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When Users Attack
AdmiralKit writes "Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers? This site documents the cream of the crop of parts that have been returned because they are "defective" or "broken." Pretty amazing what people can do to computers in the middle of the information age."
=[
They'll return their melted server tomorrow because it is 'broken'
Middle of the information age? You have got to be kidding me. The way I see it, we've barely progressed beyond the point of last night's erection.
this may be the Information Age, but we're all cavemen at heart. *sniffs keyboard*
The user who drilled holes in his laptop to improve cooling
The man who had a Pentium motherboard, and installed his new Pentium2 processor in the PCI port (with the help of a hacksaw)
My CD Rom drive, which started expelling smoke while installing Windows 95 (hardware with good taste)
The woman who brought in her computer wondering why it was crashing... she had had the thing for 3 years - without a CPU fan and heatsink attached
The incompetent computer shop who couldn't figure out how to fix my uncles computer (when its 9$ cooling fan had died)
If it wasnt for the customers!!!!
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers?
:]
No, not really. After seeing some people submit their own sites to a Slashdot front page story, everything else pales in comparison.
ah yes but nothing beats the good ol' cup holder/platform
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
I know there are 2 Dell laptops in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico that used to belong to an upper management mofo in a company I used to work for. Seems he liked to take his laptop fishing with him. Of course, he may have been stealing them.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
He'll need to add a snapshot of his smoldering webserver to his gallery.
I can't get the "Index of the pictures" page to load fully, but the pictures are loading slowly for me via the Google caches:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
I'm not sure how many pages there are in total, but these ought to get you started.
Only 17 comments so far and the server's melted. I happenned to get a few picts myself, but that's about it.
We really need a slashdot cache! Come on commander taco, surely you can program that!
I got to see the first page before it got /.ed
All I can say is WOW....I mean I've fried components before, but nothing with this kind of visible damage.....well, except for the time I burned out my zip drive, scsi card, motherboard and floppy by accidently pluging my speaker transformer into my zip drive (they look identical and have identical connections, except as I noticed afterwards one is 12VAC and the other 2.5VDC).....left pretty burn marks all over my scsi card and motherboard. And then there was the time I was serviceing my old laptop (loose connection somewhere inside) and I forgot that when I moved workspaces I had slipped the battery back into its slot....ZZZTZTZ....smoke, and a fried out chip on the motherboard.
Luckly everything I've destroyed since then has not had such spectacular effects associated.
So....I guess I can see how this stuff happens.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers?
No, because I know how much damage some users can inflict on websites.
I stole this Sig
Obligatory Google cache, though it seems to be largely a picture collection, so it's not too helpful.
According to the news on this page, the URL posted originally belonged to jonnyguru.com. But, unfortunately, the Wayback machine's archive for that site goes back to just after it was displaced, so it appears we're SOL until the server comes back to life.
Oh well...
Something to try: Put a copy of all those photos on a bogus web page with the title, "Here is what Microsoft software does to your computer."
Then show the page to your "favorite" manager.
Table-ized A.I.
So he came to me with a question about causing a break or failure in the computer that looked like an accident.
I told him flat out, that the best thing about computers is that if one thing breaks, that component can be replaced. It's also the main problem with what he was trying to do.
In the end, I told him to just live with it. Thats the best he could hope for in that case. Tech support might sound like they were picked up off the street, but when money's involved they look really close at what caused the accident.
Wow. That was a whole lot of nothing. Cool.
| - | - |
One time I fried myself on the power supply of my computer when I was like 16...oh wait...I'm 16 now, and that was 2 months ago. Worst thing about being fried while being teenage: That messed up feeling in your braces.
My parents are the typical lot when it comes to machines. When we first got one, they felt that it was "their toy" and wouldn't let me have at it. Not that I was taking computer classes in Elementary School or anything. Even at 10 years old, I was more way more qualified.
/. bunch goes through that as well. And it doesn't stop when you leave home, either.
Since that time, my parents have learned to scream for me whenever something goes wrong. I'm sure alot of the rest of the
I remember that first PC. No hard drive, DOS on a 5.25", and another floppy with something called "Microsoft Desktop 2.0" Call it the prelude to windows. On to the mishaps. Dad thought he could take it apart and tinker as if it were some sort of Ford model. Genious that he is, he has it on and is looking in complete awe at some of the parts. Inside was a 1200bps modem. He had no clue what it was, even though I told him several times. Guess 10 year olds don't know much, do they. Anyway, while this thing was still running hot, Dad rips the modem out. Two chips on the card, toasted. Several other resisters, capacitors, etc. fried. The 8 bit slot it came out of, useless. From then on, my father couldn't, for the life of him, figure out why the machine would screw up every so often. Later I learned that he'd semi-fried the motherboard, and continual (ab)use wore it out.
Then came the 486. This was the first one with anything that resembled Windows on it, that being 3.1. Well, mom wanted to see what she could do with Windows (and again, new machine, I wasn't allowed to play). What she did was got into the settings area, played with numbers, changed addresses, and basically sent Windows to hell. Then she discovered that F1 gave her setup options. Thinking that would solve the problem, she proceeded to lock herself out of the BIOS (by forgetting her password in a matter of moments). This was at the advent of Prodigy and AOL, so I found my way around after learning that BIOS passwords could be cracked hardway, and fixed the problem.
Since then, I'm the PC fixit guy. But with all the advances we have, I'm still trying to get them to move forward. I can't wait to see what they do to Cable lines and modems, network hubs, and next-gen stuff. No matter how inept our fellow peons in the workforce get, the people we know at home always seem ever the slightest bit worse...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
That's probably because AMD processors are preferred by 12 of 10 idiot overclocker kids.
Where are the pics of some creamed keyboards?
Yik! Don't bring up porn accidents, please. I just finished dinner. May make for some interesting 911 (emergancy) calls, however.
