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Worst Explanation From Tech Support?
Disgruntled-with-Tech-Support asks: "Let's face it: At some point or another, we've had to deal with some form of tech support. Quite often, it's a hit-or-miss experience depending on the level of support required. Occasionally, strange, bizarre, or nonsensical explanations result from the problems reported, such as this one: I had just had DSL installed, only to find it much slower than the 56K line I was looking to get rid of. On calling the provider, I was told (by someone who likely reading off cue cards) to visit one of their internal websites for measuring bandwidth. While there, I observed that they had both bytes per second and bits per second listed, and that the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14. I pointed this out as a possible problem, and the guy's reasoning: 'Uh, it looks like the bytes are getting through to you ok, but the bits are getting stuck someplace.' What was your worst explanation from tech support?"
He *was* way off... it was the bytes getting stuck, not the bits!
The one they won't give you unless you cough up $25.95+tax.
--
E_NOSIG
As a former tech i've had to make up some pretty lame ones for people who were too dim or uninterested enough to comprehend the real explanation.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
And amazingly enought, it always did. Lazy bugger that Scotty.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
That my website was down because a link was posted on some news website, causing millions of geeks to load the page and overload the server. What a crock of shit!
Told me that if I had a new computer I didn't even have to buy a DSL modem, I could use the modem that came in my computer. Just as he was.
For a moment I considered explaining the difference. But the desire passed.
Computer Stupidities Their stupid tech support section probably fits this article best.
What if this signature were clever?
OK, is your computer plugged in?
Uh, it looks like the bytes are getting through to you ok, but the bits are getting stuck someplace.' What was your worst explanation from tech support?
Must.... control... fist of death....
I had a shipment of bad IDE hard drives. I was instructed by the Dell support dude that Dell recommends SCSI for "servers". Upon asking why, I was informed that it "had something to do with data harmonics".
I call to complain that my service was flaky. Several times an hour the cable modem would just go out for 30 seconds then return. I call them and the guy says "well the problem isn't on our end it must be your network". I respond "Why do you say that?". He says "Well because your cable modem has been online and operational for the past 3 days with no disconnections". I say "Oh really? That's interesting... because its power has been unplugged for the past 20 minutes..."
http://brandonbloom.name
I've had some doozies of experiences at a couple CompUSA.
One time the guy tried to explain to me that I would need about $50+ more hardware than necessary to fix what I suspected to be a buggy RAM problem.
On another occasion, I was with a friend, checking out a couple hot-swap IDE cages for a development server I was building and a CompUSA dorkus walks buy and says "They're really overrated, and you probably don't need them, unless you're building a server (guy leaves)"
I didn't know what to say, he didn't help, he just offered a stupid opinion and left. So I left too.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
I was told that there were no problems with my internet service in our area (they "fixed" them, you see). Yet my hour of trying to connect before success, and my 1 byte/sec transfer speeds cast doubt on that.
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
I have experience a fair share of Tech-Support mishaps. Most of the problems stem from the fact that the people who are diagnosing your problem are reading through a "cue-card" type program. They ask you questions, and their little program is "supposed" to find the problem. That is probably why you get some idiotic responses. Just remember "reboot", the ultimate solution for tech-support.
...has the most RAM
(PHB tells Dilbert to design a "Mauve" database)
-ted
Man, I hate when those bits hang up but the bytes keep flowing through like nothing is wrong... My worst tech support: when tech support tells you to do something you said you already tried in the original tech support communication... My Belkin wireless router lags games out when plugged into it, but not when using wireless. I tried manually opening the ports, but it didn't worked. Contacted Belkin tech support and told them all this, was told that some games require certain ports to be opened that are usually closed by default, and that if I opened them everything would work fine. A D-Link router stopped routing Internet connections but still LANed the computers together. I tried going into the browser-based configuration, but I couldn't access it. Contacted D-Link tech support and told them all that, and sure enough, they told me to get the Internet routing to work I needed to check the browser-based configuration. I've got plenty more like that too...I love tech support.
"The problem must be on your end... everything here is working."
Yeah... sure.
That ranks right up there with their classic first question "do you have a firewall?" Answer "yes," and that IMMEDIATELY becomes the problem (despite the fact that it's been running for months with no change in configuration).
Just FYI: I find that confronting them with a few ethereal packet dumps usually gets you to the second tier at least.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
For my iPod, which is right now out of service: "We're sorry, your ninety-day phone service period is expired. Since you're a student, for 49.95 we can extend that to two years."
So, they want to charge me $50 because I can't request service on their web form.
Explanation? None.
I had a connection. I had an IP. However, nothing would go through the modem.
I even tried 3 different PCS and a Mac running Jaguar, directly to the modem, and still couldn't get anything through. And yet, I had a working, connected (if not logged in) modem.
So I called their support. Three techs I went through. They kept saying it was my problem, because they could ping my modem.
So I got to a second level guy. Chatted with him a while, told him what I'd done, what the first level guys had me redo.
He tells me he'll have the network guys check into it.
A day passes. Two. I call back.
Oh, it'll be a week before the problem's resolved.
A week. And four days.
I call back. I give my case number.
Drumroll.
I wasn't using an Earthlink-supported modem.
*blink* WTF? Excuse me? You guys SENT me this damn thing in the first place, and it worked fine til 11 days ago, and now it works again after I turned it off for two days.
Never did find out the real reason for it...
bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8
It should be bits/sec*(1/8), since you're getting one byte per every 8 bits. And you probably knew that, but I'm anal.
On the other hand, who knows what's happening when the bits are getting stuck someplace....
webpage
Netgear phone support for my PCI Ethernet (FA311) card conflicting with the AMD 761 Chipset INSISTED that I upgrade my drivers for the card. ...For problems that appeared during POST.
(Yes I had already upgraded the drivers. And I was using Linux. And Windows. 98 and 2000.)
Awhile back the SBC/Yahoo/Prodigy/whatever-they-call-it-now outbound smtp server was breaking every rule in the book. It was immediatly terminating the connection after the "." was received to end transmission, without acknoledging anything or waiting for the client to gracefully quit. Thus, the client, by SMTP protocol, assumes the message failed and should try again. But this is not so - the message was actually sent, despite the cutoff. This resulted in me sending a message in an infinite loop before I cought the problem. I explained what exactly the problem was, and how they might go about fixing it. Then, they told ME to go try with Outlook Express or Outlook and tell me them the "error message". So I did - and to my surprise - got NO ERROR MESSAGE! It's obviously these guys test it with outlook, see it works, and accept the configuration.. I called multiple times, and got the same response. (FYI: all other non-MS mail clients returned an error message, as they were supposed to - delivery was never acknoleged. If the connection is terminated before a graceful quit, the messages are supposed to be discarded) Now, finally, after about 5 months, the problem seems to be fixed.
When I was a teenager I had a Sinclair Spectrum computer that loaded games off casettes. One game I bought wouldn't load properly and I was told by the salesman "Probably the Pixels on your type of TV are modulating incorrectly with the computer causing the loading error".
http://www.perthonline.net
At a computer repair place I was working at a few years back, I recall one of the techs there explaining to a customer that the reason his power supply had stopped working was that the "flux capacitor" had blown. :)
Mind you this tech wasn't an idiot (or an ID ten T), he just wanted to get rid of the customer
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
One time I called Redhat for tech support in getting a RH to run on a laptop. I was told, "LCD's don't have scan rates and frequency settings like CRT's do."
I almost went through the phone to choke the bastard.
-k
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
At one big corporation I worked at, they rolled out a security patch and it caused my Windows machine to start acting up, so I called the IT support (we were encouraged not to fix problems ourselves), and the guy on the phone took control of my desktop remotely from his end, so I could see what he was doing. He got the Task Manager up, paused a few seconds, and then said "That's really odd, there's a process taking up 99% of your processor time". He tried to kill the process, but it wouldn't go away, and he repeatedly tried to kill it about five times.
He didn't seem to realise that the "Idle" entry isn't actually a process...
Bought an HP laptop less than a year ago, Installed and ran SWG to play with my friends across the country. Frequent crashes and display problems. After speaking to several heavily accented people reading from a problem tree, one finally told me my laptop isn't built for that type of thing! All I wanted to know was what video card it had because the HP driver update didn't fix the problem, so I needed the manufacturer's drivers. Finally got through to the next tier of support. Was never so happy to hear a New Jersey accent
Sunspots.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Mine was probably when I ran upon a very stupid one... whom I eventually got to play Counter-Strike with me and eventually I social engineered some essential company info out of him. Yeah, real good tech support guy there...
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Subject says it all...
That's Just The Way It is
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
That can hardly speak English. In the end I was so pissed off that I just hung up. Seriously, if you're going to give away hard working American jobs then at least give them to someone that can speak the language properly / doesn't sound like Apu with a speech impediment.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I inform the internal technical support that there is a problem with the LDAP server. He tells me that there is no corporate LDAP server. Then I forced him into admitting he didn't know what an LDAP server was. But because he has no documentation on it, it therefore isn't a problem, and he will not escalate it to the back-line support either. This is what happens when you fire all the intelligent technical people in your help desk and replace them with cookbook readers and rules people who don't take ownership and pride in their work.
My wife's (former) tech support person told her that her Windows 98 machine was crashing because it had DOS on it, and that the two were incompatible. He kindly reformatted the hard disk over lunch and reinstalled everything, supposedly without DOS, but didn't think it was necessary to back up her work. Then he yelled at her because he thought she should have noticed that he had been failing to back up her machine overnight, as required as part of his job description.
Having dealt with my Internet provider support line I can honestly say that when a person who should be knowlegable says "I don't know" and "My supervisor is not in right now" you really need to look at 2 things (1) Is our training effective? and (2) Do we pay our people enough? ---- . "You are unique, just like everybody else."
You are unique, just like everybody else.
I recently had to help a relative out with her computer's in her new home office. She had been given 8 static IP's from Qwest. We were having issues pinging out while using those IP's. So I called Qwest and they told me all they could help me with is getting PPoE working with a dynamic IP even though they were the ones who sold her the 8. They said as long as PPoE works then that's all they can help with.. how can they not support something they sell?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Oh, that's perfectly normal; the computer just has to get used to the software."
On an on-site call about fifteen years ago, I told a clueless yet very inquisitive (i.e. annoying) lady that the belt had been slipping on her data bus, causing her computer to crash. She was much relieved when I told her it was no problem for me to tighten it back up.
I have no recollection what the real problem was, but whenever her computer would crash after that, she would call and tell me her data belt was slipping again.
When I did phone support as a student worker, I had to tell someone that their email was unavailable because the server sprung a leak and it was out of water.
Unfortunately this was true as we were still running a water cooled IBM Mainframe.
The clients seemed to accept it without question but I'd have to image they though we were yanking them.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
"Customer is from this not fast enough for 5th gear."
I've been driving manual for YEARS. Frankly speaking, I was offended by that.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
This may not fully work, but recently a student at my high school wrote an opinion column in the local paper. This column outlined many of the problems with our school's computers and tech support. The article can be found here. It is entitled, "How my school spends your money." The response by the school's tech lady was that the article was "All Lies" when I asked her about it. (Please read the reader comments)
When I was told that "electromagnetic interference" was responsible for my cdrom not working.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
The two most common and worst explanations from Tech Support are when you dial a number and get told there is going to be a "short delay" and that "your call is important to us". All companies do it and both are blatant lies. This happens all the time in Australia, does it happen to you?
*.02c
When I was 13 years old I used to call Gateway and request help. Most of the time they didn't even give me an answer, they would just hang up. F U Gateway! :)
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay
I once went to PC world in the UK to buy a pair of network cards for a uni project. I asked the guy at the desk if he knew if they were linux compatible. his reply was "they should work fine as long as both computers youre connecting have the same operating system" oookaay. another sales guy in maplin electronics i once visited for an obscure rated fuse had to shout into the back storeroom to ask a colleague how many millimaps were in an amp.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
Having recently started working as a technical support person, I must say that the overwhelming majority of callers are too stupid / disinterested / lazy. to even attempt to do what might actualy fix the problem. As techs (at my company at least) we are basicly given a list of things to do no matter what the problem. the things people do to their computers are truely mind bending sometimes. I dont think many callers appreciate how hard it is to guide a completely computer illiterate person in fixing a problem they can't even describe. (case in point, spent an hour tryin to help a man with his connection yesterday, told him to check phone line, said he had, gave up and told him to call back after i gave him hairbrained fix, much to my chagrin, he called back 20 minutes latter to inform me that it actualy wasnt pluged in at all.. RAR)
Dell tech support has been going downhill for years. I think the best/worst story I got was when I got a machine from them about 4 years.
... a virus.
Came pre-installed with a bunch of crap, so I formatted and was reinstalling... then I noticed a grinding sound when the HD was reading... so I call them up to get a replacement.
What was the tech's opinion on the problem?
Yeah. Needless to say, I was rather speechless.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
When I was first learning about electronics, I was trying to find a simple way to convert DC to AC. I asked the RadioShack guy if I could use a bridge rectifier in reverse. "Maybe." Argh. Now I know better... what a waste of a dollar.
At issue is the level of training provided.
All this is not to say that don't find the horror stories, from a tech's and customer's point of view, funny. Speaking for myself, half the people I speak to assume I can see their monitor and the other half think you can't open Outlook Express without connecting to the internet, despite the big 'work offline' button in front of them...
A friend of mine had satellite internet working for months, and one day it started cutting out on him. The signal strength would show EXCELLENT->BAD->ZERO->EXCELLENT. It'd keep repeating in this cycle so fast, it couldn't even initialize the connection. So it was basically worthless.
After installing all their updates, rebooting 10 times, rebooting the satellite modem 10 times, etc. the tech support guy told me 1) I must not've done what he'd been saying and 2) I have to uninstall everything and start over. If you don't have the CDs we'll have to mail them to you.
Enough of that crap, there was no way I was messing with that software anymore. I already fought with that thing for hours. Time to climb up on the hot roof and look at the dish.
The problem: About 500 bees nesting in the thing. Apparently it was cool...that or they were just getting high on the radiation, I'm not sure which.
The solution: 3 large cans of Raid.
I called the tech support guy back and he didn't believe me...
this site is excellent, i couldn't stop cracking up after reading some of these
# Tech Support: "Type 'fix' with an 'f'."
# Customer: "Is that 'f' as in 'fix'?"
# Tech Support: "Tell me, is the cursor still there?"
# Customer: "No, I'm alone right now."
# Co-Worker #1: "A boolean variable has two possible values: true or false."
# Co-Worker #2: "Umm...true?"
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Don't mention 3rd party software. No matter what, it's ALWAYSthe 3rd party's software vendor's fault.
This guy is way out there
Me: My internet access is running at far slower speeds than it usually does.
Tech: Do you have a router?
Me: ...yes...
Tech: Well, you know, you might want to replace it. Routers can wear out, like lightbulbs.
Me: ...
I've always had great experiences... just today a nice young man told me the best way to fix my computer was to type format c: ... well, I did it and things seem to be on track for
I've had to deal with a situation where my dads email would would stop downloading partway through a message, usually a bigger one with a pic (he's on a bunch of those online dating services).
Well I dig in a bit, and adjust OE's settings in case it's timing out, still happing.
So I dig out the aproriate rfc for pop3 mail and telnet into the server, and sure enough I can get any of the other e-mails fine with the right commands, but that e-mail just stops midway through, and a minute or so later the connection to the server just dies, no error message, nothing, just drops me.
So I call tech support to tell them whats going on so they can fix it at thier in.
First thing the guy tries to do is have me change OE's timeout settings, so I tell him I've already done this and about using telnet to acess the server.
His response "trust me sir, this will fix the problem"
So Explain again, I've done that, and it doese it when I use the raw commands and telnet.
"I'm not shure about the telnet mail reader program or who rfc is, but windows uses outlook to actually get your mail"
I very nearly said 'sorry I thought I'd called tech support'
Instead I explained that telnet lets me talk directly to the server in it's language, and wouldn't time out or use OE in any way. And could tell it was definately the server.
He tried to walk me through OE again. and said they didn't support a rfctelnet (yes one word is how he said it) mail reader, just Outlook and Netscape (4 or 5 iirc).
I then aksed him if he understood I'd verified through more than one machine that the problem was definately at the pop3 server end of the connection.
He said didn't have a pop3 involved in e-mail. it went straight from thier e-mail server to my machine. No he wasn't refering to imap eigther, he honestly didn't know what pop3 was. In fact thier site said specifically they only do pop3 and do not have imap available at all.
I finaly asked if there was a higher level support person I could talk to. There wasn't. (it was early am though)
So I wound up just manualy deleting the bad e-mail on that and a couple other occasions.
The isp in question is earthlink.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
my best is that somehow the krappy wiring on my cable modem (that i had been running for two years) was bellow spec, and somehow shut down the entire cable network in my neighborhood. i laughed at that one.
I wanted that ICQ feature where you can send a message to an offline contact. So I made a request using the appropriate channels etc..
The messenger feature Request: "You should be able to send messages to a contact who is offline".
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Microsoft Web Support.
The MSN support staff has forwarded your request for assistance with your messenger issues to Microsoft Product Support Services.
I understand that you are unable to sign into messenger for windows 95 and apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced.
For Microsoft to deliver the highest quality of support possible, it is necessary to expire support for discontinued products and apply those resources to the support of the latest developments and technologies that Microsoft has to offer.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
"If you are an advanced user, i.e. you know more than our flunkie tech support people, please press 6. We will connect you to an intelligent person on this side of the ocean. Please hold."
I hate trying to boot a machine (or convincing the guy on the other end that I'm trying to boot a machine) 10 different times when I know the hard-drive has failed.
It's bad. It's under warranty. Come replace it.
I worked technical support at a start-up ISP in '96. We had 5 external USR 33.6 modems hooked up to a term server. One day my boss accidentally turned off the UPS powering all the modems, all 5 users were cut off. Worse, while the term server rebooted no one could log in for about 3 minutes. An angry user called up, and I had to given an explanation better than "my boss pulled the plug." So I said: "Reboot your system." He did. "Try now." He got on. "It seems your system experienced a modem feedback loop. It happens from time to time, rebooting usually fixes it." My boss gave me a C-note for manufacturing the term "modem feedback loop".
...it could be their admin system hadn't yet updated your e-status, and the isp tsr said what he knew...
Once, while I was in Hell I couldn't remember a phone number. So, obviously, I called the operator. Man, that guy was a bastard.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Magic the Gathering Online. MtG allows 4 of each type of card in a regular deck of cards. Upon having a problem adding a 4th card (deck editor only allowed 3 instead of 4 which has been the rule since the beginning of MtG) a couple emails to tech support revealed "the official word is we only allow 3 of each type of card per deck." A total lie by the tech support person who obviously didn't know anything about the product he was supporting.
Hi, do you have any hard drives?
No, we just have the upgrades...
At that point, I wrote a small printer diagnostic that would detect the port using IRQ's.
BTW. OS/2 2.0 didn't have CD roms to install from, only diskette.
Fight Spammers!
I call up Time Warner RoadRunner support for the cable internet service. The cable connection is down. The conversation with Tech Support goes like this:
.... ?
WD: Hi, my cable modem isn't working. The Link light on the modem is blinking rapidly.
(I can hear TS typing up a trouble ticket with one, maybe two fingers)
TS: Whoah whoah whoah... How do you spell that? B - L - I
WD: Yes M'am, B-L-I-N-K. Thank you.
This is no exaggeration. That is exactly how it went down.
I just got a new job after working in a call center doing tech support for a major printer manufacturer for the past nine months. We had some real winners working there, and some of the employees had rather interesting explanations for various issues.
One of my favourites: I overheard another rep talking with a customer whose printer kept printing random characters. The rep went through a few steps, and finally decided the best course of action would be to disconnect the cable, shake it a few times, then hang it over the back of a chair for a few minutes. Apparently this helps get rid of the data that's stuck in the cable...
when it comes to b/w calcs, it is NOT 8 per, it is closer to 10 per. layer 2 overhead kills the 8 per. 13-14 would be at least more accurate than 8, although i think that's overestimating l2 overhead.
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Back in the day, I had a friend that would always tell customers at our service shop that they needed a RAM chip alignment.
Attention Earthling: We have been studying your culture and We find it ... fascinating.
Your use of the expression "fucking comedian" leads Us to interpret this as a "profession" or line of work. Previous study has led Us to generate a rough understanding of "comedian." We have nothing really like "comedian" here on Betelgeuse IV; the nearest thing would be translated roughly as "dentist." We also have deduced a wealth of words referring to copulation (again no real equivalent exists here; the closest is "shovelling volcanic ash out of the commode")
However the confluence of the terms "fucking" and "comedian" has confounded even Our most famous dentists.
We would be most grateful for an explanation.
I got a little annoyed with a customer one day and responded with something like "Here's the answer as it's printed in our manual..."
"Derp de derp."
I ordered cable Internet from Charter a few years ago. The good thing was that they had someone out there in less than a week. The bad thing was everything else.
At the same time, we switched from satellite to cable TV. Just in case Charter had problems, I told them NOT to remove the satellite dish. At some point during the install, he decided to use the coax coming off the dish-- which he pulled out of the wall, leaving a hole in my garage's wall. Furthermore, he hit the dish-- hard-- and dented it, rendering it worthless.
I wasn't home at the time, and I knew he'd need to access my computer, so I set up an administrator account on Windows for him. (Hey, It was 2001, I hadn't switched to Linux yet.) I left this note for him, exactly these words: "username: Charterguy; no password." It's probably a good thing that he couldn't figure out what "no password" meant, seeing as he would have ruined my computer if he got onto it. (Of course, he left without running any cables or installing the modem, because he couldn't log on to my computer.)
And, just to add insult to injury, that night, when I went to sleep, I could swear that I was hearing voices! Turns out, he left his radio in my attic. (And those radios last for days on a charge if you only listen on them without transmitting.) I never did find it, so for the next three days, I slept to the sound of field calls.
Mod Interesting, I need karma.
Whatever it is I'm complaining about, I'm sure the Republicans did it. This is
From a Sun support rep:
"REXEC is not a security risk on an server connected to the internet."
From an IBM support rep two months after version x+1 of a "supported" application came out:
"Version x+1 does not exist. No, I will not look at the IBM website that you downloaded it from"
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Comcast... Gotta love 'em.
I think it was last summer, I was unemployed at that time, so I had nothing better to do than surf the web to try to find a job, and work on some personal coding projects.
Anyway, for some reason, my cable modem would sync to the CMTS, but any PC (or my router) that I had attached to the modem couldn't receive a DHCP lease. I tried removing the router, power cycling the PCs and modems, changing CAT-5 cables, to no avail.
I call Comcast, and I'm told to power off the modem and the PC, unplug the CAT-5 cable, and reverse it (that is, put the end that is in the PC into the modem, and vice-versa). After I powered everything up (which took a couple of minutes, it easily gave them a chance to purge the stale leases in the DHCP server), I can get a DHCP address again.
I ended up relaying the story to the hardware engineer who designed the cable modem, and he was laughing. He couldn't believe that Comcast would lie to me that badly.
-- Joe
About five years ago, we got DSL on our old Gateway 2000... it didn't have a network card in it, so Southwestern Bell sent us one. Being relative novices at this sort of thing, my friend who was helping me and I couldn't get the card to go in. So... we called tech support. After waiting on the line for 30 minutes and getting redirected repeatedly, we tell the tech support guy we can't get the card to go in, and we get this response:
"Oh, we have a different network card for Gateway 2000 computers. Let me send you over to [department of ordering stuff, forgot the exact name]."
10 minutes later... and the person we're referred to has absolutely no idea what we're talking about. In the meantime, we figured out we simply needed to push harder, so we didn't even need them to solve it for us.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
"I'm sorry but the Internet doesnt support Linux"
We stopped recieving the News World International channel from Comcast. It's a digital cable channel.
When we called to complain they said we should never have got the channel because they didn't
provide it and that it must of come from a satelite "shadow".
First time I have ever called a member of any tech support a dumn c*nt.
I once had to call into the 'lovely' folks at Logitech to deal with issues regarding a wireless keyboard and mouse package. At the time the keyboard and mouse would randomly loose their connection to the base station. So after doing some standard troubleshooting myself and checking every concievable thing, I bit the bullet and called them. The guy on the line was not only rude but I questioned whether he had attended his science classes back in grade 10. Call it manufacturer denial, but he tried to insist that the colour of my mouse pad would somehow 'suck' the RF signals into its deep black hole of 'mousepaddery' before they got to the base station less then a foot away. The word 'wow' came to mind, but for all the wrong reasons. I know dark colours can attract certain waves better then others but come on!
-- Bored? Check out my Portfolio
at the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14.
;)
Shouldn't it be bits/sec = bytes/sec * 8?
What he's saying is that he'll kick your ash and break your teeth in the process, necessitating a trip to the dentist. That's what it means to be a fucking comedian.
His responses were professional, until the point where he mentioned that the 900mhz model was 30% faster than the 700mhz model, and that could possibly justify the increase in the number of time I needed to restart. I then asked if, given two machines, one being twice as fast as the other, but crashing twice as often, these machines were equally usable. At that point he backed from his earlier statement :-)
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
We were working on a airelwss network install, which up untill that day had been running fine, and then that morning, nothing. Sitting around, trying ot figure it out, noones got anything. Then one guy says "I know, sunspots" WE all have a good laugh, and then he says, "No, really, theres a solar flare/storm going on today, its fucking radio reception everywhere"
I dont believe we really got to tell the customer that the network was down due to sunspots. How many times in a BOFH career does that kind of oppourtunity come along?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I have a 256Kb satellite connection (out in the sticks) and one time when my bandwidth dropped to below 28Kb speed or less, tech supp said "the cloud cover is slowing the speed of the beam down but once the skies clear you'll be back to full speed." //grumble// ...shouldn't have told him it was cloudy. ...worst part is I'm stuck with it 'cause it's the only company I can get out here with anything faster than dialup.
The problem eventually "fixed itself" but when I called again for the same problem about a month later, I made sure to say there wasn't a cloud in the sky. His response (almost sure it was the same guy)?
"There is invisible weather fenomenon slowing the beam down."
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
Chronicles of george the most hopeless tech support guy ever, funny stuff.
In Soviet Russia Slashdot cliches use you
You should have called their sales and told them their crappy tech support lost them a customer. I told the sales guy that after a tech was screwing around with me and got two months of free cable and $20 knocked off my bill.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
To a cousin of me, each time she dialed in to the internet some dialogbox came up and her laptop rebooted herself after one minute then.
She got a new modem, a new motherboard, they reinstalled windows and ran the latest update on it and the problem was resolved.
That's what I call expensive service.
bash$
...and type "format c:"
Then just reinstall windows and you'll be able to connect to our network!"
A new Dell inspiron laptop with its built in DVD/CDR combo drive would not read CDR media.
on calling Dell support, they told me that "No DVD ROM Drive will ever read CDR Media without a UDF reader driver"
--
then comes the real classic, also from Dell
Same laptop, started to overheat after about an hour of use, so thinking it was something to do with the Linux install, I restored it back to its windoze, which made no difference
calling Dell, they told me that it will run cooler with windoze than Linux, and just totally ignored the "Its Got WINDOZE" from me.
several calls later they sent a "tech" out to replace the CPU
----
The worse yet, and this time its not from a help desk in India (Yet!)
This time from my ISP (Telstra), who when called about yet more email pain, told me when I mentioned I could not even ping the server let alone connect to it.
At the time I was running pine on a UNIX box
the "tech" told me "If I was running outlook I would be able to ping the server"
----
same help (hell) desk also told me:-
to install windoze on my Powerbook, after I called them about drop outs.
to install the OSX version of IE6, when I could not use their web site from Safari
Me: My laptop won't boot. ...
Support: You need to open a ticket on the help desk web page before we can help you.
Me:
Yeah... i'm doin that tech support thing that seems all programers do atleast once during university... gotta get it out of my system. I know what you are goin through, as some support people have never even got a solid week of training.
I deal with lusers and their digital cameras, but got alot more training (as per the services requirements) and have a bit more of a chance getting someone to call back to arrange another session to learn. joy... anyway, I had this person call... 5 times, and each call started with "My camera died (again). What keeps happening?" This happens every 12 or 13 days... And every time, I would say: "How long has it been since you last changed your batteries." She would say: "about 12 days. When you last called." Then I would say: "OK, there is a chance that your batteries are dead. Do you have any fresh ones we can try out?". She would comply, and promptly end her call. I cant wait till next tuesday... after a long weekend, and she'll be ready to go with some more dead batteries.
oh well... not much i can say other than. replace your batteries.
p.s. I know it's the same woman... the VoIp system needs a login (easy website...) and pass... its great, but there are some stupid stupid people out there.
while(1) { fork(); };
One time I was working with an application server called NetDynamics running on a Solaris machine when NetDynamics tech support said "It's a problem with Solaris, it's a Sun problem". I yelled at him "Sun bought you last year, you ARE Sun!!!" He stammered and said "Yaa, that's true...but it is a problem with Solaris". Ugh.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
My cable modem had been going on and off for about 10-20 seconds a few times a day. I waited about 3 days, figuring they were simply "working" on it. I called tech support, only to be told "This happens every year about this time. The sun interferes with our satellites, which affect your cable modem. There is nothing we can do, sorry."
The following was published by an insurance company for internal distribution. These reports were submitted when policy-holders were asked for a brief statement describing their particular accident.
That's just plain awesome. Dumb people make your days so entertaining.
I had this exact same problem when I had my Speakeasy service (through Covad) installed earlier this year. For me it lasted exactly 14 days before it magically started working one night with no explanation to this day.
Every time I called them to see if they had made any progress, I got the same "do you have a router, does it have a firewall, are you running Windows, did you try blah blah blah" run around. I eventually narrowed it down to an MTU problem by crafting custom response packets from my external webserver until I hit a packet size that got through, but even with this information they weren't able to fix it.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
Had a 28.8 back in the day, and was coding web pages for NS2.x (tables -- woohoo) and was getting less than 1k per second throughput. Called the ISP, and they identified the modem as being a "problem part." So I went to the store where I bought the modem the previous week, and got a wonderful bit of nonsense:
sales tech-"It can't be your modem, it runs at 28.8 and the internet isn't even that fast."
me-"excuse me?"
sales tech-"Yessir, the internet only runs at 300 baud, which is a measurement of how fast the bits can go through the pins in the cable connector. You see, the wires are actually faster, they run at 9600 baud, but the pins can only go 300 because they are hollow and electrons, which is what electricity is made of, won't go through hollow pins, so they have to go around the edges. Since there are hundreds of these pins hooking up the internet the internet is limited to 300 baud, and I apologize for whoever sold you the 28.8 modem."
me-*looks dazed*
sales tech-"as an apology, let me give you $5 off on a soundcard upgrade, and I'll throw in a cable connector with solid pins for your modem so that you will know the speed issues are not at your end." (remember this was in the serial port days)
The guy had little kernels of almost truth in there, but I think it was luck:)
-[joke removed for your safety]-
I called up their RMA support number and the lady on the other end said..
"We don't know why the drives fail."
Instills much confidence in their prodocts.
User: OH MY GOD THE COMPUTER IS ON FIRE! Help! There's a computer on fire.
Tech Support: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
User: My name is blah, I'm the assistant dean for the University.
Tech Support (to himself): OH FUCK
Boss the next day: Umm, yeah. You're outta here. Nothing I can do.
Turned out to be a disk that crashed the hard way. And the platter decided it was still going to spin...and get really hot...and...you know the story.
When my DSL didn't work, I called up the company's tech support center, and told him that my DSL is not working properly with my linux computer, the guy told me refer WindowsXP DSL Troubleshooting guide first and then call back if that doesn't help still...
The canonical multiplier to go from bytes/sec to bits/sec is ten (10): One start bit, eight data bits, one stop bit. This is how things were over serial/modem connections not so very long ago.
I find it still remains a reasonable rule of thumb. DSL and Ethernet frame data packets differently, of course. There are no start or stop bits surrounding each byte, but there is a multi-byte packet header and trailer. IP framing, of course, adds more overhead, but I find the 10:1 rule is close enough for most purposes. Besides, it's really easy to calculate in your head.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
If you got one of the 3 week program "trained" type of techs I feel sorry for you guys...
Every so often you might have gotten one of us real Geeks.
But even we had to deal with internal stupid issues.
I remember a few times through out the 3 years I worked for Netzero when certain accounts would become unavailable for no apparent reason.
The only similarity between the accounts would be what letter they started with.
We'd come into work, and on the white board we'd see something like: "Accounts beginning with A, G and K are not able to connect".
Oh you could ask why, but you'd never get an answer.
The release of Windows XP was no picnic either. I had to wing more then a few calls. I never saw some many people spend time on break for those first few weeks.
Try explaining to people that thier old hardware doesn't work on thier brand new computer because of XP? That made people happy.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
This might be slightly OT, but you can't ignore the BOFH excuse server!
I once received a call from Qworst offering to sell me DSL. Since it had not been available in my area when I first moved in, I was interested to hear that it was available. To their credit, it was, in fact, newly available. To their discredit, the person I was speaking with wanted to bundle MSN with it.
I asked whether MSN would give me a static IP address (knowing full well where this conversation was going to lead). Her response: "It says here that you get 9 email addresses."
I explained, politely, that there was a difference between IP addresses and email addresses. She insisted that there was not, and that I would recieve 9 email addresses if I signed up with them.
I asked her if she knew what I was talking about, at which point she became indignant. She began to expound upon how *much* she knew about it all, and that I should trust her, she knows what she's talking about, and that I would receive 9 email addresses.
After a bit more back and forth, I decided to change tack - I said that this was all very fine and well, but that I would much rather use a 3rd party ISP. After explaining to her what an ISP was, and how this was different than MSN in this context, she said that such a thing was impossible to do. I was unable to suppress the cough of surprise.
"Excuse me? I had a different provider the last time that I had DSL at a previous address. I know for a fact that you can do this."
She was insistent that it was impossible, and became belligerent. At this point, it was all fun and games for me (I mean, more so than originally), so I played along and said that the real reason that I wanted a 3rd party ISP was so that I could be sure to get a static IP address, and that I was pretty sure that this was not a part of MSN's service.
She reminded me, again, of exactly how many email addresses I would receive. I told her she didn't know what she was talking about, and she said some very rude things and put me on hold while she talked to a supervisor.
I waited for a couple of minutes, and when she returned, she was very sheepish and apologetic. You see, it turns out that you *can* order DSL with a 3rd party ISP, but that she was only a part of the sales team doing this particular promotion, so if I wanted to order DSL that way, I'd need to call their DSL sales line. (The irony of this exchange was, of course, lost on her.)
I politely thanked her for her help, and recommended that she read the Qwest DSL website and learn about the difference between IP addresses and email addresses before talking to more customers. She thanked me, and I hung up.
That green slime had it coming.
...I called a dialup ISP because I couldn't get a PPP connection. Authentication was fine, but PPP negotiation failed. I explained this to the tech support people, who naturally asked what version of windows I was running. I said that I found the information out in Linux, but it had the same problem in Windows. I explained the PPP negotiation issue, and was met with 'what's PPP?' as the response. I think I spent more time explaining basic networking to the support person than anything else. Turns out they just had a flakey server that was fixed 15 minutes later.
As a Mac guy I've also seen this happen dozens of times, especially when OpenTransport made it's debute in System 7.5. Fortunately it was quite easy to do on the Mac if you knew what you were doing. Hell I could still do it blindfolded being an old Mac guru.
Our 1st level tech support forwarded a call to me because the woman couldn't figure out her password. When I talked to the woman, she said, "The woman I was just talking to told me my password started with an 'X' as in 'Zebra'. What should I type?"
I assume he means (bytes / sec)*8 != (bits / sec). I would not expect a 56 kilobits per second modem to give me 56*8 kilobytes per second.
I worked as a tech at a local isp when I was in high school. When the really clueless people would call in saying they couldn't connect I would try to walk to fix it over the phone, but when I couldn't we'd offer them to bring it in and we'd fix it for free. When they refused to do that and we didn't really care about having them as a customer any more we'd tell them they couldn't connect because "squirrels were shaking the telephone line"
(Hi Jen, if you're reading this)
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
The stupidest tech support answer I've ever run into was during the height of the virus/worm scares in February.
My cable modem connection had stopped work. Given my ISPs track record, this was unremarkable, but after it continued for 2 days, I decided to call the tech support number. After supplying my ID number, the support person told me that my connection was intentionally shut off because I was broadcasting a widely-circulated Windows virus. I promptly informed the tech support person that I did not use the Windows operating system on any of my computers, and that I could not possibly have the virus I was accused of having.
The support rep immediately told me that I had the virus, and that they would not turn my connection back on until I jumped through their anti-virus hoops. I argued for almost 10 minutes with this neophyte that I could not use their Windows anti-virus on my Linux systems, and that even if I could, it would not do a damn bit of good. Did it matter? Of course not.
Finally, in order to get my connection back on, I agreed to perform their anti-virus tricks "to the best of my ability", and install Windows just so I could "remove the virus" from my system. The rep actually thought this was an excellent resolution to the problem, but for some reason didn't believe I would actually do it (could have been my vehement renouncements against the entirety of Microsoft's products). After another 5 minutes of cajoling, I convinced her to turn my connection back on so I could get the anti-virus tools, and access Windows Update.
I was, however, given a stern warning that if I was found to persist in operating with this virus, I would have my account revoked, and my services cancelled. I submissively agreed, and thanked the rep for her time and patience. I haven't heard anything since, and I never did actually install Windows or use the anti-virus crap.
What do you expect for minimum wage, a script, and a bunch of college kids majoring in business?
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
A power failure had messed up some of the configuration settings on my DSL modem. I called QWorst so they could tell me how to fix it.
So we started sending commands to my modem through the command cable which was connected to a COM port on my PC. The tech gave me the incorrect syntax for one of the commands - I could see the modem responding with syntax error. When I told the tech this, he tried to get me to connect to a different COM port on my computer inspite of me telling him there was a syntax error in what he was telling me to type. When I told him I didn't have another COM port he tried to tell me I needed to take that up with my computer manufacturer and that it was not QWorst's fault.
After hanging up I was lucky enough to find a clueful tech with my next phone call who walked me through what I needed to do to get it right.
Mmmm.. Donuts
my "mentor" at the place i worked repeatedly insisted that i check a customers network settings when the local access number was constantly busy. on a side note, we signed a NDA to work there, were forbidden to tell anyone where we worked, but i was free to give out my email address that ended in @msn.com
User : Why does it (something, various) .. ?
.. ?
...
Me : Because it fucking does.
User : Why do I have to (do something, various)
Me : Because you fucking have to.
User : I can't (do something, various)
Me : Reboot your computer.
User : I just rebooted my computer.
Me : Rebooting the computer without knowing why you are rebooting it won't fix it. Reboot it again.
(waits...)
User : Wow, that fixed it. Thanks!
Me (under my breath) : D'oh.
