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Psychologist Consoles Data Loss Victims
(ok.whatever) writes "A former suicide prevention counselor is employed full-time by a data recovery firm to console its callers. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: 'When the company receives a call from someone who's clearly lost it -- which can happen several times an hour -- Chessin comes on the line to help the caller rediscover their happy place.' Good grief!"
I can just see a whole new line of new age books in the self-help section of the local bookstore...
From RAID to Radiant - How a broken striped array needn't end your life"LMAO
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
somebody like this, cause obviously my advice to "suck it up" ain't workin'
Lack of creativity is no excuse for not having a
Time to replace "I'm Okay, You're Okay" with "Backup often and we'll all be Okay."
is a "phsychologist console" ?
"No I can't backup from this ledge. I'm going to JMP!"
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
My porn! I lost all my porn!
How do they define "someone who's clearly lost it"?
Hey, some freak's on the phone saying he's just switched from (insert favorite open source os) to Win2k server!! Here you take him!
Instant Karma's gonna get you Gonna look you right in the face -- John Lennon
She's hot :)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
In this particular case, the signature should say:
You can apply a sociological solution (suicide counseling) to a technical problem (hard drive crash). ;-)
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Pfff...They could have just used Eliza and saved themselves some dough:r otoys/el iza.php3
http://manifestation.com.h.sabren.com/neu
> Hello, I am Eliza.
* hi. i lost all of my data
> How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?
* i lost all of my data
> That is quite interesting.
* no shit
> Why not?
* you make little sense
> You're not really talking about me, are you?
* I would imagine. Your company screwed me over. I lost all of my pr0n
> Why are you concerned about my company screwed you over. you lost all of your pr0n?
* yes. it is all gone. i might as well jump into a sewer
> I see.
* you are no help at all
> Does it please you to believe I am no help at all?
* i am going to sue you
> Do you enjoy being going to sue me?
* yes. goodbye.
Yes, your grief is good. You've made an important step here, a key realisation to taking that grief and harnessing it on the road to recovery.
I'd like to step up our sessions and tackle that guilt over dupe postings you mentioned last week.
I can see that we're making real progress here.
Liza E. Pooter
BOFH Episode 6
.cshrc and .login"h !"
It's friday, so I get into work early, before lunch even. The phone rings. Shit!
I turn the page on the excuse sheet. "SOLAR FLARES" stares out at me. I'd better read up on that. Two minutes later I'm ready to answer the phone.
"Hello?" I say.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, I'VE BEEN TRYING TO GET YOU ALL MORNING?!"
I hate it when they shout at me early in the morning. It always puts me in a bad mood. You know what I mean.
"Ah, yes. Well, there's been some solar activity this morning, it always disrupts electronics..." I say, sweet as a sugar pie.
"Huh? But I could get through to my friends?!"
"Yes, that's entirely possible, solar activity is very unpredictable in it's effects. Why last week, we had some files just dissappear from a guys account while he was working on it!"
"Really?"
"Straight Up! Hey, do you want me to check your account?"
"Yes please, I've got some important stuff in there!"
"Ok, what's your username..."
He tells me. Honestly, it's like shooting a fish in a barrel. Twice. With an Elephant Gun. At point blank range. In the head.
(Do I really need to tell you the clicky clicky bit?.. I think not)
"How many files are in your account?" I ask
"Um, well there should be about 20 in my thesis writeup, 10 or so with the data for it, and another 20 or so in a book that I'm writing"
"Hmmm. Well, I think we caught it just in time. You've still got 2 files left...
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaggggggggghhh
He sobs into the receiver a bit - it really turns my stomach.
"What can I do?" he sniffs
"Ok, do you have any of your stuff backed up on floppy?"
"Some, but it's weeks old!"
I fire up the bulk eraser.
"Ok" I say "How about I come out and load all that data onto your account pronto so you can get some work done?"
"That'd be great, but it's all at home" he wimpers. "I spose I'll just load it all in myself tonight"
"Sure. But remember what I said, solar flares are bad for disks and machines. Protect your disks from solar activity to prevent them losing their data"
"How do I do that? Wrap them in tin-foil?"
"NO! TIN FOIL'S THE WORST THING! YOU KNOW WHAT TIN FOIL DOES IN A MICROWAVE DON'T YOU?!"
"Yes.."
"Then don't use it. There's only one thing that protects disks from solar activity.."
"What's that?"
"MAGNETS! Wrap your disks up in a pillow case with lots of magnets - Solar Flares hate that"
"Wow! Thanks"
"No worries at all..."
Shit I'm good!
He's right, of course.
At work, save it to the bosses shared drive.
At home, save it to your significant others' hard drive.
"I never knew you were SO kinky!" -- Easy way to respark the relationship.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
I just completed my undergraduate degree with 10 megs zipped representing my academic coursework.
I made a 700mb CD image full of the that same file repeated 70 times.
I burned that image 10 times @ 2X on 48X Taiyo Yuden CDR media with verification on.
I've given two CDs to four different friends for safe keeping.
The probability of me losing that data is probably lower than time reversing itself to the point where I decided to back it up, and then reversing that decision.
It's not entirely IBMs fault you lost your data. Backup often.
But it's definately healthier to suck it up according to this New York Times piece.
So if you're pouting about losing data, you're probably going to be worse off soon :)
I think this is a very good thing for tech support in general. I remember working tech-support for dell when I was 16. My second day I had a lady call in who's HDD had crashed and she lost basically her life's work. It should have been a simple diagnosis, her system was still warrantied, she'd get a new HDD the next day.
She was freaking out though, crying so loud between words I couldn't hardly make out anything she said. She was having spasmatic asthma attacks from crying so hard. She was crying out to God to please help her and not let this happen. This was truly a woman at the depths of despair.
And I a novice 16 year old geek on the other end, completely unprepared to handle anything like this. I was trying so hard to console her I couldn't even do a proper diagnosis. I ran to get my boss, who talked to her for a minute before he went to get a lady who used to be a school counselor.
She talked her down enough to get some sensible information from her, and we were able to diagnose her problem instantly.
She had left a non-bootable disk in the floppy drive.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Just call it something juicy, put it on kazaa... instant distributed backup!
Tell me about your Motherboard...
It suddenly occurs to me that suicide hotlines are the example I will use when I next have to explain to someone the sheer asinine stupidity of judging tech support staff based on call length metrics.
"Hello, Dogbert's suicide hotline."
"I don't think I can go on... I want to end--"
"Shut up and kill yourself already."
*click*
No callback, 20 second call time... I'm gonna be getting a bonus!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
this guy.
Listen to the whole thing...it goes critical at 20.3 seconds.
Evil is the money of root.
Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better at using the computer. They had been really going at the bickering.
Finally, God said, "Cool it!! I am going to set up a test which will take two hours and it will judge who does the better job."
So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.
They moused.
They did spreadsheets.
They wrote reports.
They sent faxes.
They sent e-mail.
They sent out e-mail with attachments.
They downloaded.
They made cards.
They did every known job.
Suddenly... without warning...ten minutes before the time was up, lightning flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured, and of course, the electricity went off.
Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.
Jesus just sighed. The electricity finally flickered back on, and each of them restarted their computers.
Satan started searching frantically screaming, "It's gone! It's all gone! I lost everything when the power went out!"
Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all his files from the past two hours.
Satan observed this and became even more irate. "Wait! This isn't fair, Jesus cheated! How did he do it??!!"
God shrugged and said, "Jesus Saves."