"You put your what in the what? Don't reboot! Help is on the way, young man."
Table-ized A.I.
My personal favourite was a new member of the staff complaining that she was tring to access some old 5.25" disks, but the disk drive was making a horrible sound when she would put them in. It took me 5 minutes to figure out that she was putting it in a CD-ROM drive, not a 5.25" disk drive
That was 22 years ago. He bought a Commodore PET (the big one, with 32 megs), floppy disk drives and printer.
Two weeks later, he comes back with a box, and asked us if we would buy back the printer from him. In the box was the printer.
Totally disassembled.
Down to actual TTL chips, resistors, diodes and transistors. Heck, he even took apart the printhead and separated the tiny coils and the actual needles!!!
We laughed for days about this, and since he was a classmate of mine, I got teased pretty well with that afterwards...
I used to be the Windows system administrator at a small (300-person) company. Before we got mail filters installed on our server, we would just get nailed with viruses. We were on about our third round of Melissa at that point, and each time, I would send out a company-wide email telling people not to click on attachments.
;)
Well, I knew most of the people in the company quite well, including the sales guys. One of the sales guys happened to be a pretty close friend of mine, and the thought he really knew a lot of computers. In fact, he was so cocky about the belief that he would never get a virus that he didn't usually read my emails.
In this particular case, I happened to be sitting a few feet away from him when he was going through his email. He came upon my email and asked me if he could delete it. I said, "Sure, as long as you don't click on attachments." Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him delete the email and click on the next email in his box. Then I watched him double-click on the attachment and immediately get nailed by the virus.
I sprung into action. "What are you doing? That's the virus!" I yelled. I disconnected his Ethernet cord so he wouldn't spread it, and spent the next 20 minutes cleaning the damn thing off his computer.
This company was full of people who really thought they knew their stuff when it came to computers. I watched one of the Linux gurus there sheepishly admit that he didn't know that removing an NT box from a domain removed his ability to log in with his domain account. (Since the IT staff was the only group with the local administrator password, he actually had to log a helpdesk ticket saying that he couldn't log in to his NT box.) I watched our VP of sales call our network admin away from an off-site meeting because "ALL OF MY EMAIL HAS DISAPPEARED! OH MY GOD! YOU DELETED IT!" (In actuality, he had scrolled all the way to the right in the pane that showed his mailboxes, so he couldn't see any of his mailboxes. One very pissed network administrator had to explain to him that there was a scrollbar at the bottom of the screen that he needed to scroll back to the left.)
It happens all the time, but before you spout off that those users are stupid, I must remind you that we all have those things we know nothing about. Do you know the correct usage for its vs. it's? (Hint: Only use it's in place of it is -- no other time.) Can you fix your car every time something goes wrong, or do you take it into a mechanic? Do you know how to ballroom dance?
The moral of the story: We're all stupid sometimes. Learn to laugh about it. Heck, that's the only way you're ever going to get through a single day as a sysadmin.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I had the side panel off of my tower off... I put it back on, it had sparks and smoke when I just put it against it. The computer shut off. I turned it on again, never happened again. (ATX style, K6-300).
To this day I never actually figured out what happened.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
Reminds me of my friends computer, the case has a nice dent in it (on the top) from when he hit it a few times with a bat. I also hit my computer alot (back in the IBM PS/2 days, and if you had one of these computers you'd understand why I would beat the crap out of it) I dented the case with my fist, very painfull but it relieved alot of stress.
I also have a keyboard missing alot of keys from when I smaked my computer with it. After I started learning alot more about computers I stopped attacking mine. Well it crashes alot less and when it does crash I can actually read the error message and understand it (and fix it). Whenever people call me for help with computers, I always say "Well did you kick it? Good! Now doesn't that feel good?" or "Ok now go to your window, open it. Now stand near the computer, bend your knees slightly and keep your back straight, now lift the computer and carry it to the window. Drop."
Saying you've never gotten angry at a comptuer would just be a flat out lie, I bet there's millions of people who have typed up a term paper in 6 hours right before it's due, go to print, computer freezes and you realized you haven't saved the file since you opened it. Or you could be momemnts away from capturing the flag in your favorite CTF style game when suddenly the game closes for some stupid reason (IM received, accidentally hit windows 95 key, game crashes.) Most of the problems are user related but the computer makes a good outlet for your anger.
Then there's the stupidity errors,
"I was banging my mouse against the desk because the button got stuck and now it doesn't work anymore, why not?"
"My cd-rom drive doesn't work!" (open it up to find an upside down CD)
"My computer turns on for 5 minutes and then it crashes and won't turn on", spent 2 hours looking for a problem with the PSU or something like that then hear "Oh yeah the fan doesn't spin." looked at the fan, was covered in dust and wouldn't even spin if I pushed it with my finger
"I think my motherboard's bad" "why?" "Well the computer keeps freezing, oh here it goes again, don't try the power button just yank the cord from the wall and plug it back in"
"Our printer doesn't work!", opened it up, the ink cartrige was leaking everywhere since someone tried to clear up the nozzle with a pen
Those are all problems I had to fix for people I know.
Probably the worst thing I ever did was fry three athlons. One was a XP 2100+, the next was a t-bird 1.4 ghz, and the last was one of two MP 2000+'s. Two motherboards fried too all because I installed a heatsink with no thermal compound.) Although I turned the XP 2100+ into a nifty 1.73 GHz keychain. The MP 2000+ was replaced free, but the other two I have to pay for myself (although I still haven't gotten a new motherboard so I've been stuck with my 600MHz PIII for a while)
This job would be great if it wasnt for the customers!!!!
There's a way to get them to stop bugging you...
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
I was running some normal telephone cable for a friend of mine behind a desk. Modem, answering machine, and two telephones, all from one jack. I was running the cable and trying to get all of the power cords set up, as well. I was running out of hands, so I held one or two cables with my mouth. I was under the desk, so it was hard to work with.