(actually there was a esoteric bug in SPX connections on a Netware network where computers configured as remote print servers would not reconnect the SPX connection the first time it was attempted after that workstation locked up because the Netware server thought that the SPX connection was still connected. Attempting to reconnect from the same MAC address failed, but the server knew something was wrong at that point and released the SPX connection and the next time the 'print server' configured computer tried to tell the server that it was ready to be a 'print server' it would let it. As it did all this in the boot script (autoexec.bat) it really would fail on the first reboot and work on the second reboot. I could have walked them through typing in the commands by hand, but having them reboot it again was generally (much) faster.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
You could:
Not that irrate, irrational callers aren't fun. Tech support enjoys them :)
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
What Drive is the application installed on?
I said, "The 'D' drive."
They said, "Ohhhh... you should really install the application on the 'C' drive."
- sigh -
A while ago I had horrible latency issues on ATT's cable Internet network. It took months of hammering away at their tech support infrastructure to get things done. During one particularly enlightening phone conversation, I was told that ATT suspected the cause of my latency issues to be a "Rogue Router" of some sort. Needless to say, I laughed at the guy and hung up on the spot. A couple months later and with the help of a knowledgeable *gasp* tech, the latency issues were found to be caused by an overloaded node. Apparently the node had twice the number of subscribers on it than was company policy to allow. Morale of the story is that ISPs are inherently evil.
The network engineer where I work was trying to get CommunistCast to acknoledge that his cable modem had died...
After going through the basic turn it off/turn it on again/turn it off, but for longer now/turn it on again while standing on your head that he knew to do before calling, the tech thought for a minute...
"Okay, take the ethernet cable out of the modem and the computer, reverse it, plug it in, and then let's try it!"
On the other hand, when I was at CompUSA as one of their cash-office yahoos, we had a cash register (NT based) die. It would POST, and NT would get as far as saying go to hell in hex (.2 seconds post-POST). Store support in dallas kept trying to get us to unplug/plug cables and "then try it! I still can't ping..." We eventually told them call us back when they had a clue, and when they called back... they had us leaving it unplugged for longer before turn it back on.
Oops, almost forgot all my joy with dell...
After giving the tech my Dell service tag number, the tech looks up the shipping specs..
"Wait, this can't be right, how can that thing run with only one SIMM?!?"
my answer, of course, was that it was a freaking 486.
me while talking to server tech support re: a $58,000 server order:
"I'm not seeing the netware drivers posted..."
Dell Server Level 2 Tech support:
'Oh yea, we've got Netware drivers for those PERC RAID cards, go ahead and order those'
Reality:
months later we are running production on beta drivers.. months after that we finally get the final drivers
last one that comes to mind... the Rack we order with the above servers comes in a damaged box, but it only appears to have scratched paint so we don't bother freighting it back. Can't find the rails for the above servers so we call Dell tech support and lay out the situation, Rack with torn box, 3 'spensive dell server which happen to weigh over 100lbs a piece... Took 6 months and the intervention of a Dell regional manager to get our rails.. We had to figure out that they were to ship with the servers and not with the Rack... Dell had no clue and the packing slips didn't indicate. 3 years later, the bottom two servers are still stacked on each other.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
"network connectivity goes up and down because of the solar sunspot causing solar flares."
FreeBSD for the impatient.
So I stop at one of the "Extended" Services places, a Bosselman truck stop that was listed on the Website's MAP as having WiFi, but no matter where I drive around the parking lot, I got nothing. No signal. So I get some gas and then go into the place and ask the only person there if they know anything about how to use their WiFi Internet.
"What Internet?" was the response.
"there's no Internet here"
later in the week I get an email from someone at TonServices saying they were "having problems" with that location.
I like microcars
While checking to see if my ISP (cable i-net provider) provides IMAP for checking email, I decided to call. After calling, and explaining to the tech guy what IMAP was, he said: "Can't you just login through our web interface and use it." I said, "Yes, I can, but I'd rather not, because I'd like it to simply be checked by my MUA, rather than diddie dallying around typing in passwords on the web interface and such."
Silence for a couple of minutes, and then he said, I don't know.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
(my driver for the software modem was out of date, and I called to get an update)
From Conexant Tech Support.
"I'm sorry sir, your modem is kind of like a battery. If you don't keep it running it will die and there is no way to replace it. So if it is not working, it is dead. Please buy a new modem."
I've worked for MSN Tier 3 support and most of the techs do not even care about the customers
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
me:"My cable modem is dead."
@home tier1: "Clear your browser cache."
me:"I can ping the gateway everything else is unreachable."
@home tier1: "Clear your browser cache."
me:"I just downloaded 200MB of pr0n in 30 seconds and I'm calling to say thank you!!"
@home tier1: "Clear your browser cache."
me:"Hmmm.. good idea."
I bet we could start a whole subthread of explanations heard from Best Buy employees. I hear something ridiculous almost every time I go in there (unfortunately, the line is usually delivered to someone who seems to buy every word)!
* "This [less expensive] camera can only hold 15 seconds of video because of the 'cache overflow'" - about a Sony Cybershot P7 whose video length is limited only by Memory Stick size
* "Well, the wireless internet is faster because it doesn't have to squeeze through the cable."
and the most egregious of all lies-
"This Lexmark printer is excellent."
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
These posts and others like them should really be placed on www.techcomedy.com
Several years back I had the 1.2 GB IDE drive in my first linux box start developing bad sectors. I called WD to arrange for a warranty replacement and the guy on the other end of the phone said that he couldn't help me unless I gave him the error code from the WD Diag program.
I had already boxed up the drive and didn't want to go through the headache. At that time I was a Mac user as well so I told the guy that I had been using it on a Macintosh and couldn't run the software. He gave me an RMA number immediately.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I bet for every case where a smart user gets a dumb tech support person, there are 100 cases where the user has done something dumb and the tech support is actually correct. Given that
(1) dumb tech support people are a lot cheaper
(2) smart users usually figure stuff out themselves
(3) smart users are a small minority of revenue
It probably makes a lot of sense to skimp on the tech support budget for many companies.
Alright, I'm guilty of this one. This one lady was pestering me so badly about why some of the sytem files on her computer had been corrupted. I explained that there could be many different reasons. I diddn't know the specific one. She kept bugging me to find out exactly why the files went bad. So, I told her that the massive solar flare the last week was most likely the cause. She diddn't like that too much.
Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14 percent of all people know that. --Homer Simpson
I remember when I had a Gateway Computer several years ago. It was my first PC and I was still learning stuff. Well, one day, my virus definitions came up missing. Then I could access McAffee's update site. I try to reinstall Windows 98 and it gives me an error saying that the disk is compressed. So, I called Gateway Tech support.
The first thing I'm asked is if I've compressed the disk. And I said,"No. It's FAT32." He asks me what was going on and I told him about the drive compression error. He had me rerun Windows Setup and I got the compression error again. He then asked,"Do you have a wife or kids that might be have messed with the settings on your computer." "No," I replied. He then told me to look at the compression tool. I got the error,"The drive cannot be compressed because it's FAT32."
Putting two and two together on my own, I figured that the compression error and the virus dat files dissappearing was related. "Do you think it might be a virus," I asked. "Yeah. It sounds like you might have gotten a virus," he said. He then told me that there are viruses that can cause the laser in my hard drive to damage the disk surface. There was alot I still didn't know about computers at that time. But I knew that there was no laser in my hard drive and that in no way in hell could a virus do something like that. I knew that because I had at some point opened up a crashed hard dive to see what was inside. That and I had an uncle who used to work at NCR that told me how hard drives worked.
Another time, more recently, I was having problems with my emails being blocked. I talked to a lady from tech support at my ISP. She how I had my IP configuration set up. I said that it was using DHCP. She said,"Do you have it set to automatically receive an IP address or manually?" I said, it's automatic with DHCP. She said,"Oh ok. I don't know what that means." Needless to say, she gave me the most recent DNS server IP addresses to use. DHCP was giving me the wrong DNS information. It had me on the wrong domain. I thought it was funny that she was the tech support person and didn't know what DHCP was.
I bought a new Philips TV several months ago and the component input wouldn't quite work with my PS2. (I'm far from inept, I've worked as a professional video editor.) So after some lazy attempts to fix it, I figured I'd call Philips and ask if there were any issues after various PS2 message boards failed to help. After several layers of phone-menus, I finally spoke to a real person, a nice Indian lady who probably was introduced to electricity earlier that day. I explained my simple situation and asked if my TV model had any issues with the PS2. Her response was that "the Playstation should not be used with any television." Regretfully, I hung up the phone instead of mining for comedy gold. I called again and spoke to an Indian gentleman who had only been briefed on television and was not aware that things could be hooked up to televisions. So before hanging up I explained to him what a Playstation was and used lots of fancy language to describe my problem. (I just didn't know how to fix it!) Philips rules! PS- I fixed the problem by updating the DVD drivers that come with the PS2's DVD remote.
I can't recall the exact events. But back in 98, I had to RMA an Iomega ZIP drive for the IT department. When I gave them a call, I got an automated answer on how to trouble shoot the problem. But, if I wanted to speak with a "live technical support specialist" I had to provide a credit card account first.
WTF!!? The damn thing was under warranty. I'm sure they wouldn't have charged the card. But still, I didn't have access to a corporate card nor would I have used my personal one. After I told my boss (Admin of the department) he agreed with me. From that point one, we took the loss and vowed never to purchase another Iomega product. Fuck em, never again!
Life is not for the lazy.
I didn't take this one directly, but one of my co-techies did. The ISP told the customer that there must be a cabling problem between the network and the router. He said that the cable was CAT5 on one end and RJ45 on the other.
ok, had to reply. What you didn't tell them is that the internal techsupport had already asked you nicely a DOZEN times to do it for their tracking system..and YOU IGNORE THEM.
;o)
if not, that is indeed a bummer..
The problem is simple: you have a fixed budget which is universally too little to hire a lot of good people. You have a fixed (or increasing) call volume. So, what to do?
Well, in most places today they construct scripts and then hire peons to read them. They figure that most people will be deterred by this. They spend their nut on a theoretical third level person or people who are going to take care of the insurmountable issues. The rest of the people are there to obstruct the majority of people from the people who actually have a shot at fixing problems.
I've never worked that kind of desk. I actually know what i'm doing and if I don't, I find out fast. I hire people who are either tabula rasa, whom I can turn into something decent, or who have worked in service industries (I don't hire other people's help desk people, in other words). I prefer ex-military people. They are used to being treated like mushrooms and still solving problems. I also like to hire bright young women fresh out of college (or even those who didn't finish). Besides the obvious improvement in the surroundings, they tend to be pretty good at first level support if you give them a solid grounding. They're better at settling customers down in many cases. Then, garnish with one or two talented techs to sit in the middle and start spreading knowledge around. No scripts. Keep a team together for 6 months and everyone pretty much rises to the level of the 2nd level people.
The funny thing is that I can't keep employees very well (heh). They leave me and go make more money elsewhere with the skills they gain. Good money, too. I'm glad to see so many of them succeed. At my current job they have budget, and we've had the same team for 2.5 years. That's an all time record for me.
Even in 1994, imagine being told in NYC to hire 6 techs at salaries between $25k and $35k (preferred under 30). Even getting people to show up for that money in Manhattan is a pain in the ass.
As for problem solving skills, you tend to like those who worked in service industries. I personally worked at an appliance store for my parents from when I was 11 on. Me and my brother used to go out on a truck and fix refrigerators, washers, dryers, etc. It wasn't all that dissimilar to fixing up computers - there was a user interface, and a good portion of the time the problem was that the people were using the interface wrong. Say, not knowing how to use the washer timer or overloading the dryer or letting crap melt in the dishwasher and foul things up, or failing to clean the condenser coil at the bottom of the fridge (this is important). The rest of the time it was hardware issues. The hardware was modular and easily replaceable. Sound familiar?
Good support isn't unattainable. The sucky help desks have thrown in the towel though and basically don't care.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Several years ago I signed up with an ISP for dial-up service. I forget the name, it was a national service as I recall, but I got the impression that their local office was pretty small and possibly independently run. I called up to get the POP server address on what happened to be the day that one of the early e-mail viruses (Melissa, maybe?) was scheduled to deliver a payload. Keep in mind, that a fix for it had been widely available for over a month. The tech picked up the phone and went, "My God man, don't you know what day it is? The Melissa virus went off today! I can't help you today, we've already lost three machines in our back room. Call back tomorrow, and whatever you do, DON'T GO ON THE INTERNET!"
Of course, I'm the fool, because I didn't immediately run to find another ISP.
Well I just bought 5 wireless USB and a Wireless router for my mothers rare bookstore. Its an old building and they wanted to move all the dataentry accross the hall into a newly leased area for sortign grading and listing books.
I cant remember what brand I bought first , Linksys maybe , SMC, I cant remeber, but I hooked everything up as the manual said (this was my first WiFi set up, so I actually read it) well, it didnt work, I could see the router but the router couldnt see the outside.
After an hour on the phone with tech support and some already dumb answers like OH thats your problem you HAVE to be at least 10ft away from the router and some other gems I finally asked this nitwit whose first language was NOT english (Indian) Was he inside the United States ? NO He replied he was not, "I am in California he said" I was rolling, I mean I always though of Cali as its own country , apparently others do too.
I took all the WiFi stguff back and bough NetGear WiFi stuff, worked like a champ
Overnight, my 1G drive (this was a while ago) developed about 10,000 bad sectors. Obviously bad news.
Gateway Tech Support: "How many sectors are there on the disk?"
Me: "Oh, about two million."
GTS: "That's really not very many then, is it?"
I never bought another computer from them.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
A few years ago when shopping for a laptop, I opted for shelling out a few grand for DELL's top end model (8900 or something). When I got everything - the first thing I did was whipe it, install Linux and then reinstalled XP - using all of the drivers and patches from their web site. Everything seemed to work except for the 3D acceleration (it worked under Linux). I called tech support, explained to the guy what was going on and he opted to tell me to DEFRAG my hard drive?!?!?!
I returned the DELL laptop, and purchased a toshiba at CompUSA...
I still remember the time the Rogers Cable tech insisted he could ping and connect to my friends modem while my friend and I were sitting there staring at the modem in the middle of his floor, unpowered, and disconnected from the cable. The tech wouldn't believe us when we said there was no way in hell he was pinging this modem....oh well.
Turns out somebody else had hard coded the IP number that the Rogers was trying to assign to my friends modem. Unfortunately it took 3 hours and several higher level techs later to figure this one out and fix it.
A certain site wouldn't load in Mozilla unless we changed the useragent to Netscape or IE. When we called tech support for the site, they said: "We don't support Mozilla. Only Internet Explorer and Netscape 7.1."
When I tried to explain to them that Mozilla and Netscape are one and the same, he got a bit flustered and made some excuse about not having tested Mozilla.
It's guys like him that make me scream in frustration.
My Mother's a Nurse-Educator at a major NYC Hospital. She was working on a Powerpoint Presentation for weeks to teach a class. She had made a backup to CD, but there was a problem reading the CD when the data went missing.
The presentation LOOKED like it was there on her computer at work, but when she attempted to open it, PowerPoint would crash (who would have thought??) and she had no way of getting at her finished copy. She called her infinitely wise tech support staff at the hospital, and after telling them what was going on, they explained to her what had to have happened:
"You see, there's a little drive inside your computer that the data gets stored on. Sometimes holes develop on the disk, and Windows should know about these holes and protect your data from being hurt. You Windows must not be working right, and so your data must have fallen through one of the holes. Sorry, there's nothing we can do to retrieve it."
Needless to say, after being infuriated by their complete lack of respect and willingness to do their job to help my mom, I've gotten quite a few laughs out of that one since then.
ps - we did get her data back, only slightly corrupted. She ended up getting a new hdd on her work pc.
This is my Sig.
Oh hell no, I'd rather eat glass than talk to a support person (I've done support myself and I know they are either incompetent or hate you - sometimes both). When my laptop works I use their web systems.
Funny part:
Person A: I can't view the website properly on my machine - the fonts are all wrong, Person B, told me it was because I had a 21" monitor. (They believed this to be a valid explaination too).
Scary part:
Person A = Head of IT Department at University
Person B = My Boss - In charge of university website development team.
I would never expect for bytes/sec to equal bits/sec * 8. Bytes/sec is equal to bits/sec divided by 8. This has been a pedantic moment.
When I was in college in 1993, one of my classmates decided to call a local tech shop to ask them what the difference was between the 486SX and the 486DX. He was told, "'SX' is SUPER-X!".
Needless to say, we made it a point to avoid that tech shop.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
The box under the monitor that you put the CD in is not the hard drive, it's the MODEM!
At least it is to the fifty-five year-old and up New England female demographic.
I didn't know if the tech people decided to pull a fast one on these ladies by feeding them misinformation or if they just feel better using 'loftier' terms for the computer case instead of 'the box'.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Black holes are where god divided by zero
"We don't support linux." I've heard that so many times from Road Runner. When I moved to AZ though the DSL guy saw my desktop (Afterstep) looked around a bit for the start menu, then I realized I should probably reset (the modem he gave me to start off with only worked in windows so I had to reset to install it) so I killed X and he saw the prompt "Wow linux, what distro is it?" I told him (debian) and he said "Wow, debian? We're converting all our servers over from Win 2000 to Debian real soon."
I've also had good experiences with tech support, especially on other peoples computers cause I'd be calling for warrenty work. I'd call up say "Hey this computer has a problem starting up, so I swapped out a few things like the PSU, RAM, CPU, and motherboard, the motherboard is probably fried since when I tried a different one it worked, so where could I get a new motherboard since the PC is still under warrenty?" The guy went from ultra depressed (thinking "Oh no, not another problem that will probably require 2 hours to finally get to the conclusion that someone has to look at the computer") to really happy and excited like "Wow thanks for testing out all that stuff, so it's deffinitely the motherboard? Just bring it to such and such store and they'll install a new one for you."
PC tech support seems so much easier to deal with since they seem to know more about how the computer works. I guess it's easier for them since the problem is always on the users end and they have to deal with a lot of different situations. With internet tech support all they know how to deal with is configuring e-mail and setting auto detect IP address in Windows 98 and above. They rarely have to deal with a customer calling up telling them there is a problem on their end and even if the customer described exactly what was wrong, they wouldn't be able to do anything.
Charter Cable is the worst ISP I have ever had
After waiting on hold from 20:00 (8pm) to 3:00 (3am) (total of 7 hours, don't worry, I used speaker phone and coded) I hung up and called back around noon. When I asked about the wait last night I was told that their 24/7 support line isn't open at night. Now, besides the fact that 24/7 support means night time too, they weren't able to set their phones to inform you that you were waiting for someone who wasn't there. When I called again to try for a better answer they said that there is someone there at night and it wasn't busy at all and that I was just lying about being on hold. And these people didn't even have and Indian accent.
-Tim Louden
me: What's the problem, maybe I can help.
support: There's a glitch running around the system.
me: What's the glitch, maybe I can help.
support: It's some kind of glitch running around the system.
me: I see ...
Back when cablemodems were brand new, and the upload caps hadnt even been envisioned.
The call goes like this.
"UH yea, theres a problem with my connection right now."
"We're aware, there is a problem with the connection in your city which we're working to resolve."
"UH yea, well uh, yea, you see someone's been packeting me for the last hour."
Not bad for the tech support, but bad for me. A week later and I'm back on a 28.8 modem. Bleh.
You see, Fry's goes one step further than just having a horde of ill-trained customer service people roaming the store. They assign a person to each section, and go as far as to post a picture of them at the end of the aisles they're in charge of.
One day, upon needing some cable ends for some ethernet I was running, I decided to go to Fry's. They do have a good selection of networking hardware, so I figured I should have no problem getting the connectors. While I'm trying to find the RJ45s for rounded solid cable amongst the RJ11s, MMJs, and cable boots I get accosted by the salesdude, wanting to know if I need help. This is the same guy whose picture is pasted to the shelf. So I says to him, I says, "Could you help me find some RJ45s for plenum cable?" Reasonable request, right? I mean, there were routers to the left of me and telco racks to the right, and big spools of CAT5 behind me, so somewhere in that vicinity should be cable ends. His response: "I'm sorry, sir, I'm not sure what you are talking about."
I eventually found them on my own.
The moral of this story? Don't ask a customer if they need any help if you don't even know what products you sell!
HP tech support told me my Windows XP CD wouldn't boot because I needed a new hard drive.
They send new hard drive, still won't boot. Spoke to another tech who just gave me the number to call for new CDs.
A friend of mine used to be a tech support guru for a good sized computer manufacturer, they were having a lot of problems with people's computers "not turning on." Turns out a lot of people were having problems remembering to plug the computer in first. The problem for the tech support guys is that people would keep pretending the computer wasn't working because they felt like idiots for not plugging it in and didn't want to give that away as the cause. The solution was a crafty tech support answer: "can you follow the cord back to the wall, unplug it, turn the plug over and plug it in back in.. sometimes changing the polarity will fix the problem."
The DSL routers SBC provides to business customers suck. And their tech support is worse. All 3 (different circuits) totally lock up anywhere from every few months to every few days - each one quite consistently. SBC refuses to replace them, saying the routers are ours the day they installed them, so it's our problem, not there's. They (and the manufacturer) said as long as I can keep unplugging them and plugging them in (the only way to restart them) ... then the routers are fine. However, they had no reply when I asked if the same "techical support policy" applies to airplanes. If your engines quit in mid-flight, but you are able to restart them before you crash and die, then there's nothing wrong with the plane ... (Thank goodness, we now have our first orders in for real T-1s -- not from SBC).
An old lady called after seeing some TV program about how every teenager was making "virtual sex".. She doesnt wanted his grandchildren making virtual sex, so she wanted me to do something about it (i used to fix their computer). After trying yo explain her how inefective filter programs were, she told me:
-This is all too complicated, just show me where the hole in the computer were they must stick it so i can close it.
Once a guy out on a system start-up called up and said:
"Help! I've got a 55-amp short in the wiring!"
After a brief pause for muted laugher, I had to ask:
"How do you know it's a 55-amp short?"
He answers:
"Because that's how far the needle on the meter gets before the fuse blows!"
Sometimes the best thing you can do for people is just outlive them.
Back when Apple released its first widescreen (1600x1024) LCD "Cinema Display", I got one. But I was disappointed that Apple's DVD player software didn't handle it properly. When I played a widescreen DVD, it would have thick black borders around all four sides, as if it was first matted to fit inside a 4:3 area, then it was matted to fit inside a 16:9 area inside that. Not a big problem, just a silly bug, and an annoyance. So I called Apple tech support. "I just want to make sure you know of this problem, that you log it in the Apple bug database to be fixed in the next rev of the DVD software," I said.
"That's not a bug," said the tech support peon. "Here's a tech note which explains why you'll have bars above and below the picture when you play a widescreen movie on your monitor."
I told him, "That tech note only applies to 4:3 displays. I'm on a widescreen display. It should still give me thin black bars on the top and the bottom, but it shouldn't put bars on the sides as well. This is Apple's high-end monitor and I paid good money for it. I want to see this problem logged as a bug."
He gave up and had second-tier tech support call me back.
"First, I want you to reformat your hard drive and reinstall your operating system, then try it again," the second-tier guy told me. I figured, what the heck, I have backups, doing a reinstall will take less time than trying to convince him I don't need to reinstall. So I reinstalled. The problem remained, of course.
"The problem is that the Mac can only show a movie at up to twice its original size," the second-tier guy told me. "Your Cinema Display is bigger than that."
"Listen," I said. I have a sixteen-by-nine movie. I have a display that's 1600x1024 resolution. The movie is playing in a 1280x720 box in the middle of the screen. Now, what's the biggest resolution a 16x9 movie should be able to play on a 1600x1024 screen?"
There was silence on the line.
"I'll give you the answer. 1600x900. Right? That goes from edge to edge and leaves thin black bars at the top and bottom, each exactly sixty-two pixels tall. Not thick black bars around all four sides like I have now. Right?"
More silence, then: "I'll work on this and call you back."
He never called me back.
it's not only those who work at tech support who have their less-than-stellar moments. my friend worked tech for a government agency and got a call from a guy who couldn't figure out why the power light on his newly procured power strip was not turning on. turns out he plugged it into itself. do they still perform drugs tests for government jobs?
Just a little overstated... heh
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
A buddy and I had an assignment back in college to write "a windows app". That was pretty much the long and short of the constraints and this being circa 93 or so, we were working with VS 1.0 (installed from 27 3.5" floppies, no less). This was the collegiant version with no optimizing compiler.
We decided it would be terribly cool to create a electronic version of Star Fleet Battles. So, off we went creating our SDI application.
After some blood, sweat and tears we had something which should have worked. It was correct in every way we could figure out but the damned thing kept crashing on us. (imagine that) I finally decided to take one for the team and open a support incident.
After spending hours on the phone on hold while talking to different clueless support weasels I was finally connected with a person with actuall programming experience. I don't know if he was a developer or not but he did try to help. Finally, he asked me if I could send him our source code so he could attempt to debug it because there didn't appear to be anything wrong with it. I emailed him the source package and waited.
And waited.
Waited...
Finally, I called the guy back 3 days later.
Me: "So, have you had a chance to look at our code yet?"
TS: "Yeah, neat little game you've got here - is it SFB?"
Me: "Yes, it's supposed to be - I've never seen it work."
TS: "What? It works fine. We've been playing it here in the office for the last couple of days."
Me: "But, my version doesn't work - what did you change?"
TS: "Where's it breaking again?"
Me: Tells him line number and error message.
TS: "Oh that - you're dealing with a known bug in the debug compiler. Just compile your code in release mode and you're good to go."
I 'politely' explained at this time that I was running the collegiant edition. "oh" he said. "You're screwed."
Eventually, he assisted me with determining a work around. I never did receive the free upgrade I was promised to VS 1.5 which was available at the time (though, I'll admit he started backtracking just as soon as he offered it - somebody probably slapped him).
IIRC, we got a B on the assignment. All the time we spent debugging and on the phone with MS tech support ate seriously into our plan to develop features. We were supposed to have a certain number of menu items and other metrics of functionality which we completely fell short of. Fortunately, I had email evidence of some of my communication with the TS guy so our prof was merciful.
That said, it was an excellent course in how software actually gets developed - spend huge quantities of time on the latest MS bug and fail to meet your feature requirements in the course of debugging and trying to make the stupid thing work.
While I can't speak to the obvious idiotic answer the poster received I can say that I used to support DSL. While the web page was obviously wrong you cannot assume that you will get what you pay for on the invoice. Because of the way that most telecommunications providers provision DSL there is a possibility that up to 20% of the bandwidth you pay for can be taken up by network overhead. Not necessarily your network overhead. It actually depends on the number of people on the local loop.
As for actually troubleshooting it, pings don't mean crap. A traceroute will give you much more information. A continuous trace using something like mtr (Matt's TraceRoute) or some other similar program will help you narrow down where the problem is occuring, additionally, if its a router and not a bridge then the CPE configs should be checked. If its a bridge then an ATM ping from the edge router (ERX) can tell you if its actually on the circuit as there should only be the one hop between the ERX and the CPE. The tech support reps should be able to do this last one for you.
Regards,
FreeBSD Knight
Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article a d
This is a true story (doesn't strictly classify as tech support, but hey, read on!)
I went to drop off my cable/DSL modem at the office of my previous ISP when I switched providers. Walked in, found just one portly gentleman who asked how he could help me. I told him that I came to drop their equipment off. He took a look at the stuff, put the cables and the line adaptors in a pile and gave me back the modem.
"This does not belong to us".
I checked to see if I had by chance given him my new cable modem. Nope.
"This does belong to you. I got it with the rest of the stuff".
He then gave me a polite and patronizing smile and told me "Sir, you must be mistaken. You don't need a modem for DSL. All you need to do is run a cable from the phone jack to your network card".
Epilogue: I spoke to one of their agents over the phone later and told them that I'd be more than happy to keep the modem if they didn't want it. They said he was a security guard, and doesn't know the first thing about tech.
Duh!
I called my cable modem co. (I'm now with DSL) when my connection wasn't working. I explained to him that I"d connected in the past with 2 different computers with both Windows and Linux on both machines, and couldn't get either to run. Since they wouldn't offer any support with a non-Windows OS, I had to proceed to delete and reinstall drivers on Windows. He eventually decided that the problem was on their end (which I'd told him in the beginning.)
I was on DSL at the time and everything would work well for awhile (between 5 - 15 minutes), then it would start dropping the DSL connection and I'd have to unplug the router and restart it before I could connect again.
I contacted Linksys and the first tech support guy said that the router was over-heating. So I went back to the store to exchange it for another one but had the same problem. I called them again and they said they'd look into the issue and get back to me.
About a week later I got a call from another technician who blamed the problems on my ISP. He assumed I knew nothing about computers and told me that my ISP (Bell Sympatico) was changing my IP address (DHCP) every 5 minutes and that it was causing a problem.
I returned the Linksys cable/dsl router and setup a linux router instead. My linux router has been working fine for about 4 years now.
The worst response was when I was captain of this starship and the chief engineer kept telling me "The engines, they just canna take it Captain!" We would have to drift, sometimes for hours, while he tried to squeeze his oversized belly into a Jeffries tube. I think sometimes he just when in there for a sip from some private stash and a nap. Never did find out what the problem was half the time.
This would actually go on sometimes right during a battle with the Klingons, and I don't have to tell you how frustrating that can be!
When I worked tech support years ago when 56k was high speed Internet, I heard someone on the phone explain why people wouldn't "hack" the customers computer. Apperently, a hacker would have to hack into each router on the Internet, before getting to her computer, which would be a nearly impossible task.
I'm so glad the Internet police protect me!
Download speed is measured in kByte/sec.
Line speed is measured in bits/second (and often real bits at that).
If ATM is used (often the case), then there is an overhead of 5 bytes per 48 bytes of ATM data.
Add to this a TCP/IP overhead of up to 42 bytes/packet, giving an efficiency of around 95%.
This gives you more than 15% overhead. So a factor 10 is a good bet.
Now, if it is cable, there are many other things actually in there, as many are sharing the same cable etc. So it might eat another 20% - just like 802.11 is only spending half the bandwidth in each direction - and have lots of overhead.
Upon asking why, I was informed that it "had something to do with data harmonics".
My brother once explained a firewall's operation to a non-tech as "rotating the shield harmonics." The explainee (while obviously not believing it literally) considered this a good enough analogy for his purposes.
Bloody brilliant. Wish I'd thought of it.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I made a PPT presentation for school, but the computer in the classroom wouldn't recognize my CD-R. The "tech" from the AV department said I should have burned more than just the one 3.5MB file; I should have filled the disc with junk so the DVD drive could "find it" better. I thought maybe I'd damaged the disc somehow, but when I took it home it worked fine.
According to the helpdesk one day. I of course knew it was the video card but I guess some idiots would fall for it.
While working at Best Buy,I was trying to fix a customers computer, a shitty little "Com-pact" computer that wouldn't power on at all. I took apart the front of the case, realized that it was the surface mount push button switch that needed to be replaced. I called the nearest Radioshack and asked the sales guy for just that, a "surface mount, normally-open, momentary pushbutton switch" which I know they carry but needed to see if there were any in stock.
Any way, the punch line goes something like this.
Me : Do you have [above] switches in stock?
RS : No we don't carry anything like that.
Me: I know you carry them, just look at the shelf in front of you and they should be in a pullout drawer on the lower left side.
RS : No sir, we don't carry ANY electronic pieces.
Me : Ok........ Is there anybody there who know anything about electronics?
RS : No sir, this is a computer store.
Me : Ok. [Hung up]
In the end, I printed up a list of Radioshack parts from their website and sent my customer there with possible switches circled with a Sharpie. They brought back a large red pushbutton I installed in the Com-pact using telephone cable I soldered onto the mainboard
I had an intermittent problem with my cable modem for weeks that kept getting worse. The connection would slow down at random times, often coming to a complete halt. I would go down to where my masq box is hooked up to the cm, check the lights, ping the nameservers, etc -- all would usually check out, though with lots of packet loss. I'd call and they say it sounded like moisture in the cable!
Eventually I started losing connection alltogether. I'd go down and the status lights on the cm weren't blinking. I'd unplug, plug back in, run pump -R and try it again. Sometimes it would work, usually not. Again I called Comcast and they would schedule a tech visit, only to have the connection start working again a couple hours later and I'd call to cancel.
Every time, Comcast could see my cm online and insisted it must be my computer -- if they came out and the problem was on my end, they would charge me.
Well shit, they're gonna come out, see the POS 386 machine connected to the CM, see that it's running Linux, walk out and charge me -- so I ran the cm upstairs to a machine on the first floor and hooked it up directly so the tech would see that everything on my end was supported and fine.
Guess what -- started working again... for an hour. Then stopped. Then started. Then stopped again. This was nuts.
I went ahead and called them again and once again scheduled the service call -- working or not. I figured the worse that would happen now is they would come out and find it was working and I'd have to keep calling them back until they either fixed it or I had an anurism.
I went to work the next day and my wife called mid-day to tell me that the problem was fixed: "something had chewed through the cable and they had to replace it".
Sounded like the biggest bullshit explanation I ever heard until I got home and saw for myself. Sure enough, they had pulled the coax out from under the deck and run a new line -- the old line laying in the yard so I could see. Some little cocksucker with an overbite had chewed through the insulation.
The explanation the tech left with my wife was that the flakyness with the modem was probably because of varying dampness depending on outside temperature, time of day, dewpoint, etc. I think the modem dropped out everytime that buck-toothed, plastic-munching, broadband-killing fuckwad was out there nibbling on my cable!
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Back in 1994 or so I was working for a company integrating some technology from MicroStrategy into our product and we were having some trouble making parts of it work. One time when we called technical support and posed our question, the response was a quick "It works here, thanks for calling!" followed by an immediate hang-up!
perl -e 'srand(-2091643526); print chr rand 90 for (0..4)'
The most consistently bad tech support experiences for me are the increasing number of automated ones. The first response always suggests a fix that my report says I have already tried, or that is obviously inapplicable (because some keywords matched). That means I don't even reach the least experienced human serving on the front lines until step 2.
The most fun I've had was when I tried to return a pair of Sony external speakers to Fry's, claiming correctly that they were incompatible with Windows. Why? Well, these speakers had a special power-saving feature that shut themselves off when they were idle for a short time. As a result, they took a short delay to power themselves back up when they detected a signal again. The power-up time was longer than most error beeps, causing them to be lost. The tech was dumbfounded, but fortunately took them in return.
I find my experiences are usually they dont know what the hell is wrong or do know whats wrong but dont know what to do. I called in to ask why i couldnt register with my numbers and apparently the retarded contractor didnt phone in to confirm the codes. So I call tech support this preppy lady picks and she tells me whats wrong and say theyre gonna forward me to another department to fix the problem. Few seconds later some dumb sales rep picks up sounds like she didnt graduate high school i ask her to put in my fucking codes and shes all "I'll hafta forward you to tech support." The forward dies cuz she prolly was to stupid and hit the wrong number or something since it never went through. I call tech support again, this time a guy picks up I tell him the problem, puts me on hold for a few minutes, fixes the problem, I registered and was online in a few minutes. All I can say is tech support is hit or miss, if it seems like its going nowhere, it is and ask for a supervisor or something.
BTW, Earthlink customer service is the worst in history. Hold for atleast 10 minutes w/ terrible onhold music and indian techies that dont know anything.
"then he said okay ill try back later when ur husband gets home. the whole world thinks massachusetts is gay now"
I've not had too bad of an experence with tech support mostly becouse I handle most problems myself.
The worst call was when I called in to an ISP to let them know the system wasn't recognising my account.
In some ways he was ok. It was there fault and he admitted such. The only issue I had was he talked down to me while explaining what was wrong. I didn't even want one. I just wanted to know they knew and were on it. I didn't want the details let alone have them spoon feed.
However the absolute worst tech support experence was getting no responce at all.
On two diffrent occasions I got nothing.
One the phone support never answers the phone. This is 24-7 tech support it ALWAYS turns to the answering machine. I actually tried calling them every hour on the hour hoping to catch them on the ONE hour they were actually in the office for a full 24 hours.
I left a few messages.
I also left e-mail.
They pritty much took my money and left town.
The other didn't have a phone number and ignored tech support e-mail.
I eventually gave up on em.
So I'd say the worst was no reply at all.
Second worse being talked down to when it's the ISPs fault. (I took that with grace, I imagin tech support gets a lot of clueless calls and tends to get defensive).
Most of my tech support has been pritty positive.
The worst I've had was GIVING support. I seldom do it and only to help people out (not my job). Out of maybe 7 times I've been yelled at twice becouse I wasn't doing things the way THEY wanted.
I don't actually exist.
My roommate called Comcast to complain about our connection getting over 50% packet loss when pinging our gateway or dns servers.
Response: Your DHCP lease *is going to* expire in 1 hour. That is causing your problem. So wait an hour until your lease is renewed.
Just call one of the companies that shuttled tech support off to India. I've gotten a rather interesting collection of blatently incorrect answers from such tech agents.
I had to explain to one that no, "AGP" did *not* mean "Apple Graphics Port" and was *not* proprietary to Apple.
I wasn't even calling Apple, either - they kept support in the USA.
I've been on the other end of it, and they have no choice. As soon as the company-mandated trouble ticket system was installed, the company began using it to track IT personnel to see if they were doing enough. Trouble tickets were the only existing measure of an employee's performance. If you got direct-called and ran out to fix a dozen hardware problems at a time, you still weren't doing anything. So, submit the help desk ticket. Use the extra few minutes to relax on company time, due to their own policies, or swab down your filthy keyboard to make it all nice for the poor tech who's coming to fix your machine.
...
actually in asynch serial comms (such as your 56K) a byte is data bits, plus start, stop, parity bits
so the old standard 8,n,1
is really 1 start bit, plus 8 data bits, no parity bit, and 1 stop bit
so 10 bits in this case
the largest commmon byte would be something like
8,e,2 (1 start+8+1(for even)+2 stop bits, thus
12 bits in that byte as transmitted.
My DSL was acting up one day. I couldn't keep a connection for more than a couple of minutes before it would drop out and my little connection light would give me that sad, lost blink. I called Verizon to ask whether they were having server problems. Well, of course they weren't. So, what did the tech support guy tell me?
You see, after awhile, a charge builds up at one end of an Ethernet cable. That degrades the connection and could cause problems. You should try turning your cable around.
Wow.
I was working at ... insert name of the NDA'd major network interface provider ... and got a call from a customer insistent that his cable modem was working but that our nic was at fault. The customer explained that the @HOME installer had said that they tested everything and it was definitely our nic....
Here's the kicker... When I asked him to check the connections, he asked if he should take the cable modem out of the box. Yes, the @HOME installer that passed the buck had never even taken the modem out of the box and insisted to the customer that it was working.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Thats an awful lot of Inglish you were able to understand!
Dell Tech Support == Insert restore CD and pass curry.
"I see stupid people. They're everywhere, and they don't even know they're stupid."
I lost my faith in tech-support after that experience.
What you are describing is a driver issue, not a TCP/IP stack issue. Actually uninstaling the TCP/IP stack involves going into the add/remove programs applet, clicking on add/remove Windows components, and uninstalling TCP/IP there.
