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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
...people whose servers get slashdotted? Does she counsel those people too?
Also, I keep trying to read the headline as "Psychologist CONsoles..." instead of "Psychologist conSOLES..." Like she turns them into Gamecubes or something.
I'll shut up now.
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
From the article (which is pretty good, btw):
Only twice as long? For some reason I find that remarkable (obviously; I'm remarking on it). I would have thought that potential suicides would need much more help than that in the short-/immediate-term.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Abuse can be dished out to lines like that very easily, and it's definitely a good idea to have a councellor there in case. It can be important data as well, maybe losing their job for it can make them fall into depression
Also people who have "lost it" generally look to someone to talk to, and maybe a tech support guy can help?
On the whole I can't see any bad coming from it!
Just a year ago, i transferred all of my important data to a new IBM HD. I was pressed for space at the time so i deleted my old copies in the older. Within 2 months that hard drive died and took all of my precious data with it.
5 years of my life, all GONE! It was quite depressing really. Since then i have vowed to never buy a IBM hd or any IBM products ever again (not because they'll fail again, but just because they killed my data!!!)
Hmmm... Pie...
She's hot :)
When they see the bill for being on the line of tech support getting councilled for an hour after "clearly losing it", they'd definitely crack!
Ok, so say someone rm's your box or something, and you lose all your files. Unless they were *wiped*, you better get yourself over to http://dreamscape.org/toolkit/ and figure out how to use stat_inodes, parse_directory_inode, and finally the recovery tool 'e2extract' once you have compiled a map.
I lost 8 years of work and brought it back from the abyss.
Relax, everything is going to be OK.
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.
I told you, I deal with the goddamned customers! I have people skills, damnit. I'm good with people. What the hell is WRONG with you people?
-theGreater Mike.
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
Everyone knows the old rule of backup, but sometimes you lose that data. Through too many hard drive switches, unexpected upgrades or whatever.
... a way to remember his mother.
A friend of mine was storing a PBX generated WAV file his mother's voice. It was one of the last times she called his office before she died. During an upgrade the file was lost. The guy just fell to pieces. That WAV file was an emotional security blanket for him
There are jokes about losing porn or MP3s files on this topic, but think about it. How much of your life is in the bits and bytes on your server(s). Maybe it's the pics of your graduation. Maybe it's the thesis you struggled to complete. Maybe it's the love note from your future spouse after you first met.
You're keeping the data for an emotional reason. It makes sense that when you lose that data you're going to be affected.
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.
If you've ever seen someone lose a term paper, multiply that intensity by several times and you can understand how suddenly a tech support person needs to switch to being a counselor, and since many can't do both jobs, it's really good to have someone else on hand. A suicide counselor may be a bit of overkill, but having someone trained at handling very upset and stressed individuals is a really good idea. This is the wave of the future.....
There is a fair amount of writing on this subject on the net, which you can find if you google about a bit. Suicidal intent is a crisis, and crises pass quickly (one way or another). As someone who once stood on the wrong side of the safety railing I can say anecdotally that half an hour is just enough time to change your mind (and in my case, keep it that way).
The study of suicide really marks the beginning of empirical sociology and even psychology (Durkheim). Check it out, it's pretty cool.
People who lose mp3s and photos aren't generally the type to send their systems to a data recovery center. Do you have any idea what those places cost? No, there's a good reason for having a counselor type there....the kind of people that send their hard drives to them are the kind that are DESPERATE to recover their data for whatever reason...and they could probably use the help.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
My favorite tech support call was a woman who had gone overseas for a year and a half to research her novel. Prior to this she had backed up the part she had already written (she claimed it was several hundred pages created over the past year) to floppy disks. When she came home it was discovered that the data on the floppies was corrupted. But what about the original on the hard drive? She deleted it on purpose because after all, it was backed up! Argh!!!
Last year, bought a Seagate drive (yes I know....), copied all my stuff to the new drive, and reclaimed the old one for other stuff. And indeed, 3 month after having it, my brand new Seagate died on me. Of course I had no backup (yes I know...). I was shattered.