I was getting things set-up when I plugged in one telephone cable to another piece of equipment. Sure enough, the telephone cable that was in my mouth just became live.
I cannot describe to people that have not felt their tongue being fried what it feels like. Not a good sensation at all.
It also caused me to hit my head on the bottom of the desk.
All in all, not a great install at all.
This may or may not be related to what the site says, but it is not responding (even at 1am EST), so I thought I would add my own little story.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
A year ago, I dropped my monitor (sony e210) a distance of about 2 feet onto a marble floor. It landed on its front-top-right corner, and it still works perfectly!
c-hack.com |
I had been doing general troubleshooting on-site in people's homes when I went to one genius' home to fix his modem problems. I did the usual check to make sure that the software has set to the right com port (this was Win3.1), right IRQ, etc.. based on what the default setting was. Nothing seemed to work. So, I determined that it was a hardware issue.
So, I start to open the computer (which is the FIRST thing I should have done, but, oh well..) to make sure that the modem was jumpered correctly, etc.. and the (l)user tells me that, "I can't believe how amazing computers are. You just place a modem board in the computer and it's supposed to work!" Needless to say, when I looked in the computer, the modem was just laying on the motherboard, not plugged in anywhere (but nicely screwed into the case) and shorting out god-knows-how-many traces.
With the door-knob standing over me, and me trying not to call him a moron to his face, I plug the modem into the mb and again attempt the software fix. Not surprisingly, the modem was fried: the computer was working (amazingly!). I told him to bring the modem back and get it replaced--and this time, don't try to install it yourself. I never heard back from him, but, I can only assume that the next-time round his computer blew up and killed him...
When I was on the tail end of my college years I kept up my habit for comps by buying and reselling them fairly quickly.
I had just picked up a p-90 for a very good price and had a buyer for my dx266. Check these specs.
16 megs of ram
2 meg video
windows 3.1
CD-rom
15 inch monitor
Colorado 250 Tape Backup(still hearing it whining on these late lonely nights)
and a 540 meg Connor drive(worst comp in history).
Well I had a buyer for 1600 bucks, I had paid 2400 for the thing, buyer was getting a fair deal. 2 years warranty...
I had opened the box for whatever reason and it was running on the kitchen table at my place.
I go out the night, get a little ripped with some friends. Come home, crash, and up bright and early cause I had to deliver the box.
So I do not notice that the case is back on. Probably in some hangover funk it swept by me.
I deliver the box. And a week later my customer calls and tells me there is this horrible funk coming out her new computer.
I go over and crack the box, and there is some rotten scum in the bottom of the case. Slightly boozie smelling. I clean it out, tell her I do not know what it easse, but looks like a rodent got in... she buys it.
I go home and my roomate says that he had come home drunk and was about to finish doom and he got motion sickness from the game but instead of running to the bathroom, he yacked in the case. He freaked, mopped mostof it out, and put the cover back on.
Heheheh.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
My relatives asked if we had any spare CDROM drives as they had just bought some new software
that required 4X CDROM and they had only one.
You got moderated 'interesting' for your 2 word comment? WHAT IN THE FUCK IS SLASHDOT MODERATION COMING TO?!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let me tear down any hope you might have left: it doesn't stop even when you marry and give them grandchildren. It only stops 10 or so years after that when, if you raised your children correctly, you can pass the gramma/grampa computer support contract to your son/daughter. Believe me, I speak from experience.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Google has a few of the pictures here.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
My fiancee calls me for help getting a new HD to work. Go through everything- even oddball BIOS settings that in no way should help, just on the off chance they will. Everything that should have helped was tried and failed.
Turns out, she had plugged the hard drive into the floppy connector because the hard drive cables wouldn't fit. Whenever I run across that, I go get a new hard drive cable that has a keying method that works with my mobo and drive. But thats me. Surprisingly, no damage to the hard drive. Not even bent pins. And she showed me later the cable she used, it was indeed a floppy cable, and wasn't just poor phone skills leading me to believe it was.
Then there were all the calls and visits to get the system stable. Finally I go to the temperature monitor in the BIOS. It reads 110 degrees CELSIUS. Yes, you could have boiled water according to that monitor. MY foolish self didn't believe it, so I powered it down and touched the heat sink. Pain was immense. I recommend that you trust the hardware monitor in the BIOS, if you have reason not to trust it, get a handheld thermometer to place against the heat sink, DON'T use your finger. Looking more closely, I discover that at some point she has disconnected the CPU fan.
The system is now running quite well. But was annoying getting it to that point.
Back in the stone age, a friend of mine was a supplier of BBC computers. Now, these came either complete or in component form. Both were mail order. He received a letter from a customer who had bought the kit and was having problems getting the computer to work. Nothing happened, not a sausage, no lights, no beeps, so my friend paid the postage to have the computer sent back to him. Upon opening the case he could easily see what the problem was. All of the components had been fitted with precision, with care, with glue.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
Is there something you want to tell us about the interesting angles of Mars and Jupiter? Are the lights on your DSL modem blinking messages to you in Morse code again?
Personally, I think we're still very close to the beginning in the scheme of things.
yes... i don't think i have ever heard an overclocking joke yet!
He? (Hint: its name is 'SlashChick' :-P )
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
To you or more, the OS might be important, but most people don't care, and why should they? Everytime i get in someones car, i don't look to see what type is, if all i am getting is a lift to the beach!
You are a hard, hard man!
What the hell kind of RAM were you using? Both 30 pin and 72 pin are asymmetric.
"Thanks to Melmac over at TheTechBoard.com, the Mishaps section of jonnyGURU.com are(sic) being hosted on a faster server with moer(sic) space!"
karma capped
It's a *joke*, OK. Nobody *actually* believes it - at least, nobody with a functioning brain cell or two.