Being a non-windows guy myself (see below) I can easily see why this is an issue for WIndows users. The damned OS does not let you pick what kernel modules you want to have compiled in, etc. You are forced to use wtf they think you need.
Granted, (at least time I used one) Macs restricted you in the same way, but shit, at least their OS works! <G>
Oh, and here's an example of why I don't use Windows:
bash: rtfm: command not found
I returned a HP printer to CompUSA. The printer was printing on the page off-center. So the margin was .5 inch at the top and 0 by the end of the page. I took it back and suggested that the roller wasnt picking up the paper correctly and it appeared to be a hardware problem. The manager told me that its a "driver" problem and that I probably installed the software wrong.
So, I probably clicked Next, Next, Next wrong and that is causing the paper to load into the printer crooked
>|<*:=
Well, I had a little bit of sympathy to them before, I guess it was undeserved...
Paul B.
With the recent release of the new 166MMX Pentiums, I was calling around to get prices. One store, after asking to verify that the price was indeed for the MMX version, the salesperson admitted he didn't know and told me I'd have to talk to their tech.
When I asked their tech, he replied angrily "Why does everyone keep asking me that question! ALL Pentium processors have MMX!"
I thanked him for clarifying that for me and hung up.
I called our (not so) help (ful) desk and after walking through all the obvious stuff, they said deep support would have to call me back.
I got an email an hour later, with a log of my activities on that machine attached. Apparently, the log showed that the last command I had executed prior to beginning my tar was make on a Makefile.
They very nicely suggested that this Makefile had a "clean" routine in it and that was probably what deleted all my files.
There were several problems with that line of reasoning:
1) I executed that Make command 6 months ago. If they had checked the compiled executable's date they would have seen that.
2) my so-called clean routine simply deleted any object files generated by the make (it was a C program).
3) Not only were my files all gone but EVERYTHING on that mount was gone!! I don't have the access to do anything as destructive as that.
As it turns out, another user that had pbrun (some kind of pseudo root) access had moved or deleted the files "as he saw fit".
They never even apologized. Sadly, they accused me of not handling the situation well and blasted me in an email that they also sent to my boss.
These are the same admins who were "not comfortable" granting me cron access on this machine.
Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
"Your UNIX email server isn't sending SMTP compliant email"
Microsoft Professional Support Services, on why certain email from Postfix --> Exchange was not appearing in user inboxes. This despite clear logs showing receipt of email at Exchange, processing and final delivery to InformationStore.
Janie took my gun...
This was about ten years ago. My friend had a problem with his Packard Bell computer. He was just working along, when he heard a "pop" and then the screen went blank.
Since he bought the computer from Sears, he drove it thirty miles to local Sears service center. A week later they told him that they couldn't figure out what the problem was. They were going to ship it to Packard Bell. One month later Packard Bell calls and says that they can't figure out what the problem is. So they ship it back to Sears, and my friend drives thirty miles to pick it up.
He's kind of depressed. This was a month and a half later. For some reason they wouldn't honor the warranty and replace the system. As a last resort he calls me to look at the system to see what could be salvaged. So I went over to take a look. We open up the case and peer inside...
A chip on the video card had literally exploded. There were scorch marks on the scanner card just above it. There were pieces of black chip ceramic in the bottom of the case. A fifty dollar video card and the system was a good as new.
Worst explanation from tech support? Saying "we can't find the problem"...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
THIS SHOULD CLEAR THINGS UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The word bit is a shortening of the words "Binary digIT. Bits have only two possible values: 0 and 1. There 8 bits in a byte (4 bits in a Nibble) bps is an indication of how many bits that pass a certain point in one second. The larger the bps rate the faster the download and/or upload time will be. Bps or bytes per second is the same as bits per second, however instead of bits the speed is measured in bytes. Now you know what happened to all of the old telemarketers that lost their jobs because of the DoNotCall Registry. These "first level idiots" get paid $10.00 per hour to read cue cards. They are trained like sheep. The smart Techs are all Consultants making between $20.00 & $75.00 per hour.
"That is called a Javascripting language, which is installed in your hardware, not in your software"
Vonal Declosion
There was a tech support guy who came to our french class one day, and started working on the comps in there. he then got up and told our teacher somethingto the effect of "some of your smarter students have bypassed the firewall. this is bad because when they do, it makes the router lose its identity, and the network can no longer access the internet ouside of the school" which of course is a completely bs answer. they are just supposed to have the computers mnitored. but the blocking system they use in the district (Los Angeles Uunified School District) is so idiotic that it blocks tons of legitemate content and lets you view porn. for example, i was blocked form the united states chess federation site while my friend was looking at tits on another computer in the computer lab. brilliant work LAUSD.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
The worst is when a dumbass user has a problem with their computer. You go there to help them fix it and are trying to determine the problem and they start offering up possible "helpful" explanations. For example, the user might have a problem with their Internet access and they will offer up the following:
"Is it something to do with me changing my mouse pad earlier this morning?"
"I just got the Internet installed at home... does that have anything to do with it?"
"Last week my husband got food poisoning from a recipe that I printed off of the Internet... Maybe there is a virus going around."
/gunshot
I had one of those today, actually.
I've been implementing a new X10 network in my home and purchased a Leviton 4-unit controller for my bedroom.
Now, I've never used any Leviton X10 modules before, but they're nicely designed, although pricey.
Anyway, I can get the unit to dim and brighten lamps, but not directly turn them on or off! On top of that, the unit registers when I use another controller to change the state, updating the LEDs on the unit's face.
When I called Leviton to ask why their controller is doing this, the tech support guy said that it's their own system, not X10, and that they don't claim to have any compatibility whatsoever.
Funny. Every place I've seen selling the Leviton modules is selling them as X10.
I did finally get the unit to work, but it took programming it with a macro using my computer interface.
Jory
The VERY FIRST thing you do when contacting tech support is ask for tier-2. If they balk you start telling them how you can ping the default gateway but not the DNS server, or the round-trip timer is showing a lot of delay to your regional SMTP server.
You can practically hear them mutter "wtf?" and then boot you to someone that has a shot of helping you.
I love my Macs. Not a die hard, but definately my computer of choice. Matter of fact I have 6 of them running off an Airport Base station. Try to get on line one morning and none see the base station. Okay, simple problem, base station dead. Call Apple Tech, unit is still under warranty. I have the tech tell me that obviously my settings got changed. I kindly pointed out that none of my six machines could use the Airport, though they could connect via cabled ethernet. He insisted my network settings had been changed on all the computers! Two hours and several bumps up the chain of command, they sent me a new Base Station.....
Yes, just like the famed computers that run them, firewalls are without error. As everyone knows, computers were made by humans who are error prone therefor computers and software are *perfect.* Sure cars can breakdown as parts wear out and things just break but those are not COMPUTERS and SOFTWARE. Being as confident as you are of these well known and well established facts, it was much easier for you to be a cocksucker instead of just disabling your shitware and troubleshoot the issue. These facts are we well known as ISPs *like* to break things just to see if people will call so they can pay people to answer those calls.
FYI: Pretend to know something when you cry your way to 2nd tier and you are already labeled a moron and loud mouthed idiot who lost their pacifier. I mean you do have to call tech support for a reason brain child.
-Seasoned Senior Tier in industry for 5 years.
So I've installed XP several times over (on the one machine I own that doesn't run linux) because of an inexplicable error whereby the machine refuses to spin down the drives before "going to sleep". Not surprisingly, NT's system hive files are the last thing to be written to disk before shutting down, meaning upon reboot, the machine is unusable due to a corrupted hive file and must be booted off another partition.
I decided that this was a nuisance and called tech support one day. The ultimate solution? Honestly, the guy suggested that I just buy a new computer, as he was confident the bug would take years to fix. Years??? I trivially found the issue online - it's been around since win2k, and there are many computer configurations that have reported the same issue.
Amazing.
?/o
Actual quote:
Someone I spoke to on the phone referred to their computer as the "drive hard".
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
I worked tech support in a local high school, and we often did work in classrooms. The students would try and bug us or the clueless faculty would try and input. Generally it would be something stupid like a cable not plugged in, but whenever one of the annoying kids or teachers asked us what we did, my stock answer was, "Well, I had to re-articulate the binary offset-singularity on the quantum magneto drive." Either that or "The RAM disk had bad sectors"
omfg, I started laughing my ass off when I read this.
I once called Adelphia tech support, immediately got escalated to tier 2. Tier 2 SHOULD know what they're doing, right? Well, I was complaining about my speeds(this sounds familiar...), and the guy told me I was wrong with my bits to bytes calculation. He said "You aren't calculating it right. There are 1028 bytes in a bit." I'm generally a nice guy, and 1024 I could forgive. What I've always been wondering, is where the hell he pulled 1028 from?
"This is not the America I know."
The correct formula should be:
Number of bytes/second*8 = Number of bits/second
And not:
Number of bytes/second = Number of bits/second*8
This is a new kind of "spelling" errors on slashdot now. One more reason to subscribe? :)
Interestingly, a byte may not necessarily be 8 bits everywhere. The C standard for example allows a byte to be any number of bits (>=8).
When I moved into my house, the DSL wouldn't work, using the modem that I'd brought with me from my apartment. So, I took the modem out to the point where the phone line comes into the house and tested it there. Still didn't work. Neither did the other modem I had from a previous apartment. So, it seemed pretty obvious that the problem was outside my house.
Armed with this information, I called Verizon.
Call #1 I made the mistake of telling the guy that I had a Mac. So, I get transferred to their Macintosh help department, and get some guy in India who can barely speak English and assumes I have a bad modem. Of course, he can't solve the problem and has to give me a different number to call the next day (not that I'm going to, because I know it's not the modem -- I've tried it at my office and it worked fine).
Call #2 The first call didn't work, so I call back again. This time, though, I'm smart enough to forget to mention that I have a Mac. After a suitable period spent listening to soothing jazz (and the occasional assurance that my call is important), I get a nice enough women on the phone. I patiently explain to her what the problem is and what steps I've gone through to track the cause. After listening to me, she responds by asking which modem I have. I describe it, and she immediately tells me that I have the wrong modem. I need the other model of modem. Unlikely, but I'm no expert in DSL technologies, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt ... which means waiting half a week for a new modem to show up.
Call #3 The new modem shows up, and I try it. Much to my lack of surprise, it also fails to work. Back to the phones, I call Verizon for a third time. Finally, I get someone sounds like he has a clue. Still wary, though, I decide not to mention that I have a Mac. Only problem is that he wants me to run through some diagnostic steps, which means I have to pretend to follow what he's telling me, and then do the equivalent under OS X. Simple enough, until he asks me to read him some number with a weird title. I think he's talking about the MAC address, but I'm not positive. Busted? Thinking quickly, I acted like I'd been interrupted, and asked him to hold on for a second. Then, I sat there for a few seconds, and when I came back said something to the effect of, "ok, so you wanted the MAC address, right?" Bingo, got it right. I gave that to him, and within' a minute or two, he'd run his diagnostics and determined that the problem must in fact be outside my house (just as I'd suspected at first). He told me he'd send someone out to fix it, and bid me good day.
Epilogue Within a few days, someone apparently fixed the problem, and I got a call saying everything was good to go. I plugged the modem in, and SUCCESS it worked! Only took 2 1/2 weeks, and three phone calls to reach the solution that I'd already determined when I made the first call.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
freshman year of college in our dorm, my roommate and i were testing a web-spidering program. we let it run overnite once and apparently it ran amok and the next morning our internet had been shut off.
our genius university of course sends internet termination letters via email. we found out it had been cancelled due to the fact that our computers were supposively infected with the code red or blaster worms.
we attempted to explain that we were both running linux and the spidering program was the cause of the excessive traffic but the IT department refused to enable our connection until we provided them with a full system virus scan log using the university's supplied mcafee.
at that point we gave up trying to explain. we just installed a fresh 98se installation on another partition, booted into it, installed mcafee, scanned our system, and emailed them the log file.
the next day our network access was re-enabled...
today i started a short 4 day temp job at the small phone service center here in my town. they have about 40 people and half to Sony optical drive support and the other do ISP. a local ISP had been planning to do some changes to their system and today was the day to implement the changes. they sent out instructions to all of their users by email and mail about what they would have to change. 2 things. all the people need to do is change their login name from just the username to their whole email address on the dial-up window and in their email settings. i need some quick money to fly down to florida to tour a school i want to go to so i figured this job would be perfect. 4 days, 12 hours each, $9/hour. the 20 temps they hired all got folders with instructions on how to change the settings. its actually the same packet that was sent out. i didn't need it because it was so easy. the same thing all day... "you can't connect? ok. go to dial-up networking and open your connection's logon window. as @pcpartner.net to the end of your username. now go to outlook express and go to the account settings and do the same." the only problem is that most of the temps hired were dumber then the people calling in. neither could follow the simple instructions, WITH PICTURES!!!. my first day and i became a second tier tech. i called a bunch of people back and did the same thing the other tech were supposed to do except one difference. when i went through it the user could actually get online and get email. i don't know what the other techs were leaving out but i'm pretty sure it was common sense. sorry for the long ramble. i'm off to bed. i've got another 12 hours in cube city tomorrow.
I'm a major geek and am experienced in all forms of the art.. recently I let the ISP of the company I work for know that we were having major connection problems.. resulting in a total lack of usability. First they told me that I was wrong. Then they told me it was our companies fault because we were obviously infected with some horrible virus (they told me ICQ was to blame). They told me because we were swamping the broadband connection (running an ssh session and doing some minor web browsing). Then they told me it was because we were the target of someone trying a DoS attack. Finally they made some adjustments to the antenea (wireless is all we can get in our location) and instantly everything is fixed. I have to wonder if it's really good business to blame your customers for a problem especially when it's obvious that they know as much about the topic as you do. It really lowered my opinion of their company. Another example of such support and we'll be switching to a different ISP.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Not really a professional tech support, just a funny stupid answer to a computer problem. At my school there is one computer annex that is only Sun machines running Solaris(for us CS students to program on). This was near finals so all the Windows computers in other annexes were in use, and these 4 or 5 kids ventured into the Sun annex and attempted to use the machines. After several minutes of bad attempts, they finally came to a conclusion of what the problem was.
There wasn't enough sunlight. It seems that they figured a Sun machine running Solaris MUST mean it is solar powered. And since it was night time, the machines obviously didn't work until morning.
This is ignoring the fact that the room was indoors with no outside windows and the machines were on and displaying a normal login screen. No one in the room tried to help these morons, hoping that darwinism would take effect. They left without getting their report or whatever printed. Hopefully they failed college and will never attempt to enter that room again.
I was walking through the halls of my office on day and my boss stopped me. He had been explaining something to our new tech. He asked me to explain how anti licing worked. I was ver offened and looked at him blankly and in bewilderment over it. Then it occurred to me he ment antialiasing.
About 6 months ago, my broadband provider had a router problem (packets were being routed in a loop). I essentially had no connectivity. I called and explained what was happening. It was obvious they support guy had no clue what I was talking about, and when I explained I had used traceroute and found this problem he thought I was some sort of "hacker" [sic]. Anyway, he began trying to troubleshoot the problem and began with, "Is your cable modem plugged into a power strip"? I said yes. He directed me to plug it directly into my outlet instead of the power strip. I was confounded. I basically scoffed at him, which made him mad, and he said, "Do you want me to help or not?". I said, "No thanks".
What a moron.
I had a really weird one, and I really can't blame the techs support for being a bit confused by this one because it really is odd. (fyi, I'm a tech for our company, and was talking to the techs of what is basically our ISP).
Basically, we had a server that, after being on for awhile, would lose connectivity on a certain IP address. The machine had about 5 IP's bound into a single NIC... and after IP #2 would die, #1, #3-5 would still be happily accessible.
Well, the internet dudes fully disclaimed any responsibility, citing the problem to be on my end. So thus began a week of troubles, replacing NICs, checking cabling. Eventually, the server itself was move off the main IPs and another brought up to test the issue. Same problem.
After awhile, I noticed something. Whilst trying to access the main server on the "dead" IP address, I couldn't get in. However, if I accessed server #2 (formerly the main server), and then server #1 to copy files, the IP was accessible. Armed with that information, I hailed the ISP tech support, and loe and behold after much investigation it turns out that the cisco router has a bunch of CPU hash errors in the logs. So... router goes out, new router in, and problem goes away.
To be fair, it gave me a much needed opportunity to replace some crap cable and do other things with the server - and all downtown that would have otherwise been associated with that anyways was put to the router problem which caused the primary issue.
Therefore, I can cuss at people in Christian as much as I like.
I had this EXACT same problem with my ISP. It turned out that the LISA daemon that comes standard with Mandrake (dunno about other distros...) burps out ICMP pings over your network. My ISP took his ICMP ping traffic to be port scanning and/or some MS-Blast virus, and disconnected my connection. The bastards finally turned it back on once I tracked down exactly what was generating this (very minor) ping traffic.
Last summer I was installing an Alltel Business DSL line (1.5M/256k) homed to a non-Alltel ISP. They initially sent the wrong modem. Replaced it. The modem still did not sync to their network. After a few more days of corporate DSL troubleshooting, they sent an Alltel technician who was on a conference call with the local switch operator and corporate DSL support.
The modem would not sync to their network and they refused to admit it was their problem (as I've found is always the case with Alltel.)
The local tech was completely illiterate and he finally gave up trying to mediate between me and the others so he left and I joined the conference call with the switch operator and corporate support.
So I'm listening to the switch operator talk to the DSL support guy. I answer a few questions here and there. They think it might be a bad card in the DSLAM. They replace the card while I'm on the phone. Still nothing. Then the switch operator is like "Oh, the port wasn't turned on." The modem sync'd right up and all was fine.
How pathetic is that?
Serial connection? It should be bits*10=byte. But 13-14 times?!? Where's my mallet....
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I about a dsl outage once and was given the explanation "the phone lines got wet."
I told him that I live in seattle - and if they can't deal with wet phones lines, they have a really big problem.
I called our ISP about our T1 to the Internet being down (we're talking a 1'st tier ISP, not the guy around the corner). After some rudimentary troubleshooting the first level tech said that she was going to refer me to a second level technician, but that I needed to send an email to the second level tech to initiate the support request....think about it.
This is the same dim bulb that after I told her I couldn't ping the first hop by I.P. Address, told me "O.K., but have you tried to ping it by name?"
I called in because I was having trouble reaching my ISP's DNS servers:
"We don't use DNS. We use DHCP."
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I had incessant problems with my Roger's Cablesystems cable modem connection when it was new. I ruled out everything at my end so it had to be with the cable companies setup. Tech support kept insisting it could not possibly be their equipment. I demanded to know specifically why the problem couldn't possibly be with their equipment and they said, "Because it is managements position that there is no possibility of there ever being any problem with any of their equipment ever." Armed with that gem I wrote to management flaming them royally and gave them to the end of the week to solve the problem or I was getting a DSL line instead. The next day the problem disappeared and the manager wrote me saying they could not find a problem with my connection. Strange coincidence I guess.
Never bother calling ATI for help on their video cards. (The website may provide some help.) Every time you will get a whole slew of instructions which boil down to "disable every possible feature in your BIOS and OS and see if that works". I think they think you'll just despair of ever being able to get your system back to the way you like it if you follow the instructions, and just give up. It's very effective.
Your only hope is to wait for the next version of the drivers, as it turns out.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
One bad Friday afternoon in 1986, I wouldn't sell a guy a null modem cable for use on the Kaypro II, because I was tired of trying to support people who expected it to work. He went ballistic, not surprisingly. Later, our hardware guy and I put the the Kaypro on the bench and put an oscilloscope on its modem UART -- and discovered that one of the inputs had an opposite polarity to its published spec! I think we were the only shop in North America possibly the world that could make the Kaypro's internal modem whine and snarl pretty without crashing.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
It's not too bad as synecdoches go... CPU just means "central processing unit". That certainly seems like an accurate way to distinguish a the tower from the peripherals.
All's true that is mistrusted
Most dual speed hubs these days can do 10/100 on a per port basis. I believe (but am not certian) the accomplish this by having a small switching circut that does 10 on one side, 100 on the other. The port is then routed to whichever side it is at.
Regardless of how it works, it does, I have seen it first hand. Kind of academic these days since switches are at a pricepoint to make hubs worthless.
Friends of mine that I hadn't seen in awhile ran into a rash of problems with their '98 over a period of several months. First IE started crashing a lot, then other things started crashing too. Eventually they started getting blue screens, which after awhile were accompanied with insistant beeping from the PC speaker. Then Caps Lock would get stuck on, or the keyboard would freeze (mouse could move). Finally, it would only boot in safe mode so I got invited over to dinner. This 'death' had taken about 4 months, following a relative's last visit when he had upgraded IE. We thought maybe it was a virus or a dead keyboard or both. So I went over there to have a look, and took my toolkit with me in case I had to open the PC. The machine was off when I got to the house, and my friends were out of the room when I turned it on. I went into the BIOS right away so I could see how the keyboard was faring without Windows running. It was fine there. I poked around the settings and everything appeared to be in order. I saved on exit, and Windows booted up fine.
As my friends came into the room, I asked them if it had started booting normally again before I got there. Not having seen Normal Mode in a couple of weeks, they were amazed and wondered how I did it. I had been in the house less than 5 minutes.
I gestured at my toolkit and said, "It knew I was going to open it up if it didn't cooperate. Accidents 'happen', you know." I then got them to load up everything they normally get going, and then more and more programs, open-close-open-open-open-close, etc.. Nothing like its recent self according to them. No viruses to blame, and no corrupt files. Touching the BIOS and saving without doing anything is the only thing I had done.
I used to work tech support for backup software. I guy calls in with some problems during his backup. I had him review the logs and we found SCSI errors indicating a problem. I asked if he had more then one SCSI card on the server. Suddenly the caller was off the phone. I kept saying hello, hello until he returned. Then he said I did it. I asked you did what? He said I changed the exterior SCSI cable to the other SCSI card. I asked if he shutdown the server before he did this. He said "no". I stated "It is generally not a god idea to swap SCSI cables when the server is running.
His reply
"But I did it really fast!!"
My Reply
"Are you faster than electricity?!"
From bash.org:
@FirebirdGM> I just called my Futureshop and asked them how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty.
@FirebirdGM> The guy that was on the phone told me that it was only a few pounds difference.
@FirebirdGM> And that's why I don't shop at futureshop.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I had Cable from Cox for the longest time and it was starting to feel kinda slow once my roommate discovered the beautiful world of bit torrent. Our upstream was capped at 32KB/s and it was starting to become a problem. We looked into business grade cable but that was way out of budget. Our next move was to look into getting DSL on top of the Cable modem and bond them at the router. I looked around on Verizon's website and saw that they offered pretty good bandwidth for a reasonable price, but there were several inconsistancies on their website, sometimes referring to bandwidth in bits per second, sometimes in bytes per second.
I call to order and asked the tech about the actual speed. I was mainly interested in upstream which was 128KB/s, or so I was told. I asked if the "B" was lower or upper case and was told it was all uppercase. I wasnt sure if the guy I was talking to knew what he was saying so I posed a question: "if I can upload at 128KB/s and a 1MB file is 1024KB, how long would it take to upload 1MB of data?". The guy did the math and said it would take about 8 seconds to upload that much data, give or take depending on other conditions. I asked for his tech number, name, and office. Then I told asked him if he was sure it was 128 kilobytes per second or 128 kiloBITS ber second. He told me that its not uncommon for people to confuse bits and bytes as they are different pronounciations of the same thing. I just about laughed my ass off but sinnce the first month would be free i decided to give it a try.
The DSL modem came but it wasnt until a month later that the line went active. I tested the bandwidth and low and behold the guy *was* and idiot (or was i for giving it a shot), and the upstream was crap. I called and complained but they wouldnt drop the charge for the second month. At about that time I canceled my land line all together.
Moral of the story: tele-tech's will tell you whatever they can to get you to buy the service, and if it looks too good to be true (like HalfLife2.zip 1.4GB on torrent in May 2004) it is.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Throught this thread I've been defending help desk workers, but this is an ask slashdot for the worst explanation from tech support, so I'll share a personal expericed from my perspective as me, on the other side of the phone.
I worked for HP's outsourced tech support, supporting all in one printers, on macs. One such printer; the HP laserjet 3330 had a critical undenyable hardware problem; when you plugged the 3330 into a mac, either ther mac would reset constantly, or the printer would shut down (the printer has no on or off button!)- it only effected some printers, with some macs, but it was widespread enough that that about 50% of 3330 calls related to this problem (incidentally I spent 2 full hours trying to replicate the problem on dozens of different macs to no avail); so I had congruently tracked it down to a hardware failure, and a memo went out that this was a hardware failure. About 40 seconds after the memo went out, another memo went out saying that we were not allowed to identify it as a hardware failure on the part of the printer...
I had to do a callback, during which I assured the person on the other end of the line that it was his mac expereincing the hardware failure- even though his printer was turning off, would not print, and several other USB devices were working- I finally after some thought said that the
'mac's ability to accept an off or on code from a USB keyboard means that it's constantly pooling for a result, for whatever reason your mac is sending malformed polling requests that are causing the printer to shut down, perhaps if you got a USB hub it would isolate the printer from the problem' (As much as I diden't know what they did to foul up the hardware in those printers, I did know that a USB hub normally fixed it)
I felt really bad, in fact I felt so bad that I made one of my mannagers send the guy two free toner rolls and a big stack of paper.
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
They insisted that the smyrnacable.net mail servers did not belong to them, and told me to contact Smyrna Cable. I patiently explained that Smyrna Cable no longer existed because they had devoured it. Apparently it was escalated to somebody with a clue, because a few days later my account was closed.
Months passed and the matter was forgotten. Until one day, some company in Smyrna emailed me. They'd found my old resume on my old site and wanted to know if I was interested in a job. Sure enough, my old site was back! Maybe somebody restored a backup or something. I went through the whole process again, only this time Charter's tech support denied even more vehemently that smyrnacable.net does not belong to them (despite the fact that it's among the choices on their Webmail page!)
I finally gave up on the. I meditated until I remembered my old FTP password, and replaced my personal Web site with the above story (suitably embellished) and a challenge to Charter Cable to permanently remove it. I then emailed the URL to tech support. Needless to say, the page came down most ricky-tick.
I used to have a 433Mhz Celeron computer up untill a about 5 months ago when I got an EMachine T2341. It started up so fast, and I got all of my stuff installed and put in a extra Gig of ram. So, I was playing Warcraft III, and then the thing just shut off. I pressed the power button and nothing happened. I unplugged it and started it back up. Well, the memory had never shown the full gig. *runs free* It only shows 641840. I installed MBM and relized that my computer has an automatic temperature shutoff switch somewhere over 150 degrees that I was hitting. I got some clock cycle limiting stuff and managed to keep it from crashing or powering down. I opened up a tech support request, and they said that my ram was being used for the integrated graphics that I wasn't using. I E-Mailed back, and then they said how to turn it off. That didn't work.
Hold shift at the EMachines logo to see the ram.
This is an AthlonXP 2400+, it goes to fast to read.
Your ram is defective.
I don't think it is. What about my heat problem? Is that red light supposed to be on?
Your ram is defective.
What about my heat issue?!
Your ram is defective.
I took it back to Best Buy:
This computer has heat problems.
You opened the case. The warrenty is void.
It says right here in this E-Mail(waves paper) that I can do that.
The warrenty is void. All we can do is exchange it for a new one.
Well, the ram still doesn't work, but the inside of this one looks different. It hasn't overheated yet. Same model, different motherboard and cpu-fan...
I wouldn't. As an example, CompUSA sells SCSI controllers but not SCSI drives.
All's true that is mistrusted
Solaris has /sbin as a symlink to /usr/sbin
All's true that is mistrusted
Dear Betelgeusian IV. You have entered the Slashdot domain. Please reply with one of the following to prevent a hostile interaction with this Earth Tribe.
Be sure to say Linux rulz
Windows, M$, Bill Gates, GUIs, Darl McBride teh Sux
And most important, have a racist anecdote ready about Indian tech support complete with some nonsense about "Indian accents". This is most amusing as most Slashdot people still think that India is some place "out of town", somewhere near Africa, is a place where people go to school on elephants...oh wait - "Indians go to SCHOOL? Them niggers really are progressing, huh Billy Ray? I gotta stop humping my sister in the haystacks and start reading that Almanac thing." Finally, if by chance anything positive emerges about India (i.e. a better voting system, qualified software engineers) it must always be suffixed/prefixed with one of the following sentences to lessen the blow to the Great American Ego - "<Positive news about Indian> but there are poor people in India, so it doesn't matter" OR "<Positive news about Indian> but there are hungry-starving people who can't afford to use both their nostrils in India, so it doesn't matter". Happy communications with these well-read, literate slash-dotters.
This isn't exactly about tech support (which I seldom call anyway), but here is a story from a long gone past:
In 1987, our university department had moved to a new building, and a 10base5 ethernet (yellow coax) divided into five segments had been installed to serve offices and labs on six floors. Since we brought with us a few hundred DEC VT100 terminals, we had maybe 40 Ungermann-Bass NIU-180 terminal servers (eight RS-232 ports each) distributed throughout the building, booted with software downloaded from a dedicated IBM PC.
The Ungermann-Bass TCP/IP software was still only in beta state when it was delivered to us, something I wasn't quite aware of from the start but learned the hard way. Occasionally the terminal servers would simply hang for no obvious reason, requiring us to reset them manually. This was a bit tedious (six floors, remember), and I tried unsuccessfully to find the cause by analyzing network traffic using two SpiderMonitors.
Then one day our DEC Field Service engineer arrived to install the NIA20 ethernet interfaces we had acquired for our two DEC-2060 systems. The installation procedure involved extensive testing of the equipment, some of it when connected to the ethernet, and I could see lots of funny packets with different protocol types (including ISO packets using the 802.3 protocol type field for packet length) scrolling by on the SpiderMonitor.
Minutes later I found out that pretty much every NIU-180 terminal server was now hung. Time for another walk through the building.
Given that we also had HP workstations using ISO encapsulation of IP packets on our network, I began to suspect that the NIU-180 TCP/IP software was sensitive to ethernet packets of (to it) unknown types, because the failures seemed to correlate rather well with the use of those workstations. I never made any conclusive tests to verify my theory, though.
Some time later I visited the Ungermann-Bass representatives in Stockholm to tell them what we thought of their product so far, and I mentioned the annoying hangings and my theory about what triggered them, including the "bad" test packets from the DEC-2060 systems.
"But then the fault obviously is with that other system, not with our terminal servers, right?"
I nearly began explaining at length what I had learned a few years earlier about fault tolerance in data communication protocols, but I realized I was dealing with sales people, not tech support, and rested my case. Some time later, we replaced the beta version with the official release of their TCP/IP software, and the problem was gone.
I always give the correct answer to any question given. Yes, it takes longer, and yes, you pretty much have to explain everything involved, at a really basic level.
Why do I do this?
Because educated users make less work for me than ignorant ones. This is a long term strategy, and I am telling you now that it pays off. Of course, if you are a temp or something, don't bother. Just fix and go.
Even then though, it's kind of fun teaching people who are about as technical as celery about the history of peripheral connectivity, and then getting the impression that they actually picked up something that would be useful to them in the future.
I'd just signed up with a new ISP, and wasn't quite happy with the latency I was getting playing Quake on a local server, so I called (foolishly) thinking they might have some suggestions on how to mitigate the problem. I was told to turn on PAP. When I confronted the tech support guy, he said I was a 'sharp one' and admitted he had no idea what I was talking about.
Swear this happened..
:-)
:-)
We bought an HP netserver (this was a bit ago) and set it up. We usually run a small batch file called tailchase.bat that just loops a directory over and over to test the box for a bit before we set them up.
This server wouldn't get more than a few hours before dying on the tailchase. Locked up hard.
HP sends out a tech. (Not an HP tech, someone they contract with locally)
He comes over to check it out and asks up what server OS we have on it.
We tell him we haven't installed the OS, it hasn't been stable enough for us to do that yet.
He said, (I swear) "Well, this is a server, it's not designed to run DOS."
So I promptly told him to pack up and leave my server room, called another tech from out of our area I knew. He came out, found out the motherboard was bad and replaced it. It ran DOS for days fine until we installed Netware, and ran Netware for years after that. (We did have to reboot it once..
Called tech support about a hard drive that seemed bad. He said to me... "just take it outside and leave it in the sun for a while" Took a while for him to convince me he wan't an id10t - but eventually I sat out in the sun reading a book with the disk. Took it back in and it worked flawlessly. Something to do with warming the sucker up.
Unfortuantely, they kept wanting me to go through steps to ensure I had connectivity. I tried to explain over and over that I am online, and that they can even ping me via the static public IP I used for my PS/2. They didn't know what ping was.
I tried to explain, but they kept stopping me, refusing to even let me explain what ping was, repeatedly saying, "we don't ping, sir!" I tried to explain it is harmless, and if they went to the command prompt, I could tell them how to ping my PS/2 so they'd know it is online. They refused, getting upset, saying they are not allowed to ping!
The only option they would give me, even after I spoke to the "manager", was to go through the connectivity steps, which, by the way, assume you only use their network adapter. It doesn't matter if you are online, or that you can prove it, or that the error is clearly from their authentication servers. They only know how to take you through the steps to be sure "your adapter is plugged in," etc.
I wasn't frustrated because they didn't know what ping was, but because they wouldn't even let me prove that my PS/2 was on the Internet, and connectivity was not the problem. It turns out, they can't help you at all when you have problems with their authentication servers, and don't even have a means to log that their is a problem with them so someone in Japan can fix them. Yet, you have to use the authentication servers to connect to their game servers. The bottom line is that SOE's 800 number support is virtually useless for any techy that knows he's online. You just have to wait until someone somehow realizes there's a problem and fixes it.
Open Standards Portal
You asked so here it goes, back in 1997 I bought a new Sony VAIO and formatted the harddrive- well I didn't realize I had to REM out the first cd-rom line in autoexec.bat to get my cd-rom drive to work correctly under win95a. I called the Sony tech support line and told them of my problem, after about the third call I spoke with a woman and told her, "I have everything working properly: video card, sound and modem but my cd-rom doesn't want to stay under windows!?" She excitedly said, "How did you get the modem to work!?". I told her,"I INSTALLED THE DRIVERS!". Any way I soon hung up on her and called a friend of a friend who worked as a technician for a nearby computer store to fix the problem.
As with any DSL line, my Qwest DSL failed form time to time. Actually it failed a lot more than most, but anyways. Now at the time Qwest used Cisco 67x series brouters for their DSL. These were real configurable brouters that, while not running IOS (Cisco bought them form someone else) were still powerful.
/29 of my own. Now of course the brouter needed to be configured differently for static IPs than the normal consumer level dynamic IP setup. With a dynamic IP, it got it via DHCP, and then ran NAT to give your comptuers IPs. With static you assigned it the IP, and it just routed straight through.
This was good, since I had their allegedly bussiness class service which, among other things, entailed a
Well EVERY time I called them because my DSL was out the second thing they'd ask me to do (first was a power cycle) was to re-config the brouter. Ok, this is dumb enough, it's not like I randomly change the config for fun. Now I can undersrand this as one of the things to try since customers are dumb, as a general rule, and do fuck shit up. However I told them that the light that indicates physical link was blinking (meaning not connected). That means any config problems are not relivant since the physical connection can't train. Doesn't matter if your routing info is fucked or if it is in bridge mode, it needs link first before that matters.
I tried to explain this to them to no avail. However what took it from bad to fucking stupid was without fail they read me the DYNAMIC config. Had I actually entered what they told me, I would have broken my connection, since I was provisioned for static IPs. They not only wanted me to do something that was useless, they wanted me to do something that would have made things WORSE.
And they wonder why I am now with a different provider.
After I installed it, he asked how I did it... the previous IT person said his computer was too new. The best part was that the "program" was a shortcut to a web app!
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
I had the misfortune of having cable installed on September 11, 2001. It didn't work, and when I called for tech support I was told "The military has taken over the Internet".
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be . . . an easy way to factor large prime numbers"
Bill Gates, 1995
1) I called pacbell because my connection was down. I told the guy "The connection is down, and your router isn't responding to ARP requests". He said "lets check your TCP/IP settings to see if you changed something.". I replied, I have 3 machines none of them have been touched and they can all talk to each other just fine. "I'm sorry sir, but you need to do this". Ok, so I fired up vmware and continued reading my email and other such things while repeatedly saying "ok" and "yep, its right" into the phone. Occassionally he'd ask what the dialog box said, so I'd quickly move over to VMware and start reading off the tab names at the top. Eventually, when he was satisfied with my settings he sent me to tier-2, who took 8 hours to call back but did finally fix it (shocker, it was their fault). I hate the tier support system
2) I called SBC the other day and asked "I was wondering if you support multicast to your home dsl users". Back came the indian accent: "I'm sorry sir, but I couldn't quite hear you". Repeat these two lines for 10 minutes. Finally, she answers "ohh... Yes, we support multitasking over our DSL lines". Sigh... I said "never mind, I can see you're not going to be of help if we can't communicate". She said "Why do you say that sir? Maybe you should try our online live chat support system."
But seriously, how long do you think you could play a tape of your voice asking stupid questions at random intervals (say every 30 seconds or so) over the phone without them hanging up on you and actually trying to have a conversation? I'm betting you could get some of them going for 30 minutes at least.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
http://www.datadocktorn.nu/us_frag1.php
Learn how to defraggle your motherdisc.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
I like to start every call to tech support with the line "please be aware that I will be recording this call for quality assurance purposes". That normally gets them on edge ;)
I also have, through many many interactions with my ISP's helpdesk, gotten a fairly good understanding of what they will ask me. So I just rattle off a list of all the things I have "tried", including reinstalling dialer software rebooting a hundred times, powercycling the cable modem, disabling my firewall, tried two different machines with four different operating systems, etc. If they still ask me to reboot anything, I'll ask for a supervisor...
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
Back in the days when @Home was just starting up, my cable company actually sent two people out in a van to hook it up for you. One of them was the "cable guy" and the other one was the "tech."
The cable guy did his thing as the tech hooked the cable modem and plugged it into my brand new NT box with a network cable.
Tech hooks it up, sets the network settings, and reboots. No connection.
Tech begins looking at the hardware profile, and I notice a big "X" over my NIC, indicating it is disabled.
I told the tech that it appeared the machine shipped with the NIC disabled (I hadn't used the NIC before) and to try enabling it.
Instead the tech ignores me, dicks around with the TCP/IP settings some more and then makes some incoherant rambling about Windows NT not being a "plug and play" operating system. He tells me that he thinks that my NIC is not compatible with the cable modem and offers to sell me one from @Home for $70.
I told the tech that I would pass on his offer for the time being, and that I would call my OEM to see if perhaps they had an updated driver. The tech agrees and gives me the number to call for support.
As soon as the tech leaves, I go into my hardware profile and enable my NIC. Not surprisingly, I'm now online.
