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Microsoft Tech Suport vs Psychic Friends
OmahaVike sent in an amusing piece that may just bring you a smile on a slow friday. It's Microsoft Tech Support vs The Psychic Friends Network. The article describes attempts to solve reasonable tech support questions through the 2 seperate support channels. Well written and funny (a rarity in the world of microsoft bashing where "Funny" usual means replacing the "S" with a dollar sign, swearing a lot and comparing various MSFT employees to the truly evil). Next time I need tech support, this might be worth considering.
Most of you Linux users probably haven't dealt with MS support lately, but I have. All I needed to do was read off some cryptic error message to the representative, and then reboot my machine four times (at his instruction) and then insert my "Windows 2000 System Recovery" disc, and everything was okay. Kudos to microsoft for their quality support.
Gates
(swap e and s)
Gatse
(insert o and x)
Goatsex
USER: Yeah, I'm trying to get my Access Script to talk to two Sybase applications at the same time, and I can't seem to get it to work.
BOFH: What's your user name agian?
USER: user10
(Sound of BOFH tapping away busily on keyboard)
BOFH: I can see the problem right here. Its definately a ID10T problem. I can fix it though.... for a price
USER: A... price?
BOFH: Sure. No big deal, just give me your credit card number over the phone. When I fix it, I'll charge your credit card.
I'm sure you get the gist.
Secret windows code
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Realizing that you should use database software with less bugs: priceless.
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
Gee, I learned something about tech support reading this:
If you call the wrong support number, you won't get a satisfactory answer.
What irony here. If you have a VB problem you need to contac the VB tech support people? Damn, that's too complicated.
They should've called that Jamaican Tarot Lady and asked her which number they needed to call to get support for their questions.
"Um, So you're telling me that the Queen of cups says I have to call the VB number for VB problems and the Access number for Access problems? {smarmy} Hehe, yeah sure, I'm smarter than you, you fraud!{/smarmy}"
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Atomfilms (and probably several other places around the net) has Psychic Pigs Tech Support [http://www.atomfilms.com/films/film.asp?film_id=9 07 for those concerned about goatliness.]
("The Sun card tells us your problem is server-side..."). It's Macromedia flash format.
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
One day I'm working on trying to get RAS working on an NT server. After way too much work, I finally got authorization to spend the 2 hundred to make a call to MS tech support.
I could dial in, but I couldn't get the application to run and display at the remote location. So MS dials in.
MS: Can you give us a shared directory that we can try and map?
Me: Sure. Try D colon slash temp.
MS: Is that a front slash or a back slash?
My jaw hurt for two days from hitting the floor so hard.
So, the conclusion is that the Psychic Friends may have actually been able to help, whereas MS Tech Support definitely couldn't? Chock one up for the Friends!
This is a true story, hard to believe, but true.
You should have been at the Apache conference this month: one of the lecturers was showing a Java program that emulated a magic 8 ball, while going back and forth between the windows, people in the audience noticed that he was running MS Outlook.
After a while the guy ran the program and asked for questions to put to it, a guy from mid-back shouted 'Ask the program if MS sponsors you to use Outlook'
The guy ran the program, and yes, it printed out 'Outlook not so good'.
Now, the probability of that coming out is already like 1 out of 20, but what is the likelyhood of somebody asking that question? If it was a set-up it was done extremely well, since everybody laughed for quite a while...
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
-- the cake is a lie
Actually, modeling the situation gives us the following:
It is generally agreed upon that in a given field of study, the total knowledge in that field doubles every T years. If we average over all fields of inquiry, we have aggregate knowledge increasing at an exponetial rate characterized by the time constant TK.
K = K(t=0)*exp(t/TK)
where of course K is total knowledge.
In contrast, the "quality" of miracles has been observed to decrease with time. Above I conjectured an inverse relationship, but I suspect an exponential decay is more apropos for western civilization: many big miracles around t=0 (~1-30 A.D.), some smaller ones later in the same millenium, decreasing even moreso in the first half of the second millenium, and all but disappearing in the second half of the second millenium. This is more characteristic of an exponential decay than a simple inverse power. Thus we can model:
M(t) =M(0)*exp(-t/TM)
where M(0) is the "miracle-value" at t= 0 and TM is the decay constant for the miracle function.