/. just posted. Apparently, some editor did take that obvious hoax seriously. Yikes!
If this is how you react to a joke, I'd hate to see your reaction to the Tesla-coil powered PC story
220v -- 'nuff said
Tonight, 20 years later, I finally figured it out.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
get em a new mac
if they manage to break that, I will give them a cookie.
I'm quite serious, if there is such a thing as idoit proof, I think these beasts qualify.
(that us until they rm -rf / accidently or something...)
I live in a giant bucket.
One month, the plan for their full page color advertisement in Byte magazine fell through. I'm not sure what they'd originally planned to advertise, but they ended up advertising the EPROM programmer instead. It wasn't unusual for EPROM programmers to be advertised in Byte. But it was somewhat unusual for there to be a full page color ad for one.
The ad was very successful. We started getting a lot of orders. And as far as I know, most customers were happy with them. But we did get a few customers who called us saying things like "I installed it, now what do I do with it?" You'd think that people wouldn't buy a $250 accessory for their computer without some idea of what they planned to do with it.
Anyhow, one of these customers was really irate and demanded that we refund his money. Company policy at the time was to only allow exchanges of defective products. So he said it was defective and sent it back. When it arrived, we discovered bullet holes through the box. Looked to be the result of a 9mm, though I could be wrong.
Just check,
:))
http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/
You won't believe what you read, those will show up like some sort of fake to you but not, I have computer shop owner friends and it happens, they verified.
Oh, btw, isn't it worth talking when a site deletes their own pages when linked by slashdot too?
Heh...
For a little while, I worked for a large chain of restaurants who were changing over to a new point of sales system (POS).
Each restaurant was instructed to package the original POS and mail it back to the company's headquarters.
One of these restaurants decided they should really clean up the POS before sending it back, and ran the thing through the dishwasher. The dishwashers for this restaurant run fairly hot, causing the plastic to warp and buckle, effectively ruining the POS.
In another incident (same place), a certain restaurant had been hording hard-drives from the new POS (we would occasionally send a hard-drive with an image of the original OS to resolve problems, and these guys still had two of the old ones, which we wanted to reuse). I politely asked that they return the hard-drives in the same boxes we sent them in.
Instead, they returned them in one of those plastic FedEx bags. However, they were thoughtful enough to include the silicon gel pack.
Needless to say, the hard-drives were very thoroughly dead, with no hope for redemption.
And so it goes.
Actually, I'm sure it cuts down on the amount of calls for connectors loosened in shipping. As long as you don't overdo it (one glob on the corner of the plug that can easily be removed with a knife will do it) it should provide protection from jostling.
On the other hand, if the integrator went berserk with the hot glue...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
What I would think would be funny is to see the logs from the Accidental Damage Protection programs at major companies today. I wonder if Dell could provide us with a list of their more humorous ones...like they get a call saying "oops I dropped it", and they pick it up, it's in nine pieces, all a different color of the rainbow, plastic and all.
My friends and I have done some crazy stuff to exploit the warranty, but accidents generally are much more interesting.
-Jordan
I'm at a local computer store and the kid before me is there with his mom seeing if he can get his processor "fixed". The owner of the store opens the case to see the 486dx266 chip laying mangled on top of the socket. All of the pins are bent, the chip is cracked and blackened, and there's still a nice little burnt smell even from a couple of feet away.
The shop owner asks the kid what happened. The boy confesses that he and a friend were monkeying about on the computer and the friend decided they should overclock the processor. Surely overclocking must be achieved by putting the processor on in a different direction. The friend puts the processor on backwards. Doesn't work. They try and try to "overclock" the machine and eventually *POP* the processor dies. The kid states that he got mad took the processor out of the machine threw it on the floor and gave it a gentle coaxing by jumping up and down on it. After that they attempted to fix the pins and put it back it the right way. No luck though just more ZZZZT ZZZZT ZZZZT from the processor.
This kid must have been 13 or 14 years old standing there with his mom. His mom just had this little smile like "You poor stupid kid, you'll be living with me until your 36" kinda smile both frustrated and amused.
It took everything I had to keep from falling down on the floor with laughter.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Tons of mind-boggling cases of hardware, software, OS and tech support abuse can be found at the Computer Stupidities Page.
As for the squeaky clean computer, this is one from there:
* Customer: "My computer doesn't work."
* Tech Support: "Ok, what happens?"
* Customer: "When I turn it on, nothing happens."
* Tech Support: "Hmmm. Can you think of anything you might have done to cause it to stop functioning?"
* Customer: "Well, I just cleaned it. There was dirt on the fan, and I wiped it off."
* Tech Support: "Oh, that shouldn't have hurt anything."
* Customer: "Then I opened up the computer and wiped the insides as well. I took it apart and washed everything with Windex."
If I owned a car, I'd know what car it was, but the only reason I'd know is that I had a choice of what car to get when I bought it, and I agonized long and hard over the choice. Most people choose to get a computer, they do not choose to get a specific version of Windows, or even any version of Windows, that's just what comes with the computer.
It's more like asking me "So, you know the machining company who made the pistons for your car, right?" I bet a lot of people wouldn't even know their car had pistons.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I worked in the early 90's for a VAR in western MA... man, that was an experience, even aside from the customers. But there were a few memorable repair calls we had.
We came in one night from a repair call and dinner to find the following message on the answering machine:
"Um.... hi... this is Jane Doe. My Commodore 64 started smoking earlier, and I shot it with a fire estinguisher. Um... do you think it's safe to turn it back on?"
Another call we got was:
"Hi... I was wondering if I could buy a Q, L, and C key from you... my parrot ate those keys off the keyboard."