I actually called the number the tech gave me to let them know that either the guy was an idiot (or at best too arrogant to listen to the suggestion of a high schooler).
Contrast this with my most recent setup with Comcast. The guy basically dropped the cable modem off, took one look at all the machines I had sitting at the side of the room, and said, "I'm not touching anything. Here is the setup information." I'm not quite fond of Comcast (I actually preferred the Road Runner connection I had when I lived in San Diego), but at least their cable guy was smart enough not to prentend to know what he was doing.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I called up Adelphia about some kind of cable modem problem. At one point the rep told me my cable jack in the room may have been left disconnected, since all the singals pouring out of an open jack can interefere with airplanes.
Right.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I got this when I worked as a tech support...but I didn't know it spreads so far........
Me: Hello
Moron: Hi, I demand to know what's going on with this network. It is so slow right now. I am pinging yahoo right now and only getting 60-70 ms. You need to notify the network engineers right away.
Me: Wait, what ar..(Interrupted)
Moron: No wait, you just need to get on the phone, call whoever is responible for handling the network right now, and tell them there's a serious problem that needs immediate attention
Me: Look, I think you ne...(interrupted, again)
Moron: Don't bother telling me to check my stuff, I know everything is working fine from my end. (got pissed) You know what, connect me to your supervisor or to the network department now.
Me: (Raising my voice, I was pissed, so I decided to piss her off) Alright. There is a way to fix everything that the university is hiding from everyone, but I (she tried to interrupt, but I raised my voice even more) will just tell you how to do it so you won't encounter this again. Go to the University user directory...
After getting her to the directory page and making her lookup the helpdesk phone number, it was time to end this stupidity.
Me: ma'am, here, you just want to smash your head onto any hard rocks or objects and then call that number. You got the wrong fucking number, bitch. Learn to dial a phone first.
And no, the Helpdesk phone was not forwarded to my home
You should have told him like it is: A bit is simply another word for 125 millibytes.
In my last job I was given the assignment of calling Veritas sales and asking them if they supported RedHat Linux 8.0 for their popular backup software. The box said that it supported RH 7.3, and I was supposed to find out if and when they would support 8.0.
The salesman sounded very confused, and then gave me a long speech about how Veritas is "working closer with Linux than ever before. We are trying to support Linux, but Linux isn't working with us." He told me that I needed to "call Linux and tell them to support our product". I managed to get the sales guy to refer me to technical support, but technical support told me that they weren't allowed to talk to customers. I had to go through the salesman.
Though my boss struggled for weeks, I don't think we ever got our money back. So much for their satisfaction guarantee.
I once had to walk a recovering alcoholic / schizophrenic with multiple personalities (who was off her meds apparently) through using keyboard shortcuts to reinstall her mouse drivers... it was the hardest call of my life!
... ... ... ...
ME: ok, hit the windows key.
Her: where's that?
ME: the windows key is on the bottom lef...
Her: *screaming in my earpiece* You stupid fucking bitch... you know you cant do this!
ME:
Her: Um, sorry... that was Cindy, she has some issues.
ME: um, ok, so the key is on the bottom left.
Her: ok...
ME: now hit the up arrow until you come to
Her: *child's voice* daddy touched me and made me feel dirty.
ME: !!!...
Her: Um, ya, sorry about that, I haven't heard from Sam in a while.
Her: *child* I've been in the closet.
Her: *screaming* That's where you belong you worthless little whore!
Her:
Me:
Her: Ok, so now that the start menu is open... now what do I do?
Me: *CLICK!*
From what I hear, later in the day she called back and complained that I hung up on her... thank god for conversations recorded for quality assurance purposes.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
I heard an interesting comment about a company's Mac tech support today.
"Sure our software is Mac-compatible; all you need is Virtual PC. Did we forget to say that on the box? Sorry, no refunds."
What part of the post did you not understand? His computer WOULD NOT BOOT. Kinda prevents using web tickets, huh? He never said he was at the office or even had another computer around...
In an annoyed email over an on and off cable modem connection, I sent, "Dear Charter Comm, I currently subscribe to your cable modem Internet service, I would be very interested in upgrading to an 'Always on' Internet connection. Please contact me if such a service is in or comes into existence." My reply was, nearly word for word, punctuation(or lack there of) and all, "i'm sorry i don't know what you mean, what is an always on connection"
What do I have to do to get a sig around here?! www.bearscanfly.org
Several years ago, we were using plain PCs as dumb terminals to a UNIX based system. One of the PCs developed a problem and the person who came to fix it(but couldn't) said that the PC probably had a virus in it. He couldn't answer the question of where was it living, since the PC had no hard-disk, only a floppy drive and 256 KB of RAM. Go figger!
I had just moved into my current house, the guy that lived there before had some funky phone line schemes ran through the house and only half of the jacks worked correctly, so I had to rewire the house, but when I got done the outside phone line went dead, as the phone company was doing work down the street, but unfortunately they didnt report it at the time, here is my conversation with the support line on trying to get the phone line turned back on. Me: Yes Im calling about my phone line, its not on, its like it got disconnected. Support: Let me check, Im not showing any problems with your line. Me: Well, thats why Im calling, to let you know there is a problem. Support: Have you checked different phones in your house. Me: Well, Im at the box outside and Im not getting a signal, so none of the phones in the house will work right now. Support: You need to check all your phones in the house, one of them may be off the hook. Me: Hello, am I talking to myself? If the signal to the outside box is not on, then the lines inside the house will not work. I just need you to turn the line to my house back on. Support: Have you changed anything in your house? Me: I just rewired the house. Support: Im going to send out a tech. Me: I dont need a tech, I am a tech, I need you to turn my phone line on. Support: We cant support anything within your house without sending a tech out. Me: Dont worry about the house, just turn the line that runs from the pole to my house on! I called back about 30 minutes later to find out that the line techs were working down the street and accidentally disconnected the neighborhood. The phone lines were back on about an hour later and my rewiring worked fine.
I was at Verizon's store today, and witnessed one of the counter guys saying that everything from a phone that randomly turned off to poor signal reception to a BROKEN LCD were all from "overcharging the battery". Four people in a row got this line about how you should only charge the phone for four hours even if you have a trickle charger because overcharging the battery evidently is responsible for the Earth spinning out of orbit and crashing into the sun. Arrrgh.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
The conversation went something like this...
Me: ok, do you see a DOS prompt?
Customer: yes!
Do you see a "c:\"
Customer: yes!
Me: type "cd logs"
Customer: It says "Syntax error"
At this point we repeated the exercise several, several times. I was completely stumped as to why we couldn't get to the logs directory to even start to figure out the real problem.
Things escalated and my boss put me on a flight to go fix the system. I went down to have a look and in five minutes I was kicking myself watching the customer type:
I never felt like a bigger idiot.
ZZ
actually when talking about internet bandwidth 8*bits doesn't equal a byte. Normally for a single byte to get through there is a lot of overhead. When they spec out a internet line to 56 kilo BITS per second that doesn't include all of the TCP/IP overhead of the packets. Its pretty common for the overhead to be as large as 5 bits per byte. In every packet there is a MAC address, a 'to' IP address, a 'from' IP address a subnet mask, and multiple types of error control (CRC or parity bits I'm not sure, maybe both). In any case its not too crazy that your getting 13-14 bits per byte.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
After lengthy diagnosis...
Me:
I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a "Yo-Yo"
Customer:
Oh, ok, what do I do now?
Me:
You're On Your Own
-click followed by dial-tone-
--- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
- Explain the concept of time zones. Mail went down in the UK at 10am. EST was 4am, and I call UUNet. The guy goes, "What do these people in the YOOKAY want mail at 4am?" It's 10am there, sir. "But it's so early in the frickin' morning! We always do our maintenance between 4 and 6." Yes, and that's 10 to noon in England. "But it's still dark out there, right?" The supervisor I demanded to speak to later told me she had to explain the concept of time zones with a flashlight and an orange.
- Confused Sweden and Switzerland. Austria and Australia. "I am am sorry, sir," said the snooty tech to the head of our Australian Division on a conference call, "I show no 'Sydney' in Australia, maybe you meant Salzberg?" His response, "What are you, kid, TWELVE???"
- One tech said on the conference call, "My boss said to tell the frogs to sip their wine and just wait." On the call? Two techs from Transpac. Merde.
I also got boldfaced lied to, like "Our routers don't keep logs," or "I'll call you right back." Of course, not all was rosy overseas.But all in all, I loved working International.
The Background:
I moved from FL->CA.
Told Mindspring about the move. They lost the move order. Put in another. Finally it's supposed to be HOT.
No sync.
So I checked the VPI/VCI number for PacBell vs. Bell$outh. Bingo they're different. That's the problem.
After some guessing, I found the modem's IP (it really had router functionality but that and it's native PPPOE support were turned off). Set my PCs nick to be on the same subnet. Telnet to the modem, try the default password. No Go.
I call Mindspring:
I explain what's going on to the 1st level tech. He immediately realizes I know way more than he does and there is nothing he can do to help.
Me: "look I'll be happy to just fix it myself, but I need the password to login to the modem and reconfigure it from the comand prompt."
So he forwards my call to 2nd level.
The Nightmare Begins:
I give the same explanation, troubleshooting and diagnosis to 2nd level.
His response, I think there is a problem with the way your network is configured.
Impossible. How else can I be sitting at a telnet login prompt for your modem. I can see other PCs, share printers, files, etc.
I try to educate him as to the basics of networking, but he obviously has NO Clue.
So I humor him, remove the hub direct connect to the modem. Same thing.
2nd level: I think it's a driver problem.
No it's not and here's why. See above.
To make a long long story short, I offer the clown any OS he wants (98, NT, 2000, linux) and any NIC I have (Intel, 3Com or junk ones).
Two hours later.
2nd level we'll have to send a tech (teleco) out to check it. If the problem is found with your stuff, there'll be a charge $$$.
I'm totally F-ing fed up. I have him transfer me to customer service so I can cancel my account and call someone who can.
Prolgue:
I downloaded a new firmware (no capability to reset to defaults the teleco issued modem) for a retail version of the modem (guessing that it's exactly the same thing). Uploaded it via serial console (which also reset the password) and bingo I'm in. I changed the VIC/VPI (using the now default password) to those required by my new DSL provider (some time later) hook it up. Spare modem.
Who will guard the guards?
I once phoned tech support and asked why my inet connection was so slow. The techie's response was to unplug and turn off everything in my room because the appliances were sucking too much electricity from the modem, thats why it wasnt going at top speed. If only there was a way to smack someone thru the telephone...
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
This conversation took place three years ago when I accompanied a friend on a trip to Best Buy to help her purchase a new computer. I kept my mouth shut to see what the guy had to say.
Salesman: This HP model is really popular. It even comes with a cd burner.
Friend: That's one of the things I really wanted for my new computer.
Salesman: Great...but if you decide to purchase a model with a cd burner, you should also pick up this surge protector.
Salesman hands her a $99 APC surge protector.
Salesman: This surge protector is even on sale, so you lucked out.
Friend: That's ok, I already have a regular surge protector from my old computer.
Salesman: Ohhhh...that's not going to work if you get a model with a cd burner. You know they don't call them "burners" for nothing. These things reach over 500 degrees. If you don't have a high quality surge protector, there's a high chance that your computer will catch on fire and burn your house down.
Friend: Are you serious? I don't want that to happen.
Salesman: Hey...I'm just trying to look out for you and your family's safety.
Me: I think it's time to go.
Later that day.
Friend: That guy wasn't that bad.
Me: Too bad Best Buy doesn't sell fire extinguishers, he could have sold you one of those while he was at it.
Nothing against Best Buy or computer salesmen in general...I just thought it was a funny story.
In the 1960's, yes. Now, no, not really- and your linking to a dictionary doesn't prove it. That dictionary definition is decades old.
For over almost 30 years, a byte is 8 bits, a nibble (no, I'm not making that up) is four. A word contains four nibbles or two bytes. Insisting otherwise is anal retentive at best.
Please help metamoderate.
Speaking of which... Google never forgets!
Plenums are defined to be any compartment or chamber which is connected to or a part of the air distribution system of a structure. Think things like ducts, flow shafts, and sometimes even the void above a dropped ceiling. The outer PVC jacket on normal Cat5 cable burns at a relatively low temperature and produces large quantities of highly toxic black smoke. Plenum rated Cat5 has a much higher combustion temperature and produces smaller quantites of smoke. The National Electric Code specifies that only Plenum Rated Cat5 can be run through any space connected to the air distribution system. Since air ducts are handy ways to run cable, a lot of Plenum Rated gets sold.
If we treat our users as lusers we may sometimes find that we are them when making a call to our "service" provider.
Most religions (not just that of the eight Crusade's) have golden-rule sayings such as "treat others as you'd like to be treated yourself" - it's good advice, you reap what you sow
the ISP we were using was switching cable modems, so naturally we lost service when we missed the deadline to get ours switched over (ISP was sending account notifications to a former tenant not even affiliated with our account). In calling tech support to find out what to do, I was told that I couldn't simply bring in the old one and exchange it for the new. I was told that it ABSOLUTELY had to be done by a service tech and that I would have to wait at least two weeks. After explaining that we ran a business and required a modem immediately the tech guy informed me of a "group of roving service techs" who were dealing with these types of emergencies. He promised to forward our phone number to them and we would be contacted later that afternoon. When my roomate woke up in the early afternoon to find no internet connection he was not satisfied with my explanation, and after an hour of waiting for the phone call from the roving techs, he called the head office himself. They had never heard of these roving techs, and that he was more than welcome to come down and stand in line with all the other people exchanging their modems. In all subsequent dealings with this ISP, I called twice, and the secod person I talked to was always the one that solved the problem.
as someone who had the unfortunate job of working tech support for a DSL ISP I can tell you first hand that most of the stupidity comes from the customer NOT the tech. and usually, if we give you a BS answer it is because we think you are a moron who we just want you off our phone/away from us and will probably belive whatever we say. its really not a personal thing. its after about the 1000th "my modem don't work." "sir, is it plugged in?" or something similar conversion you start to hate all of humanity who would dare ask your help.
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
We all know that kilo in KB often means 1024, like mega in MB often means 1024*1024. Not all know that kilo in kbit/s means 1000... I think we should give back 1000 to kilo, and use the new kibi for 1024. Like in "50 KiB/s is not broadband". Joakim
...the bytes where in transit and the bits where on break. I can't believe he didn't explain this to you. Bits are under union contract, bytes are currently outsourced, so don't be suprised if there is a lack of communication between the bits and the bytes due to these factors.
Go talk to your HR department. Right. Now. Please. NOW.
It is -completely- illegal to hire based on gender, age, marital status, # of children, etc.
Please help metamoderate.
First of all, I think it is stupid that bps and Bps measure two completely different things. No wonder people get confused when they are put next to each other like that. It's completely ridiculous. Second of all, the equation is fine. bytes/sec = bits/sec * 8 Equations are evaluated from left to right. It is not bits/(sec * 8) it is (bits/sec) * 8 1 byte = 8 bits.
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
Oh, and here's an example of why I don't use Windows:
[erich@localhost erich]# sudo uptime
Password:
11:40pm up 233 days, 23:02, 3 users, load average: 1.02, 1.03, 1.00
Wow. You have a high uptime. You know what thet tells me? It tells me that you have a box up that is very likely to have one or more kernel-level root exploits.
No one cares about your uptime. They do care about the traffic they're getting hammered with because your l337 high-uptime Linux box just got r00ted.
Update your kernel. Now.
I went through months of troubleshooting with Verizon. Everything from the basics to having a tech come out and replace the phone cable. Finally, I got fed up, and signed up with Earthlink. The price is higher, and I had to sign a contract. And guess what, same problem.
After doing a few more tech support calls, I finally got through to someone who apparently knew what he was doing, because after that day, I haven't had the problem again. But his explanation? "We just put you into safe mode." It's too bad I didn't ask more about that.
Maybe someone here can tell me what that meant?
--
QDB.us
I rang Microsoft up to activate some software (I know, I know). I had to go to a human operator, as the system didn't like my serial number. The conversation went like this: Tech Support: Hello, Microsoft Activation Services. I'm afraid I can't activate your product, please call back tomorrow. Me: Why not? I need the software as soon as possibly... Tech Support: Yeah, there's a bit of a problem at our side. Me: What? Tech Support: [embarrassed] All of our computers have crashed, we don't know what's gone wrong, and we can't boot them back up. ...well, at least for once Microsoft were refreshingly honest :)
I have so much stories that I'm not sure from where to start. I'l go with my latest and the one which drove me almost nuts.
with aei.ca ISP. I just wanted to know a simple information which isn't on the website (upstream)
machine: for general information, press 1, for technical support, press 2, to re-listen press 3
me: *press 1*
me: hello, I would like to know what r the complete changes of the dsl service
her: How am I suppose to know those details! I'l transfer you to technical support
me: Hello, I was transfered cause she didn't know shit
him: *laff*
me: So, is the upload of the dsl service still 800kbit?
him: yes
me: is it the same for the ultra?
him: wait a second, I'l transfer you
me: *shrug*
me: Hello, I'd like to know if upload speed of the two services are the same, of 800kbit?
her: what?! you again? WAit I'l transfer you. please wait a minute
me: A()%#()%*)@#(!
me: Hey don't transfer me anymore! IS THE ULTRA AND DSL BOTH 800KBIT OF UPLOAD
him: yeah I think so
me: ok finally an answer. thanks I guess.
me: One more thing, dsl service has no cap right?
him: yes but don't abuse your connection. above 40GB and you get a warning
me: so what the fuk does no cap mean? mind as well put flying leprechauns on your screen
him: listen sir, it's expensif for us after 40GB
me: yes but you're doing false advertisment with your "UNLIMITED!"
him: Let me transfer you wait a minute
me: *burst a vein on forhead*
*hangup*
They couldn't even explain a simple thing. Everytime the person tried to just get rid of the customer being me asking for simple piece of information and explanation behind their false undertisement of "UNLIMITED" which is really 40GB.
Me: "I'm trying to upgrade my current system with an external 56k modem, and I'm having difficulties getting it to work."
Tech: "But why would you want to switch out your current one for one that's only got 56? I mean, you already have 75, right?"
Me: "No, you're thinking of the processor; I'm talking about a modem, and mine is only 14.4k."
Tech: "No, actually those are just different words for the same thing."
Me: [Silence.]
Tech: "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
Monday, May 17, 2004 ~ 1 pm
Compaq Tech Support: Unplug the AC Adapter. Take the battery pack out. Hold the power button down for 90 seconds.
Marc: Done.
Compaq Tech Support: Now flip it over and push the reset button for 30 seconds.
Marc: I forgot this was here. Done. What does this do?
Compaq Tech Support: The reset button?
Marc: Yes.
Compaq Tech Support: It resets the hardware.
Marc: Yes, I know. What hardware does it reset.
Compaq Tech Support: It just resets the hardware.
Marc: Yes, I know this. What I want to know is what hardware components it's actually reseting or whether I'm just playing with a dummy botton.
Compaq Tech Support: The reset button... it just... it just resets the things.
Marc: Hold on I have to write this one down.
Compaq Tech Support: This is not information I have access to...
Call ends shortly after with me agreeing to test my laptop one last time before sending it off.
I remember being the operator for an IBM 4361. The controllers (like massive coax hubs) booted from an 8inch floppy.
It wouldn't boot one day, so I called tech. We worked out that the boot floppy was currupt and we'd need a new one. They said they would need a copy of the floppy to do this.
That presented me with a problem, as the floppy was currupt of course, and I didn't have a spare anyway.
They tech guy said, no problem, just photocopy it and fax it to us.
Well. I was all prepared to explain exactly how stupid he was when it transpired that the floppy had a label on it with the codes required to gen a new copy!
koan
This signature intentionally left blank
I have done support for both pc as well as mac, but I am doing Mac at the present time @ POS, what really gets me is ppl will not try and research ANYTHING them selfs they just want to ask a question and expect a quick fix. I am dumbfounded when I ask someone what type of computer they have and they respond a mac---HOW MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF MAC ARE THERE. When you ask them what type they say a G4, well everything is a g4 these days. I think they need to give out IQ tests before you are allowed to own a computer.
8 * x bits/sec = x bytes/sec
Called a tech support guy out. He fiddled with the cables, and then told me that some of the cables are transmitted down the screen of the coax cable. The rest are transmitted down the core.
Seriously? I tried to explain to the guy how coax cable actually works - but to no avail... ...needless to say, they traced the problem back to their roadside connection point.
Steve
Randomly pressing keys for a living...
In Switzerland all your tech support calls to Dell get rerouted depending on the language you speak/choose. French goes to France, Italian to Italy, German to Germany. So far, so good.
Now I don't doubt that the Germans have quite a high level of quality when it comes to manufacturing machines, optical components, AMD processors and the like, but their customer service is definitely one of the worst I've ever had to experience.
We had a Dell laptop with what we supposed was a damaged wireless LAN card. It would report "Network cable unplugged" even when the card's MAC was clearly allowed to get on the wireless LAN and had the correct SSID set. I'm a UNIX tech and don't know much about Windows, so I felt it might be nice to call Dell to find out what's wrong and get someone to send a replacement card if it really is the card's fault.
After waiting patiently through 10 minutes of pop music three times (their system kicks you off after 10 minutes) I finally managed to get a real, flesh-coloured human on the other end of the line.
Them: "Hello, Dell Inspiron support, how can I help you?"
Me: "Ah, well, we have a Dell Truemobile blah blah card here that is acting odd. How can I verify that it really is defective?"
He asks for the service tag, the usual details and I tell him the precise nature of the problem.
Them: "Oh. Well, I see that you have Windows XP Home Edition preinstalled there. Home Edition does not support networks. I'm sorry, we can't take that card back, you need to upgrade to Pro and try again."
I really hope he was fired afterwards, since as they say, "your call may be recorded for quality control". Swapping in the same model Dell TrueMobile card from a different shipment of notebooks worked just fine, by the way.
I worked for a network support company and one of our clients was having constant crashes from their specific software. We instructed him to call his software support line - the answer "You definately have a TCP/IP Wait state problem." to which they of course offerend no further explanation or solution. Buggy software was the real answer. We adopted this answer as our standard for when someone wanted an answer to an unanswerable (or stupid) question. "Hey, my computer crashed this morning while I wasn't paying attention to what i was doing and I didn't bother to write down any error code. What caused it?" us: "It's a TCP/IP wait state problem. Let us know if it happens again and write down the error code."
True story.
Back in 1995, my family had been using our first PC (whitebox 486 with Windows 3.1) for about a year. Our Microsoft mouse had been trouble from day 1. It kept sticking on screen as if the pointer hit something, even though the mouse itself was fine. I called MS, and over the course of the next few weeks they had us clean the mouse (several times), buy cleaning kits, change drivers, get a new mouse, nothing seemed to work. Finally, one tech (perfect English in those days) said, and I quote, "Well, I guess it's obviously your mouse pad. I guess you could always take your business elsewhere."
The next day we bought a Logitech mouse, and have used exclusively Logitech mice for the past decade without the slightest bit of trouble. I later went on to help found a Linux Users Group in college.
The moral: Dude, NEVER dare your customer to take their business elsewhere. Not even if you're Microsoft.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
This is the same thing as what he said. x * 8 bits/sec = x bytes/sec. (I got the 'x' in the wrong place above, but whatever). Or, the other way around the way the submitter said it: x bytes/sec = 8 * x bits/sec. Don't confuse me like that.
1 bytes/sec = 8 bits/sec
x * 1 bytes/sec = x * 8 bits/sec
4 * 1 bytes/sec = 4 * 8 bits/sec
4 bytes/sec = 32 bits/sec
Earlier this year at work, I needed to run Visio 2003 to make some simple diagrams. (This is at work, not home, so I didn't have a choice of software.) Visio, installed on Win2k SP4, would not run. When I started it up, it would crash immediately, usually without even giving me a message.
Called Microsoft.
After a 45 minute call to setup an account, then a wait to get a callback, then another 45 minute conversation with a very nice Indian gentleman, we fixed the problem.
Microsoft Visio and Microsoft Windows are incompatible. This is a known issue. The fix is to drill down to some obscure registry key and add a 1 to it. Then everything works fine.
And somehow Linux is the OS with the reputation for obscure configuration and software conflicts. Go figure.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
From: Manjeet
To: Robbie
Subject: MOUSE IS DEAD
HI ROBBIE
PLEASE CAN YOU HELP THE NEW SECRETARY ROSE WITH HER COMPUTER. HER MOUSE HAS
STOPPED WORKING AND SHE CANNOT DO HER WORK. HER EMAIL ADDRESS IS:
medsec@***.com but she cannot access her emails because
she's got no mouse.
MANY THANKS.
Manjeet.
--
i don't understand...was i supposed to email her a new mouse??
I worked for a dot com back in 2000 as the technical director (read: he knows what he's doing). Against all the recommendations I gave them, they decided to host it on 10meg of free space the ISP gave us.
Toddled off to the section of the website and signed up. Great, should be done in a couple days. More than enough time.
Never happened. Spent a couple months on their helpdesk, swearing my head off at them and they kept saying 'it's at your end'. I eventually got clinical depression and we launched without a product to show the world.
Another month went by and my condition worsened, so we got another tech to start bugging the ISP. Then, one night, I got the call.
"You were right. The webmaster says sorry."
At the time, I was so piss relieved. Uploaded the site in half a hour and we were live.
Then I spent the next fortnight redesigning the site because no one liked it.
In the end, the thing folded in November and I 'stole' (read: it was on my hard drive) the data and sold it to someone who was negoitating for it for most of the year. It got relaunched and tanked in a month. I got a few dozen bottles of Coke and some free lunches out of it.
Shouldn't it be bits/sec = bytes/sec * 8? ;)
Ummmm....... no.
1 bytes/sec = 8 bits/sec
For example:
x * 1 bytes/sec = x * 8 bits/sec
4 * 1 bytes/sec = 4 * 8 bits/sec
4 bytes/sec = 32 bits/sec
This can be rewritten as bytes/sec = bits/sec * 8. It's kinda of informal to write it that way, but it isn't wrong. Also, those who might think it means bits/(sec * 8) should learn BEDMAS!
I'd have cussed him out in Atheism. Which is pretty hard, because none of the words exist.
paintball
Even worse If you own a Mac. Then they say "Its your mac problem and they can't help you".
...
Me: "The net has been down for 6 hours. Any ideas?"
ISP: "What OS are you using?"
Me: "OS X"
ISP: "Its your computer's problem. Macs are not standard."
Still wondering what I would talk to with a 1 port hub.
Was is warm and wet?
paintball
I had been considering buying a notebook from Alienware, so I naively called their sales people hoping for some tech specs that were not posted on the site....
First, their front-line sales force has been outsourced to Costa Rica. India is one thing; the level of english may occasionally be difficult to understand, but the techs/(salespeople) nonetheless tend to be quite intelligent and knowledgable.
I wanted to know if the unnamed, but (AC'97 compliant) sound card would work under Linux. *Never* mention the L-word when speaking to tech-support! I discovered that the chip was made by Realtek, and asked for a model number. I was told that it was a trade secret. I pointed out that I could purchase a notebook, crack it open, (without violating the warranty), and read the bloody model number off the chip. Trade secret explanation reiterated by tech...
I called back later, (hope springs eternal), and got another salesperson. I tried to figure out exactly how knowledgable this guy was, so I asked if the laptop supported a certain protocol:
Me: Is the notebook fully compliant with the DVDA protocol?
Sales: (Pause) Yes, completely.
Me: Just version 1? Or version 2 also?
Sales: (Longer pause) Compliant with version 2, yes.
Me: (Click)
When I have the *sales* people, the ones trying to *sell* me the product, informing me that their notebook is capable of accomodating 4 cocks at once, I take my business elsewhere.
If only you could get women that way.
paintball
How about ;
Some of the features that are in the new My eBay 2.0:
Customizable summary page (except for the useful features)
Easier navigation (no one knows where anything went)
Ability to add a note to an item listing (how the fuck is that useful?)
Buying and Selling reminders (All their info is wrong)
Increased Watching limits
At-a-glance status icons (what do those icons mean? I know how to read...)
Printer-friendly views
Fresh new look (God save us from "Fresh new Look"s)
It took this guy and me a good ten to fifteen minutes to overcome the communication barrier and finally start talking about the same thing. He kept using the wrong name for the part he was talking about, too.
I'm fairly good at communicating with people, and it took me that long to get on the same page with that guy. I'm wondering what's going to happen when these guys and ordinary users have to overcome not only the language barrier but the techie/non-techie communication barrier.
Figure it takes ten minutes to figure out what you're talking about over a non-native-speaker language barrier. Then figure it's at least ten minutes for J. Random Tech Support to get simple concepts across to L. User. The mind boggles at how much time is going to be spent trying to figure out what's going on. And the longer you're on the phone with tech support, the madder the average user gets...
Clearly, time to run, screaming.
The day I realized I knew more about computers than most tech support:
I wanted to get some more RAM for one of my boxes. I called to find out the RAM speed, etc. needed. The end of the conversation:
"Does this PC require parity RAM?"
"Yes, sir. The RAM has to be installed in pairs."
Oooooooookaaaaaay
I found this and also this interesting. A Mebibyte (MiB) is 1024 bytes, and a Megabyte (MB) is now the standardized 1000 bytes.
a good example of this was when i was working for a tech support place in oregon. some lady called saying that her tax software wouldnt print.
me:"so what happens when you print it taxcut"
caller: "i just get a blank page"
me:"lets print from internet explorer, what do you get"
caller:"still get a blank page
me:"did you check your ink/toner level"
caller:"well i can print from word"
**prints a word document**
**Sets printer to B&W**
(we finally figure out that she cant print anything that has pictures, or certain fonts)
me: well let me explain it to you, you cant print in IE and not in (random photo program) so its your printer drivers or windows, and thats supposed to be handled by your printer tech support. im reaaally sorry, but were not allowed to do that, because theyre afraid we dont know what were doing
caller: well i called HP they were were on the phone for half an hour, and diddnt get it fixed, she said it was a software problem
me: can you tell me who you talked to?
caller: i think it was erin.
me: well call them again, tell them that ben from H&R block told you its definatly not the software, and that erin is stupid, and you wanna talk to someone smart, or tier2.
caller: yeah i thought it was the printer. because of the internet explorer
then i proceed to walk over to erins desk and call him a moron. and he needs to think more about fixing users problems rather than handle time. and explain how it cost the company more money because what he did. he got mad, and reported me to my boss, who looked up the call log, and told him that he deserved to be fired. (diddnt actually fire him)
and one more thing to be mentioned that i was hired as a temp, us including alot of weed smokers, people that are not doing so good, and ex criminals had access to bank accounts, irs records, credit card accounts, ssn information, etc etc, for the past 7 years. and none of them that i know of went through a drug screen, or a background check. honestly i could have stolen MILLIONS OF FUCKING DOLLARS. with the information i had there. and as a temp making 9/hr i could honestly say that it diddnt look like too bad of an idea.
When I worked tech support one of my coworkers had a box of index cards with the answers to everything. Me, being clever, decided to start my own collection so I didn't have to bug him. One day I was on the phone and I recognized the problem and started flipping through my cards to find the one I needed.
I let the customer know about my collection of cards with the answers to common problems to help get things fixed to kill time while I looked.
I found the one I was looking for I started reading it out loud on the phone and quickly realized it wasn't what I wanted.
I really had nothing else to say so I just told the customer "these things are worthless." Fortunatly she had a sense of humor.
I then fixed her problem the usual way and didn't bother with the box of answers much after that. Google, quality coworkers and a background of years of fixing computers is all you really need.
If you have to be trained to handle a consumer PC user tech support line, you're going for the wrong job. You should have years under your belt fixing and building your own systems before you even submit an application. Companies don't want to pay you to sit in a classroom (e.g. training). Like any other job you're expected to be proficient to even be considered to be hired. They shouldn't need to train you for very long. The only training should be to get you're experience focused on their specific products.
Imagine if software companies were expected to train employees how to program (from the basics) and pay them before getting them working on projects that were bringing the company money. Most companies expect you to know what you're doing before you show up.
Tech support companies don't need to worry about training so much as they need to stop hiring morons out of despiration to fill seats. People expect Tech Support companies to operate like McDonald's (training unskilled workers instead of hiring only skilled workers) and then wonder why the support is terrible.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I had 3 failed netgear firewalls, they were all the same model and all died the same death, when I rang Netgear to ask for RMA's the guy on the other end said are you sure I've never heard of a problem with one of those, WTF! I waited 40 minutes on the phone for that. I also was unable to get one of our netgear print server to add a new printer, I rang them to see if they might have come across it before the guy said it's busted and sent me and RMA form, the next day the other two stopped working, I rang back and got another two RMA's with no attempt to troubleshoot the problem. In the end it turned out that I was trying to do it through RDP and it only works when your sitting in front of the machine, but I could have got 3 new print servers if I was as lazy as them. The moral to the story, don't use netgear, especially not thier print servers.
Correct explanation:
"Which room are you in, and should I bring any alcohol?"
Actually, I suppose the second half of that is unnecessary - you were working tech support at the university, you obviously needed to bring alcohol.
paintball
Um.. NO
He meant x bits/sec = y bytes/sec * (8 bits/byte)
y would be a smaller number than x.
Think of it this way. When he looks at the website, in theory the number that is in bits/sec should be equal to the number that is in bytes/sec times 8.
I face this all the time, almost word for word. Drives me NUTS.
The University dialup installed an authenticating proxy to track peoples web downloads, after this I couldn't get Quicken's share download to work.
So before we called their pay for support line, I rang their sales and asked if it would work with an authenticating proxy - yes.
So then I rang "tech support" who tried many random things, including trying to get me to configure it to dial the modem, even though I explained that the modem was on another computer which was connected via LAN.
No matter what happened though, quicken would not authenticate to the proxy.
They started trying to convince me that the Uni was blocking the quicken update URL - what a coincidence, they started blocking it just when they switched over to the proxy!
In the course of this they mentioned an ini file. Looking at this file, it had the URL's that quicken used for it's share update.
I opened one of the links up in explorer, which downloaded it fine, i tried to explain this to the guy
Guy: So the problems fixed, you can download the update.
Me: No, I've verified that I can access it, but not with Quicken, Quicken still won't work with the proxy.
Guy: Well then I'm afraid your ISP must be blocking the URL. Talk to them about lifting the block and then call us back.
Me: No, it's not blocked I can access it...
Guy: So the problem's fixed?
Me: Not with quicken
Guy: Then they're blocking it blocked
Me: Look, the Uni hasn't blocked any sites ever, I don't think they're going to start with your share update.
Try as I may, he refused to acknowledge that it wasn't being blocked. Never did find out how quicken was compatible with an authenticating proxy, my family got sick of not being able to connect and setup with a second ISP just for quicken downloads!
Around 1999, the company I was working at, had just hired a new help desk tech. Now this guy had his MCP and A+ certs. He also reminded us of this fact at least once per hour. Needless to say within a month we were quite tired of this pompous old windbag.
Anyways, the help desk techs did 4 hours on the phone and 4 hours on-site. The MCP had gone down to fix a network issue and had been gone for an hour when my supervisor went down to see if he needed any help. Apparently, the tech had reinstalled Windows NT, reinstalled the drivers and the problem was not fixed. So he decided to replace the network card. He opened up the machine and removed and inserted the new NIC while the machine was powered on. The supervisor was amazed and told him to not do that at which point the tech actually yelled back at him citing his certifications and his superior knowledge and why he knows what he is doing. Needless to say, he was fired immediately.
I'm rarely on the phone with tech support (not because I'm too good for them, but because I don't have many things to call in about). Anyway, the "blame the other guy" thing hash appened to me, so I have company A call company B with me on the line. It makes for a very interesting conversation. I've only used it twice, but so far it's worked pretty well.
A: We have an exact copy of the light bulb here and it seems to be working fine. Can you tell me what kind of system you have?
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Only illegal immigrants get the "postercomment" compression filter. Go back to your monkey land!
I sent an email off to LSU's "Office of Communications Services" when they decided to block all traffic on port 25 on campus due to some folks with one of the many windows worms that would send out email and shit thru SMTP. LSU's solution to the problem was that in the ideal world, everybody use's LSU's crappy a$$ Lotus Notes server for their email via the web.
Well - I send email using my own domain and web server, which is located in Houston, TX (some 6 hours away from LSU). I need port 25 to send email on my mrbrown.net email account.
I send off an email to the OCS people telling them they're stupid and they need to open port 25 so I can use SMTP. I get a phone call the following morning at about 7:30 (before I was even awake) from a tech who proceded to bitch me out about running a server. I inform the douche bag that he should've read my email, where I point out the name of my server and my exact problem, I ask him if he can open a port for just one particular MAC address (after he informs me, the "stupid one" that I have a dynamic IP address....), and he doesn't even know what a MAC address is.
I tell him I'll find a solution, he warns me that I'll be referred to the dean if I violate any of the university's regulations, and he informs me that he's closing the report and just hangs up on me.
Don't ever wake me up before noon, sucka.
What I want to say, if your ISP has bad tech support, maybe its that you get what you are paying for...
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
How the HELL did that get modded informative?!
You are dumb.
Or to do math your way:
x * 1 feet = x * 12 inches.
4 * 1 feet = 4 * 12 inches
4 feet = 48 inches.
This can be written as feet = inches * 12. So plugging in 48 inches, I get feet = 48 * 12, or 48 inches is 576 feet.
I work in tech support for a small college, and this is a story I actually just heard today about one of my co-workers. It happened earlier this week.
She was called into the President's office because they were upgrading his computer, probably involving an upgraded OS. I don't know those details because they weren't important. What's important is that the process involved a new keyboard, and so the techie had put the keyboard on the desk and was trying to get through whatever process she was following on screen with the mouse.
At some point she determined that she needed to restart the computer, so she pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del. Nothing happened. She pressed it again and complained that nothing was happening, and nothing continued to happen. The President's secretary looked on patiently and discovered the problem -- the keyboard was not plugged in. So the secretary softly explained that the keyboard wasn't plugged in, and the techie snapped (in a nice but frustrated way), "no, it should still work!" (WTF?)
You can imagine that it wasn't long before the secretary had her convinced that a keyboard will not affect anything on any computer that it isn't connected to.
I used to provide over night support for a batch processing system. Early one morning I got paged and dutifully stumbled half dressed to the pay phone around the corner and called the operations staff. Me (though yawns): What seems to be the problem. Support: The whole systems ground to a halt, the link to America has gone down, we think some trawler's dragged the line up. Me: I'll get my scuba gear and be right down. Support: Really? Me: Goodnight.
had a friend who couldnt get his PS2 to work on his dsl line. called tech support for the provider. after explaining the problem, he was asked if the system was running windows XP.
got my dad's computer on the wireless network. i head back to school and his wireless card keeps dropping the connection and requiring that the card be restarted to connect again. calls linksys for tech support. idiot on the other end tells him that the problem is him running AOL9.0 which was incompatible with that linksys card, and he would have to downgrade to 8.0 and call them back.