Tried contacting data recovery services. However, not only were they rather expensive, but also they did not guarantee confidentiality (in their customer agreement, they reserved themselves the right to make "good" use of the data if they stumbled across sth interesing...). Well, there were some pretty personal data on the disk (in 12 years, you do accumulate stuff), so this did make me somewhat uneasy.
Finally, a friend of mine told me that just letting the drive rest for a couple of week may bring it back. So, I just put it away, waited 4 weeks, reconnected it, and presto! everything was back! Sometimes lady luck is your friend! Of course, first thing I did was copy everything over to my new brand new raid array of Maxtors: You never know when it will fail again.
Say no to software patents.
when do they start handing out anti-depression pills with the purchase of a pre built computer?? instead of emailing the manufacturer's tech support, just forward the request to a local pharmacy for a refill.
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
I recently lost(forgot) my pgp key. I had a lot of stuff encrypted of personal value. No it wasn't childporn.
:-)
I finally got gpg hacked so I could brute my password. If anybody want in just mail me
I just need to make some kind of phone-home ability. So each instance will tell "mother" which segment of the key-space it has searched.
That's one way of dealing with it...
Ironically I had backup's of both the data and my secret key. But not my password.
-- Make software not war
[Customer] Hello, I lost all my data, what should I do?
[Helpline] Well, let's see if your data really is lost...
[Customer] How would I know?
[Helpline]Use another PC! Go to our website and download ReKovver.exe. You need to run this from a diskette on your PC.
[Customer] Would you guide me through?
[Helpline] Sure.
(Half an hour later...)
[Customer] It just says "No Results". Are my data lost then?
[Helpline] I am affraid that is the fact, Ma'am.
[Customer] So what do I do now to get on?
[Helpline] Do you have any close friends or relatives who would support you from here?
[Customer] I am not sure...
[Helpline] Then I must insist that you don't hang up before we agree that it is fine to do so!
[Customer] Please help me...
[Helpline] You must first think of something really wonderful that is non-cyber.
[Customer] Pardon?
[Helpline] You lost some valuables in the computer, so to get over the devastating expirience you must think of valuables you can't loose in this manner.
[Customer] My wristwatch?
[Helpline] I don't know how valuable your wristwatch is, but I would go for something along the line of your kids, your parents or going barbercue in the mountains.
(Half an hour later...)
[Customer] I think that I can manage now...
[Helpline] If you get desparate, then please call back. My name is Joe Counsel, and it has been a pleasure to help
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
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 :)
nobody is interested in backups. What everyone wants are restores. There is a fine but crucial distinction between both terms. If you don't see it, continue backing up your data on the same DAT tape you've been using for years ;-). I think the counselor can tell a lot about people who did frequent backups and now had to do their first restore.
Yours, Martin
Personally, I prefer to find my happy place after a drive crash in a backup mirror drive in a mobile rack which doesn't get plugged in until I find that the rest of the computer is OK. Though the counselor actually is hot.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Also bear in mind that, according to the article, the "candidates" usually don't call back, for one reason or another. Which means that the counseling hotline doesn't actually know whether they were successful or not...
Say no to software patents.
"a laptop crushed beneath the wheel of a MacWorld shuttle bus or a PowerBook that spent two days at the bottom of the Amazon River"
Perhaps its that Mac users are just more sensitive.
What do you say to someone who kept all of the 25 slide powerpoint presentation, that they've been working on for a month and is due to tommow, on a floppy disk that goes bad? It sucks. You want to say:
"You're an idiot. Why the hell didn't you back it up?
But what really comes out:
"I'm very sorry, floppys are so horrible. If you look at them funny they stop woring. Make sure to email files to yourself. Again, I'm sorry".
I work tech support at a state school and I can't even count the number of students who have started crying. Its gone down in recent years because our admins finally decided to backup/autosave all Microsoft Word (which is one ofthe problems to begin with) documents on every public computer at the school (which is quite a lot) on a file server. That way if the student is in a lab for a few hours and gets a "Word has experienced a problem, your file will be lost" message they can come to the help desk and we can recover whatever was saved. Its really a life saver sometimes (students tend to do stupid stuff when they lose their big paper).
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Well excuse us, for not making more of an effort to entertain you. Go back to jerking off into the gaping mouth of your dead mother under your bed. Also you are such a lame troll, it's obvious to all of us here that you are a virgin with a B.O problem.