While sort of not a supid mistake by users, I did see one specatular mess made by a power supply that flamed out. As we did the autopsy, we realized that the thing had gone up because the airflow was blocked because of some buildup. We realized, when we visited their site, what this was. THey were in a small auto-insurance office packed with five or six chain smokers. I couldn't stand it in the office more than a minute or so. I suspect that the PSU had gotten a fair amount of ash from a nearby ashtray in addition to just general gunk from the smoke.
The last two paragraphs of the parent post comprise one of the most insightful thoughts I've ever read on /. Kudos to you for helping to break the stereotype that all sysadmins are holier-than-thou bastards. I'd mod you up to 6 if that bug was still around that let you do that..
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Ok, its not much, but it still amazed me.
.
At my old job, we had a lot of interns (wich the boss saw as free labour), one particular intern once had his computer screen go blank on him. So he called me up to help. I go there and knowing the computer, and the guy, I figure he had kicked off the power cable again. But I could still hear its fan humming... I turn the case around slowly, all the cables are still pluged in, so I proceed to push 'em back in (the case was at the cable's limit...big stupid table, not my idea, anyways...).
The guy (same intern who admitedly didn't know much about computers) reaches across me and YANKS THE POWER CABLE OUT.
Long story short it turns out the monitor was defective and would shut itself down when it got hot, but I came very close to punching that intern in the face
ARGH!
You can't take the sky from me...
You mean like this guy?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Maybe they (we ;-) ) are, but I don't recall any hardware stuff when I did my MCSE. In my work (I work as a consultant) I never deal with hardwareproblems, and I don't need to.
So, let me get this straight, because I just can't believe that I'm understanding you right. You are saying, straight-faced, that software people don't have to know about hardware issues, and don't need to? And you work on/with computers for a living?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA. Man, I've been giving MCSE's the benefit of the doubt up until now, mostly because I haven't had any direct experience with them. But you just sunk the ship, me ol' porkchop. If you can't, or worse don't want to, fix basic hardware problems, you are an employee I would not want in my organization. The memory stick wasn't plugged in all the way ferchrissakes! That's some basic, basic stuff. If you can't at least pop the top to your box and see that crap isn't plugged in like it's supposed to be, that "E" in your certification title is a complete and total misnomer.
I'm quite serious, if there is such a thing as idoit proof, I think these beasts qualify
You've never done help desk work, have you?
Macs are harder to screw up, but they make up for it by being a total PITA once they are fucked. Which set of obsolete/conflicting extensions actually work? "Oh, look: it boots from a CD but not from a clean install from that CD. That's weird..." Couple with the endless joys of "My Powerpoint won't open/save. It says something about running out of memory. I've got 512MB- why is it running out?"
OSX so far has been better, but not much. My TiBook has Finder locks about twice a week now when trying to access a CD: no alternative but to reboot the machine. My very expensive video editing system and Final Cut won't talk to my Formac A-D bridge. Apple has no clue why: they want me to install the OS9 version of Final Cut but it refuses to install on my system. Again, no idea why. I can't wait until I have to train our Mac-using technophobic faculty how to use OSX: they're going to have a cow.
Then, of course, you get Apple's legendary service. We sent away a Cube the other day after it was dropped by a mover. Came back and wouldn't burn CDs. Hmm- I wonder why? Maybe it's because they replaced the CD-RW with a DVD-ROM without asking. Kind of goes with the first system I ever sent back to Apple that came back without the CD cables attached.
Macs suck. (Before I get flamed by Mac partisans, I'm the Mac guru here and the one keeping them from going away entirely. ObBossQuote: "Anything that gets rid of a Mac on campus I'll approve.") But Windows sucks even more. I had a parent ask me the other day why we don't just transition to Linux and I couldn't help laughing out loud. I've got a Linux machine of my own, but the day I have to support faculty members trying to use Linux is the day I quit to go work as a garbageman.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
some of the things I've seen users do to laptops.
One user took her laptop home before a long trip out of town and, out of fear of having her house broken into and her laptop stolen, hid her machine. But in an odd place; the oven! The day she was to return her mother came to her house and decided to make her daughter her favorite cake. So what do you do when you want to bake a cake? Preheat the oven! Interestingly enough, the machine still SORTA worked. The CDROM was fused to the case but the LCD still luminesced in certain areas!
While we've had the typical fried computers resulting from spilled drinks, we've also had a few that have been run over (how they ended up behind the tires I will *never* understand) as well as several that were actually urinated on. That's right, someone apparently had a few drinks and thought it would be funny to evacuate their liquid wastes on a laptop. I hope they got a nice shock!!
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
The voltage switch on PCs are certainly a dual edged sword. Whilst working in .uk, I had to set up 50 new workstations (needed yesterday)in a call centre. I had set them up in rows of 5, going back and forth adding memory, plugging them in, installing the OS, network set up, etc. I was keeping a pretty good pace and was plugging in the last row, then I heard a "POP!". I'm not sure if it was a disgruntled phone clerk or if the switch just moved during shipping, but I found 2 more switched to 115v (I switched them back to 220v).
OTOH, the pay was shit (£5/hr in 1998), so I really couldn't blame anyone for wanting to smoke a few new workstations to retaliate against the cheap cunts that ran the place.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Rather, mean and cruel, and inexcusable on the part of a teacher, whose job description probably does not include "attempt to damage children's psyches through public humiliation". The person who asked about the parents suing the school was right on, in my opinion. Ordinarily I loathe over-zealous litigiousness, but in such a case it would be well warranted.
Mine likes to make the blinkenlights go on and off - by pressing the power and/or reset buttons. He's a stealthy little critter, so I don't know why my computer crashed until I hear the giggle.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
My car doesnt have pistons.. neener neener!
gotta love wankel engines
its a joke! relax
All electronic devices are powered by smoke. Once you let the smoke out of the box, they cease to work.
I'm gonna reply to this even though it scrubs a moderation I already did in this story.