You can read a bit more... ...is there anywhere I can read a byte more about it, perhaps?
Damn it. I used to fully understand the relation between bits and bytes. But after reading your three helpful posts I somehow lost that knowledge and became confused again.
You should have stayed in bed today.
Maybe the poster has a box that is on a network not connected the Internet? Try that on a Win9x box, connected to the 'net or not.
Well did you call the plumber?
He called (Dell I think) tech support for something, and the best answer to my cousin's problem they gave was "your CD-ROM drive is running too fast. You need to get a slower drive."
I belong to the ______ generation.
Isn't that Ron Jeremy? At least I heard he was doing stand-up comedy...
My mode stopped working. When I called in I was told an act of God had killed the modem. Acts of God were not covered by my warranty.
My wife went to work and was told her new computer was ready for her. There was only a monitor. When she tried to explain to her boss she didn't have a computer the boss said, "yes you do, it's right there." Finally my wife asked her boss to insert a floppy disk.
Just to make life hard for some people I like to play this little trick.
Wait until they leave. Close the all the applications. Open the Calculator, or Solitary, or what ever. hit "print screen", then set that picture as the background. The user gets really confused when they can't get the calculator to close, or move, or calculate. I also went on a run of putting "Richard Simons" background on other peoples computers. My boss couldn't stop laughing as he told me to stop waisting company time.
I was having trouble with my Sky Digibox (satellite TV set-top-box) crashing or freezing a lot. I called Sky tech support and explained the problem, and asked if it could be faulty hardware. They said, no, it wasn't the hardware. Aha, I thought, then maybe the software needs upgrading. Could that be it, I asked. They said, no, it wasn't the software either. Umm... what does that leave, then?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
I worked for an ISP where apparently one of the reps told a customer there line could be slow because of sunspots.
That one got to a national computer magazine and there was much embarrasment all around.
In early 2001, after building my mom a computer from scratch, I received her old Gateway 233Mhz system to do with as I pleased. The first thing I did was flash the BIOS. When the system failed to POST after that, the next thing I did was contact Gateway support.
Thus began an odyssey that I hope never to repeat with any company, and certainly will never repeat with Gateway. They're never getting another dime out of me or my family for as long as I'm alive.
Below is why. The first two logs detail a chat session between Gateway and myself, conducted using a particularly nasty piece of customer service software called eGain. You can see how it made the live person on the other end of the chat session sound like a robot.
After that follows a series of e-mail correspondence. This log has been edited both to cover my tracks a bit, and to get around the slashdot filters, as the characters per line ratio of the post is otherwise too low.
Chat Session 1
Question: I updated my BIOS and the system boots, displays gateway logo, but does not POST.
A Chat Agent will be with you shortly.
Wendell: Hello Fahr, welcome to the Gateway Chat Support Service. I am Wendell here to help you with your issue.
Fahr Vergnugen: Hi. Have a system here that's not terribly happy.
Wendell: Can you please tell me the exact problem you are facing with your Computer?
Fahr Vergnugen: Need S/N?
Wendell: Fahr, please provide me your Serial number.
Fahr Vergnugen: Okay, older PII-233Mhz / LX chipset board. tried to slap in a newer celeron, it didn't take, decided to update the bios.
Wendell: Okay , Fahr.
Fahr Vergnugen: sure 0009589521
Wendell: Thanks , Fahr.
Wendell: Can you please tell me the problem you are facing with your System?
Fahr Vergnugen: grabbed BIOS 4A4LL0X0.15A.0023.P18 from the gateway support site (was running P11) and flashed the board.
Wendell: When this issue happens is there an error message? If so, could you please tell me the exact error message?
Fahr Vergnugen: now, the system fires up, displays a gateway logo, and a small progress bar in the top left fills from grey to white, and the system acts like it's going to POST normally, but it never happens.
Fahr Vergnugen: the bar takes between 3 and 4 minutes to reach 100%.
Wendell: When this issue happens is there an error message? If so, could you please tell me the exact error message?
Fahr Vergnugen: and from there it just sits. If I hit TAB to view system messages, it acts normally, but again, no POST. Nothing happens.
Fahr Vergnugen: no error message. Just doesn't beep and post.
Fahr Vergnugen: I think it's probably pretty shafted, but I thought I'd check with you guys.
Wendell: Fahr, please hold on while I search for your resolution.
Fahr Vergnugen: np, holdin' on.
Wendell: Thank you for waiting. Please review the following information, which I think will help you.
Wendell: [Item sent - Astro and Profile 2 - Computer stops responding after power-on self-test (POST)] http://www.gateway.com/support/techdocs/astro/trsh oot/1106.shtml
Wendell: Did you get the page , Fahr?
Fahr Vergnugen: yep, but no help I can tell already, since it assumes I can get to Windows, which is not the case.
Wendell: I realize your time is valuable, please wait one minute while I research this further.
Fahr Vergnugen: np
Wendell: Fahr, I apologize for the delay
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
When I was working for a no-longer-existent division of Turner Broadcasting, after the big AOL-TW merger, they decided that we should install AOL 6.0 on every computer in the office. Now, do I need to tell anyone here that AOL 6.0 was not designed for a business environment? No, we didn't have some special, custom install. We had the same one that showed up in everyone's home mailboxes.
In spite of this, it mostly went smoothly, except for this one laptop. After an hour and a half on the phone with AOL support (which actually WAS a special number just for those of us who had to try and install this stuff internally), our tech had learned exactly one thing: he could not simultaneously install AOL 6.0 *and* the network card. He had to choose between network connectivity and the software.
Finally, the AOL tech, who totally understood our frustration (since they also had to install this software on their computers), said, somewhat sheepishly... "Well, it *should* work."
No one could argue with that. In fact, we'd installed AOL 6.0 successfully on at least two laptops of the same exact model. So we knew that it *should* work. I felt somewhat proud of the guy on the other end for giving up, really.
The solution? Install AOL 5.0. (Then, a year later, realize it was a terrible idea to try to migrate a huge company to using AOL as their main email client, in part because it was a huge waste of employees' time to delete all that spam. But by then our division no longer existed and I had returned to grad school...)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Tech Support (an elderly sounding woman): "Hello, Commodore customer service. May I help you?"
Customer: "Yes, I'm trying to find the file format for Deluxe Music Construction Set."
Tech Support: "You want to format a disk? Lemme see..." (paper rustles)
Customer: "No. I'm looking for documentation on the file format for DMCS."
Tech Support: "Oh, yes. I've got documentation here." (paper rustles) "Ok, to format a disk, first you--"
Customer: "No, no...I'm looking for the file format for--"
Tech Support: "You want to format a file? I umm..." (paper rustles again)
Customer: "NO... I DO NOT WANT TO FORMAT A FILE!"
Tech Support: "Ok, well, to format a disk, you--"
Customer: "NO! I don't want to format a disk. I'm a programmer. I'm trying to find some documentation on--"
Tech Support: "We have documentation."
Customer: "Yes, I understand. But I'm looking for specific documentation on software that I bought through Commodore. I'm looking for documentation on the file format for Deluxe Music Construction Set--"
Tech Support: (paper rustles) "You want to format a file?"
Customer: "No, I-- Is there someone else there I can talk to?"
Tech Support: "No. No one here but me."
Please mod funny, I need karma...
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
One day I went to pull up the my-yahoo home page co-branded by my dsl carrier using Opera for Sharp Zaurus. To my surprise I got a page telling me that I needed to upgrade my browser to netscape 6 or ie to view this page. This was new! Figuring there was some sort of misunderstanding I dug out the support number for my beloved dsl carrier and asked them what the problem was. The best explanation I could get out of the over-seas support people was that their website could cause damage to my computer if I didn't use the correct web browser to view their content!
Well, believe it or not, they blamed the poor transaction speed not on their old systems or tired networking but on snow on the phone lines.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
This situation was made all the more bizarre because the data centre that I was dealing with was the company that had me on LTD while I recovered from a badly broken leg, then decided one day to send two people round to my house to fire me. Thanks, guys!
The next day, when the transaction speed went back to a decent value, I really wanted to ask if they'd had people go out and brush the snow off the 50km of phone lines between Mississauga and Scarborough. Goofs.
most technical problems I've experienced with users tends to be layer 8 of the OSI model...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
what are you people talking about?
eight bits typically equate a bit. so bps / 8 = Bps, not bps * 8.
I hope you let him (or her?) have it. I would have responded in a stream of techobabble "the truth" with extreme prejudice.
Because Microsoft!
I know that this will probably not show up - but here is my tale:
... So ...
I recently moved town - and got setup with a new DSL provider. When my DSL modem arrived - it did not work. Some basic analysis showed that the power supply didn't work (conveniently I had a router that used the same type - so I was able to confirm that all I needed was a new power supply).
The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi - I just got my DSL modem - but the power supply is broken - so I need you to send me a new one.
TS: What operating system are you running?
Me: Umm... The power supply is broken - it doesn't matter what operating system I am running.
TS: Do you have the modem connected to your computer?
Me: Sure... (It was sitting on my couch - but hey)
TS: Do you see any flashing lights on the modem?
Me: No - the power supply doesn't work.
TS: What operating system are you running?
Me: Sigh... Windows XP.
TS:
Me: The power supply is broken - I need a new power supply.
TS: So - what do you need me to do?
Me: I need you to send me a new power supply.
TS: Ohh. You need to call this number:.....
Me: Grrr....
Uhmmm bytes/sec will NEVER = bits/sec * 8 ( or 9 or 10 or 13? or 14?)
Bytes per second = bits per second / 8 (or 9 or 10 or 13? or 14?)
Geez
Watch out, there are Llamas!!
I knew a guy who worked at one of the local Best Buy's. A lady, in her lat 30's came into the store with a computer that wouldn't boot. She asked the guy I knew to have a look at it. He took it back and realized the power supply wasn't working. One of his co-workers convinced him it would be rather funny if instead of telling her what the problem is and fixing it they tell her a BS story and see if she buys it. So they take the computer back to her and inform her that her computer is in need of a new flux capacitor. She apparently has no idea what they are talking about and they decide to run with it, the guy tells her that they do not have any flux capacitors in stock at the moment, but the Circuit City across the street usually does. Well the lady takes her computer over to the Circuit City and apparently tells them what she was told. About 20 to 30 minutes later the lady comes back into the Best Buy with her computer and tells the guy and his co-worker that Circuit City didn't know what she was talking about. They tell her they'll take another look at her computer and take it back and about 10 minutes later come out and say that they were right and she does in fact need a new flux capacitor. They suggest she take it to the Best Buy in the town just north of where their location and ask them, visibly frustrated at this point she leaves the store. About an hour later they get a call from the lady, who is furious and screams over the phone something to the effect of "YOU LITTLE ****ERS! A FLUX CAPACITOR ISN'T ****ING REAL!!! IT'S FROM A ****ING MICHAEL J FOX MOVIE!!!! I will NEVER shop at Best Buy again!!!!"
Bungo!
What utter rubbish.
What are they teaching Kids in schools these days?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
The part I was looking for was an RJ45DB9 connector. I had one on me (my personal one), but needed to buy another one (for the business).
The fun started when I went into the store:
Me: Yeah, I'm looking for a DB9-to-RJ45 connector. I don't see them on your shelf, maybe--
SalesTroll: Sir, there's no such thing as that part.
Me: Uh ... no, I need to connect a rollover cable to it. There is such a part. I didn't see it here, but was wonderi--
SalesTroll: That does not exist! I don't know where you got the idea--
Me: *pulls out my hardware - lo and behold, the hardware that "doesn't exist"!
SalesTroll: *confused and shocked expression*
Me: Please grab a manager for me and ask; you may well have one in the back, as you do some networking here.
SalesTroll: *Goes to a manager and mutters something ... manager looks at me and loudly says, that doesn't exist. SalesTroll then pulls out my hardware. Manager looks confused, comes over.*
Manager: Wow, that's weird ... I've never seen anything like this. They must be really rare.
Me: Uh, no, they're used for Cisco devices all the time--
Manager: Oh, those're like Macs, right?
Me: *holding back laughter and murderous thoughts* Uh, no. *I take my hardware back* I'll order online, thanks.
Ah, such fun.
When I was working for a large publishing company in 1997, the staff received a dire warning regarding the GoodTimes virus from the IT support manager. This was the one that lived in an email called GoodTimes and would trap your computer in an 'n-binary loop' until it was physically destroyed. We were warned not to open it, but to leave it to the IT support professionals immediately. Of course, this occurred some 18 months after the 'Goodtimes virus' had been exposed as an email hoax.
This one is from one of my coworkers..
Apparently, one of their production sun server reset itself suddenly one day (this is in the late 80's/early 90's). They got some people from Sun in to have a look at it and they spent days looking over the machine and checkig logs. In the end, the explaination given was "A gamma particle from space". I shit you not. According to them, one flew through space, straight though the processor and caused the machine to reboot.
It makes diction too you limey bastard
Scene
CirCity camcorder department.
Salesman: "Do you know the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom?"
Me: "No, pray tell... What _is_ the difference?" (More importantly, what's his story?)
Salesman: "With optical zoom, you can see that fly on the wall over there. With digital zoom, you can tell what SEX it is." (He's as funny as he is knowledgeable.)
My wife rolls her eyes at me, and not at the joke. What he said couldn't be farther from the truth. Digital zoom doesn't give you more information. The picture loses resolution with digital zoom because you're just cropping the picture and blowing it up. You have less information. It's always like this. I think these are the guys who don't have enough brains or charisma to sell cars.
Tangentially: Since the economy still sucks, why is customer service still awful everywhere? Granted, I'm not looking for any of those jobs, but a lot of bright folks seem pretty desperate.
Jobless recovery means the check is in your mouth.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
You wouldn't believe me, some guy just phoned me and asked me how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty.
:)
I told him that it was only a few pounds difference.
I have used many different cable and dialup providers for my linux box through the years. When I signed up for my latest provider "Kabelnettet.dk" I couldnt get through. Called their tech support and told them about the problem. The guy takes me through a few tests using ping and other tools. At some point he realizes that I use Linux and conclude that the problem is at my end. I tell him that my OS works perfectly with all other providers and that I am no network newbie (I develop network software for a living), but I just cant convince him that the problem is at his end. I am no quitter - after working this issue with him for about 20 minutes its like he turn into a robot and keeps saying "We have no problem at our end" no matter what question or argument I bring up. After 30 mins I offer to boot up the same machine in windos. I do a ping in windos - no packets come back - the same as under linux. Only then does he agree to send a techician to have a look at their own switch - AFTER A RECORD 35 MINS ON THE PHONE HE DOES WHAT I ASKED HIM TO WHEN WE STARTED!. The next day they have it fixed. Their network is down quite often but I just dont have half an hour to talk to them every time. I have to see this from the bright side: at least they are cheap..
I think one of the worst things I've heard from tech support was when a friend said his ISP was acting up, so he rang there support line. After a while he got through and explained the problem The reply was along the lines of "Yes, we're under attack!, can you help us?..." My friend then hung up. In my personal experience with tech lines, all they seem to know is "Please insert the restore disk that came with your pc" I swer it would be far easier just stick a recorded message at the end of the line telling users to do that, because its a waste of time trying to get any other help
www.daujones.com has lots of very funny stories like this
i read this once or twice a year, just to remind myself how dumb people are.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
Participate, and phone Metzleschjong today, and ask him to change his yes into a no, or at least an abstentation. If Poland can do it, so can Luxembourg!
+352 54 24 14 (home) or +352 478-4101 (at work, at the ministry of pubs)
Soon after I bought my first digital camera (and before I bought a printer) I found a camera store with one of those Kodak "digital printing" kiosks. I played with it a bit, then I had a question. I could see a floppy drive on the system, but I coulnd't find a CD or CF reader.
I was in Hawaii in September last year, and after a long day I decided it would be relaxing to sit in the hotel hot tub for a while.
:\) not Works and I'm in a document but I can't get it to be lowercase. I've called Dell and they can't fix it either."
:\
It was fine for a while, then some elderly woman got in at the same time (which was a bad enough sight itself) and she decided to make conversation. Well, the topic came up of me being a 'computer guy' but nothing really came of it.
Then, some elderly old man joined the party (remind me not to stay in that hotel ever again) and made conversation with the elderly woman, and somehow got on the topic of computers again, so this man asked if I could help him with a problem. I figured, hey... I'll be nice.
He said to me, "Ok, I'm using Microsoft W-O-R-D (He spelt out Word
I'm trying not to laugh, and think a bit... Automatically assumming its the CAPS LOCK key, he said he tried that so I then tried explaining Format and Paragraph settings changes which got me nowhere.
I guess it would be funnier if you'd been there. The man spelling out W-O-R-D was probably the highlight of it all.
Some vacation
[intekra] - [www.plex.nu]
several months ago i contracted with arcor (a berlin dsl provider) to get a 768k line. recently ive been interested in using usenet news... so i pinged around and found the servers but they had passwords... i send a mail to the tech support asking what is my uid/pwd for nntp... he tells me that 'i should ask the provider of this service and they have no way of knowing.' eek... guess dumb tech support knows no international boundaries.
I called up my cable provider and asked why exactly I couldn't run a webserver? The answer I got back from the young lady was, "It interferes with the RF signals from the lines." After that, I asked her if she knew what port a webserver commonly runs on, and she didn't know what a webserver nor a port was. I called back and got the same response. Great!
I've had some funny episodes with HP tech support regarding printers lately.
For one thing, I had set up a HP Business Inkjet 2600 for a customer under OS X Jaguar and for some strange reason, it wouldn't offer most paper formats under page setup. So after trying around for a while and already suspecting the prior installs of ESP Ghostscript and GIMP Print for the previous printer. (An Epson Stylus Color 1520, officially unsupported by Epson for OS X, therefore resorting to the above software), I called HP tech support to ask them if there was anything I could do to have the A3 paper format back. He told me I had to make a manual setup for a custom paper format (with A3 measurements), because "OS X does not support A3 paper format".
My answer was: Ah, interesting, thank you very much. (Hung up).
After reinstalling Jaguar without Ghostscript and GIMP Print, the printer worked flawlessly with the built-in drivers and offered pretty much every paperformat in the world, including A3 and A3+...
So much for A3 support under OS X.
The other thing was that a power adapter for my HP printer had burnt out and I wanted to replace it.
They sent me their replacement part after going through a long idenification process.
I live in Switzerland...they sent me a German adapter, which will not fit our wall outlets...
I called them again to tell them they sent me the wrong part. I then spent 2 hours on the phone trying to convince the tech support guy, that they database was faulty, because they listed a "Euro adapter" to be sold for Swiss customers, although we don't have "euro power points". Eventually he sent me an adapter with the same voltage ratings, but listed for a different printer model, which had the normal device cable plug, so I could connect it too. The good point about it: I got it free of charge.
I've been doing support for close to 10 years, and this just makes all helpdesk techs look bad. It casts a stigma on us all who strive to fix problems as opposed to just "answering the phone". If you don't know the answer, find out from someone who does! Don't BS the user, if you do, the next time they may not call, and if that happens enough, no one calls and your out of a job.
Depends - how fast is it moving?
I was going to say something funny about relativistic speeds and extra electron charge, which would be true of flash memory, but darn it hard drives still use magnetic domains this decade. Apologies.
User: hello, xyz webpage is loading very slowly so is everything else like www and xxx.com Support: yes sir, you see all those pages are in english and it takes a bit for them to be translated and delivered to your computer User: !!!!!!!!
I had a Dell which didn't boot, it was completely dead on arrival. Probably power was completely dead. No power at all.
Dell support insisted me to run their diagnostics programs. I argued that there was no power. They just insisted to run the utilities anyway. I argued that I just can't because there was no power.
There's a company that does Internet and phone service for people living in the university accommodation here (University of Edinburgh). My voice mail hasn't worked since the beginning of the year, but it only doesn't work when people call from outside the U.K. (which happens a lot since I'm an international student). Naturally, their tech support is a little confused by this since they aren't calling from outside the U.K., so it works for them. After we'd been through the routine of them testing it several times, calling me, getting my voicemail, and insisting that there was no problem, they finally it informed me that they thought that everybody calling me must be using pulse dialing, since they were obviously having trouble negotiating the system of having to dial and and then dial an extension #.
I explained to them that they weren't having trouble dialing extension #, but that the problem occurred after a they had already got into my #, and furthermore pulse dialing was hardly ever used in the United States anymore, and that people are calling me from several different landline phones, using several different phone companies, plus cellphones using a variety of carriers. After that they resorted to insisting that it was some kind of problem in the phone system, and couldn't possibly be on their end because everything worked from their perspective. After that I gave up and started telling people to send me an e-mail if they didn't get my voicemail. Later, I discovered that it would pickup while I was on the phone, but not when I wasn't. Definitely the strangest tech support problem I've ever had, and a completely inadequate explanation -- not too interesting, though.
I found the nice "user friendly" settings to disable the bug.
Well, where's that option so we can all disable it?
Exactly, so therefore megabyte should be standardised to 1000 to save confusion.
One of our clients (a small non-profit with around 20 computers) has us do their IT stuff. Our Networking guy set them up with a Linksys Router with DHCP....really simple. They had little need for a hardcore setup, and the little Linksys Router would do the job just fine.
Some time later they finally decided to do IT internally, and hired an MCSE Certified Guy. This genius ended up disabling the DCHP Server oon the Router, installed a DCHP Server on their Windows Server, and then because he couldn't get DCHP working on the Windows Server, Set all the Workstations to Static IP Addresses.
Needless to say, this guy was fired cuz nothing was working, and had us straighten everything out for them.
Goes to show you the value of a Microsoft Cert.
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
Back when Windows 95 just came out - in floppy form - I had a problem where after 3 installs, it would no longer install. Called MS support, the guy told me that my problem was because when I installed my new HD, I'd accidentally "flipped a switch" on my floppy drive which made it unable to read compressed files. I've never called MS support again...
When DSL was new to Hamburg, Germany, by a new telecom company (HanseNet), they offered 2MBit/s instead of Telekom's 768kBit/s. I called them to verify that I could really get a 2 MBit/s line to my home. They said "yes, but you'll never experience 2 Mbit/s really." "How comes?" I ask him, and he replies "You computer can't handle that much data anyway.". Getting interested in this, I ask "which part of my computer can't handle 2 MBit/s, please?". Astoundingly he must have thought I want to browse the net with my old Newton or whatever, since he claimed: " Your CPU is too slow, it could never handle that much data." This was not 1974 or so, it was in the year 2001, I think I had a CPU fast enough for 2 MBit/s in my PC at that time!
Fortunetaly, the line proved to be real 2 MBit/s in the end and was just recently improved to 3 MBit/s. I wonder how my new G4 PowerBook can handle THAT much!
This sig is stolen from someone who had a much better idea than I had.
Actually, I remember a case where disconnecting the printer actually helped find the problem.
A customer called up because his computer would lock up frequently. We troubleshot the hell out of the system. We found that when the printer was not connected, the system was stable. So, he returned the printer, thinking that he had a bad printer.
Next day, new printer, same model... Same problem.
So, we went into SERIOUS troubleshooting mode.
It turns out that he recently fixed the ongoing moisture problem in his basement, and the grounding rod (Yes, this was a very old house) was not grounded. He poured some water over the rod, and found that the system was stable. I strongly advised him to get the house re-grounded.
He figured that he'd just give his house a cup of coffee every morning until he could have someone come out.
After spending a load on a video card for a retrospectively lousy game, a lot of frustration, driver corruption, a necessary reformat, etc, I called Dell tech support. Ow. One guy was able to help me doing a bit of complicated business in the reformat, which I couldn't ahve done myself, but I received answers of:
1. I need to disable onboard video/flash my BIOS to do so
2. I need to re-install my USB drivers (which were shot)
3. A new video card will not work in my system at all.
Then I called nVidia. The guy spoke perfect English and had me up in 15 minutes, with it configured as a second display. So there's a happy ending, but I can't say it justified all the suffering in the middle. I'm actually inclined to call nVidia (or the manufacturer) again if and when I upgrade video cards. And not Dell.
my sister called tech support because her cable modem wasn't working. cable light wouldn't say on, tried using a few different cables different computer etc, nothing worked. the tech support person told her the 'maybe rabits chewed through the cable'
but it wasn't that many years ago that bad weather could degrade dial-up connections - including snow stretching bad or weak connections.
Clear, Dark Skies
Go visit : http://www.deadtroll.com/ !!!
Robert
Working for a Mississippi ISP I had a customer call to switch from a local competitor. He explained that when the competitor's service seemed unusually slow, he called tech support and was told that, because of the hot sun in Mississippi, the asphalt in the roads heats up, causing telephone lines to melt, resulting in the slowdown.
That's what I understand, but it's still pointless and stupid (Or just an excuse for hard disk manufacturers to screw you over)
Quite simply, 1000 bytes is almost totally useless as a measurement, so the original definition of a kilobyte was 1024 (2^10) bytes and a megabyte is 2^20 or 1024x1024 or 1048576 bytes.
I despise these kibibyte things, Apple have already inserted enough superfluous lowercase-'i's into the computing world, we need no more!
Yeah, so what if K in bytes is different to K in watts or grams, they use a different base for counting in, it's really not worth shoe-horning SI standards into something which is inherently incompatible with them.
perl -e 'print "Just another Perl newbie\n";'
I for one welcome our new alien overlords!
Wait a minute......
after reporting a failed cable box (and after having isolated it by swapping out with another box), the cable person insisted the problem was with my splitter; and she promptly removed it. Seeing that did not fix the problem, she finally replaced the cable box. I asked what ususally failed in the cable boxes and she said...are you ready for this?
...DOH!!!!
"sometime the semiconductor gets scratched"
I was busy one summer, my sister would be going to college in the fall, so I decided to order her a computer. Athlon 1.2 Ghz (really fast at the time) with 512 DDR memory (or so the guy said). I also wanted to buy a good GFX card with the system and swap it with my aging Rage 128 (the salesman assured me I could).
I got the system and there was no DDR memory, which pissed me off. I took out the video card and put in my card and tried to boot the system. No go. The on-board card wasn't being overriden by the Rage 128 (couldn't even see the bios screen with the rage128 plugged in). After rumaging around the bios and finding nothing, I call tech support.
He said that I needed to reformat the hard drive since the problem was with the windows registry which, he said, was stored on the master boot record and thus could only be fixed with a reformat. I tried to tell him he was full of BS but he hung up on me.
Talk about customer service.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I've been working in support for five years. Primarily lastline support. At lastline support you don't have to deal with neophytes, mainly we support techies at IT-departments who just doesn't have time to read thru SCSI-logs or dig into timeconsuming troubleshooting. They pay well for us to fix their errors, because it's good to have someone who cuts thru the BS fingerpointing between HW, SW and database suppliers. Of course, this means we're the ones who have to contact their suppliers, often for the nth time.
Doing this for so long have learned me how to handle the idiot-filters at the software companies helpdesks to get to talk to an informed techie. But sometimes, you just can't win'em.
At this one problem, I needed some obscure fact about a backupsoftwares API-agent for a databasebackup. I called the regional supportcentre and explained the problem in detail, mailed the logs, and was told that this was too heavy for them. So I was given a 'special number' directly to the german techs who supposedly made this piece of code. 'Great!' I thought, finally someone who knows what I'm talking about.
I dialled the number and was greeted by a fellow with an thick, german accent, who said he couldn't hear me properly. I spoke with a clear diction, and talked louder and louder until I was almost shouting in my cubicle. Heads were popping up around me, and I was standing there, shouting at him to be heard. I too, could hear the crackling of the poor connection - only, it didn't really sound like a poor connection. It sounded more like some moron crumbling paper near the reciever. At this point I also heard a distinct giggle from the background. The techsupport still insisted it was a bad line, so I hung up, and dialled the number again.
This time a woman answered, apparently their supervisor. She excused my previous treatment (not very sincere, as I could hear from her voice she had just been laughing hard) and she explained that the students they had answering the support hotline were 'a bit rowdy'. I'd say! But did I get mad? Not at all, in fact it was a rather amusing anecdote to be passed on around at lunch. You see, working with id10ts for five years has taught me such selfcontrol, it would make a samurai selfcombust in envy.
End of story was that they needed to make yet another patch for their buggy agent, so I just told the customer to make a query to put their databases available for offline backup.
"Sorry, but print jobs will go very slow today because of the heavy fog"
And it was true, our university campus was linked to the other campus with a high-speed laser link that turned into a low-speed laser link in foggy conditions. And someone had decided to put all the print servers in a central location at the other campus...
Rune
So that's what it was! I used to tutor first year CompSci, and a major problem was Asian studens who'd ask for help, claim to understand an explanation, but then be unable to answer questions about what you'd just explained to them.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
my cable modem was suffering similar random spurts of connection. For days I called the cable company and each time they tried to tell me my router/drivers/network card was the problem. Finally I got a field tech support guy to come out. The real problem? My neighbor had a bad cable to their house, and a lazy field tech guy had cranked up the signal at the neighborhood cable trunk to try to overcome the problem, which had the effect of overdriving the signal to my cable modem and caused random spurts of disconnection. The new field guy installed a new cable to my neighbor's house and cranked the signal back down to normal at the trunk. Problem solved. Sheesh.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
I called the Helpdesk, and some guy answered and told me that it was... solar flares or something? I did what he said and flipped the comp on and off 30 times and it blew up in my face!
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
I build websites for some local companies and one is my brother's boss, who's very nice and knows me personally. Having had the FTP access for over a year and knowing I was the ONLY person with the username and password (not even she had it), some files on the server to do with the website mysteriously disappeared.
Nobody had the password, this is guaranteed.
The website went a bit weird and then I get a phone call from her saying the website's not working properly.
I notice the files are missing and tell her to phone tech support, tell them files are missing and get them to change the password.
Ten minutes later, I get a phone call from an extremely annoyed tech support at the hosting company trying to talk over me and how dare they tell their customers that their deleting files.
Instantly, they've lost my respect and, luckiily, I happen to be recording the phone call (I still have the MP3 lying around somewhere). I tell them I'm the only one who's EVER had the password and files have gone missing. They say they haven't. I point out that only I know what files are supposed to be there.
Getting increasingly annoyed and obviously not interested in checking their system, they tell me that their customer must have done it. This is a person who has never really used a computer. I tell them that's obviously not true.
I ask if they have access logs, they don't. I know it's happened in the past week or so, but they have no way of checking who's accessed the FTP or anything. I suggest that maybe they've system's had, e.g. a bad sector on a hard drive or something. They totally dispute the possibility.
Fine, I say, after giving several suggestions for them to look into, include making sure they at least log the IP's going into their FTP. They start to calm down realising that I actually know more then they do (they were obviously some sort of manager or something at the hosting company).
I don't care, I have backups (they don't), so can they just change the password on the off-chance that they are correct and that someone could have logged in with a UN/PW that only I've ever seen. They agree. Their systems don't even allow a customer to change a password themselves, they have to go via the company's tech support.
Three years on, the password is still exactly the same despite repeated requests and we haven't anybody "logging in" since. The MP3 still makes me laugh to this day, the change from "what lies are you telling to our customers" to "okay, sorry, we'll see what we can do" is very amusing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I work at a Futureshop. One day this guy calls me and asks how much more does a 20 gig hard drive wheigh when it gets full. What an idiot. I told him only a few pounds ;) He seemed satisfied with that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When Deus Ex first came out, I was all psyched cause I loved the game. At least the part I could play. I got frustrated enough to call tech support, only to have this conversation.
Tech: "Hi how can I help you today, sir?"
Me: "Hi, yeah, I have this problem where my character dies everytime he walks through a door."
Tech: "Hmm, interesting. Are you sure you're going through the door?"
Me: (laughing to myself) "Yeah I'm definitely going through the door."
Tech: "And your guy just drops dead?"
Me: "Exactly, and this is with almost every door"
Tech: (after a little pause) "Well, my boss is telling me this is a gameplay issue, and you should call the hint hotline. Would you like the number?"
Me: (contemplating my hate) "No...no thank you"
THE HINT HOTLINE. LIKE I NEED A WALKTHROUGH ON HOW TO GET THROUGH A DOOR!!!
Anyway, turns out my motherboard/cpu combo was buggy, and the levels weren't being loaded up properly. Damn hint hotline....
I work tech support that is multi-tiered in a university. There was one internet connectivity problem I just couldn't figure out on my end so I figured it was something in their end of things. So I called the main university tech support
Me: It does...
Them: Oh, it's a virus.
Me: No, antivirus is up to date, scans return nothing.
Them: Go get all the windows updates
Me: They're all up to date, besides it happens on our linux computers too
Them: I think it's a virus. do you want me to come down?
Me: Uhm....no thanks (hanging up the phone)
(I get a resolution in the mail: cause: virus)
I suppose I understand with all the windows problems lately, but wow. Now it's the universal solution.
And what is so frustrating about that is, several months before, I had an NT problem ( not my fault ), called tech support and got some guru on the other end, who was nice, patient and BRILLIANT. He talked me through an incredibly complex process over the phone and my computer was fixed. I never found him again, so assumed he was like the AC repair man in "Brazil".
While supporting 1000's of systems we get a call where the customer say's the PC is hot, smoking and seems to be on fire, "What should I do".
DUH,
Racks to the left of me, Routers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with you!
I called MS developer support a few years ago after exhausting all other options, including the sacrifice of a manager to the programming gods (maybe I should have moved on to VPs?). After ten minutes of me explaining our ActiveX architecture to the tech, he responded with, "Um, nobody's ever tried that with ActiveX".
.NET and it wouldn't interface with the legacy ActiveX code the way the documentation said it would. After some serious digging the tech discovered the feature we were trying to use was yanked just before GA but the docs were never updated.
A more recent fun one was when we were trying to migrate some code to
I define "the out" to be the thing that "i" have done to make it so they dont have to help me.
The out can be that I have a "linux server" somewhere in the building. ie "Oh, no so we dont support Linux so I can not help you on any network issue you might have."
Comcast recently did this. For a real estate friend, I went over to look at what was wrong with her network and cable modem. I called up tech support and when I told the tech support person there was an internal network, i got "OH NO, no no. We can not give you any more support because you have an internal network. Thank you for calling though..." The tech support person had found his "out".
Next time you are on a call with tech support, watch them try to find their out, the piece of knowledge that will free them from the obligation of helping you.
no god is good
A prime example of internal ticket system humour can be found at Chronicles of George.
George is, quite simply, the worst helpdesk technician ever.
His grasp on the written word is shakier than a canoe full of epileptics. His knowledge of computers is thinner than a Vegas dancer's chiffon underpants. He is, by all standards of intelligence, a rock.
Good for a laugh, but explains a lot about tech support.
Is called a terminator.
There's no I in team. There's no U in it, either.
Yes, but there is an M and an E. ME ME ME!
09
Our company was this DSL modem manufacturer's biggest customer. We had access to the top engineers and developers in the company. After several tests on one of our DSLAMs to try and diagnose an off problem, the response from the manufacturer is: "the device is in an indeterminable state of function." Thought that diagnosis was great..............
How about a *good* tech support example -- a few years back my Mac's SCSI drive blew up, taking the partition table with it and leaving me with a piece of junk. I persuaded the company to buy me two SCSI drives as a replacement (so that I could do disk-to-disk backups) and set about installing them...
No luck. Everything I tried left me with an unbootable system.
So I called Seagate, not expecting much. But the guy on the phone (first time luck, perhaps), after ascertaining that I had *some* clue took me through his debugging steps and we eventually isolated the problem in some very slight damage to the SCSI cable. Disks to one side of the connector were perfectly usable, disks on the other side of a miniscule crack just wouldn't work but the debugging attempts would suggest some type of system conflict.
How, from somewhere on the other side of the US, this guy managed to figure out that it was a tiny break in the cable is still beyond me. But I wrote to his employer to say that he should be getting awards for his service level. No doubt, his call times were poor so he was fired shortly thereafter.
but once my cable TV went off, so I called tech support to find out the issue. They said that they couldn't see any fault at their end, and we spend a good ten or fifteen minutes resetting various bits of equipment at either end to no avail.
However, after about 20 minutes on the line, the support agent I was speaking to obviously found out some information previously unavailable (frantic typing, 'oooh!' of realisation). It turns out that all cable TV in the ENTIRE AREA had gone off, and every single agent was doing EXACTLY the same as the one I was speaking to because no-one had told them there was an outage.
Classic.
When ESDI disks came out, we thought it would be a good idea to try and get better support for the new technology. So we signed up for the $1200/yr premium support plan. That kind of money should at least get us past the "reformat your disk" nonsense.
We got our first ESDI system, and booted the latest Xenix install with ESDI support from diskette. Everything went smoothly until it got to the part where you format and partition the disk. Two thirds of the way through the formatting, it found a bad sector. No biggie, these were common and just added to the bad block map in those days. However, it kept finding the *same* bad sector over and over - ad infinitum.
So we called our premium tech support - confident that now we had a problem that they couldn't possibly blow off with "reformat the disk", since that was exactly what we were trying to do. Not to mention the big bucks we were paying. I explained the problem, and to my horror and consternation, the guy said, "Reformat your disk and reinstall Xenix." I completely lost it, and told him he was a complete idiot and needed a new career. He told me I needed to calm down and follow instructions if I wanted his help. I told him what he could do with his help. The boss gave me a long lecture on the relative number of flies caught with honey versus vinegar - however, that was the last SCO system we ever bought.
I was having difficulty with my DSL service. When I called tech support, I knew they would need my IP address to test the connection. So, I gave the receptionist my IP address. After writing down my IP address, she replied (with all seriousness), "Boy! That's a long one!"
Try this (works on most every install, as it doesn't require 'My Computer' to be visible - which it isn't by default in XP :
1. Go to the Start menu
2. Choose "Help and Support"
3. Search for "Diagnostics"
4. In the results click on "Network Diagnostics"
5. Click "Scan your system"
Windows XP will now test various settings until the results are displayed.
6. Under "Modems and Network Adapters" expand (click on the + besides) "Network Adapters"
7. Expand the pertinent card (there may be more than one)
8. Read MACAddress line.
Much less daunting, a few less steps, and in the end the tech support person has a wealth of information available to them through the user. In addition, once things are setup, the scan can easily be performed again to make sure things work.
Turns out, these dickheads call it a "CD/Rum" or something. Imagine that, it even has "Rum" in the name and they deny it is a drink holder. I will never do business with them again! Bastards!
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The conversation went like this:
Me: "Hi, what settings should I use for your DNS servers?"
SBC: "What DNS servers? Are you having trouble connecting to the internet?"
Me: "I'm installing Linux, and having issues with getting it to work over a PPPOE connection."
SBC: "I'm sorry, we don't support exotic operating systems"
Me: "I don't need support, I just need your DNS servers."
SBC: "Sir, you don't understand, unix based computers are incompatible with the internet."
I just sat there astonished for a few seconds, and then hung up. I'd figure it out on my own.
Saying "What utter rubbish" is what causes the problem in first place. The definitions of kilo/mega/gigabytes are varying depending on who's speaking. And then there's the standard units, which are always the same. As long as people don't agree on something, and insist redefining the prefixes based on context, there will always be confusion.