If we were to multiply these two quantites, we obtain:
MK(t)=K(t)*M(t)=MK(0)* exp[t((1/TK) - (1/TM)]
where MK is the Miracle-Knowledge function. My contention, then, is that TK = TM, which leads to a constant value of the MK function for all time.
Since it has been uttered on more than one occasion that "It would take a miracle to get adequate tech support from a help desk", it seems natural to apply the above results to the topic at hand. Therefore, applying this to tech support, if you have ever found tech support helpful, then you will always find it helpful as MK is a constant in time. If you have had one experience when it wasn't helpful, don't bother ever calling again, as the same constancy of results applies.
QED
You get paid by the line, don't you?
The next morning my friend is back workign on it and the woman tells him that God told her that the problem was with the CD-ROM drive. After looking around, my friend finds out that someone had pluged the CD-ROM's ribbon cable in backward and that was causing the problem.
You know, it seems like there was a time when gods did more impressive feats than telling old women that their CD-ROM cable is in backwards. What happened to parting oceans, annihilating entire populations in opposing nations, plagues of locusts, and so forth? If the best God can do is simple tech support type activities then you can color me unimpressed.
Touched by an Angel: Agitprop for the Xians.
you realize that fixing other peoples code isn't always that simple, right? How many different programmers are out there? How many different styles of programming is there? And how many different ways to do one thing? Put that together and something very simple to do, could be coded in a way that just doesn't make sense to you, and you've wasted far more time trying to figure out what their code does, and not why it does it wrong.
I've been doing tech support for four years next month, and I can tell you without hesitation that in most cases, I do tend to go into auto-luser mode on *any* computer-related question, even pretty hefty ones from my geeky friends. Recently, one came to me about some technically arcane problem he was having with his Mac. The first thing I asked him (without even thinking about it) was if he had restarted yet.
Bear in mind, this was somebody who used to be my *boss* at my old tech-support job, and who's quite a bit smarter than I am. I felt bad for days afterward. (Of course, he ribbed the hell out of me for it.)
For those of you reading, if you're in tech support, do yourself a favor: Get out! Get out now!
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Wow, (probably staged) evangelism for the new age.
just my blog and pix
And how exactly does MS Access get fulfilled in a sexual, spiritual or emotional way?! Submit philosophical queries? Connect to two databases at once, while a third is watching?
Hmmm, that last one actually sounds kind of like the problem they were having. Maybe there's something to this after all... ;-)
[TMB]
i forsee a story on /. making microsoft look bad. wow i must be a psychic...
Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a result of this research, we have come to the following conclusions:
So now we know where Micro$oft hires its support people... ;-)
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Because Windows leaves yucky Windows bits on the hard drive which would bring bad karma (-1) when you resurrect the machine with a Linux soul.
Since Windows has Scientologist code, there are also probably thousands of body thetans on the hard drive that would cause problems in the new operating system.
And yes, you have to follow a "threefold law", to remove the bad karma bits and thetans.
(1) "Uninstall Windows, format your hard disk, then re-install Windows."
If that doesn't help:
(2) "Uninstall Windows, format your hard disk, then don't re-install Windows."
Usually, the instruction (1) doesn't help them.
"IDIOTS guide to Microsoft Bob"
:)
:)
I'm not sure if I'm being trolled or not...
That book should be worth money! I know I'd pay for one just for the humor factor
I' know it is hard to belive, but this is a true story.
:)
A friend of mine was doing computer support for a local hospital, and one day he got a call from a woman about a progrma not working. He goes down to her office and starts working on it. While he is working, she is chatting him up on what she talks to God about. And what he tells her. My friend is amused by this (being athiest), but puts up with it. After a half hour of working he still can't find the source of the problem. Since it is now after 5 they decide to pick up again the next morning. The woman tells him that she will talk to God and see if he can help with the problem.