I want to modify your metaphor a bit (unless I'm misunderstanding it, in which case it's an elaboration), yeah, most people know what kind of car they have, like most people know what kind of computer they have... "Dell" "Gateway" etc, it's printed in nice pretty letters on the shiny outside of their new toy, just like a car. A bit more advanced user might want to know how many cylidars it has (processor), whether it has antilock brakes (Ram / OS, etc), and how many people it seats (HD size). There are plenty of people who buy a car based on how the seat feels, whether it looks good, and what their friend said about the same kind of car. They don't know about the more advanced things, and they don't care to. They want a car that feels comfortable, gets them to work, and perhaps makes up for a phallic deficiency. Likewise with computers, they want something that lets them check email, read CNN, and shoot some aliens now and again. If it does those things, they're happy.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
i am so glad i am willing to learn that not EVERYONE who wears a turban is involved in ANY sort of terrorist attack. i am so glad i am willing to learn of other cultures. on the other hand...i am so embarrassed that i live in a society of people who are so willing to not only HAVE such hatred for those who are not responsible, but to show it in a manner that is SO FUCKING IGNORANT.
sure we have the freedom in the US. (by the way, have YOU fought for your freedom? have you done anything POSITIVE to keep it? or do you just accept and not give back?) but as it has been said many times before, "your rights END where mine (or the girl whose face you spat upon) begins." you have no idea if she was born here and is an American. you are judging her by her religious beliefs of wearing a scarf/turban. what the hell makes you so much better?
there the girl is, minding her business when someone spits in her face. i doubt she was even trying to impress her beliefs on "anonymous coward". i imagine she was talking to her family or friends, reading, shopping or some such activity.
im not saying i like "Jihad Johnny", Zaccharias Moussoui (sp?) or any others who were involved. im not condoning the acts... but it was those living the TERRORIST school of thought that take the lives of others ---- not neccesarily some innocent person who is here in the U.S. for what is a seemingly free society.
another thing... if you ascribe so much to these hatred beliefs of yours, why dont you identify yourself?? because you dont want people spitting in YOUR face?
get with it. and after you do... BRING IT.
bastard.
"The degree of tolerance attainable at any moment depends on the strain under which society is maintaining its cohesion." George Bernard Shaw
"Respect must be our goal if we would diminish prejudice in our time." Selma G. Hirsch
"It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling." Pierre Bayle
"Without tolerance, our world turns into hell." Friedrich Durrenmat
> How the hell does BS like this get modded up to 5? I'm sorry, but thats not believeable at all. For one, no adult is that stupid, you would literally have to jam & crumple that floppy in to get the tray to close.
Careful, you're showing your age, child. Back in the days when many machines had CD-ROM drives and 5.25" drives at the same time, many CD-ROM drives were cartridge drives (put the CD in a carrier and insert the carrier into the drive), and I have personal experience with many attempts to slide a 5.25 incher into the cartridge slot, into which it fit fairly comfortably.
> Second, besides the tray being jammed shut, I really don't think there would be any "horrible sound" as a CD-Rom doesnt try to spin up unless a real disc is inserted.
See above. The sound is the lever that opens the sliding door on the carrier rending the diskette asunder. Again, I've personally heard it, and when the disk inside contains valuable information that you know the user never backed up, it can be truly sickening.
Virg
Here's an IDEA.
./ users who have server space and are willing to provide a cache. When a site is about to be posted, an e-mail is sent out giving those users 5, 10, 15 or whatever min to mirror the site. As the posted site is ./ed, these "cache ./ers" post links to their mirror.
./ cache user, and would happily mirror sites for ./ use.
Have a listing of
I would like to be the first
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
yeah. 1st gen 1985. awesome little car, 200k miles, and it will still chirp the tires in 3rd gear
www.thetechboard.com/mishaps/index.html: HTTP 404 - File not found
www.thetechboard.com: The website for thetechboard.com is Coming Soon!
For more information, please click here to contact us.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Hoo hoo hooo...MCSE over here. ;-)
There is absolutely zero-zip-nada hardware stuff in the MCSE. Now that the MCSA takes a combo of A+ and either Network+ or Server+ as a single elective, there is hope that maybe there will be at least a modicum of hardware awareness in future MCSA/MCSEs.
Before I went for my MCSE, I spent a lot of time playing with computer hardware, building my own machines, etc. Even now, people contact me more for hardware issues than software issues. I like to think I sort of have a touch with it. I haven't killed a machine yet doing something stupid, thank Goddess.
It is realistic for a large corporation to have a group of sysadmins who don't touch hardware issues and a group of hardware geeks who don't touch software issues. But get down to the medium to small business, and such specialization is suicide.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
After a couple of years of use, the cooling fan on my PowerMac 6100 started flaking out. The machine would get too hot, and frequently the fan wouldn't go unless i poked the blades with a q-tip, which would unstick the fan, and the computer would cool off again. This was clearly not a suitable long-term solution, so I took it to my local computer shop. I told the repair guy that the cooling fan was intermittently refusing to run. He gave me the ID10T look, and patiently explained to me that cooling fans didn't run all the time, only when the computer got hot.
I took my problem elsewhere.
They are out of business now.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
Pretty amazing what people can do to computers in the middle of the information age
It's amazing what people can do in the middle of the information age, as opposed to say, the end or the beginning, yes.
May we never see th
Dear site owner,
We will be providing a link to your site in about 30 minutes, after which it will recieve hundreds of thousands of hits. If you're not equipped to handle that, you may wish to consider having your site mirrored. OSDN is a leading provider of low-cost quick-turnaround web hosting services.
Sincerely,
C. Taco
May we never see th
Well, I work in technical support, and I always say, "if the customer was always right, they wouldn't be calling us for technical support."
