techs before they finally sent me out for this. It would have been impossible to predict or diagnose.

I then helped her box up the new PC and take it over to Best Buy to return it. I made up some song and dance on the spot about how she was my mother in law and she had bought this computer for me and how sweet it was but I don't need it, and BB waived the restocking fee. I then dated her daughter for the better part of a year. Good times.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2008 08:26

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:03

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Coffee Jones posted:

I always imagine a hair-brained woman trying to avoid being 'in trouble' with her husband.

A:"I didn't do anything. How was I supposed to know? It's not my fault."
B:"What happened?"
A:"I'm sorry!"

This is my least favorite difference between home users and business users. A home user will have no problem telling you in private that they were looking at porn and they got this virus when they tried to install a trojan'd codec.

A business user will swear up and down, for the sake of keeping their lovely job, that all they were doing was working with excel then out of nowhere all this porn started downloading itself and all these popups came up.

Don't gently caress with me. I don't give a gently caress how you got it, and I'm not going to narc on your stupid middle-management rear end you washed up white collar chump. The more you tell me, the faster I can be done and the less I will charge you.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2009 22:06

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

I just got a call from a client asking about his wifi. He said that he was getting "54 millibauds per second". No wonder it's slow!

# ¿ Mar 30, 2009 22:04

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Tony Montana posted:

You'd think if he said 'um, I really don't do domestic PC sales and don't really know anything about it' then the message would get around.

Yeah, of course, the best PCs come from Japan anyways. Domestics never hold their value.

# ¿ May 28, 2009 05:02

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

coyo7e posted:

Edit: Despite "I haven't owned a care in years" being a great line, it's a typo.

Ha, that would be good.

"Don't you care about your users? Come fix this!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. I haven't owned a care in years and my caring license has lapsed. I'm afraid I cannot own or operate cares for anyone's issues."

# ¿ May 29, 2009 00:50

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

sfwarlock posted:

Someone who is under pressure to make it Just Work. Especially if some idiot with power in the organization wants to be able to print to the office from home, but "doesn't want to gently caress around with the VPN bullshit, just make it simple, okay?" Direct quote.

I had to help a client upgrade from Filemaker 5.5 to Filemaker 10. Their DB guy upgraded his database, I just had to install the software. Old versions of filemaker would let you open a file on one computer as the host, then if you had the db on a fileshare and opened it on another computer it would automatically try to open it as a networked copy through filemaker's network protocol. Version 7 and up removed this ability and makes you click on file->open network file to open it on a remote system.

my client's first words when i told him that he'd have 3 new mouseclicks to learn? "i call bullshit"

# ¿ Jun 2, 2009 09:13

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

I just had a 20 minute IP Relay chat with someone about some PC work they needed done. It took 20 minutes to get "please email me to discuss this further" across.

This is the email I got (in Comic Sans font)

quote:

Hi,

I am very much happy to speak with you in few minutes ago on relay.....The main problem is listed below.

Hard Disk...................80g

Processor..............

Main Board...............

Just let me have the cost for that.

Thanks

edit: and here's the back and forth emails
me: What is the problem you are having? Do you need to have a drive replaced? I'm not sure what you're asking me. In the phonecall, you mentioned 20 PCs. Do they all have the same problem?
him: Yeah they have the same problem.
me: What problem are they having?
him: Hard disk and Processor and Main Board.
me: Do you need to replace the hard disk, processor, and main board on 20 PCs? Repair them, upgrade them? I need a little more information.
him: Yeah you have to upgrade when you replace the hard disk and main board and the processor
me: What kind of hardware is in the computers now? Would you like to replace the RAM or to keep the old RAM? Aside from the 80gb hard drive, what other specifications would you like to have on the processor and motherboard? What speed? What will the PCs be used for, then maybe we can get a better idea of how to upgrade.

and then nothing. wtf.

angelfoodcakez fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jun 8, 2009

# ¿ Jun 8, 2009 18:02

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

I have a client who keeps on saying "cold boot" when he means "reboot". As in "the virus locked up my pc and even after I cold booted it, it was still there". They always do that, they read or hear something then halfways use it correctly but mostly incorrectly.

I had another who was convinced that everything that was wrong with his computer was a registry issue. He was running XP SP0 on a Sony Vaio from 199never and absolutely refused to update anything because he had it just the way he liked it. One day, he was having issues with tabbing between form fields in IE, as in, it was slow and took about a half second to tab. He said "it feels like a registry issue, doesn't it?"

Yes, yes, it does have that registryish feel to it.

he had about a dozen different registry cleaners installed, and had a specific pattern that he used them in, because "they work in different ways, and some are better than others for different issues", like the IE form tabbing issue.

I like my clients because they like to cut me big fat checks, but drat.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2009 13:16

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Lum posted:

No that's completely incorrect. A "cold boot" would be switching it off completely before powering it back off, so in modern times it would be a full Shut Down then press the power button. Just doing a restart would be a "warm boot".

This used to make a difference on older computers as the contents of memory could stick around when doing a warm boot, for example some warez discs on the Atari ST would leave some little intro/demo in memory which would then be loaded instead of the built in OS if you used the reset button on the back rather than switching off waiting a second and switching back on.

yes, you and I know the difference between a cold and warm boot, but he doesn't, that's the point. he must have read or heard it somewhere and now says it to appear knowledgeable.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2009 14:18

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

angelfoodcakez posted:

I just had a 20 minute IP Relay chat with someone about some PC work they needed done. It took 20 minutes to get "please email me to discuss this further" across.