The next morning my friend is back workign on it and the woman tells him that God told her that the problem was with the CD-ROM drive. After looking around, my friend finds out that someone had pluged the CD-ROM's ribbon cable in backward and that was causing the problem.
He keeps claiming it was a coincidence, but I've been thinking of starting a church for our lord of tech support
- tokengeekgrrl
May sound funny but I have run into stranger stuff. There was a mechanic near where I lived in Virginia called Christian Car Care. Their motto was "We will pray for your car." And they did, they would litterally come out and pray over your car for the power of the Lord to move through it and fix it... when that didn't work (and it usually didn't) they would take into the garage and fix it.
But I wonder if one could set up a Christian Computer Support. With the mission statement "We will pray for your Computer, and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ MCSE, CCNE, A+, MCSD, CCNA, etc, etc". Hmmmm... this is a good idea, just need to find some venture capital.
Mmmm...Sacrelicious!
Mmmm...Sacrelicious!
-Homer Simpson
(Jamaican accent) if dey hat cooled Cuh-leo, dey wuda got dee dop ah dee line support, mahn!
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Me Regis, I would like to use a lifeline.
Regis And who would you like to call?
Me The Psychic Friends Network please.
Regis Our friends at AT and T will gladly connect you...... Hello! This is Regis from Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and we have your friend thrillbert here and he has a question regarding Microsoft Windows 2000 Enterprise Server.. thrillbert, you will have 30 seconds and they begin now...
Me How do you secure a Windows 2000 Enterprise Server?
Psychic Put it next to Jimmy Hoffa.
Me I will make that my final answer
Regis Congratulations!!! You just became a Millionaire!!!
sigh.. back to the real world now...
Surprise, surprise, free support is available for Microsoft products. It's called Usenet, user web sites, etc. Exactly the same as Linux and FreeBSD, just the source isn't open. Help is easy (and free) to find when you know where to look.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
The problem was that my MS Access database got corrupted. Whenever I tried to run a certain report, Access crashed. Unfortunately, I had spent over a week creating this report, and I wanted to recover as much of my work as possible.
I called MS Support, spent a few minutes wading through their phone tree, and then waited on hold about 20 minutes. ... ... ... ...
Me:   My Access database is corrupt. Access crashes whenever I try to run a certain report. I want to get back as much of my report as possible.
MS Rep:  Ok, try doing file/open, and pick the name of your database.
Me:  Do you want me to kill and restart Access first, because it is crashed.
MS Rep:  Huh?
Me:  I'll just kill and restart it first. Ok, the database is opened.
MS Rep:  And it works, I see. Can you press the "Reports" button?
Me:  Ok, I get a list of my reports. Now what?
MS Rep:  Can you tell me which reports are on the list?
Me:  Sure, here are the reports
MS Rep:  And which one is having problems?
Me:  This one
MS Rep:  Ok, can you try to double-click it?
Me:  Sure. Ok, it's starting to run. Now I get the problem. Access has crashed.
MS Rep:  Can you describe your problem?
Me:  There are funny colors all over the computer screen and nothing I do in Access has any effect.
MS Rep:  Oh, I figured it out. That means your database is corrupt. Goodbye.
Me:  WAIT WAIT! I know that it's corrupt. That's why I called. But what can I do about it?
Ms Rep:  You need to create a new database. Goodbye.
Me:  But what I was asking was how to
CLICK
end of call
If you'd like, you can call back tomorrow. We have a couple of guys here, Steve and Paul, and they 're much better with computer stuff than I am
So, Steve and Paul, who know a lot about computers, work for the psychic friends network? It wouldn't happen to be Allen & Jobs, would it?
Stupid like a fox!
Taa-daa! SomeVar now contains the path to the selected file. It's simple enough if you know what you're doing. COMMENTING YOUR CODE IS EASY TOO.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
For more dark humor from the trenches (tip of the hat to that other place) have a gander at Idiot Watcher's technology section. As a burned-out, cerebrally friccassied tech worker whose seen his grey matter served up to himself flambe, though, I can say that a lot of them hit far too bloody close to home to be very funny. Less jaded geeks, though, should see a lot of humor in them!