More evidence...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Are we supposed to be impressed with the fact that your teacher managed to be more of a jackass than you were?
People like you two are pulling down people like Chris.
May we never see th
1) Did you pop out of Mom's womb knowing everything about computers, or did you have to learn it through experience, probably with a few mishaps along the way?
2) People make mistakes all the time that *could* have had horrible consequences. Of course, only the few that actually happen make the Darwin Awards. We then laugh at them. I dare say you've made a couple of potentially fatal mistakes in your own life.
3) People that make fun of people trying to do computer repair piss me off. Yes, I understand that it's monumentally annoying to deal with a user who has destroyed their computer, but that doesn't give you any excuse. I'll bet a lot of people here on Slashdot could easily get their hands ripped off when poking around inside a car, or get chemical burns messing around with chemicals, or (here's a good one) ruin food, equipment, and sometimes damage themselves trying to cook something. Why? We aren't all experts in the given domain. So unless you think it's funny to have a chemist cracking up at your permanently scarred hands, why don't you lay off the user that toasted their CPU?
4) Any sort of useful learning, esp. research or new stuff, usually involves getting burned a few times. You make a mistake or a bad assumption. If you aren't getting burned every now and then, you're doing rote memorization of existing work out of textbooks.
May we never see th
Ok, who's got the boil on his Semprini, then?
You know, I liked most of this post, but one thing here is a pet peeve of mine. It always made me lose a lot of respect for sysadmins -- company-wide emails telling users not to do "foo" on their computer or they'd damage it (email viruses being the worst). Why the hell do you ever tell a user something like that? What if your car mechanic said "don't shift into third gear or else your car will explode"?
Why is this sort of thing even exposed to users? Block the damn things.
My opinion is that sysadmins should *never* give technical instructions to end users to do routine maintenance ("You can upgrade to Lotus Notes 5 by clicking on these two icons and then dragging this. This must be done by Friday"). Do it yourself, install remote administration software, do whatever.
Second, why is it funny that the Linux guru didn't know NT? Do your NT gurus know Linux internals?
That being said, I agree with the "we're all stupid sometimes" bit.
May we never see th
> There is one manufacturer here in the UK who still glue things together - it's damn annoying trying to change a drive and finding both the power and data cables have been glued in (with hot-melt glue)!
No, think farther back. Back then, when computers came in components, they meant components, as in loose LEDs, connectors and wires. Assembly was supposed to be affected with solder, since glue is non-conductive. This wasn't a case of gluing ribbon cables down, it was a matter of gluing resistors and power lines in.
Virg
You know, there's a logo on the front of most microwaves telling their brand name.
Just out of curiosity, can you recite yours?
May we never see th
Aparently Gateway Country's customer service leaves much to be desired. This actually happened in my home town.
To summarize: A guy who was dissatisfied with Gateway's service decided to place the computer in the entrance to their store and smash it with a sledge hammer. So they threw him in jail. This guy just can't win.
When they mention "central processing unit", they are actually referring to the case. Clueless reporter.
They might be trying to learn, you know, reach a point where you aren't classifying them as "morons" any more.
May we never see th
Too many files to mirror somewhere... at least not one that would not suffer from another /. effect.
:(
/. before. We know the effects. We try to avoid it if possible. :p
The site was hosted at webmasters.com in Tampa. After the traffic crashed the server twice, Webmasters sent a nasty email stating that they were permanently closing the account.
Of course, this is getting fought. But consider TTB, at least for the time being, a dead link.
For the record, no one at TTB submitted the link. We've been
"The mishaps page was hosted on http://www.thetechboard.com (aka "TTB").
The site was linked from the front page of http://www.slashdot.org.
Typically when a site gets linked by slashdot, also known as "slashdotted", it tends to encounter large bursts of traffic.
Due to the gross incompentence of the hosting service http://www.webmasters.com, the server crashed twice under the pressue of being "slashdotted".
The complaints of the other clients that were using the same server and therefore also experienced outage prompted Webmasters to threaten to permanently close the TTB acount.
Of course, the account has always otherwise been in good standing, but the folks at Webmasters don't even have the mental capacity to limit bandwidth for a particular site so it does not bring down the entire server, so why would they take TTB's otherwise "good behaviour" into consideration?
Please forward any hate mail to: security@webmasters.com (this is from whom the mail about the account cancellation came from).
Thank you.
Jon "jonny" Gerow (pronounced muck like "Guru", hence the handle)
"
Actually comptuers can survive quite well under high heat. The main bproblem are plastice peices on the cdrom as you said and lcd's warp under even little heat. Even though those fail that actual chips wont. Many comptuter chips are cooked at several hundred degrees when they are being assembled to keep out every trace of moisture possible.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I have also removed an unknown number of 5.25" floppy disks and CDs from between the drives, as users mistake gap for drive. And I can't even remember the number of "which one is the ANY KEY?" calls I used to get in the DOS days.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
In one job I had I ended up having to do internal support for the PCs in the office.
One Monday I get a call from the CEO saying that his mouse isn't working. I go down to his office, and check out the mouse.
It's in about 15 pieces. I notice there's a mouse shaped dent in the plaster on the opposite side of the office.
I ask him what happened. He tells me that he was trying to use Excel when the pointer stopped moving and he just couldn't make it work anymore. I say "ok" and go get another mouse.
I plug it in and reboot the laptop, and suddenly the begins to work again.
Silly CEO.
Somewhat offtopic, since this wasn't anything to do with a computer, but the worst shock I ever got was from a flourescent light socket. I was trying to install a new light in the front of a display case (full of open pocket knives, natch), and I was feeling with my fingertips for the socket edges. I was crouched down, with my chin resting on the metal edge of the case, when my fingers simultaneously poked into the socket itself. The jolt caused me to clench my hands, and I shattered the bulb between my fingers. The bulb fell down into the bottom of the case, where it covered the case (blue velvet coverings and all) with that whitish powder that is inside those things. Of course, since my chin was on the edge of a METAL strip, I got a nice little reminder there as well. I felt nice and tingly for some time afterwards...;-)
I run a web hosting company. Send me a zip of the site (brian@tobinhosting.com) and I'll mirror the stuff.