I solved this problem this way: When I say "1 Gibibyte", it's 1073741824 bytes, and when I say "Gig", it's "About enough, but still too fucking much, to burn on a CD". =)
The worst explanation I've heard was from a cow-orker at a helpdesk where I worked. Now, at *company*, we had field people who would drive around in their cars all day with laptops. To communicate with the home office, they had Research In Motion (RIM) modems that would connect through the ether and pull up info from our central office. One of the interesting quirks was that the software was hardcoded to look for this thing on COM3. Of course, *most* of the time, Windows would put it on COM3. Other times, they'd call us.
Of course, there were multiple tricks to get it set to COM3 (removing a serial port and re-detecting it, etc.) but the best resolution I heard was from the guy across the row: "What's it say? COM1? Keep driving around until it finds COM3."
Masterful? Incompetence? Or a beautiful combination of the two?
49 20 68 61 76 65 20 74 6F 6F 20 6D 75 63 68 20 66 72 65 65 20 74 69 6D 65 2E
Support Rep: Hi! I'm Eliza. What's your problem?
Gun: I need to check and see if my forwards to a [yourdomain] account are being blocked based on the server they're being forwarded from. Do you need the IP address, forward address?
Support Rep: What does that suggest to you?
Well, I'm currently a soldier, so I get to be home once in about 2 weeks. I don't have any problems with my cable modem connection, but while I'm away, somewhy my parents do have them, and once in a while they call the tech support, most of the things they told me that the tech support said was try turning off the firewall(luckily my parents don't do such things with the comp, and wait for me, so i'm still virus free.)
As everyone knows, DSL speed is limited by wire distance from the local telco Central Office or Remote Terminal. A couple of summers ago, SNET (Connecticut independent phone company, now assimilated by SBC) was having a lot of trouble with bad DSL performance. They had wildly oversold their bandwidth and the service was almost unuseable between 5PM and 9PM, peak gaming hours. Faced with a barrage of calls from angry customers, telephone tech support people were telling callers that the reason for their DSL trouble was that the summer heat was stretching the telephone wires, which increased their effective distance to the CO/RT and therefore slowing down their traffic. As the lines cooled in the evening, they shrank again and performance returned.
I worked for a major insurance company around here. They had an old-timer in tech support for reasons I could never understand. I think it's just because he was a couple years from retirement and they thought it wouldn't be a big deal if they stuck him there.
His answer for *EVERYTHING* was "let me change your password" because that was pretty much the ONLY thing he knew how to do. I actually overheard him personally when someone called up and said they couldn't print. What was his response? Yep, you guessed it. "Let me change your password and you can try again."
"I can be self-referential if I want to," said Tom, swiftly.
That's a ridiculous way of saying it. It makes no sense. You could say the following:
1 byte/s = 8 bits/s
which infers that you are saying how many of one equals the other. Putting in a multiplication sign infers otherwise:
bytes/s * 8 = bits/s
This suggests the correct conversion betweeen the units, as in, each byte had 8 bits in it. This makes complete sense.
As you wrote:
bytes/sec = bits/sec * 8
This is just wrong, and nothing else. You suggest that there are 8 times as many bytes as bits, there is NO OTHER WAY of interpreting this.
Kibibytes as word is a failure. Outside of a few pedagogues on the internet, noone even knows such a term exists. Those familiar with computers are resistant to using new terms. Those unfamiliar consider it all gibberish anyways. And the new term are even more nonsensical as at least kilo and mega are somewhat familiar terms.
Besides which, kilobyte and megabyte and gigabyte is not jargon. It is a computer term. Sorry but your attempt to revise history has failed.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
About a year ago, my friend's computer in her office decided to die (she is a graduate student). She had an old Pentium II running Windows 98 then. What happened was, Windows was corrupted enough that it could not boot into Windows, and the best she could do was to boot into the command mode.
Anyway, she calles the IT guys on site for the help. The kid who showed up looked at her computer and asked her "Where is the mouse (cursor) on your computer??" Apparently, the kid (undergraduate student worker) have never seen a computer that does not run Windows.
After seeing that, she sent the kid back and called me for help...&
You could start an urban legend about the origin of the terms "debug" and "bug", etc.
Here, this is a prime example of help desk training.....
Support Training
....move along....nothing to see here....
This is sorta revelent... I am a geek, and do support for an ISP. While in Best Buy once, I overheard a guy giving an explanation of a hard drive, and it went something like this:
"Yes, anytime you buy a 20 gig hard drive, it won't actually be 20 gigs. It will actually be about 18-19 gigs because all drives come with some bad blocks."
I felt like tackling him, strangling him then having a quaint conversation with the customer about how people count in tens and computers count in twos. The whole mega vs mebi thing, etc etc.
That was by far, the funniest, oddest, and worst explanation I've ever heard.
FLR
I travel a lot for business, and had an ISP that was bought by another ISP that was bought out by another ISP, etc. So when I'd arrive at a new city it was hit or miss whether or not the numbers would work, as apparently there was all this voodoo magic involved in making my account work on all the different infrastructure.
So. I called tech support with a dial-in problem, as I often did when in a new city. First off the guy insisted that I [b]had[/b] to use their proprietary software or I couldn't dial in. I convinced him I could use Windows DUN instead. He asked me what the name of my icon was used to dialup. I told him, it was something like "Mindspring Wichita" since I had about 40 of them labelled by city.
He insisted, from this point on, that I couldn't have multiple icons like that, because they [b]had[/b] to be named one particular string or it wouldn't work! God, that was frustrating. I just wanted my damn email. I tried to get passed up the tech support chain but he wouldn't. I ended up getting his name, calling back, getting someone else, reporting him, and getting the problem fixed once they did the voodoo magic to set me up on the new POP.
Fricking idiot.
My mother was just starting to use computers and she was excited to have an email address. Her cousin sent her a joke via email. After seeing it and laughing, she asks me: "Wow, that was nice. Now how do I send it back to her?"
- Why would you want to do that? She already has it since she sent it to you?
- That's precisely it; now that she lended it to me, I have to send it back so she can send it to someone else!
Gotta love your Mom!
My not so network smart roomate had to call our DSL provider in college because our line kept dropping out for hours on end.
The explanation he was given "It appears someone is IP Storming your DSL modem, you'll just have to wait it out."
When I got home and he explained the call to me I nearly fell off my chair, and then nearly canceled the service because I was so pissed.
Apple free since 1990!
...it did happen to a woman right in front of me at Micro Center in Radnor, PA, several years ago. She was in front of me in line at the service desk, where I was waiting to either drop off my PowerBook for repair, or pick it up. That I don't remember.
I overheard her exchange with the guy manning the service counter. Apparently her PC kept running out of RAM and someone else had suggested the presence of a "memory leak." The service counter guy assured her that the machine's RAM was solid and not liquid, therefore there was no chance that it could leak from the computer.
I don't know how I managed to keep a straight face.
~Philly
You're kidding me. Was anyone really confused by the use of 'Hindu' instead of 'Hindi'? This correction was unnecessary and only for the intention of self-aggrandizement, which seems to be a problem with most corrective posts on /.
Now, since this post is highly OT, let's burn some karma!
I was "upgrading" to their next version and importing all the reports into the new system. I found about 30% of the 400 Baan reports I had didn't work after the upgrade. I narrowed the problem down to a bug with the database driver. If I used left outer joins (which I needed) in the report the software would crash. Called Tech Support, their response... (This product has been out for 1.5 years now) Their "solution" was to not use outer joins in any of the reports. 30 calls later... still no fix. *sigh*
A friend of mine called Dell Tech Support because a new USB 2.0 card he installed was slowing down his computer. He called Dell Tech Support, and the tech person told him to run the Dell Diagnostics software. He got an error saying "Invalid System Clock." The tech person put him on hold for around 20 minutes, and then came back on and said "You couldn't have gotten that error. Do you have another disk to try it again?" He said "Yes", tried it, and got the same error. The tech person came back on, and said "There's no way you could get that error. It's a figment of your computer's imagination."
One of my most beloved systems ever was an old 386 that my uncle gave to me when I was 11. The thing was ancient. All it had was a 30 MB hard drive and a 5" floppy. I decided to add a CD-ROM to it, because CD-ROM's were the new fangled doodads of the day (it was rated 2x, just for the record). Of course, the thing didn't work when I hooked it up. I know today it was because my motherboard didn't have an IDE connector (just a generic "hard drive" port), but I tried desperately to hook it up. I referred to tech support numbers in the manual, and got to talk to somebody. He asked what kind of a computer I had, what OS I was running, and recommended I call somebody at IBM and ask them about the problem. So I called IBM, and told them I was trying to upgrade to a CD-ROM drive. The first question they asked was what computer I was using, and I told them it was a Datatech. The woman on the other end practically screamed at me: "The DATATECH is not an IBM machine!" And me, in my eleven-year-old glory screamed back: "Well, then, why'd he tell me to call you?" For about four years, I was afraid to call tech support because I thought people would take advantage of me since I was so young. Now, I just solve the problem myself.
We used to have this guy who worked in our Tech Support department that should have never been working here, he always was looking for someone to do his job for him, well, we got fed up with it and when he asked someone on our team why the error was occurring in our software package, and we told him "Code Erosion". The definition was that over a period of time the code would wear out and need to be replaced. THe funniest thing is he actually told a customer this. ~Novensu
I had an opposite issue in a sense...
We had a lot of Digital DECstation workstations. One of them stopped working, so I called Field Service, and our usual guy comes out. Although it is a straight-up motherboard swap, he needs to do some diagnosis to put on the tag to engineering.
As is, the system wouldn't POST. He took the cover off, tested it again, and it POSTed fine. Figuring something was loose, he tightened all the connections. Put the cover on, system wouldn't POST. Took the cover off, system would POST. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We decide NOT to put hte cover completely on, but just lay it down on top, upside down so the internals were covered, but nothing scresed in or possibly shorting. Won't work. Take it off, works fine.
New theory - took a piece of cardboard laying nearby, and covered the case. Wouldn't work. Took it off, and it worked. Took a piece of paper, covered parts of the motherboard at a time, and slowly narrowed down the location.
The DECstation 5000s had a pair of large EPROMS with labels on them. The labels covered small round windows which I assume was for "flashing" the EPROM to wipe it out and reprogram. Apparently, they had somehow developed a sensitivity to light. A single sheet of paper was enough to block the light to prevent them from working.
I'm no electrical engineer, but this was bizarre.
The field service engineer put "afraid of the dark" on the tag, and left it at that.
Try and debug that one on a help desk phone...
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
A friend of mines mom called a certain companies tech support. She wanted to know why her dialup connection was only connecting at 22K, since she has a 56K modem. She was told her computer couldn't handle 56K of data coming in at one time. LOOK OUT....IT'S GONNA BLOW!!!!
But more importantly...
Exactly which model are you.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Mod parent up.
I've never even considered something like that before.
So I called to complain that this fancy new box actually took longer to detect a portscan. After getting the runaround for a while about how the III was "newer" and had "more features" and it "wasn't fair to compare this one feature" I finally got a straight answer. The reply was (paraphrasing a bit)First time I've ever been told I had too much hardware. I was tempted to tell him to send someone out to install less memory.
Started out in 2003 when I got a Compaq with XP running on it, machine ran fine except a bluescreen and then it restarted.
By asking the machine not to rebbot when it came to the BSOD I distinguished (I thought) what was the problem, it involved the Graphics controller. Called tech support, they picked it up, switched it and sent it back, same thing; BSOD, so I told them and they changed HDD and motherboard. Same thing still.
Call them again, they send new "backup CDs" (you know those ghost CDs that wipe the partitions and restore the system to factory settings).
Still does not work, I send it away complaining about memory as I knew XP could be sensitive to defective RAMs. I call the guys actually do the job and got to talk to the guy who was working on my computer, he said that one of the RAMs was indeed defective and he had knew this all along but he was not allowed to change it since it wasn't Compaq original.
So a company called "Kontorslandslaget" (which now seems to have merged with Compaq Sweden and now calls themselves Coneo) had hyped up the computer with another memory stick which was not original, it seemed that I was the only one who recieved a defective one(?).
Anyways: I call tech support and state the issue, they say call Kontorslandslaget; who says call tech support.
After DAYS of jumping back and forth I manage to talk to some sales person who basically says: We can't help you with this issue.
If I wanted to bitch about this I could, but I have already changed all parts in the computer and the Compaq is about to retire as a server soon.
My only experience with tech support has been awful to say the least.
This old guy used to pay me $15/hour in college to help him out with his computer. I'd set things up for him and transfer files from his Mac to his new PC. He used email and the Internet every single day, so I was shocked to hear him ask me the following question.
"Hey Ben, if I have the address of a web site how do I get there without a search engine?"
"Do you see that white bar at the top of the browser?"
"Yeah, it says 'http://www.altavista.com'"
"Type the address in there"
As odd as that request was, I stopped returning his calls after he left this message on my answering machine. Can you figure out what the heck he is saying?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
I have a coworker who used to do phone support for people who really had no business doing router maintenance, but were stuck with the job anyway. Invariably, these people were highly defensive about their level of competence, and suggesting that they check the obvious - "Did you check to see that it's plugged in?" - met with an angry response. "Of course I did!"
So, coworker came up with a novel idea. Instead of asking them if the router was plugged in, he'd ask, "Can you unplug the power cord, and plug it back in upside down? Those cords are defective, sometimes you need to flip them."
Every once in a while, the guy at the other end would stutter nervously for a moment, then say, "Hey, that worked! Thanks!" Of course, the plugs in question were three-pronged, so there was no way they could have been plugged in "upside down," but they were grateful for the opportunity to save a little face.
over Washington state. It was incredibly foggy and the pilot and passenger quickly became lost. The decided to fly close to a building and ask for directions. The found a building and wrote a note to the people inside the building. The note read, "Where are we?". One of the office workers noticed the helicopter outside the window and quickly wrote a note back saying, "in a helicopter." The pilot immediately seemed to know where he was and flew directly back to the helicopter pad and landed. The passenger was astounded.
"How did you know where we were?"
"That was the Microsoft building. Where else would you get a technically correct, but completely useless answer," replied the pilot.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Many years ago, I had an Aptiva tower computer, an odd little machine. One of its creative features was the built-in Trident video card that automagically disabled itself if a PCI video card was added to the system. At least, that's what it was supposed to do.
When I installed a snazzy new STB Velocity 128 3D card in the machine, I discovered the built-in video card did automatically stop functioning, but did not become invisible to Windows 95. As a result, Windows frequently enhanced my computing experience with fun activities like:
- trying to exclusively use the non-functional Trident card for display
- dying--apparently in shock over having two video cards--during boot
- rediscovering the Trident card and prompting me to install drivers for this "new" hardware
After much time spent updating drivers, firmware, and the BIOS, I gave up and called IBM technical support. My hope was one or more of the undocumented jumpers on the motherboard had something to do with really disabling the Trident card. Instead, I was informed Nvidia and STB had messed up by not making their hardware fully compatible with the auto-disable feature of the Aptiva's built-in video. According to the tech:I was neither surprised, nor disappointed, when IBM left the consumer desktop market a few years later.
"Be Happy or Die." -- AoN
ITYM debee to improve his dB
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
I called US Robotics to get some help with a router that was *supposed* to speak SNMP. Except i could walk the tree just fine with my windows machine, but debian could not do it no matter what package i used to do it.
Me: what version of SNMP does model XXXX router run?
Them: What do you mean? it doesn't run snmp.
Me: yes it does. i can walk the tree with my windows box... how can it not be running SNMP. so what version of SNMP is it running? there are only like 3 versions.
Them: The router isn't running SNMP.
Me: (continuation of my position cause clearly it does run SNMP wen the firmware also shows options about domains for SNMP walking)
Them: (holds his losing position)
Me: (gets frusterated and hangs up on them)
At the company I used to work we once had a guy whose website we were developping; we never gave him root access to the server because he was known for changing stuff around, as he often did with his normal ssh account. So when he demanded root access one day, we made him sign a contract that stated we would no longer be responsible for anything that went wrong, no matter whose fault it was. One day after we gave him the root password we received an angry e-mail demanding to know the username for root.
As if that wasn't bad enough, we got another e-mail a week later which stated that after he removed 'all the redundant code' from our scripts the site stopped working, and we must have broken it somehow while he did that so if we could please fix it. We had a lot of good laughs about him, except for the developers responsible for dealing with him.
Well, my boss tried to get her email account fixed once, and the "genius" tech support guys (who were a bunch of fucking lasy asses, likely threatened by the fact that I knew such amazing facts as what HTTP was) said: "Uh, we have to get to the server to do that, but it's locked in a room and we don't have the key". Brilliant! This was 1997 when anyone who could find the "on" switch could get a tech support job. God I hope all of them are unemployed or working at McDonalds or something! (while I cling to my progamming job, hoping it doesn't go to India!).
After a couple of days of a non-working cable modem and apparent lack of service from my cable provider (For reasons of anonymity, I will not mention the cable providers name, but we can call it "Cox").
Anywho...I proceeded to call the cable company and wait for Tech Support. After a few minutes holding, a lady came on the phone and I proceeded to explain my problem. She tried to walk me through the standard script (is it plugged in? do you have a head on your shoulders? are you sure its a computer?). Finally I asked if I could talk to someone in the Technical Dept (NOT Tech Support) and see if I could re-register my modem's MAC address. After flailing and obviously trying to prevent me from getting to the real help... she told me (drumroll please):
"Oh Sir, I just found out that Internet Explorer is experiencing a nationwide outage and you will need to call Micro$oft about the problem"
YOU GOTTA BE F$@#!ng Kidding Me!
I tried to be nice and tell her I didn't really think that was the problem and again ask for the Tech Dept. She would not budge. So we went back and forth on this a few times (all the while Im trying to remain calm).
Finally I lose it and try to explain as nicely as I can: Maaa'amm I don't think this is could be the problem because IE is a local application, merely a way to browse the web, its just tool. Since it runs local on a machine...it can't actually have a Nationwide Outage.
And before I could finish she was trying to interrupt again so I raised my voice and said: "AND IM NOT EVEN USING IE...IM USING MOZILLA! But Im sure there is a nationwide outage of that as well. Or maybe its my command prompt/ipconfig, maybe its having a nationwide outage as well. RIGHT?!?!"
Then she hung up on me....the nerve.
There seems a certain irony in the advertisment stating "Windows 2003 outperforms every Linux Red Hat Configuration Tested" being underneath a /. story entitled "Worst Explanation From Tech Support?"
Invaders must die
A few months back I purchased 2 copies of Battlefield:Vietnam from BestBuy.com(one for me and one for my bro). I installed my brother's copy first then went to install mine. When I went to input the CD-KEY I noticed that the case had 2 FRONT COVERS on it. No backcover - no CD-KEY. So I look in the manual for Tech Support Telephone # and hidden in the back in small print is the #. I call them up and get this elongated moronic message stating if your missing a CD-key to scan your CDs and proof-of-purchase reciept from the retailer and email the pics to them.Appearently this is a common problem In a few days, they would email me a CD-KEY. So that is what I did.
Sure enough, a few days later I get an email from this idiot at EA SUPPORT Named 'MIKE'. He says to me:
Dear EA Customer,
Having reviewed your support request I have determined that your scan of your CDs is fake and is readily available on the internet. Your not fooling anyone. No, I am not giving you a CD-KEY. I suggest you go to the retailer and return the game as this is not a warrenty issue
Regards,
Mike
This email pissed me off and prompted my rude reply.
Mike,
Where do you get off talking to me like that? What you sent to me must be the most unprofessional reply I have ever recieved from a major corporation. You called me a 'Customer' in the beginning of the email then you implied that I somehow obtained the game illegally. You contridicted yourself as well as make yourself look like an ignorant asshole. The scans are not from the internet as I personnally scanned them and is supported by the Best Buy Reciept in the same image you fool. Appearently you need to update your video drivers to allow for better desktop resolution. I will be calling your support center tomorrow morning to report you, your unprofessionalism, and your unwillingness to assist a paying customer. Oh, lest I forget, the product I recieved was missing an important componant (i.e. CD-KEY) rendering it useless. As it was manufactured improperly; this IS a warrenty issue. Perhaps you need more training.
May God have mercy on your soul & your job.
The next morning I called the support center and spoke with a supervisor. He agreeded with me that EA was responsible and promptly issued me a CD-Key.
It's not what you know; It's what you can find out.
I once had a client relate a story to me about a story another one of his consultants told him. I'll regale you in dialog form:
Client: Can you still run DOS commands in 2000?
Consultant: Nope.
Client: Why not?
Consultant: 2000 is built with NT technology.
Client: NT?
Consultant: NT, New Technology. You can't run DOS.
I once told this user by the phone to "move the mouse across the screen and right click over My PC", well, a colleague of him told me later that the guy actually lifted the mouse from the table and waved it in front of the monitor while he was saying to me on the phone "But it doesn't move!"
I was on the phone with a Dell Tech Support guy (from India of course) and I was having a problem installing the Dell system software (for USB 2.0 support) off the drivers disk onto my laptop. I was getting the error something to the effect of "Cannot install on this machine." I had called the guy to ask if the error had anything to do with the new HD I had installed. I figured maybe the install software was checking the system to make sure it was the original hardware. He told me that was not the case, and the problem was that my software was corrupt. I knew he was wrong because everything extracted fine, and I could reinstall the software with the old HD in the machine. Well, it turns out that it was becuase WinXP SP1 was not yet installed on the new disk. I think the lesson here is that whoever put together that software package for DELL should have put more specific error messages into it.
Perhaps not.
A 9600 baud serial link is only 960 characters per second. There are ten bits per byte, because you have a start bit and a stop bit for each character. That makes 10 bits per byte.
Things get even stranger over ethernet... When measuring bandwidth in terms of bytes/sec, if you use FTP to measure it, then your measurment throws out the ethernet headers, which results in a lower number.
So it all depends on how you measure.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
me: do you provide complimentary high speed internet access?
reserveration clerk: yes, we provide high speed dial-up access.
>"But..."
<"We don't support networks."
>"So it's not on a network anymore now."
<"Ok, I see your problem is caused by a bad modem, new one is on it's way."
At Cablevision, they consider the digital upgrade to HDTV to be way to complicated for mere ordinary folk to handle. So they send "Super Cable Guy"! A special technician who is trained to install the HDTV converter box. It's a good thing they don't charge for this service.
Well, Super Cable Guy dorked around my Mitsubishi TV for about an hour before declaring that this particular TV did not support HD, despite the large "HD 1080i capable" printing on the front. He insisted HD 1080i had NOTHING TO DO WITH HDTV!! But he agreed to humor me and leave the converter around so I could try.
After he left, I walked downstairs and looked in the back of the TV. He had plugged the cables into the standard RGB input instead of the clearly marked 1080i DTV input. I swapped the cables, checked that I now could receive INHD and a bunch of other channels and then called the cable company and told them they need to explain to their techs just what HDTV is.
JoAnn
It probably makes sense to the people running the airport. Just like to the unknowledgeable, trains in Britain and Ireland being slowed / stopped due to "leaves on the line" sounds incredible!
(What happens is that in the Autumn, the leaves pile up on the line, getting ground onto the rails by passing trains. They form a slippery laquer, causing the trains to loose traction - on slopes this can result in inability to make the climb without a run at it or extra locomotion. It's like ice for railways!)
But it still sounds hilarious. "We apologise for the delay, this was due to leaves on the line".
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Fortunately I didn't give them my username.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Our corporation had mostly NT systems, with a few unix servers scattered about. Name resolution was mostly WINS and hosts files. We moved to DNS servers on NT.
I later noticed that the unix systems were not showing up on the DNS servers. Calling the issue in to the support group, I was dumbfounded by the response. "Sorry, Unix does not support DNS." I literally had no idea how to respond to that. I hung up, called back, and spoke to someone else who had a clue.
The PC tech support "guru" insisted that it was a f@*#ing software problem. Smoke comes out of my computer and this imbecile comes up with the lamest excuse on Earth. Software !?!?!?!?!?! I was so pissed, I was fuming and talked to his immediate supervisor and bitched her out. I then threatened the regional sales manager not to buy any more machines, which is an effective threat when you end up buying Onyx 2000 and Origin 3000 from them.
In all fairness the workstation and server SGI tech support is really good. Its the best I've seen compared to Apple, Dell, HP ....you name it. You do pay a pretty price for their tech support, but when SGI entered the PC market they had to subcontract the
manufacturing and support out to other American companies. Which resulted in a significant problem with the quality of their tech support (which I may add was all done in the U.S.) My experience with tech support from Bangalore has been pretty
good so far. Which goes to show its not which country you subcontract or outsource to, but to whom.
If any of you have ever had them before they went under you know what I am talking about!
They once told me, after a full day of downtime for my website running on Linux and Apache, that the problem was because the web server needed to be restarted. And they thought it was going to be another 3 to 5 hours before it came back online!
Thats when I decided to host my own server!
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you."
First thing the tech support said when those win file server had a problem:
"It's Linux's fault".
Well, what a convincing explanation, a nice big cloudy fog, sorry, FUD.... :-)
I went on a service call to a home user. They proceeded to tell me that they bought a Dell 8 months ago, and hadn't opened it all that time. When they did open it and set it up, it wouldn't boot. They contacted Dell, and Dell tech support informed them that "hard drives need to be used frequently or they stop working."
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
A couple months after I had my cable modem installed a few years ago, it was pretty slow. Lots of dropped packets at the gateway, that sort of thing. So I gave Shaw a call to let 'em know I wasn't happy with the service I was paying for.
:)
The explanation I got: "It's been cold lately, that's probably what's causing it."
This was in -October-. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The temperature was hovering around freezing...maybe a little colder. No snow yet. On the Prairies, before the winter's out it's going to drop down to -30C.
So I hung up on him and the problem went away in a couple days.
For the record, I've had the modem a few years, in a temperature range from about +35 to -35. It still cuts out sporadically, but temperature has no obvious correlation
I know the parent post asked for funny stories about people calling Tech Support, but I've got a few similar ones instead.
... ... ? ...
... Well, what section of our website is it in? ...
I work Desktop Support and Network Administration for a national non-profit. We receive quite a few funny calls, but here's a few of the best over the past week:
Me: Desktop Support, how can I help you?
Caller1: I need help.
Me: OK, what can I help you with?
Caller1: Well, I just need your help, will you please come down and help me?
Me: Sure. I'll be right down.
I get to their office and ask what they need help with:
Caller1: Well, I had a stack full of papers on my desk
Me: And
Caller1: Well, they fell behind my desk.
Me: And you need my help because
Caller: Well, you're Desktop Support, aren't you? I need help moving my Desktop so I can get the papers out from behind them.
Different call, this one long-distance from John Q. Public. A bit longer, not as funny--just really stupid:
Caller2: Do you work on your website?
Me: Yep. What can I help you with?
Caller2: Well, I'm having problems accessing a document on your website.
Me: OK, what document?
Caller2: I don't know.
Me: Okkaaayyy
Caller2: I don't know.
Me: Well, I'll see what I can do.
Caller2: When do you think you'll have it fixed?
Me: Well, considering you can't tell me what the problem is, I'm not really certain.
Caller2: Do you think it's possible that you'll have it fixed in the next hour?
Me: Well, it's possible. But it's also possible that it will take a week to fix. If you can't tell me the problem, I'll have to search through every document on our site. After I search through all of the documents, I may or may not even have the same problem that you're having, so I may not even be able to identify it
Caller2: OK, well, if you can have it fixed in an hour, I'd be really thankful. If you could, would you please call me in an hour and give me a status update?
Me: Uhm, why don't you just check back periodically to see if it's fixed?
Caller2: Well, I can't. I'm leaving my office in an hour.
Me: OK, well, I'll try my best, but to brutally honest, I don't think I can have it fixed in an hour.
Caller2: Why not?
Me: Well, you can't tell me the problem, I can't really fix the problem.
Caller2: Fine! Here's the problem:
Me: Ah! OK. That makes things easier. I'll get right on it.
As it turns out, in typical Microsoft fashion, our provider's ASP engine crapped out. 99% of our site is straight HTML, but this page was ASP, so it wasn't easily noticed.
Last one (long again, sorry):
One of our other Network Admins is anal about clamping down on our own users--I must admin, it's not entirely without reason. Anyway, he decides he's going to teach himself the web interface of our firewall (a piece of crap FW, at that), and he does. Well, in a fit of frustration with our users, he clamps down all outgoing traffic, restricting all outgoing traffic but basic ports: he leaves open 80, 22, 110, etc. He doesn't tell anyone about this.
Well, a day after the clamp-down, we start getting message-not-sent errors from Exchange. I start scratching my head and check the outbound SMTP queue--there's over 1500 e-mails waiting to be sent! I try telnetting out over port 25 to many different valid mail servers, with no luck.
I ask the other Network Admin guy if he made any changes to the network lately. Of course, he says no.
Thinking our ISP made another screw-up, I call their tech support number and describe our problems, asking if anyone else has reported similar issues. He says no, but suggests we reset our router. The other Network Admin runs and reboots the router, and I'm immediately disconnected from the Tech Support guy: we're on VOIP. After yelling at the other admin, I wait for my phone to come back up and ca
I had ordered two used, 386 laptops over the internet. One model had a 5 mhz faster cpu than the other, otherwise they were identical. When I received them it turned out that there was something wrong with the "faster" laptop - it took about 20 minutes to boot up. It didn't take long for me to realize that the hard drive in the faster laptop was defective. Since the two machines used the same model drive, it was easy to swap drives and confirm that it was the drive that was the problem - a conclusion reinforced by running diagnostic software. I called tech support for the laptop dealer and had a conversation that reached almost psychotic proportions:
Me: The hard drive in the faster laptop is defective, it takes about 20 minutes to boot. When I swap it into the other laptop then that machine takes about 20 minutes to boot. I've run diagnostic software that confirms that the drive is defective.
Tech: The drive in the fast machine is slower?
Me: Yes.
Tech: That's because the bus speed in the faster machine is actually half that of the slower machine.
Me: What?
Tech: The way the manufacturer gets the cpu to run faster is by slowing down the bus speed and then doubling the clock.
Me: Hmm. But the same drive has the same problem when I move it to the machine with the slower cpu.
Tech: Yes. That's because it has a slower cpu.
Me: So the faster machine is slower because of the bus speed and the slower machine is slower because of the cpu speed?
Tech: That right.
Me: When I take the drive out of the slower laptop and put it into the faster laptop, then it boots just fine.
Tech: Yes, that because it is the faster machine.
Me: Each machine can't simultaneously be slower than the other. If B is slower than A then A can't be slower than B. You know, it would like violate the law of transitivity. The problem is just that the drive is defective.
Tech: Fuck you! [hangs up]
We're really lucky in Tulsa. There is only two good things about Tulsa: the SOTA cable system (which was just upgraded about two years ago) and the insane amount of Quick Trips (a local convience store). There is a QT every mile or so, and most of them are brand new mini-malls almost. The cable here is dirt cheap...I have a business connection of 256K up/1.5 burst down for $79 a month, and I can do everything but spam from it according to my contract. It hasn't gone down in months now either.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Wish I could remember the snappy answer given to that one...
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
http://www.ubersoft.net Ask Alex. :-)
According to Merriam-Webster online (here), jargon is "the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group." I think "computer term" qualifies as jargon.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
My DSL line started dropping out at random after a thunderstorm, the tech support guy told me the problem was that my DSL modem was in the same room with the computer, and the EMI from my computer was the cause. He said I would need to relocate the modem to a room with no other electrical equipment, then wait one day for the "fields to dissipate". Where in the world am I going to find a room without so much as a lightbulb in it? I found a copy of the latest firmware for the modem, flashed it, and was back up without further issue. I wonder why I even bother with those guys.
Back in '96 my connection to my cable-modem went out. Not uncommon, so I gave it the next day while I was at work to resolve itself. Still out when I got home, so I called TechSupport.
The answer I was given was that Mr. Smith (who?) called to report that he was moving into my apartment in a week, and therefore they took upon themselves to turn off my service. No notice to me whatsoever. I was dumbfounded at this policy.
So when I bought a house 3 years ago, I called all the utilities a week or so before possession, and was again amazed that I was able to turn off the seller's service...with just a phone call; no proof or id required.
Nice way to mess someone up, eh?
You shouldn't be surprised if "bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8" To get the number of bytes you've received, you need to divide by 8 to get the number of bytes you've received, not the other way round.
I know everybody knows this, it's just a typo, etc. but this IS slashdot, and we need be considerate of the impressionable PFYs who might be reading this.
At my workplace 3-4 years ago were several HP-9000 minicomputers running the HP-UX flavor of Unix and the "Networker" backup software from Legato. Networker has an extremely convoluted, ultra-paranoid system of license key authentication that somehow always involved multiple phone calls to the vendor every time we wanted to install the software on a new server.
The crowning moment came after a severe hardware failure on one of the machines necessitated a replacement motherboard. The replacement went smoothly until such time as we tried starting the backup software, only to be given a big nasty license error -- Networker had detected the change in hardware and no way was it going to run on *this* strange machine.
A call to the vendor revealed that while we were properly licensed to use Networker, the support contract (several thousand dollars a year) for the account had expired. Yes, we were perfectly entitled to run that software, but we weren't entitled to talk to tech support. And only tech support is allowed to hand out new license keys.
I'm not sure if the person on the other end of phone was incompetant, or trying to hold us hostage to buy another support contract, or some other bit of weird politics (and I'm willing to concede the possibility that the problem may have just been a couple of individuals who didn't know what they were doing), but it took close to two days of phone calls before they finally put us through to the gatekeepers in tech support. And keep in mind this is for an BACKUP AND RECOVERY SYSTEM for a large, high-profile application; if the disk array had gone along with the motherboard, we would have been unable to restore from tape.
Eventually on day two they do patch us through to a techie, who is also weirdly evasive about wanting to give up a new license key. The woman at our end who is talking to him patiently explains that the mobo has been replaced, everything is working fine except Networker won't recognize the new hardware.
"Well maybe they installed the motherboard wrong," was tech support's response. I felt only a little sorry for the guy, who I'm sure could clearly hear the roomful of derisive laughter when this comment was repeated to the rest of our group.
A couple of hours later we had a new license key and all was well again.
When I was 15 (about 5 years ago), the computer our entire family shared was badly in need of a reformat to clean off all the accumulated crap of my family's random downloads. It was running an anti-delete program at the time that would save ALL files to the recycle bin. So, being the devious bastard I am, I find some .class files from my sister's sessions playing Yahoo! Hearts and claim they are from a virus. To make a long story short, I get to reformat and clean my family's crap off of the computer and my sister gets yelled at and her computer time reduced (leaving more for me)!
I phoned NTL support to report that their reverse DNS for the range I'm in was broken.
After about 10 minutes of him doing "stuff" he said the reason for this was that I was running a firewall on my router.
I had bought a retail-packaged CPU there and the OEM fan/heatsink that it had come with seized a few days of use later. So I bring it back to the MicroCenter, flag down one of the fellers, and said to him:
Me: "Hi, I bought a CPU here the other day, and while the CPU is fine, the sink it came with looks a little buggy".
Employee: [stares at me blankly]
Me: "Is it possible to just get the sink replaced? I don't need a new processor."
Employee: [continues to stare at me blankly]
Me: "Hello?"
Employee: [very slowly and seriously] "This is a computer store, we don't sell sinks here. You want the Home Depot in the next plaza."
Me: [stares at employee blankly]
Gotta love that Inter-Galattic hit hiker jargen way to go with the HHGTTG quote
Once I was working as a system administrator at a local TV station, also managing users, mostly specialized people. One day I'm going for lunch and I meet this stage-building guy (I don't really know what he did there) and he told me his e-mail was broken. I asked what happened, and he told me he just pressed "Get Mail" and a big error message came up with a tilted red cross on it. I said I'd check it out, and did before lunch, in fact, so the guy wasn't there when I checked the problem.
I press "Get Mail". Up comes the error message and the tilted red cross, with the message "You have no new mail."
To be perfectly honest, I couldn't even laugh. I was just blown away. I just switched a client and went back to my office, he never called again. I'm sort of glad because I like to be nice to my idiot users, but I couldn't figure out how to tell him what was wrong without letting him know he's a retard as well.
"The cross connect dropped out." I'm not exactly up on the lingo, but the gist of it was there was a line provisioning problem on a Voice T1. This was a week before ATT pulled the plug on that T1 and 4 others feeding a RAS my company maintains. Completely by mistake. How do you accidentally disconnect 5 T1 lines?
quote from rinkworks.com
"
I was having a conversation with a friend in the computer cluster. A girl overheard us and piped up.
* Me: "So, what's your ICQ number?"
* Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
"
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I don't believe it is rubbish. It intentionally confuses the issue of SI units, which are meant to be easy by virtue of base 10.
I don't have a problem with using the terms informally in informal settings, but it causes confusion and abuse when the terms are used in formal settings.
The binary naming system tries to maintain the best of all worlds, and it seems to succeed pretty well.
One problem I haven't seen mentioned is that the approximation gets worse the larger the order of magnitude... Most people accept 2.4% error (kilo), and even 4.9% (mega), but the situation gets worse, and not just linearly. 5% is already significant for me, but if we blindly keep using this system, we'll be off by more than 100% eventually, which is just idiotic. No, 30 orders of magnitude isn't realistic, but 7 or 8 probably is, and that gives errors of almost 21%. So the approximation is a bit rough.
Every time we had a flooding problem we would call up maintenance and the first question they'd ask was, "Is this in a patient area?" because this building was also a hospital. The first few times we told them truthfully that it was just a lab, and they would show up a day or two later - never mind the fact that we had a quarter inch of yellow water on the floor. Finally we just started telling them that it was a patient area or that we did clinical samples and couldn't do our work in these conditions.
I always felt a little guilty, but sometimes, especially if you can't get help, you have to not tolerate any downtime. Then again, I didn't try to be an arsewipe when I talked to the guys in maintenance - I was apologetic.
When I made my very first linux install (SuSE 5.1) on a Compaq P200 MMX, I had to call SuSE because I wanted to set the BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM, and I couldn't figure out how to get into the BIOS.. Anyway... I called tech support (this was back when you were calling from the US you actually got to talk to an American) .... I called tech support and I told the guy I need to know how to get into the BIOS... He paused for just a moment, and said confidently, "Okay, go to your start menu, go to "find," type in BIOS, and his "search."
Sounds like the LiveChat bot fails the Turing test. Neato!
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I had an iBook whose Hard Drive was making quite loud pings and clicks. It sounded as if the control arm was off or something. An Apple rep at the "Genius Counter" of my local Apple store informed me that even though this was showing all the tell tale signs of imintent Hard Drive failure it was most likely an OS issue.
I informed him that there was no shot the system's OS is going to cause the control arm of the Hard Drive to be out of whack. It just isn't possible.