This is the email I got (in Comic Sans font)

edit: and here's the back and forth emails
me: What is the problem you are having? Do you need to have a drive replaced? I'm not sure what you're asking me. In the phonecall, you mentioned 20 PCs. Do they all have the same problem?
him: Yeah they have the same problem.
me: What problem are they having?
him: Hard disk and Processor and Main Board.
me: Do you need to replace the hard disk, processor, and main board on 20 PCs? Repair them, upgrade them? I need a little more information.
him: Yeah you have to upgrade when you replace the hard disk and main board and the processor
me: What kind of hardware is in the computers now? Would you like to replace the RAM or to keep the old RAM? Aside from the 80gb hard drive, what other specifications would you like to have on the processor and motherboard? What speed? What will the PCs be used for, then maybe we can get a better idea of how to upgrade.

and then nothing. wtf.

Just a follow up...

After a few back and forth emails, I was able to tease out the hardware specs he needed. I priced it out and gave him a quote for parts+labor and asked him where his office was so I could look at the machines before I put 4k on credit.

He tells me to let him know when the hardware arrives so that his deliveryman can pick it up.

I look at the IP sending the emails... loving Nigeria. That was loving elaborate. IP relay phone chat? drat.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2009 08:06

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

The hardest part about this job (for me) is explaining the differences between what a solution will do, and what the user will expect it to do.

"What do you mean that we can't do a bare metal restore of the server from the USB flash drive we've been copying our documents to? You said it was the backup, so back it up!"

# ¿ Jun 22, 2009 06:10

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Arsten posted:

As someone who runs his own business like this, I leave in the fine print that a monitoring application will be left behind to help them diagnos problems and leave instructions for removal in the contract.

Several times I've had them go "Yeah, that network isn't working, and hasn't since you left." At which time I pull the network uptime and details records from the computers, usually while they are talking to me, and go "Yes. They have been."

Three times, now, I've had to present this evidence in court. One of them came back and tried to sue me for violating their "right to security" and their lawyers dropped them after the initial filing because it's in the contract that this is going to happen, and what to do to remove it.

It's well worth it to build a secure unit (only talks to a single DNS-resolved IP, only communicates over SSH) and deploy something similar. I've had to use it around 30 times or so over the last ten-ish years.

Being in a similar line of work, I would very much like to know more about this application. Is it home-built or commercial? Are there commercial/OSS equivalents? What does yours monitor and why?

# ¿ Aug 7, 2009 07:35

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

ah, ok. i work mostly with home users and having a small app to monitor for problems, allow remote connections, etc would be pretty good for some of my clients

# ¿ Aug 7, 2009 21:18

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Zephirus posted:

Makers Mark (or any good bourbon above 40 by vol) or Hendriks Gin (or any good London Dry).

I don't think it's possible to be a techie in this industry and teetotal. I certainly don't know anyone who is.

I deal with stupid users all day for my livelihood and I am a teetotaler.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2009 22:58

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

ErIog posted:

You'll never get promoted like that.

I work for my own company, and as such I have just promoted myself right now, this instant, just to spite you.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2009 23:26

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Casao posted:

"Would you like a receipt for this transaction?"
Yes.
"Please go inside for your receipt..."

This is worse.

Might as well say

"Would you like a receipt for this transaction?"
Yes.
"That's nice"

# ¿ Sep 16, 2009 20:48

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

quicksand posted:

Hey can you install microsoft for me? Thanks!

everything is broken!
what's broken?
everything! microsoft is down, i can't get in!
what's down?
microsoft! microsoft office! i can't get in!
what part of microsoft office are you trying to use?
MICROSOFT OFFICE FOR MY EMAIL

# ¿ Sep 22, 2009 06:37

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Spermy Smurf posted:

I got called out on this in a domain wide email recently.

It used to be taught that way. The MLA handbook said it needed to be done.

8-12 years later the MLA decided that you only need one space after a period. So now younger people put 1 space (as they are taught), and us old fogeys (27-30ish?) usually put 2 since thats the way we were taught.

Of course none of this is what you asked, but I am leaving it in anyway. I believe it was used for typewriters like you mentioned.

There's a lot of history to the doublespace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_spacing_at_the_end_of_sentences

# ¿ Oct 20, 2009 19:44

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

an old client i haven't heard from in months posted:

subject: Beware! a ruse, allegedly from me
body: if you receive a request from mr asking you to join "desk top dating" , please disregard. You may also receive a second or third follow up asking you to please join. This is a pfishing expedition to capture your personal info and your pass word. I joined this briefly after a 3rd request from a dear friend of my father in law. After an hour, I became suspicious and stripped the intrusive software out of my computer. I hope I was in time.

Please e mail me if you are getting requests to join desktop dating from me. It will mean I did not clean my machine quickly enough and that my whole address book has been captured.

Sorry for having to alert you to this. I let my guard down.

He sent this to his whole contact list. I never did get those emails he was talking about.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2009 11:06

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:03

angelfoodcakez: Mar 22, 2003; crank dat robocop

Stop being jerks about the reimaging thing. A policy to reimage everything makes sense in a corporate environment where these things can be mandated and controlled.
There's a big difference between office users and clients who pay you. You tell users what to do, clients pay you to do what they want.

The typical client does not want to have to deal with a fresh install and not having the installation discs for all of his software. If they pay you to make sure that doesn't happen, then that's what they pay you for.

You know perfectly well that you can usually take care of something like WinAntivirus2009 without worrying about the computer now being on some ultrarootkit botnet from mars poo poo.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2009 23:21

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