:)
Temporarily, of course.
Well-said, and in far fewer words than I used.
I have a very visceral reaction to this kind of abusive behavior, particularly when it comes from someone in a position of responsibility.
Had a similar incident when I was in elementary school, except I was the butt of the joke... never forgot it either (even 20+ years later).
Like most young geeks, I was socially awkward until college... took a while to grow into my brain, so to speak. A particular teacher was telling the class about a really funny 1-800 number he had called, like a "joke of the day"... something like "1-800-Quick." He assigned me to go call it and come back with the "Joke of the Day." I recognized the number of digits was wrong, and said something to that effect. He told me to shut up and go call it... so I went.
As I sat in the office down the hall trying to find a "Q" on the telephone dial (not realizing there wasn't one... I was only 11 years old at the time), I never even considered the possibility that the "Joke of the Day" was on me. Only after I got back to the classroom and reported my bewilderment at not being able to find a "Q" on the telephone dial did I find out that this "teacher" was really one of the enemy.
There is nothing quite like being forced to stand in front of a whole room full of people while they laugh at your "stupidity," trying not to gag from that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach that says "you've been set up." I actually recommend the experience to the original poster... might teach him some empathy.
As far as I'm concerned, that kind of behavior on the part of any "teacher" is a career-ender, and in the same category as a psychiatrist who sleeps with his patients, or a cop who takes bribes. All should be fired, gone, sacked, history.
Were it my child, I'd be all over the principle like white on rice.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Microsoft Certified System Engineer .
So you are saying a hiring manager should not expect their newly hired MCSE to be able to walk into a server room, look at a pile of boxes of newly ordered equipment and set it up? How does Microsoft expect it's certified engineers to manage a network if someone else has to design and build the damn thing? What about the occasional hardware problem? Does the MCSE who is supposedly earning $87K/year on average have to pick up a phone and have a hardware tech come over and swap out the components? Are system engineers supposed to point and click their way through the whole job?
Someone gift me a P3-500 that their local shop had spent plenty of time on and had failed to resurrect. It had finally reached the point where it wouldn't boot, let alone run.
:)
CPU fan was so corroded from cigarette smoke that it literally *crumbled* when I touched it. Well, gee, I think we found the problem!! Not to mention that it had been so hot for so long that the onboard video circuit was fried and there were scorch marks on both mainboard and case. (Much of that because the CPU fan motor was still running and generating mucho heat, thanks to the fan bearings being seized solid.)
But miracle of miracles, the CPU was still alive, and is now being perfectly reliable in my XP/ME machine. A nice upgrade from its former C400.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I want my cookie. :)
:)
Friend managed to render both a Toshiba laptop and a Compaq desktop inoperable inside of a week, just from mucking about with the bowels of the OS (this was in the DOS/Win3.1 era) without having the first clue what she was doing.
I told her to get a Mac, under the theory that if it was harder for her to get at the OS, it would take her longer to screw it up.
Six months.
So much for security thru obscurity.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Once upon a time I had a manual typewriter. (Yes, kiddies, this true story is from the Technological Dark Ages.) One of its critical parts, the part that took the most wear, was this little pointed thing that had a ball bearing balanced on top of it. It got worn out and replacement parts were not to be had, and after that it tended to slide over sideways and jam up the whole machine.
:)
I became quite proficient at fixing it -- which required that I balance the typewriter overhead in one hand, while carefully maneuvering the pointy thing back under the ball bearing with my other hand, and with my third hand screwing it back into place (you see the problem already). This usually took about an hour and a dozen tries before all the forces of gravity and luck coincided and I got the damned thing working again.
One day, after the umpteenth time the pointy thing slid out of its socket and I had to start over, I had enough. I took the typewriter outside and chopped it up with an axe, then hung the corpse on the fence as a warning to others.
I still have the axe. Perhaps this is why all my computers are so well-behaved.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Lighten up Francis."
That's it Pal.
You just made the list.
I guess you described my complaint... How can one possibly call these individuals "System Experts" when they aren't even given basic hardware training. Knowing what RAM looks like would benefit most MCSE's. Perhaps realistically the "S" in MCSE should stand for software. Who would think that Microsoft would use deceptive advertising?
This is quite interesting. It appears that birds have a thing for keyboards.
Some sort of odd quirk in the avian psyche, I suppose...
May we never see th
"When Users Attack" ... I guess this gives a whole new meaning to being 'slashdotted'. Sorry man, we really mean no harm.
We come in peace. Take me to your lizard.
How about another hosting provider, such as freeservers, or webpipe, or rackshackor one of the gazillion others? Maybe they actually spend their money on having more than one server so that they can handle a day of bursts on one of their sites... geesh.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Actually, Dell (or Compaq, can't remember) actually had a help topic on this in their FAQ.
Q: where is the 'any' key?
A: there is no 'any' key. 'Press any key' means to hit any key on your keyboard.
Or something to that effect.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I don't know about 72 pin *DIMMs* (for the sarcasm impaired, there is no such thing), but in 72 pin SIMMs, the notch IS off-center.
http://www.webmasters.com/testimonial.php
Kid who built his own computer brings it into the shop. It won't POST. Look insode and see that he was using an XT power supply on an AT motherboard. He had removed the plug at the end of the power cable and had soldered the wires to the connectors on the MB.
:).
I did something similar as a kid, with the difference being that my version worked. I spliced one power supply's (severed) cables to the other supply's (severed) connectors, taking care to match wire colours.
I guess the kid you met hadn't