He informed me that he knew a lot more then I did, he added that going to websites, and downloading music + "just everyday using your computer" can easily cause a corruption that will do this to a Hard Drive. He told me that if I reinstalled the OS it would fix it. (At this point the machine wouldn't boot off anything other then the CD- by the way. Once a call was made to the Hard Drive - DEAD)
Luckily his boss came back from lunch, I asked the guy: "Hey want to hear the sound of Hard Drive failure?"
He listened for about 3 seconds before adding: "Yeah that's toast"
Tech support's response:
Dear user,
Thank you for choosing SMC Networks, Inc.
From your mail I understand that the SMC 7008 ABR router spontaneously reboots multiple times when being scanned by a vulnerability scanner called "Nessus" When 'Nessus' is activated continuous packets are flooded into all the ports on the WAN side. The router thinks that there is some sort of intrusion into the router and reboots. This is the reason why the SMC 7008 ABR router spontaneously reboots multiple times when being scanned by a vulnerability scanner .
If you need further assistance, please reply with history to this email to techsupport@smc.com
Regards,
SMC Networks Technical Support
1-800-SMC-4YOU,
techsupport@smc.com
This is an old argument first heard echoing around the halls of international translation.
A Table in English translates to "(a Table)" in German, but the germans have different cultural associations with the word, and thus the word Table in english in fact conjures up completely different connotations, emotions and sensibilities in the english speaker when compared to the word for the same objeect in germany.
(Not my argument - a paraphrase of classical translation pedogogy)
What we have here is a translation between base 10 for humans and base 2 for bounded arrays.
Most people use arabic notation, but in fact store and think of large numbers in base 10 scientific notation. We are essentially zero-counters when it comes to large numbers.
Computers on the other hand are first binary, and secondly store numbers in multidimentional arrays. They are not zero counters, and do not favor round numbers. Generally computers favor memory blocks which are bounded by n dimensions each of which is a exponent of 2.
All thiis to get back to the main point.
The limitations of translation ensures one will never be able to express computer number comfortable in english - and thus the attempt should be governed by the law of diminishing returns.
AIK
I was checking out a Mac forum when the very first G5's were shipping. This guy posts a message like "I just got my new G5 today. I was installing a PCI card and the screwdriver slipped and scratched the mobo. Now the computer won't start up, what should I do?" There were a long list of suggestions, soldiering wire across the traces, shipping it back to Apple as DOA, etc. Buried way down was this "Shoot yourself in the face" The worst thing was, the card wasn't PCI-X compliant, and wouldn't work anyway.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
Me: Oh, looks like the battery was loose.
Customer: No, it wasn't, I'm sure.
Me: Oh...(grasping)...were you near a window when you put the battery in?
Customer: Maybe...
Me: That's it. Sometimes sunlight can corrupt the internal settings of the wireless mouse, which can be reset by removing and replacing the battery.
Customer: Oh, THANK YOU!
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
Back when I had a Sprint cell phone, I had a week where I could make outgoing calls, but couldn't receive calls. When I talked to tech support and the guy asked me where I had been for the last few days. When I said that I had mostly been at work which was at NASA Ames, he said:
"Oh. NASA reprogrammed your cell phone."
How do you respond to that? The next day, my cell phone started working again. I guess NASA must have reprogrammed it back!?!?!
Technically, The equation is not "fine"
You're missing the explanation point in his original equation..
"bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14"
In many programming languages and some mathematical notations, the explanation point is read as "not". Therefore his stating the equation as such makes the equation itself Wrong... of course that's just what he intended
There are exceptions though... In Intel-style x86 assembly a word is always 16 bits, a doubleword is 32 bits and a quadword is 64 bits. An octetword would of course be 128 bits.
As a joke once (I worked on a Mac helpdesk) I explained to an end user that the the reason they could not connect to the internet (the real reason was the proxy was down) was that they had a curly keyboard cable.
The problem with the old Mac curly keyboard cable was that all computers are made up of 1's and 0's.
Everyone knows that, yeah?
Well the zero's are getting through- cas they are round, but the little hook on the 1 (see!) means that in combination with the curly cable meant that the 1's were getting hooked over.
If she had a straight cable can she use that one.
By the time she got a cable from the cupboard and plugged it back in I had restarted the proxy and she was 'totally astounded'- really glad I had taken the time to explain it.
Aint I evil?
JR
Me: Excuse I have just installed Suse Linux and cannot find where I should enter the parameters in order to use my internet account...
IP guy (wanadoo spain): well, you know, the problem here is that LINUX IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THE INTERNET...
A neighbour came, had a beer, showed me how to do it in less that two gulps, and showed me as well how to mount and dismount cd and zip units while drinking a second beer. This happened in early 2001.
... y Dios vio que Linux era bueno... Genesis 99.666
The cover thing reminded me of a tech support story of mine.
I was doing support for some lawyers. Built them some PCs. One guy calls me after a week or two and says he can't get on the net.
So I arrive and test the PC. Yup. No net.
I do a little fiddling, then eventually take the PC out of the little wooden cubby hole in his desk to fiddle with it. I take the cover off, and check to see if the net card has worked loose.
Reseat the card, and all's well. Put it all back together...and it goes offline again. Went through this loop 3 times.
Finally, one time I ran my hand down the far side of the case. (Since I was under a desk, I hadn't had the opportunity to really see the opposite side of it.)
He had lined his case with refrigerator strip magnets.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Sometime companies make things difficult just so they can sell you additional products.
TO: Sony Clie Handhald Support
I am trying to figure out how to transfer pictures I took with my Clie to my PC. I have invested over 8 hours in trying to figure this out. Do I need PictureGear like it says in the online support? If so it was not included on my Sony CLIE Installation disk. Do I need to have a memory stick to do this? If so I demand an explanation as to why you couldnt make it so that the pictures transfered through HotSync.
From: SONY Online Support
Thank you for contacting SONY Online Support. We apologize for the inconvenience caused. To transfer the picture Memory Stick is required. Before transferring the still image files, copy the image files to Memory Stick media. You cannot transfer image files directly from your CLIÉ(TM) handheld to your computer. [long 12 paragraph instructions on how to do this with a memory stick omitted for slasdot readers' sanity] Thank you for the opportunity to be of assistance.
To: SONY Online Support
cc: Nobuyuki Idei (SONY CEO)
cc: Howard Stringer (SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA CEO)
Guess What? You just lost some brand value. You did not tell me why you were unable to put the functionality of using hotsync to transfer the pictures on my CLIE to my PC without the use of a memory stick. I can therefore only assume that the sole reason this OBVIOUS feature does not exist is that Sony wants to try to force me to buy a Sony Memory Stick. But I foiled your plan! I was able to find a third party software solution that translates the pictures saved in the PC backup folder from your format to a JPG format. It was not easy to find but it was free. Once I downloaded it became EASY to transfer CLIE pictures from my PDA to my computer in a format it can read. Unlike the multi-step process you tried to require me to do using a memory stick. I find what SONY did here to be spiritually dishonest and very non-customer friendly. As such, I will be very wary in the future of any SONY products that I purchase and will seek to purchase alternative products instead. apparently, I need to protect myself from your dishonest schemes.
From: SONY Online Support
Thank you for contacting SONY Online Support. Customer input and response is invaluable in the continued support and development of our products. We want you to know that we appreciate your feedback. Thank you for the opportunity to be of assistance.
Back in the early 90's I was on the other end of the 'tech support' phone. My favorite call was, "This damn computer doesn't work! I turn it on and it just says c:\ and sits there! What should I do?"
This is the same thing as what he said. x * 8 bits/sec = x bytes/sec. (I got the 'x' in the wrong place above, but whatever).
Actually, I think you got x in the wrong place here, too. Maybe:
When one is talking about apples and oranges in algebra, it is customary to use different variables. I may have flunked second semester calculus every time I took it, but this much math I remember.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
You don't read a lot about that, nowadays.
I had the misfortune to buy an HP Vectra from them for my brother , and the Windows install was in one huge monolithic blob on a CD: you had to install all the crap at once, even if you only wanted Windows or a certain driver. That would have been fine if they had shipped a stable build that actually worked. But the config for the Zip drive was both wrong and out-of-date, and downloading latest Zip drivers from Iomega didn't seem to help the persistent crashes and freezes.
So I rang up their "Tech support", to ask about their recommended fix. She walked me through the script, starting with "is the computer switched on Mr. (my surname)?", and suffixing every single question in the script with "Mr. (my surname)". This was clearly their attempt at personalizing "Customer Care", and make me feel like a Valued Individual(tm), but all it did was make me want to smack the "Customer Care" out of her with a blunt axe.
Eventually we came to the end of the script, and no closer to a solution. She now advised me to re-install from the massive blob CD, which would fdisk all my data to oblivion. I explained that I'd done that already, and it hadn't worked.
"It looks like the installation CD as shipped has a problem."
"No that's not possible Mr. (my surname). They're thoroughly tested."
"Well sure it is. Maybe it worked before, but doesn't work on the latest hardware."
"No that's not possible Mr. (my surname)"
"Why not?
"What do you think could be wrong with it Mr. (my surname)?"
"How about the out-of-date drivers?"
"How would that crash the machine Mr. (my surname)?"
"If there's a bug that didn't show up before, but shows up under a new revision of BIOS, or a new ethernet card, or new firmware in the Zip drive, and so on."
"I don't see how that's possible Mr. (my surname)."
"Well it says on the Iomega site that there's a known memory leak issue with the version of drivers that you've shipped, for a start."
"I'm sorry, what was that you said Mr. (my surname)? A memory LEAK?"
"Memory leak, yes. I can give you the address of the bug report on the Iomega site."
(muffled laughter) "There's no thing as a 'memory LEAK', Mr. (my surname)." (more muffled laughter, now joined by her colleagues, phone covered up and uncovered as she talks)
At this point I was starting to get irritated. Paying for incompetence and ignorance is one thing, but getting laughed at for politely explaining to someone what I paid them to already know is quite another.
So I told her to put her supervisor on the phone, right now. She sighed, and said "OK, Mr. (my surname), I'll put him on right away!" (more muffled laughter).
The supervisor was no better informed than his idiot underlings, but at least he was willing to listen and learn when I explained to him how poor allocation and deallocation management can cause a failure to reclaim discarded memory, and he accepted that there really was something called a memory leak, and that the computing world outside of CompUSA had known about it for years, and that Iomega had reported the bug exactly as I'd described it.
But CompUSA never did fix my problem. So I backed up my brother's data, and rebuilt his PC from scratch with a borrowed Windows CD, figuring it was worth losing out on the "free" Norton AV etc. that came on HP's monolithic blob-CD, if that's what it took to get a PC that didn't freeze randomly a dozen times a day.
Now, whenever one of us runs into a "professional" who wouldn't know his own job if it jumped up and bit his dick off, we usually look at each other and say in unison "there's no such thing as a 'memory LEAK', Mr. (my surname)".
Ok I purchased an ALL-IN-WONDER card to record my favorite TV shows on. The card has an external jack that connects to my sound card. Me: I get sound from the tv but when I set up your software to beable torecord pause the sound it stops. Tech: Are you using regular speakers or digital out from your sound card to a reciever. Me: Digitial Tech: Thats your problem the signal is analog and you have digital speakers. Me : but I get sound when your software isnt trying to capture the data/ Tech: it because its digital....
At one point, RR in northeast Ohio needed you to do some kinda logon before they'd pass packets for you. They had some Win software that would do a name/password thing.
A tech or friend of a tech there made "rrlinux", a GPL version of the same. Also a version of DHCP that was more RR friendly (RR's DHCP servers were a little flaky early on).
RR tech support web pages had Linux buttons to click that would take you offsite to this guy's personal web page for support.
Not as good as in-house support, but still nice.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
"From bash.org: @FirebirdGM> I just called my Futureshop and asked them how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty. @FirebirdGM> The guy that was on the phone told me that it was only a few pounds difference. @FirebirdGM> And that's why I don't shop at futureshop." After reading that I called where I work (as tech) and asked one of the girls the same question who was working at the time, she didn't know how to answer, she was fired by my boss a week later, oops
~ All comments automatically moderated -1 since 2004 ~
I called my old ISP (just before I switched to another), Telenor, which is Norway's biggest ISP. The line sucked, I never got the speed I was supposed to have, and it was down approx. 2 hours every three nights or so. Well, I called them once when things didn't work.
...and at that point I hung up, laughed hard and waited until the problem was sorted out by itself.
Me: Hello, my DSL Internet connection doesn't work!
Lady on phone: Okay, what is your subscription ID?
*says all the formal stuff...*
Lady: What operating system do you run?
Me: Linux.
Lady: What?
Me: Linux.
Lady: Windows?
Me: Linux!
Lady: What is that, Leniks? Me: Yes, Linux.
Lady: What is it? Do we support that?
Yet another reason not to use huge ISPs.
All these are from Help Desks located in India:
... What our web site is slow? You must have a virus, reformat your system now!
;)
#1 Bad phase of the moon, try again in a few days.
#2 The guy inside the computer is stressed out, try turning off the computer for a few hours and try again.
#3 You use computer too much, cut it out guy!
#4 Your parts must be out of warranty, give me your credit card and we can order new parts for you.
#5 Your DSL is not slow, it is the other web sites that are slow. Slashdot effect, try visiting other web sites.
#6 Reinstall our software again, we need the spyware on your system to see what you are doing in order to help you better. Get rid of Spybot and Spysweeper.
#7 It must be all that porn on your system? What you don't download porn? You must have a virus, reformat!
#8 Look I work for two US dollars an hour, they barely train us, and learning your language is a pain. I live in an apartment with 12 other people and can barely afford to pay my share of rent. How should I know? I don't even own a computer! Go call a local computer store and have them do it, the money shall be well worth it. You'll never get a good answer from one of our tech support lines.
#9 We can't help you, my scripts do not cover that.
#10 It is a sign of the coming of Shiva! Aiiiieeeee! I quit!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
@FirebirdGM> I just called my Futureshop and asked them how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty. @FirebirdGM> The guy that was on the phone told me that it was only a few pounds difference.
depends on how many 1's vs. 0's are used. 0's are lighter because there is nothing there.
.signature not found
I just wanted to point out that I also use AEI, and I had a lil' problem activating my DSL line.
Looks like they have to send the postal address (complete, w/ appartment number) to Bell when some user wants to get a DSL account. What happened in my case: I said to the sales/tech person that my address was "*** rue Beloeil". Bell refused that address, tried again, had to wait 48 to 76 hrs, refused... after some research it looks like there was a "de" missing in the adress, so it was "*** rue DE Beloeil". I dont know if you understand french or not, but "de" in an address should'nt mean too much. Thats the dumbest error I had yet.
Also, just for your information I had ~630kbps upstream with a DSLREPORTS speed test, using a standard (non-ultra) DSL account.
And for the 40gb warning, i can't confirm because i never transfer that much (and what this limit is for? download only? both?), but I gotta agree AEI or whatever ISP would start loosing money when tranfering that much.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
The cable guy came to hook up my future mother-in-law's computer. I had recommended an eMac, since I know I'll be the one maintaining it and I know Macs better.
He rings the doorbell. At 8:30 in the morning. My mother-in-law opened the door (in her bedclothes) and asked him to wait a minute while she woke me up. He sighed and tapped his foot. I dragged myself out of bed and threw a shirt on.
Immediately upon entering the house, he says he's having a bad morning. Oh great. Then he asks what operating system the computer's running. "Mac OS X 10.2," I say.
"It won't work," he says. At this point, I'm feeling two things. First, I feel like I screwed over my future mother-in-law for recommending a computer that wouldn't work, and second, I want to know why this guy thinks an eMac won't work. So I ask.
"Well, uh, our software, uh, hasn't been upgraded, so, uh, I can, uh, get your name and number and we can, uh, call you when it gets upgraded. It works in OS 9, though."
"This computer has OS 9, too. Will it work if I boot into OS 9?"
"Uh, no," he says, "it's something about being upgrade to OS 10. It doesn't work anymore. It also doesn't work in Windows 95, or on computers that were upgraded from Windows 95 to 98, and people have problems using the service on HPs that have Windows XP installed"
At this point I knew he was lying out of his ass, because there's no difference in booting into OS 9 from an eMac and running OS 9 on a computer where it's the default OS. At least to the applications. And my parents have an HP with Windows XP installed, and haven't had a problem. This got me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. So I tell him to install the line, and I will set it up myself.
He walks out in a huff because (I think) he was hoping to get out of this job and get a doughnut or something. At this point, he's woken everyone in the house up by talking too loudly, and he returns with a HUGE drill bit. (Like an inch in diameter. Way bigger than you'll ever need to run a cable wire. I know, I helped my dad run cable in my house and we did it with a 3/8" bit and a coat hanger.) My future mother-in-law asks him what he's going to do with it.
"I have to drill a hole in the floor."
"Wait a minute, I'm paying $89 to have in installed in an outlet on the wall."
"Well, that's a different team, you'll have to get someone else to come out, and that computer's not internet ready, so it might not work anyway."
At this point, she's starting to cry because she just bought this house and he wants to put a 1" hole in the floor, and she thinks she just wasted $800 on a computer that won't work.
"Why isn't it Internet ready?" I ask.
"It doesn't have ethernet" the idiot says.
"Yes it does"
"But it's not the same on a Macintosh." (Yes, he's that dumb.)
"My friend's got four Macs running OS X hooked up to Comcast hi-speed in the same township."
"Well, maybe he figured it out how to do it," he says. "I don't know how."
Not knowing how is a lot different than "it won't work."
Under my breath I say "Maybe I should call Comcast and get a friggin' job."
"FINE!" says he. "YOU DO MY F*%ING JOB." Then he grabs his stuff and slams the door as my future mother-in-law is holding me back from rushing the asshole.
So now we have my future mother-in-law and fiancée in hysterics, kids scared in the other room, and my future brother-in-law and myself ready to hunt this guy down. All in the space of fifteen minutes of this guy ringing the doorbell.
We all calm down, and my mother-in-law calls Comcast and asks what computers aren't supported. As it turns out, there shouldn't be any problems using Comcast broadband, and they "don't know why any of their repairmen would say that." Then she got transferred to this guy's supervisor.
"Well, I'm getting a different story from him," he says. No shite sherlock, he wants to keep his job.
So th
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
About 10 years ago, I had a problem where my Informix client wasn't seeing the server. The tech support drone asked me to check my /etc/hosts file. When i replied that the server wouldn't be in there because we were using DNS, he told me that Informix didn't support the use of DNS. Even 10 years ago, they supported it. Turned out to be a bug in their (then) UDP based server discovery.
I was having trouble with AT&T Wireless a few months ago. I called and let them know about my issues, and added in the fact that I had read several news articles about the problems they were having with a new computer system.
The CSR replied: "Actually, all the cell phone companies are having problems right now because of the new number portability. We just get mentioned the most in the media because our name starts with an A."
Are you with NTL? I had this problem for about 10 months, only sometimes it would go off for 8-12 hours at a time, several times a week. They offered me no compensation or apologies and said that I'd received a good enough level of service. I am now with BT on ADSL. The NTL cable was about 40% faster (600kbps) than the BT ADSL (512kbps but with more protocol overhead) but the BT has been up for nearly a year with one outage of a few hours on a Saturday.
Stick Men
You flunked because you're a moron. Here was the original equation.
x * 1 bytes/sec = x * 8 bits/sec
now lets simplify this a little bit, into algebraic as opposed to scientific terms.
y = 8 (this is for our bytes/sec)
z = 1 (this is for our bits/sec)
x * 1y = x * 8z
This, as far as I can see, is a perfectly legitamate equation. This is the same as saying x=x, which is always going to be true. What the equation expresses is that 1bit = 8bytes. Now please, enlighten me on why this equation is not legit.
Of course, for practical calculations, you have to consider TCP/IP headers and the medium loss (such as ethernet frames, or modem parity/stop bits).
Just a FYI, I am not the parent you replied to.
I worked at a helpdesk from 1999 to 2002. I grew up with computers and wrote my first programs when I was 7 or 8, so I'm no idiot. And ebfore you complain about why I was working at a helpdesk, getting $25k at age 19 was a good gig, especially in a low cost-of-living state like Florida.
Anyhow, a gentleman called up and said his network connection wasn't working. WINIPCFG said TCP/IP error. Now, at this point in my career, not to mention my life, I could walk him and any other caller completely through opening the control panel, going into network, tearing down and rebuilding his network configuration including reinstalling the TCP/IP stack, which was the crux of the problem. And by walk him through, I mean, I could do it while reading The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul and pinching a loaf on the pot.
He refused to do it. He swore up and down that I was reading cuecards and asked to speak to someone who "knew what they were doing." I transferred him to my supervisor, who informed him that I was a certified subject matter expert for Windows networking. My boss had him do what I instructed, and it worked.
I suppose the moral is this: Sure, there a lot of helpdesk losers. But have the sense to know when you're talking to one of their gods.
RTFC (C = comment)
He was not an employee of a cable company, he was a self-righteous neighbor in the building who had cable instead of ADSL.
Suing his employer won't help, he probably works for a accounting firm or some such.
You're all morons...
Threeve bytes = eleventy-billion bits.
Well, maybe not yet...
=P
ascii art
I know tech support convinced you that that is true, but if your 20gig iPod shows only 18megs of disk space... there's something really wrong with it!!
Dark days for Apple those were.
sulli
RTFJ.
Situation: Mainframe is down, hard, and the HMC (OS/2 based management console) is not working correctly. It accepts the commands to re-IPL the mainframe but then just spits back a msg that IPL failed, can't communicate to the mainframe. Okies, time for a Sev 1 call to IBM Tech support (this is for a Fortune 100 Financial Svcs Firm). Me: I wish to open a Sev 1 issue for Customer # xxxxxx. IBM: What is the serial #? Me: The serial # is yyyyyy (at which point they know everything about us) IBM: What is your location? Me: Chicago IBM: Could you spell that please? Me: You want me to spell Chicago? IBM: Yes, could you please spell Chicago? Our mainframe was down for 8 hours that day. It was eventually fixed by one of our own sysprogs dialing in from his Las Vegas hotel room, remote controlling his own desktop to spit out a diskette (!!) and me running across the street to an alternate HMC console so he could then remote control that and input the diskette and use it to reset the mainframe. This formed the basis of an interesting conversation with our IBM account team as our hardware maintenance contract was up for review. Sad, too; in days gone by I used IBM's support center as a measuring stick for other support services.
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
From the lovely folks at AOL. Customer gets $668 Phone bill for Calls to one of AOL's Dialup numbers. AOL techsupport does some magic or whatever and concludes that there is no way that AOL software could have dialed those numbers. Their answer "your telephone company has changed the routing on your correct (Local) number to the pay number, contact them". My brother (who works for the telco in question, just had to relay this to me.
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
i think e-machines is not the culprit here. its most probably best buy.
we'd tell people to return dead on arrival products to best buy, and 4 weeks later that same product is sold to somebody else, as new, not working. since we track serial numbers and retailers - we KNOW best buy sometimes puts returned merchandise back on the shelf without testing it first.
i never buy anything there.
"I'm sorry, sir, I'm not sure what you are talking about."
To be fair, he gave you an honest answer. The alternative is worse, that is, pretending to know the answer and then giving you bad advice.
If you explained to the clerk what you were looking for, then he could potentially help many other customers. We've all got to learn someplace.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
As a Mac user I called Bell South and demanded to know why I couldn't get the much cheaper self-install option on a DSL line.
It went something like this:
"So why can't I get a self-install? This is like a Mac tax you know. I can't get the free install, I can't get a free NIC..."
"Sir, if you have a Mac then the signal will sense that there is a Mac in the building and stop outside. A technician must come and draw the signal in by priming the line."
I pause here to revel in this statement...
"So let me get this straight. Your DSL signal is a sentient being, that can tell what brand of computer I own and then make a conscious decision to defy the laws of physics and stop in the middle of a wire?"
Long pause....
"Well that's just what they tell me..."
"Thanks but I'll just get my service elsewhere."
Fun!
They have no idea what they are talking about. Bytes/sec and Bits/sec do not have any special meaning beyond the number of bits or bytes that can be passed in a given second. .00015 seconds!
First, it's totally and completely moronic to strip the TCP Header off for one measurement but not for the other, it's not some sort of standard practice.
Second, the story says that instead of Bytes = 8*Bits, it was mroe like Bytes=13 or 14*Bits. That means that by their logic the BYTES were getting stuck as it was taking more bits to make a single byte, not the BITS.
Third, the speed test is probably hosted on a simple webserver with a moderately sized file, whose download is timed, because this makes sense, it's how everyone does it. With that being said, why and how would they see the TCP headers from that layer?
Fourth, in order to code a working speed test, you couldn't use packets small enough for a TCP header to matter it to matter, and I've never seen a speed test that tried. A standard TCP header is 120bits (15 Bytes) IIRC. Let's figure out how small it would have to be: (x*13)-(x*8)=15, solve for X and find that the packet would have to be 3, do the same for 14 and you'll find that it's between 2.5Bytes and 3Bytes of data in order for the difference to be the size of the TCP header. What kind of a speed tests measures accurately to anywhere near modern DSL line abilities (let's say 100,000Bytes/sec to 400,000Bytes/sec) with just 2.5Bytes? Even for just 100K/sec DSL that's a 400,000th of one second of bandwidth. That's like checking someone's hearbeat by touching their wrist for
Parent posts with this theory are merely flamebait and should be ignored.
Jamon
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 - pre v.4 firmware is free to download, for v.4 you need to pay for a support contract.
I phoned 3Com support and asked "Why?"
Apparently because "since the Enron affair, 3Com are afraid of giving software away for free". I spilt my coffee.
KB = 1024 bytes
MB = (1024 * 1024) bytes
I will not change the precise language I have been using for 25 years because people outside of my field has problems with field specific math.
If they want to change the terms, then they should not be using byte either. Then they can use KibiFloople to mean 1000 Flooples and MebiFloople to be 1,000,000 Flooples and leave our field specific terminology alone.
I've spent 3 years of my life doing tech support, seen plenty of good and bad tech's but this takes the cake. My team was providing tech support for internal employees of a F500 company, we we're required to go through a script at the start of each call to determine whom we were talking to and if they were calling on behalf of themself or someone else. Our caller id system worked on users' employee id's but sometimes people would fat finger their eid and we would be made to look stupid. My cube neighbor gets a call from some lady who had typed in the wrong number. Apparently they had a bad connection because he keeped speaking louder trying to find out why she was calling. Suddenly he nearly screams out, "Are you calling for Dick?!". He realized his mistake, apologized profusely and then put her on hold for five minutes till everyone had stopped laughing.
in japan, they say "i understand" (wakarimashita) constantly during conversation; the meaning is pretty much synonymous with "i am listening." this is called aizuchi and is required to show you are paying attention. it is why japanese people might make "hmm" and "ah" noises and nod a lot while you are speaking. it's just a custom of politeness.
unfortunately, i think it causes the expression to lose meaning to them when translated to english. they use it much more loosely.
You're only given an email address, but they admit to not being able to access any emails.
It's like getting someone's phone number and being told that they don't have an actual phone, just a listed number.
So my basic setup at home is a cable mode to two linux boxes, one acts as a firewall, one does mail, web, dns, etc. Somehow one of the windows boxes behind the firewall managed to get one of the various viruses floating around out there and started spamming those in my address book. The cable company receives a complaint and shuts down my connection. I have NO problem with this, in fact its one of the reasons I like my ISP.
So, I figure out which machine got infected, clean it, have a quick look to see how the virus got in in the first place, upgrade all the virus definitions on the clients and the mail server.
Great, call the cable company, let them know that I cleaned out the virus, and they turn on my service again, quickly. I'm happy, return to work (I zipped home at lunch to do this). By the time I get back to work, my cable modem is down again. I call in, they reply that they got complaints that I'm infected with whatever virus. I ask if thse are "new" complaints since 1:00pm (When I called in to say I'd fixed everything). "Uh, I'm not sure, I'll pass you on to the network guys that do this stuff". I'm thinking this is a good thing, they'll actually have a sniff.
The network guy, tells me that they received a complaint and had to shut my modem down. I ask if the complaint was regarding an email sent after 1:00pm. He tells me he thinks its from earlier in the morning. So I explain that I cleaned the virus, and that he should turn my cable modem back on. He tells me he's going to have to charge me since I got infected twice in one day!
After arguing about it with him for 15 minutes, I finally ask to speak to his manager. I get the manager, tell him how upset I am about being charged for this, and that I'm seriously considering calling the competition as soon as I hang up with him. He apologizes, tells me there will be no charge. I ask him what's to prevent this from happening again to another customer who doesn't know any better. He has no answer.
Already over 1K answers ... here is mine anyway:
Setup: Brand new Pentium-600 with and Intel 10/100 Net card (BTW this card is the best item I ever had).
Problem: I just lost my new Cable Internet connection.
After a few Q-Cards reset, I am then asked what my hardware is, I get the answer:
"Pentium 600? Wow, there is the problem, your computer is too fast for the connection, the packets are just not getting to you fast enough to be processed, like air in a gas tank!"
I then asked for a supervisor who corrected the problem in minutes (resetting a node somewhere near me).
The ISP was "Road Runner", sold to AT&T, then sold to Comcast!
A couple of years ago I decided to try one of the Alienware laptops. A few days after I recieved it, the backlight in the display went bad. I sent it in to get it fixed, because to me the problem was obvious. They sent it back to me claiming that the reason why the display was "bad" (If you looked REALLY closely you could see the image... but that was it) was because of bad RAM. Of course the night I got it back, the display went dark again... Of course at that point I decided to just return it and get a refund... But seriously... how does someone get bad RAM from a dark LCD screen?!
I'm only paranoid because everyone is against me...
My favorite conversation with a Cable ISP company tech support:
ME: My email client keeps hanging when I try to download my email. I have looked into the problem further and have discovered that if I delete hte spam in my mailbox that have blank subject lines, I can download more mail before it times out.
TECH: What does that mean?
ME: I receive a connection timeout from your email server during download.
TECH: Can you get to the internet?
ME: Yes.
TECH: Are you using anti-virus software or a firewall?
ME: Yes, both plus a NAT on my router.
TECH: Please disconnect your router and turn off your antivirus and your firewall. All those layers are interfering with your email software.
ME: Ohkayyyyyyyyy..... (me busily turning off all protection for my poor computer)
ME: Trying again.... (still doesn't work)
TECH: Your software must have corrupted the email; you will need to delete it.
ME: Downloading email corrupts it on your server?????
TECH: Yes, that can happen.
(Repeat the last 3 lines 4 times with different phrasing)
ME: Can I talk to your supervisor?
TECH: I'm sorry sir, but the problem is on your end. Goodbye.
(Disconnects chat session)
...and little kibibitties.
A kibibyte's bin'ry too, a power o' two.
That's what they're teaching kids in schools these days!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Enough said.
Sort of a running "Tech Phone Sex" gag. IIRC, the young lady character was one of several characters she had on tap, including a blind exotic dancer, with an eccentric rottweiler dance partner, and a "valley girl" horoscope commentator. She always ended that bit with, "One time, I was dating this guy, and he was really hot... ...Whatever!"
FPO
So you're saying, we corrupted the terminology first; how dare they retaliate?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
My wife takes distance education courses on-line. The teachers are idiots, but it's cheap and the books (yes, she has to buy books) are actually informative. The latest course she took didnt' have powerpoint slides anymore (I guess some linux users were complaining? these aren't technical courses, so most of the userbase is windows-based). They went from powerpoint to Java-based presentations with voice-overs - kinda cool, except it didn't work on her computer.
Worked on mine, worked on my win2k server, hell, it worked on my linux server too! but it wouldn't work on hers (winxp sp1, all hotfixes, fully updated, etc....)
She called support and they were no help. I e-mailed suppport with very detailed specs (what version of java, what version of windows, what hotfixes were installed, etc....), I even included the fact that it works on 3 other systems, but not the one we want it on.
I believed that the problem was that it was based on Microsoft's implementation of Java (which my new xp installation didn't have, so i had the latest and greatest Sun JRE).
Want to know what they said to do? It's good... really.... I was impressed....they said...
insert drum roll....
"Please use a computer with Windows installed on it."
To say the least, I was stunned into silence for a good 5 minutes.
To make a long story short, they had a compression program for their java applet that didn't support the last two versions of java. (which is why it didn't work when I rolled back 1 version).
was a Linksys guy who tried to convince me that classless routing does not exist. :)
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
When it became common to prohibit the use of cell phones at gas statios I asked the woman inside why they do this. She: "Uhm.... I think it's because of... those... rays... those bad rays... UV-A and UV-B rays?" :p
I called up my ISP (Choice One Communications). Here's a rough transcription:
"Hello, Choice One Communications. How may I help you?"
"Hi. I'd like to report a problem with our T1."
"Okay, sir. Go ahead: what's your problem?"
"Well, we're dropping between 15% and 20% of our packets."
*pause*
"What's a packet?"
Once on contract, I opted to burn a little waste money and make a point to our client (who was trying to shake down on in-house contracts for IT people)
:)
:P
Called MS support claiming a 'mouse on our terminal server was refusing to work.'
To keep a long story short, this poor sap ran us through eveyrthing to try and get it working again (including checking driver files and system stuff, I even got moved up the line a couple times)
After about an hour, they finaly break down to the good old 'you need to re-install the OS.' lament. (read: we have no idea, re-install!)
He forgot one thing however:
'is it plugged in?'
Sigh..
This more or less made it clear to our client's that they need in-house support and can't rely on some underpaid yutz on a phone to do the job right.
(Nervermind the kind of noises the guy made on the phone when I mentioned we were working on migrating alot of our backend servers to *nix, hee!)
My new top secret key -> C>N|KB
how about : ... or response from a tech support guy to a routine question from a client :
... the tech support guys at the isp where i used to work were not the sharpest pencils in the box ...
- i'm sorry sir your screen resolution is too high for you to receive email
- you are stupid, find someone who knows something about computers and get them to call me back
there were lots more
I haven't seen them sell returned items as NEW, but yeah they dump stuff back on the shelves without testing. I think they wait for something to be returned 2 or 3 times before they send it back.
What's crazy is that it makes sense, because most things don't actually have problems, it's usually the user not getting it set up right or knowing how to use it. I buy a LOT of open-box stuff from BB, and have never had a problem with any of it (you still have the 30-day return, so it's no big gamble).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
When I got my first cable modem, I had the abosolute worst customer service from the provider... the damn thing would lose service almost daily, but the problem was actually with their routers and DNS... I can't tell you *how* many conversations I had that went like this:
:)
"Did you reboot the cable modem."
No...
"I need you to pull the power, wait 30 seconds, and reconnect it."
The problem isn't with the modem. I can ping the modem from my end, and traceroute shows traffic is going out and dying at your router.
"Has the modem come back on yet? What lights are on?"
Yeah, it back. All the lights are on. They are blinking quick quick quick slow slow slow quick quick quick.
"Hmmmm. I think you might have a defective modem, I can't see it on my end."
Can you get past the router? I think it's a router problem.
"Would you like me to send out a technician to swap out the modem."
Yes, yes I would.
The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun, with Coca-cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun.
Not only was it within Apple's one year warranty, I had also forked over $350 for the AppleCare extension, so I could have the privilege of calling and telling them about the defect. The Phone Technician I spoke with was slightly infuriating. It eventually got fixed, but I had to deal with a local tech instead of direclty through Apple.
Tech: Under what conditions do you use your PowerBook?
Me: Mostly, it's on my desk at work. At home, I sit down with it for a few hours.
Tech: Do you use it on your lap at home?
Me: *blink* Um, yes...
Tech: Using it on your lap probably caused overheating, and that won't be covered under Apple's warranty.
Me: *fuming* But it's a laptop...
Tech: Actually, sir, it's a portable...
Apple never calls it a "laptop" on the site; I guess most computer manufacturers have moved away from that term because the systems just keep getting faster and hotter.
There are, however, many promotional pictures of people using iBooks and PowerBooks on their lap. *shakes fist*
Years ago, I signed up for a cable modem. I was running Windows 98SE at the time (didn't want NT, and XP wasn't out yet).
:-)
I had a network card, but until that point I had used dialup for access.
The tech installed the modem, and sat at my machine for a couple of hours, trying to get a response from the servers. He finally gave up and proclaimed that my NIC was bad and to get another one. He told me to call their tech support line on the weekend with the new MAC address, then he exited quickly before I could tell him I had another one on the shelf.
After installing the new card, I tried to call. As you have probably guessed, tech support wasn't answering on the weekend!
For the next week, I called multiple times and each time I had to go through multiple techs to get to their back line - each level asking me to do the same tests that the previous level did. They NEVER gave me a case number, despite me asking several times. At the end of the week, their final answer was to format the hard drive and reload!
Being stubborn, I decided to do some more digging. I finally managed to find some information that showed me how to completely remove TCPIP from Win98 and reinstall it. It fixed the problem.
MUCH later, I had someone from the cable company call to ask about the installation. I related the problem, and that after a week of frustration, I fixed the problem myself. They asked how I did it - I refused to tell them! I said that their technicians didn't have the technical expertise to understand.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
No, there are 10 bits per character. There are still just 8 bits per byte.
I mean,
Sounds like a lack of good tools is frustrating both the Rep and the caller. Especially when they have to fight through a button tree to reach you, people will assume there's some sort of call management software that's tracking their calls and recording the problems they have.
A little bit of sympathy on both ends, and everybody's job gets easier. Duh.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I can see it now. New guy shows up at the office, first day on the job. Starts talking and in the same breath utters the words 'kibibyte' and 'gibibyte'. Two of the guys on the team hold him down and start beating him senseless, two others start picking apart his resume and application paperwork to get him fired that same day on a technicality.
Anybody that actually says either of those words in my presence is getting bitchslapped, no doubt, and probably sent packing during the next set of layoffs.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Aparently nits are in season again. Pick them while you can!
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
[Me] "Tech support."
[Caller] "Hi, there's something wrong with my Caps Lock key."
[Me] "What seems to be the problem?"
[Caller] "Well, when i press the key, the letters get small..."
[Me] "Uh-huh..."
[Caller] "...but when I press it again, they get big! Shouldn't it be the other way around?"
[Me] "I'll send someone over."
As a result, they don't tend to kill each other as the argument escalates.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I mean yeah... the paper clip is part of my toolkit, but a picture of it from this particular source?
Ha, let me try that again. I meant to say Norton Internet Security, though Norton AntiVirus can cause problems with e-mail.
A friend who's a professor of chemistry at a university in New England called campus IT when his network connection went down.
"You should unplug the LAN connection," said the IT guy. "There must be some bad electrons trapped in the 10-base-T port."
Mind you, my pal researches quantum properties of crystals, so this didn't wash with him at all. It did, however, inspire him to write the following song (mp3 available upon request -- email me):
INFO SYSTEMS
by Guy Crundwell
When your computer's down and no magic comes out
And it crashes, halting production
You gather all you playmates around your cubicle
And tinker with their suggestions
Someone will undoubtedly say
"Let's call them," once
"Let's call them," twice
But then the info systems guys will give you s***ty advice
They told me once to unplug the port
Of my 10-base-T LAN connection
They said there must've been some bad electrons
And all the managers say
"I know it's rough
to be rebuffed
By somebody with a head full of Co-co-co Puffs
The path we take through info systems is rough
It's rough
The path we take through info systems is rough
It's rough enough"
-- Rick G. Karr Cultural Correspondent, National Public Radio +1 212/878-1445
If your 20gig iPod reports 18megs, it's broken, take it back. :)
Isn't nitting about nits a nit? Pick yourself.