---
Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Oh, the Mac users were trashing Micros~1 back before Linux was even written!
sulli
RTFJ.
Our research began when we called Microsoft regarding a bug that we had detected when executing queries which pulled data from a Sybase Server into Microsoft Access. If we used the same Access database to query two databases on the same server, we found that all of the queries aimed at the second database that we queried were sent to the first database that we had queried. This problem existed no matter which database we queried first.
The problem is that the programmers were undoubtedly using the same DSN for both connections.
They could have solved the problem by creating a second uniquely named DSN in the ODBC control panel and using it for their second connection to the database. This is a common mistake, and should be obvious to the MS help desk.
That will be $55, please.
and Bill G was coding for Apple before there was a Macintosh............
"Laws are like sausages, it is best not to see them being made" Otto Von Bismarck
I understand the point of the article was to be humourous, but did it not occur to the guy to try Usenet? He could have gotten better help for free, and considering the unique and intriguing nature of the questions, he probably would've had no end to the number of people trying to outdo each other with suggestions on how to fix it...
Problem 1. How was his database structured? Was he doing the querying through Access, or VBA? Could he conceivably do it through VBA or VB instead? How were his connections set up? Was he explicitly closing one connection and then opening up another? Considering that one design flaw early on in the db design could bring into effect all sorts of problems down the road, the MS guy probably WOULD have to be a psychic to figure out what the initial factors were.
Problem 2. Forget Microsoft Graph. Does the guy have access to VBA and Excel 2000? There's no end to the charting you can do if you access the various Excel objects through a VB program. Yes, it does tend to bloat things and slow them down, and yes, you do need to look up a lot of extra documentation, but it's definitely doable, and if it's doable, it's been done and talked about on Usenet.
Problem 3. Look into the VB help files regarding the Common Dialog Control. You can create a pretty customized save dialog that looks just like the real thing in an MS Office ap. And yes, it would probably be a VB issue instead of an Access issue because it's a VB control, so being passed off to a programmer's help desk would seem pretty straightforward, IMO.
I mean, not to excuse MS help at all, but I think questions about various coding techniques and workarounds shouldn't be thrown on the shoulders of some guy who's trained to remind people to make sure their monitors are plugged in. It's probably beyond their scope (especially at $55 per problem), but he could have gotten it for free online. There's no end of people who get off showing how knowledgable they are (yeah yeah, myself included).
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Although not all that original. (If you haven't seen it, like technology, and need a laugh, check out the rest of routergod)
-N
Don't you wish you were a large multi-national corporation?
However, even as an avid Micro$oft hater, I have to give them credit for one thing done well (at first) and that is TechNet. The TechNet Cds were great, easy to navigate, and packed with useful info. Only problem is they ruined it when they moved it to the web.
--
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Figures. I mean, I've never worked in techsupport, but I guess it's quite annoying to get thousands of phonecalls per day from ignorant users, but looking from my own perspective: Ignorant user. Or maybe not - I consider myself pretty darn computer literate, and I've called techsupport about five times during my life, all releated to server-side problems that I had no access to fix on my own. The thing is, after reciveing thousands of phone-calls from ignorant $lusers, they automaticly go into "ignorant $luser mode" when they pick up the phone, leaving fellow geeks to be crushed with answers that don't really tell us anything... most of which begin with the words "press the start button", in which cases, I promptly hang up...
I really don't know why I bother sometimes =)
Im an MCSE and I have the "IDIOTS guide to being psychic" on my desk to help with those unanticipated outages on our MS app servers. You would be suprised how informative the book is. Not to mention the looks from the staff when they see it on the shelf next to the "IDIOTS guide to Microsoft Bob"
Hacker Tarot Cards
1.The FOOL: a manager using a Sunblade to run a screensaver.