Wow, I think you've got that special sensitive touch when dealing with people. You'd make an excellent addition to Kelly and the team down at DriveSavers.
Either that or writing children's novels.Best wishes,
Mike.
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.
We used to get lots of people who lost papers, short assignments and occasionally a term paper or article. We even recovered a few theses. However, we never encountered someone that lost a dissertation. I always figured that those that did, just jumped of a roof or something.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I read "Good Grief!" and instantly added "...Charlie Brown". From there it was a small mental leap to Lucy and "The Doctor is IN"; now I'm wondering whether a call to this service will put me onto a delusional dog who's fighting the Red Baron, a bird who can't fly, a manic depressive kid with a big head and a striped shirt, a child prodigy pianist or a kid who's too scared to let go of his blanket.
Yep, that's the guys I'll want to talk to when my system's dead.
What the hell's IN this beer anyway...?
You can apply a sociological solution (suicide counseling) to a technical problem (hard drive crash).
Well actually, yes! I'm sure a lot of here have noticed, that when we get people over their fear of technology, their fear of being stupid or breaking it, it is much easier to train/teach them. I have always said, for all I do in tech, that what I do best is hold hands. Let's think about it - if you are in any type of help/admin/trouble/design - when someone calls you they are already in distress. They may have spent who knows how long, so afraid of looking stupid, trying to fix it themselves, making things worse. I have watched grown men pull their hair out, and have had women hug me and cry on my shoulder (real tears!), because they had worked hard all week and lost it all. Before I can do anything for them, I need to calm them down. Sometimes I make them take a break, not to worry, I'll do the best I can - I sound like a doctor half the time. When I train others, I always pass this on - which to me is a most important step. I make a lot friends too, and good word always makes it to the top.
I know others who take a different, very condensending approach, and they really piss me off. But they become hated by those that dared ask for help. And as arrogant as they are, as they look down at the 'fools who broke something' they don't even realize that they make themselves look bad, like they are the ones who really don't know what they are doing.
Tell me about your Motherboard...
(at least one person got it, eh?)
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
I don't think the majority of posters here realize how stressful a major data loss can be, especially if the person calling is responsible in some way for the data.
/'... or oops, I forgot that I left my coffee on top of the EMC)
Lets say that you admin a set of servers for a site of 1000 people and you have a major data catastrophe. If you are calling a data storage/recovery firm like Iron Mountain/Arcus to get a copy of your latest off-site duplicate backups.
If the failure has gotten to this point, it means that your on-site backups have failed or have been destroyed and that you may have several Terabytes of data to recover, since you can afford the services of a company like this.
Think about this:
- You are the one being paid to keep the systems up and available and this isn't happening.
- There are around 1000 people that will not be able to work until the data is restored and brought on-line. This can be days or even weeks depending on the size of the failure.
So now, not only are you possibly going to lose your job, but there is a possibility of many more people losing thier only source of income. Its frightening. The failure may have been something you could have prevented. It may have even precipitated from some your actions. (oops, I didn't mean 'rm -rf
Gary
next week, shrinks help those who cannot remember their high scores on tetris.
-Cnik
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.
I would have thought that potential suicides would need much more help than that in the short-/immediate-term.
And you would be correct in that assumption. The problem is you're confusing a temporary reprieve with a more permanent solution. It's one thing to talk someone out of an attempt at suicide at a given point in time and quite another to get to the root causes and change the thinking patterns that lead to those thoughts of suicide.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Feh. Not to troll, but my own experience with DriveSavers has been, well, not so good. We had a drive go bad in a customer's server once, of course they had no backups, and all their accounting and business data on it. DriveSavers to the rescue, right? Wrong. Turns out the drive had a head crash in the FAT region and the drive had never been defragged, so what it came down to is that we were charged a couple grand for a CDR full of corrupt data. w00t.
Salvation came from a most unlikely place. Turns out that a secretary who they had fired only a few months ago had used the backup program that comes with Windows to archive the entire server drive on to her local machine. The data was 4 months out of date, but it beat the hell out of starting from scratch.
-R
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."