2.The MAGICIAN: a hacker with a Mac, a Pentium box, a U10, and a Cray on the table in front of him --- all running the same program with the same GUI. An infinity sign is over his head.
3.The HIGH PRIESTESS: a woman holding the Documentation, closed and concealed. The crescent moon is showing on an SGI Origin behind her.
4.The EMPEROR: Steve Jobs sitting on a G4 running OSX, holding an optical disk vertically in his hand.
5.The EMPRESS: A secretary with a IMAC running OSX.
6.The HEIROPHANT: Bill Gates with two flunkies kneeling before him, their faces averted, offering him floppy disks. He wears a laptop computer on his head.
7.The LOVERS: a PowerMAC and an IBM Power PC exchanging software as an angel bathed in glory regards them.
8.The CHARIOT: A man in a chariot, hurtling up an exponential curve, drawn by the twin sphinxes of Technology (black) and Culture (white).
9.STRENGTH: A woman holding the entire design and implementation of Microsoft Excel in her mind as she corrects the final error. An infinity sign is over her head.
10.The HERMIT: An old hacker, white-bearded, burns the midnight oil; its Star-of-David flame illuminates his keyboard.
11.The WHEEL OF FORTUNE: A rotating wheel. Cray is on the side going down, despite its good technology; Smalltalk is opposite it, and C++ is sitting on top. Four winged beings -- a mouse, a turtle, a dog-cow, and a human -- look on.
12.JUSTICE. A cold-faced woman holds a calculator in one hand and a delete- key in the other.
13.The HANGED MAN: A programmer is tied by his ankle to a cable duct. His phase is completely shifted: he awakens at sunset, he sleeps at dawn. His monitor is reverse-video. He programs on, flawlessly, oblivious to his circumstances.
14.DEATH: A skeleton weilding a scythe surveys a field, on which are scattered Intel P4's, Cyrix's, IBM 360/91's, Xerox Alto's, and many other machines.
15.TEMPERANCE: An angel stands with one foot on her chair and one on the floor, as she copies files from one disk to another. A cursor blinks from her chest.
16.The DEVIL: The goat-headed Lord of the Pit stands on a pile of Windows manuals, holding an inverted torch in one hand. Two humans, male and female, are in chains at his feet.
17.The TOWER: An ivory tower is struck by a bolt of lightning. Two robed figures, denied tenure, are hurtled to the ground.
18.The STAR: A Mac is running its `warp' screen saver, in a transient fragile moment of peace.
19.The MOON: A wolf and a jackal are typing at two PC's. A crayfish crawls out of a pool, offering suggestions that may ultimately prove deadly. The moon shines through a window.
20.The SUN: A naked child riding a winged rocking horse programs clever applications on a high-quality workstation.
21.JUDGEMENT: An angel blows a trumpet; all over the net, web pages arise, to be rated Cool or not.
22.The WORLD: A woman dances on the clouds, unclothed, unencumbered, in a ring of clouds, a 3-d mouse in each hand. The four winged beings from the Wheel of Fortune surround her.
more to come
360 degrees of Karma
Some fortune cookies know one thing MS Tech support doesnt: "Outlook not Good"
Well, it's great 3 year old humor, however, it's now hopelessly outdated, as the Psycho Fiends Notwork, like so many dot.coms, is now dead, god bless its pagan soul. However, I suggest as a follow up, they call up that one West Indian Psychic lady who advertises on the cable channels; though, personally, that lady scares me.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Tech: Hi. How can I help you today?
User: My computer won't boot up.
Tech: Hmmm, I'm seeing another computer in your life. Am I right?
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Damn it Jim, that's my sphincter, not a jelly donut!!!
But you would think that (given the advice the psychic friends gave) they could look forward to you solving it and just tell you what you found...
Do a google search before posting.
I know it's not very PC to say this on Slashdot, but I did have a good experience recently with Microsoft tech support when I lost my global catalog (among other roles) to a power outage AND my tape backup. I'm rather new to Active Directory and the tech did help me step through ntdsutil, enabling me to seize all the lost roles.