Trying to get support as to why xbox live won't connect to in network customers... the reply from a level 2 technician was " UDP packets are not supported on our network "
As with any tech support it really depends. Back in the day I had a compaq something or other and an parallel port zip drive. After a few months we lost the installation disc. This before the internet. I called tech support and being that I still had the guest drivers the very friendly tech guy taught me about batch files, autoexec.bat, and helped me add in automatic starting for the zip drive. I don't know if this guy knows it but he sparked a 12 year olds interest in computers that day. Now I am going into my second year of Computer Engineering and am more then proficient with windows and linux. If you are reading this guy, thanks.
Burn Bright or Fade Away
Told me that I suddenly couldn't log onto my online banking (which I had been using for months) because of an incompatibility between my cable modem (which I had been using for months...) and their servers. Huh???
Nah, I'm saying if they want to change it, they have to change away from our terminology. KiloByte remains 1024 bytes. If they don't like our "kilo" being 1024 and want something to mean 1000, then they should use the Kibi to mean 1000, then they should also not use the term "byte" either, as it is a technical reference, so they should replace that with something else, thus, KiloByte = 1024 bytes, KibiFloople = 1000 Flooples.
As to the other comment, the tech language we use was derived in the context of our field. It'd be like a bunch of novices coming in and completely changing the jargon of the plumbing field or medicine based on their uninformed preconceptions. "That's not a crescent wrench! It looks nothing like a crescent. Let's call it a Variable Gap Bolt Loosener and require everyone else in the world to do the same."
Also... Kibi and Mebi are just very unprofessional sounding, like they belong in some Pokemon cartoon. I wonder how many person-hours in committee were required to come up with those terms. I know they preserve the K and the M but this is rediculous. As for me, I will refuse to use "Kibi" and "Mebi".
The other day I picked up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 from the bargain bin and took it home and installed it on my XP machine.
Took off a flew for a few minutes, then the system locked up -- no Ctrl-Alt-Delete or anything else, just frozen video and no activity.
Rebooted and tried again, a few minutes later, frozen.
Went to the support site to see if there were patches or FAQs about the lockup. Lo and behold, there was one support sheet that said:
Go into winconfig (I think) and set your computer so that no programs or extra services start on reboot. This means: no firewall, no anti-virus, no anything running. I unplug my network and try this and, sure enough, MS FS runs like a champ. Unfortunately, I'm not going to do this to play a $9.95 game, so I keep trying stuff. I went to Microsoft Update and make sure all my service packs and drivers are up-to-date and they are. Then, out of curiosity, I went to my graphic card's site and there is an updated driver. I install it, restore my boot-up to everything that was there before, and flight simulator works fine.
So, with all of the security problems Microsoft has, their free support tells me to disable all network protection on my system in order to play a game when the actual problem was in my video card driver.
At least they didn't tell me to reformat and reinstall Windows.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Unbeknownst to me, my printer port had broken from the mother board. I got my printer about 6 months after I got the computer, so I imagine, the printer port was just always broken.
I spent an entire day on the phone calling back and forth between the computer company and printer company. Finally, the printer company swore that their printer was fine, and told me to force the computer company to accept the blame.
I stuck to my guns and told the computer company the printer was absolutely fine, and that something had to be wrong with the computer itself. I was then told to go through a whole bunch of steps, a few of which included DOS prompts. Since my very first computer was run completely through DOS, I had no problem with these steps. This mystified the tech support guy.
The mysticism then turned into cynicism. He asks me:
"Are you a competitor?"
*laugh* "No."
"I don't believe you. I think you are a competitor testing our tech support."
"What? No, I'm not a competitor!"
"By law you are required to tell me if you are a competitor if I ask you. So I'm asking you, are you a competitor?"
"No! I am not a competitor!"
"Then how do you know DOS?"
"My first computer ran off of DOS!"
"Right.."
"Look, I just want my friggen printer to work, ok?"
After many more tests, his superior came to the conclusion that my printer port just must be broken. A few days later, a repairman showed up and swapped in a new motherboard, and voila! It worked.
But, after an hour of reconfiguring our cable modem connection every possible way short of USB(which we didn't have the cable for anyways), I get told "Well, we are upgrading routers in your area, that must be it, try again in an hour or so"...
IDIOT! If you told me that when we started we could have saved a lot of your time and mine.
Though, he may have said that as a last ditch way of saying "I have no fucking clue so lets make something up"
Working as a system administrator/support person I get alot of PEBCAK (problem exists between chair and keyboard). After a while experiencing these problems I've started doing the Jedi Mind Trick hand movement in front of the screen and chanting some gibberish before I sit down to fix the problem.
;)
It's really hillarious when I then do exactly what they've been trying to do (so they claim) and it works. This leaves the employee with their mouth wide open, staring at me stuttering "b-b-but.."
Then I leave.
Try it, it's tons of fun
computers let you make more mistakes faster, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
The fact that you can't keep your employees around means that 1) your business could be achieving a healthier profit margin than it is; 2) your employees could be more satisfied with their work environment; 3) your customers could be happier with the customer service they recieve.
It seems to me that your goal is not "to attract the best help desk people in the field". Your goal is obviously some politically motivated sense of the American dream. I guess that's fine, but I wouldn't try to characterize it as magnamosity or having a large heart. Running a successful help desk is about one thing (more or less): attracting and keeping the best tech support help desk people in the world. Maybe I, once I twist my mind, might decide to one day dig a hole with my Made in America shovel and invite "W" over to stand around and chuckle at the sheer brilliance of the whole thing. (just kidding)
There are probably hundreds of individuals out there who are trying to run training centers but are failing abysmally at it; you are trying to run a help desk, but are, via what could be called a "happy accident", running a highly efficient and successful training center!
Silly as this may sound, I think that you need to open up a training center. You could really make a great difference in the world by doing those kinds of things that you are really passionate about.
Like any true geek, we probably do our own tech support. So we are we really calling "customer support" to complain?
/. users to post.
/. user to post about these.
/. attention for posts.
Anyhow, here is how I see it:
1. We've either diagnosed the problem and fixed it, and want to call someone with the company to give them a detailed explanation on what is wrong, just to hear them say, "huh!?" This is good material for
2. We've diagnosed the problem and found that it couldn't be fixed, so we return the item and want to complain to someone about their POS product. The support guys then feel our wrath. It has got to be reeeaally bad for a
3. We've diagnosed the problem and found we can't fix it because it is on their end. Of course this is the one that started the discussion. We call anyway hoping to talk to a fellow geek that won't mix up his bits and bytes and can say, "oh, here is the problem." IMNSHO, this gets the least
Oh well.
However, in other fields of computing, like networking where you have Mbps (megabits per second), it has always been customary to interpret kilo and mega as standing for factors of 1,000 and 1,000,000 respectively. So in order to know how many bits you're talking about exactly, you always had to be aware of which particular jargon you're using. Distinguishing between kilo and kibi is meant to clear this confusion up once and for all, and it's not Apple's idea and not the idea of some weird SI committee; it's the idea of the IEC. The prefixes they made up look and sound awful, but most of the time you're only talking about rough numbers and the subtle difference doesn't matter anyway, and for those cases in which you need the exact number if bits, I haven't seen a better idea yet.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
A few years ago, the local phone company was expanding their infrastructure to include cable and internet service. The distribution system involved putting little buildings in neighborhoods where the phone company ran high speed fiber lines. From there they split out the normal phone and cable lines. Since we lived just 200 ft from the building, I asked them if they ever planned to run fiber to the homes instead of having to use copper for internet. The told me that would never happen because fiber optics cause cancer!
The other day I was looking for a compact flash 802.11 card. I got scoffed at by the techie. "You either want a compact flash or you want a wireless card? What will it be!"
Sounds to me like he is saying "we made up the words and terminology to describe industry specific meanings and terms, so now others should not tell us they are wrong and try to change them."
Or as you might have put it, "we CREATED the terminology, how dare they corrupt it?"
Byte is specific to the computing field as far as I can determine. Therefore, kilobyte and megabyte are also specific to the computing field and should be defined in relation to the computing field - not by others stating 'we have a word that is simular and means X, so your word also has to mean X or we get confused.'
If you had had a word for our situation, we would have used your word and your definition. You didn't, so we created a word with our own definition. Too bad, our (made up, industry wide understood) word doesn't change meaning just to make your life easier or to prevent your confusion. If you want to use our words, us our meanings.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Come on, you know the rest!
:o) jk
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
...Breaking News...
This just in: Standard computing term "byte" has been redefined to refer to a group of 10 bits, rather than the previous 8. "The old standard was simply too confusing," say laypeople. The new term for referring to a group of 8 bits will henceforth be a "bibibyte." Industry insiders quoted as saying "WTF?!"
When an entire bank of PRI lines went down killing over 1500 dialup users, the RFO I got from the vendor was:
"Unscheduled testing of the emergency battery backup system"
So I asked the tech, "You mean someone kicked the power cord and the ups did not take over..."
I was greeted with dead silence.
"Jesus saves sinners...and redeems them for valuable coupons"
They're not reading from que cards
;-)
Uhm. Que?
(Hrm. Seems Slashdot doesn't like my Spanish question mark, or I don't know how to enter it.)
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
I work as a contractor for the Postal Service. We have National Support (through EDS I think). Anyway, the Desktops, file servers, and networking are supported from the National Support. A while back, we were experiencing a problem with a new computer we were attemting to set up. The network card lights were acting unusally, and we couldn't get it to connect to a server. After about 4 hours of dickering around with it, we finally decide to test DHCP. We turned on a machine that hadn't been on for over a month, and bingo, no IP address. Steve, our Network Engineer, calls the help desk to activate a new range of addresses on DHCP, that we lease, but they administer for us. He gets on with the Tier 1 guy, who immediately attributes the problem to sunspots, because of the sunspot forcast that had been broadcast widely that morning. Steve gets ticked, and tells the guy, "I want to talk to somebody who knows something about DHCP please." This guy gets someone else on the line. He starts to give Steve some line, and Steve quickly cuts him off with: "Do you want to do this your way, or do you want to hear how come we know what the problem is?" After about 10 seconds of silence, Steve tells the guy that we can release and renew and the computer will get a new address OK, but a machine without an IP can't get one. The guy decides to take a look, and of course, every IP we've made available is leased. He then spends about 15 minutes activating new IPs, and sends us on our way. To this day, anytime we have an new issue pop up that can't be immediately be solved, it's chalked up to those sunspots.
Somewhat OT, but when I was in college I worked at the computer help desk. My all-time favorite complaint was the calls I would get asking for help to find the "any key". Remember way back with those dos based programs that would say,"press any key to continue" to get the text to scroll to the next page. I still laugh when I imagine people looking all over the keyboard for the anykey button.
Christ. Now I've seen it all. Don't you people have something better to do than debate the correct definition of a Byte?
;)
Go outside. Read a book. Get a girlfriend. Almost anything in the world, including gazing at your own navel, is more important than this discussion.
Yeah, I know. I must be new here.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
It could have been something even simpler, probably the tech was looking up the modem using the MAC address that was on file, but potentially the group entering MAC addresses into that database made a mistake or didn't update it properly. So when the tech pulled up the diagnostics, he saw a modem that had been online...
But it wasn't your modem.
I was troubleshooting a Macintosh with issues connecting to a cable provider. Upon questioning the user, "What did your cable ISP tell you the problem was?" The user's response was, "They told me it's an issue with my Winsock files and I need to have them replaced."
Ummm, look up the word "jargon." And what exactly are you getting at in that second paragraph?
I once worked at the service desk of a computer store. One day, a guy comes in - walks to the service desk (at the back of the store) - past the display computers, the rows of software, accessories, and all the related signage.
He puts a small box - about the size of a ATX PS, but with tubes coming out of it instead of wires - and asks me how much to replace it.
"What is it?" I ask
"It's a compressor for a 4510." He says.
"What's a 4510?" I ask.
He looks at me like I'm an idiot, and says "It's a dishwasher - don't you know anything?"
So I say "we sell computers here."
"Really?" he says - and then when I point to the afforementioned computers, software, and accessories that he walked past to get to me. He surveys everything, and says "Oh. I guess it is. I thought this was Trail Appliances."
"No, they're one block down."
*sigh*
Once, I called for tech support on a broadband connection (directed wireless). The connection had gone down. He instructed me to pull up my Network control panel and read him the IP address.
I informed him that the IP address was a local, internal IP address assigned by the LinkSys router.
Him: "Just read me the IP address"
Me: "Okay. It's 192.168.1.101"
Him: "I'm going to try to ping that from here"
Me: "Well, you're not going to get anywhere"
Him: "Hmm. I can't ping that IP address"
Me: "Yeah. I know. I tried to tell you that."
And then some BS about restarting the computer.
Me: "Look man. The light on modem labeled 'Connected' is not on."
Him: "Well, I show you connected"
Me: "No, you don't."
Eh.
My relative works for a city government office. She had the recurring problem of not being able to login to the network services when she came in at 8 a.m, but could connect at 10 a.m. and such. The explanation given 'your computer needs to warm up before it can use it's network card'.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
-Ma! I want ma' kiwibytes! -Not until you finish your vegeteables!
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
About 4 years ago, when I was doing an internship in CT I was stuck on dial up. I was having problems using my connection once establishing it (I had never used the modem in that computer before, having been on campus and all) I finally gave up tinkering on my own and called tech support at my ISP
Me: I can't seem to get anything that uses TCP/IP to work.
Them: delete your cookies.
Me: (I can be a stubborn ass) This isn't a problem with my browser, I can't use telnet, I can't use ftp...
Them: delete your cookies.
Me: Why?
Them: What do you mean why, you need to delete your cookies so we can see if one of them is causing a problem.
Me: Do you understand that I can not use ftp? I don't use the ftp client built into netscape...
Them: Oh, you use netscape... here is how you delete your cookies.
Me: I am not deleting my cookies, this is NOT a browser problem.
Them: then I can't help you.
Me: Can I speek to someone higher up?
Them: just a moment...
Manager: What is your problem?
Me: TCP/IP isn't working.
Manager: Delete your cookies
Me: It's not a browser problem, I can't use ftp or telnet either...
Manager: telnet?
Me: It lets you remote control a UNIX computer else where, and it runs over TCP/IP.
Manager: Your cookies are skrewing up TCPIP.
Me: They can't do that.
Manager: Don't tell me about this stuff, I have been doing computer support for 2.5 years.
Me: I have been doing it every summer for the last 4 years.
Manager: If you don't delete your cookies. We can't help you.
Me: Can I speek to someone higher up the ladder?
Manager: No.
Me: (hang up)
Me (calling back later, after trying on my own some more): TCP/IP isn't working, I can't ftp, can't telnet, can't do anything... I called earlier, I don't want to delete my cookies, becasue it isn't a browser problem.
tier1: Are you the guy that was talking to my boss earlier?
Me: yes
tier1: he is such an idiot, here try this (I don't remember what the solution was)
Me: thanks, can I have your name so I can request you if I need someone who doesn't have hsi head up his ass?
tier1: yes... (name) (I don't remember anymore, had it on a post it for a while, but then I moved and changed ISPs).
If you are out there dude, thanks again...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Nothing wrong with hiring the unqualified. Actually, hiring based on "the smile" or some other non-technically related thing is smart. Nothing wrong with that at all. Problem starts when they keep leaving, right? Anyway; theory is different from practice, so that's probably where it all breaks down.
The idea is to create a work environment where people want to stay; if my boss called me a mushroom, or said that I "brighten up the room" or whatever, I would be like "forget you, you jerk." Or "dregs" - a human being... a "dreg"? Dude!!! Isn't it obvious why you can't hang on to your employees? Geez!!!
The main focus, really, and this may be hard to deal with, is job satistfaction. Job satisfaction is the secret - this is what improves customer service satisfaction ratings; this is what improves (lowers) turnover rates. With happier customers, happier employees, and lower turnover rates, you know what happens? Profit margins improve. Get your budget right here.
Try a little respect and human understanding. You can't treat your employees like mushrooms, dregs, or flower arrangements and expect them to feel wanted (which they are, actually, because I am sure that most people have lower turnover rates as a goal).
We had a great one once where a user called us and said she couldn't get her document to print. My collegue was walking her through printing through the Mac OS9 Finder.
"Okay, click on the printer and then go up to the 'Printing'" menu."
"There is no printing menu."
"Is the printer highlighted?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. Okay, read to me the menus you have on the screen."
"Okay... File, Edit, View, Special, Printing, Help. Nope, there's no Printing menu."
This sentence's period was stolen This sentence knows who took it:
I worked in internet tech support once. one of the passed down answers they gave for people experiencing slow connections was to have them ut their modem settings to
AT&F&C1&D2
All this does is reset the default settings on the modem and tll them they connected at some bogus speed.
I got fired for arguing this bogus tactic with the older support crew. Oh well!
DirecPC has outsourced their support to Indian index card readers. Our DirecPC connection at work had died for no apparent reason. Having delt with this before I went through all the steps of re-running the config program (they sometimes switch transponders on you without an automatic update). I exhausted all my resources and finally called their 'support' line.
The poor schmuck on the other end couldn't understand that I had already done everything on his index cards, so I played along until he got to the end and said - 'I am sorry that I have not been able to resolve this problem. I will pass it along to an engineer who will contact you within 2 to 4 days'!
2-4 days!? I never did hear from the engineer, and the system fixed itself after a couple more hours of outage (no changes, just let it sit).
Another time I had problems connecting to my webserver from DirecPC. I could ssh to my home system and connect just fine, so I knew the problem wasn't the target system. I finally traced it down to the DirecPC system, somehow they were blocking part (or maybe all) of EV1 Servers (several other sites I know are hosted there also weren't available).
This time I actually got to talk to a real network guy, who still couldn't understand the problem (I guess dealing with total morons all day could do that to you). Finally I reversed roles on him, told him to click on Internet Explorer, type in my website in the URL box and give it a try. Presto, he finally got it. It was fixed within an hour.
For people like me (and I expect a large percentage of slashdotters) it would be nice if there were a tech. support phone number reserved for people with a clue. I do know how to troubleshoot a network connection, I do know how to operate a mouse, I just want an intelligent conversation with someone who can do the same!
Remember Lexington Green!
Actually with DSL there's more overhead for small packets. Typically, for DSL the providers use PPPoE with a LLC/SNAP header. LLC/SNAP adds a 10 byte header (rfc1483), Ethernet adds a 14 byte header, PPPoE adds a 6 byte header, and PPP adds a 2 byte header, adding an extra 32 bytes per packet.
In addition, DSL runs over ATM. ATM chops up packets into cells. Each cell has a 5 byte header and a 48 byte payload, except for the last cell, which can only have a 40 byte payload due to an 8 byte trailer.
Needless to say, there's a fair amount of overhead for small packets with DSL. I know this because I write code to forward and terminate DSL PPPoE sessions.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Ther ewas a time this kind of discussion on slashdot would have tons of Admins talking about how stupid their users are. I'm shocked about how many users are on here talking about how bad tech suppourt is. It really makes clear the changes in the slashdot user base in the last few years.
Rice
pending committee review
I was unable to browse to anything, and doing my own troubleshooting, quickly determined that it was Verizon's DNS servers not responding. Things worked great by IP, but nslookup timed out.
So I called Verizon, and while waiting on hold, got the bright idea of using Verizon's business DNS servers (different pair of IPs). That worked.
I waited for the tech on the phone anyways, and explained what I had done.
Verizon: "In your browser, can you please enter http://www.verizon.net and tell me what you get?"
Me: "It works"
Verizon: "Um, so it sounds like you fixed the
problem"
Me: "yeah"
Verizon: "I need to ask you one more thing, are the lights on your DSL modem lit?"
Me: "Ah, yeah".
(I probably should have said "No")
You're all a bunch of fucking nerds.
Persons: PTH -- me, Pan Tarhei Hosé; SMC -- a tech support guy, Stupid Moronic Cretin. A phone conversation:
PTH: Good morning, there is a problem with your router with IP a.b.c.d, it seems to--
SMC: Have you installed the latest Explorer patch?
PTH: No, but this has nothing to do with www, your router seems to drop--
SMC: You need to patch your Explorer because there is a virus in the wild.
PTH: That's great but I am not talking about Explorer, I am talking about ICMP packets which are apparently--
SMC: It is against our terms of service to use unpatched Windows.
PTH: Yes, that's interesting indeed. Fortunately I am not using unpatched Windows so that having been said we can now go back to the meritum. The router in question--
SMC: But you just said you have not patched Explorer?
PTH: Because I don't use Explorer God damn it! Will you please listen to me? I have investigated where the ICMP packets are being dropped and it is your router with IP a.b--
SMC: Explorer is integrated in the OS so even if you are using Net Escape (sic) you still need to patch the libraries used by Explorer.
PTH: Listen to me! I don't use a God damned Windows and even if I did it is completely irrelevant because your freaking router is dropping ICMP packets which I need to--
SMC: You mean like TCP/IP packets?
PTH: No! I mean like ICMP packets!
SMC: For WWW?
PTH: No! For ping, God damn it! This does not matter! It is broken and it has to be--
SMC: Not for www? Do you know that we don't allow P2P networks?
PTH: Yes! I don't give a flying fuck! Please listen to me! I have--
SMC: But how can you not have unpatched Windows when you just said you didn't patch your Windows?
PTH: For the same reason I don't have vaginal infection even though--
SMC: You mean you have a virus? Then you should--
PTH: No! I mean that... Ah, never mind!
SMC: If you have a virus you should first patch your Explorer and then install an anti-virus software. Do you have anti-virus software installed?
PTH: No, I don't need any anti-virus software on my OpenBS--
SMC: Everyone needs anti-virus software, because--
PTH: OK then! I have anti-virus software! Your router is misconfigured because it--
SMC: Was it updated after the new virus came out?
PTH: Yes!
SMC: And you have some problems with the Web, right?
PTH: No! I said--
SMC: I thought you said that there is something with the network?
PTH: Yes, the network, but not... Ah, what's the point... Yes! I have problems with the Web! The WWW problems with my Explorer on my Windows!
SMC: OK, what do you see when you click start button and then [...] and [...] and point to [...] and scroll to [...] and click [...] and then push [...]?
PTH: Uhm... I see... I see Ping Error.
SMC: PIN error?
PTH: Ping, P-I-N-G Error.
SMC: What version of Windows?
PTH: The best one. Fresh install.
SMC: Patched?
PTH: Yes. Every day.
SMC: Thank you for your help. I will contact our technicians and we will investigate the problem as soon as possible.
PTH: Thank you...
The problem was solved few hours later. I got an email from the more competent technician explaining that they had some problems with one of their routers which was blocking ICMP traffic and that is why my ping could not work... They were sorry it took so long but it was very difficult to find where exactly the packets were being dropped because they have many routers. He also asked me to report more details next time than "WWW problems with Explorer on Windows: Ping Error" if I want them to react faster... Needless to say, I cancelled my contract the next day quoting the above conversation as the reason why I will not buy anything from them ever again. I believe the SMC was fired.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I think this discussion is clearing up why people don't care for calling customer service / tech support. All the people doing tech support either don't know what they are talking about, or think themselves gods of computers and open to insulting and degrading the people they are talking to when they are confused.
How would all you computer nerds feel if you called a doctor for medical advice, and they made similiar comments about your stupidity at not understanding a topic foreign to you?
Or maybe I need to start working at a company that doesn't care whether I insult the intelligence of their customer's. Where I work, I'd be fired in a heartbeat for making such a comment, because these customer's give us $8mil dollars a year in business at least. Or, they are a fellow employee whom I choose to not lord my computer knowledge over and instead respect and provide help to.
And we wonder why people are intimidated by technology. Maybe it's because of all the high and mighty jerks who are in the technology field.
Highlighted are the words key to understanding what he said:
"If you are measuring bits/sec of traffic vs. bytes/sec of data."
Traffic = transfer including TCP headers, data = data the computer/application is processing after the headers are stripped off and processed.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
> What does it take to get straight answers from these people?
Persistence, mainly. I had to call Comcast four times, replace my cable modem, and get a technician out three times before my intermittent connection drops were fixed. The third guy actually had his head out of his ass and fixed me right up.
(Turns out that a squirrel had chewed through the cable coming into my building, and the loss of insulation was causing the signal strength to drop to the point where the modem would lose its connection.)
One time I was administering a school network consisting mainly of SunOS systems.
We had recently gotten HP-UX systems and at the time the HP-UX systems were not able to access NFS mounts off the SunOS servers (don't remember ultimate reason, it's been a while).
Anyway, in the midst of working the problem, before I truly had a good idea of exactly what was wrong, a girl comes up and asks what is wrong with the network, and I explain:
'Our network we have, it smokes crack, and these new systems, well, they are also smoking crack, but it's a different crack and we need to get them to coordinate their crack smoking more...'
She gets a bit insulted and indignant, thinking I'm talking down to her because she's a girl and not a sysadmin or anything and says: 'I can handle a more technical explanation than that!'
And my truthful answer: 'But I can't'.
She quickly laughed, smiled, and was reassured I wasn't truly talking down to her, I just had no clue....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I used to work at best buy as a Tech-- And this is quite unlikely...at least for RAM...
Any Memory Module (stick of ram, you know) whether it is defective or not is considered defective and gets shipped back to manufacturer. Tust me, we wouldn't want to take the time to test the ram at the tech bench, then package it back up, then walk it all the way to computers when we could just stick a piece of paper on it and let someone else deal with it as it was sent back to the MFG. It was acctaully the process we were told to follow.
This isn't true for all hardware, but for RAM it is.
I wouldn't doubt merchandise going back to shelves untested.
...about when he worked for IBM, back in the 1970s.
;)
He said that when they itemized their bills, they had to use code numbers. When they had especially thick folk to deal with, they'd list "Code 33". It's much like the ID10T or PEBKAC terms, but much more cryptic.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
The "Chronicles of George" has the best collection of bad tech support explanations I've ever seen. And, nominally, they're all from the same person.
http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/index.htm
FrontDoor 2.02; Noncommercial version Press Escape twice for...
Let's be honest. You can usually tell within the first four sentences spoken - including the greetings and introductions - whether the caller is going to be capable of following instructions and perhaps even useful toward resolving the issue, or will be completely, utterly fucking worthless.
It's amazing how much you can learn just from hearing someone's voice. And I haven't been wrong yet.
+++ATH0
Looks to me like that DSL rep would have offered a better response with one of these Tech Support Spheres instead.
Lessee (shakes sphere, reads answer): "Network Error" - see? It works!
- Rob Wilco
Apparently, so fairly old woman got this new fangled computer thing and she wanted to get access to that Internet thingy -- so she signed up with us. We gave her the appropriate disks to install our Internet access software. Well, she had problems with it.
She called in complaining that her footpedal wasn't working well with our software and was having problems it to run our setup program.
They guy taking the call was turning red and it was VERY difficult for him to keep from laughing his butt off. Eventually, he calmly explained that the footpedal was actually a mouse and belonged on the table near her keyboard and not on the floor.
We really enjoy that one. After the call, he told us what was the deal and we all laughed a good long while about that one. I still use that story when folks call me for support and tell me something like "you must think I'm stupid" -- I tell them I've seen worse.
I try to keep in mind that this was 6 or 7 years ago when the Internet really started to catch on to the average user. Folks starting getting online (or in this case, attempt to get online) that had very little experience with computers.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
Since I am an AC, I can say that the mechanic was actually me:
Female Car Owner: My headlights are not working right. Can you take a look at it for me ?
(later) Mechanic: I checked it out, you are running low on halogen-headlamp-fluid. You need a fill-up. It's going to cost you..
Whine whine... Didn't we all say that when Wired coined "surfing the net" and swore we'd maim whoever we'd catch using it ? And look where we are now ? Not that I'd actually use that expression. But I definitely use the new units because they make sense. That variation in units has always bothered me, it was untidy. Maybe to the usians who are used to the medieval way of making things with units in thirds of powers of twelve every other twenty to make a round number (or however you measure things over there), it's just another special case and it doesn't matter much, but to the rest of us who live in a logical world, it was annoying. I know I've already fired 6 new guys who refused to use SI units. Another two died mysterious deaths. I think the others learned their lesson.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Silly English Kaniggets!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
EL: The virus software is breaking your email.
ME: So do viruses. It was working yesterday, virus software and all.
(for the record, this tech did not solve the problem, and email started working all by itself 2 days later.)
No, mod parent down, he has no idea what he's talking about.
First off, TCP/IP is not listed in Add/Remove Programs on ANY version of Windows.
In all cases, although it is generally an issue of the protocol being unbound from the network adapter, rebinding usually does nothing, a complete reinstall of TCP/IP is needed. On Win95-ME, this means removing every instance of TCP/IP from the Network control panel applet. Removing only the one on the adapter will only unbind it.
Me, I don't like Windows, but at least I know it. I do ISP tech support, this is in the top 5 most common issues I have to deal with every day.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
I have 10Mbit cable connection (6Mbit of which is guaranteed) for less than half of what you pay for it. Lucky you say?
Oh yeah, I happen to live in Belgium
I did a 6-month gig at a financial trading house outside NYC. I was filling in as a temp network manager until a replacement for the old one (he quit) could be found. They made their new hire, and I had one month left on my deal, so I stayed and helped the transition. The director, who hired the manager, was a mainframe guy, and didn't know PCs at all, only big iron. One day, the director is trying to use PC-Anywhere to control a remote PC in England; PC-Anywhere is not running full screen on his local PC, so he can't see the entire remote desktop on his 17" monitor. He calls the new network manager in: Director: How do I enlarge this window so I can see the whole desktop? Manager: Lemme try something. (no luck at all) Manager: Ah! I know the problem! You have a 17" monitor here, and the remote machine probably only has a 14" monitor on it, so that's as large as it can display." The director looks at me skeptical. ME: So then if you disconnected the monitor from the PC in England, you couldn't use PC-Anywhere? You'd just get a blank screen? Director: Manager: Let me try something other things... I was happy to leave this contract... I took with me the most valuable piece of advice I've heard about contracting, from another consultant there: "Never work for a place where the primary product they produce is money!" kM
-- You can't drink all day. (Unless you start in the morning...)
That's because "Teir 1" were the same folks you talk to about your cable bill. They didn't know a cable modem from a toaster oven...all they're supposed to do is weed out the people who can't get email because they're typing their password with caps-lock on.
;)
Your experience, while definitely frustrating, is the best case senario. I worked Teir 2 for @Home for 2 years, and believe me, you didn't want Teir 1 going off their script. Anytime they tried to get technical it was even money that the customer would get transfered to teir 2 with a reinstall of Windows gone horribly wrong. Unfortunately, plenty of my colleges on Teir 2 were just as clueless, and had no concept of the infrastructure beyond the cable modem. For them, if a modem was down, it automaticaly meant there was a problem at the customer's house. I saw my share of tickets showing a gateway was down, but rather than report it we just sent a tech out to swap the modem.
Tech support reps always talk about clueless customers being good for a laugh, but I was infinitely more frustrated with clueless techs. Around half our calls were people who were calling back because the first time they got an empty shirt who gave them a solution that had nothing to do with their problem. 80% of the work was being done by 20% of the techs, because the vast majority didn't ever try to find out the specifics of a problem. All they could do was memorize generalities like symptom x has solution y.
What was even more fun was watching those same people get promoted over better techs time and time again. The golden boys were the guys who would automaticly find a reason to end a call if they hadn't resolved the issue within 5 minutes. All managment knew was that their call times were low...nevermind that it was due to them never having solved a problem
A couple years ago my Quest DSL line suddenly stopped working. Qwest said they were replacing some cable in my area and my line probably got disrupted. During the next 2 weeks I made 35 calls to Qwest support. I reprogrammed my Cisco DSL router twice, had my local computer shop do it (twice), replaced my network card, did registry restores and even reinstalled Windows, not to mention repeating the same diagnostic procedures over and over with almost every clueless Quest tech. Finally, technician #35 said, "Oh, wait, you're still in bridging mode, you're supposed to be in PPP mode. [clickety-click] Try it now." And presto, it was fixed.
Presumably this technician was looking at the same screen as the other 34 who hadn't noticed that the mode setting was wrong. If only I could have billed them for my time. My partial reward came 2 days later when I informed Qwest that I was switching to a local ISP, and explained to the customer service rep EXACTLY why they were going to waive the account transfer fee. They did.
I've been happy with my local ISP ever since. (QuidNunc.net in West Seattle).
Been there, done that. I bought one of the original Logitech TrackMan Marble trackballs and spent a couple months cleaning it, jerking it around, banging it on the desk trying to get it to go left consistantly. Then I made the "breakthrough" realization that it happened on hot days. Figuring it was just a loose wire I spent another month bemoaning each day as the sun would come in and "heat" up my mouse to the breaking point. Eventually something shaded just my mouse and I realized the optical trackball was being blinded by the light. What a horrific experience.
LOL, my first post to Slashdot after years of lurking.
I had a interesting hardware problem with a Digital VAX 6000 class machine.
I happened to be on call and the night operators paged at 2am to say that the backups were not running on the VAX computer. I tried to diagnose the problem over the phone, but it was not happening. When I got to the data center, the box was powered off (even though the key was set to run). When I turned it on, it would start to run through the self test and about half way and then just power off with no message on the console. I logged a service call. When the field service tech got there, he ended up having to call back to DEC to get help diagnosing the problem.
It turned out that it was an airflow sensor in the cabinet that was faulty. He actually diagnosed it by using a paperclip to bypass the airflow sensor. By the time he tracked down what the problem was, it was getting close to start of business and the machine needed to be up. Since we did not have a spare airflow sensor on site, he used a second paperclip to create a redundant bypass for the sensor so we could keep the machine up for the day and then replace the sensor at close of business.
I got a kick out of telling people that the machine was only running because we had a redundant dual paperclip fix in place.
I've noticed the most ludicrous answers to my computer questions are answered by Best Buy employees. Sometimes I go there to buy hardware to get that "instant gratification", but most hardware can be bought for much cheaper over the internet, even with shipping.
I once went there to buy a stick of Crucial pc2100 to add to my pc. First off, the ram is behind the counter at the Best Buy in my area, I suppose to prevent theft, even though there seems to NEVER be anyone at the desk to help you, so it's pretty difficult to even read prices/ram info. I finally got an associate at the desk after a while and asked him if they had any crucial pc2100 512mb sticks in stock:
me: "Do you have a 512mb stick of Crucial PC2100 in stock?"
counter monkey: "Yes, we sure do!" (hands me a 256mb stick of Kingston)
me: "No, I meant Crucial RAM."
counter monkey: "Oh, all RAM is crucial to your system!"
Needless to say I had to point to the package that I wanted, after trying to explain to him it was a brand and I needed 512mb stick, not 256.
I had a bad 15 pin serial port on my laptop. I called support to have it sent in and repaired and of course I was run through a cue card session to make sure it was *really broken*. By the end of the call, the support guy had me hooking my laptop directly up to a printer (using the parallel port obviously), and printing a test page. I asked him what this had to do with my serial port and he said it was just a procedure we needed to run through. I grudgingly obliged and after I informed him the test page printed correctly (no surprise there) he says "Well ma'am, it doesn't look to me like there is any problem with the port on that machine" I had absolutely no response to give him.
I work network support for the Deptartment of Education in a major metropolitan area, and we got a trouble-ticket sent over to our group with the following Problem Description:
"how do I set up a teacher's iBook so that teacher can access DOE email at home without the need for an internet service provider"
Responses we came up with:
1. A REALLY long ethernet cable.
2. Terrestrial microwave.
3. Print the emails as they arrive, pay couriers to deliver the printouts.
4. Our datacenter is moving to a new building at the end of next year, suggest moving it into her apartment.
You're not actually a fucking wolf, you stupid, twisted furry.
Here's an example of why I use Windows:
E:\>uptime \\athena
\\ATHENA has been up for: 423 day(s), 19 hour(s), 48 minute(s), 26 second(s)
It doesn't take much to make a box run indefinately - I've never had a problem with uptime on any machine except the one I'm in front of the constantly - whether it's Windows or *nix.
Saying "This is why I run X" and flashing up some stats doesn't prove anything.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Read the rest of the thread, this person is simply kharma whoring by spewing bullshit about subjects of which he has no clue.
We usurped kilo- and mega- and applied it to our word, byte. Kilo- and mega- already had their SI meanings; we didn't invent them. We then continued to grab with giga-, tera-, and even still with peta- and exa-. Or rather we complain that they should be binary in measure but in common practice they're metric.
If we were to have clean hands, we should have adopted our own unique terminology: thella-, mella-, bella-, trella-, quella-, etc.
Meanwhile we have two meanings of our own for mega-, and when applied to bits per second we have more confusion (sometimes measured metrically, sometimes binarily). Consider for example the assumption that you can convert between b/s and B/s with a factor of 8 when there could be a hidden mega-/mebi- conversion factor in there as well. It shouldn't take 5 minutes to verify.
You might as well get used to them, because those who know and care about the difference will continue to ask you to clarify whether you mean metric or binary measure. Eventually it'll be quicker for you to just use the MiB and metric-MB to make it clear at the start.
(Meanwhile there are people who believe that the reason why their 250 GB drive only comes up as 232.8 "GB" is because they lose 17.2 MB due to "formatted capacity", overhead in numbering every sector like they were pages in a book. Bullshit. Filesystem overhead for a blank disk should be well less than 1 MiB; the discrepancy is adequately explained by the metric-binary conversion.)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
A few years ago (when RAM wasn't quite so cheap) I decided it was time to upgrade my memory from 64MB to a whopping 192. I called a few stores, priced it out, and picked the cheapest vendor.
I went to the counter to pay for it and the guy asked where my computer was so he could install it.
"It's ok," I replied, "I can do it myself."
"We have to install it, sir. Most people don't know how and end up breaking something. It's just easier if we do it." Ok, fine. My computer was only a 5-minute drive away and even with the $10 install fee it was still less than the memory at the next cheapest store.
Half an hour later I'm back home with my newly upgraded computer. I plug it in, hit the button, and hear a "pop". Then the distinct smell of burning electronics.
Fifteen minutes later I'm back at the shop. This time I go into the back with the tech. We open the case and survey the damage. The motherboard, video card, memory (both the 64 and 128MB sticks)and CPU are all toast. The sound card and CD-ROM and floppy drives were all that survived. The cause? Memory installed backwards.
They ended up giving me a brand new system (and one 133 MHz faster, at that). Much better than the memory upgrade I had wanted.
I was having continual problems with the Solaris port of a backup package. They preferred that we log all support calls through email and their website rather than speaking to a live person. The company had a method of collecting all the goodies from the system (/etc/system, /var/adm/messages, st.conf, and so on) so that they can diagnose the real nature of the problem.
/var/adm/messages:
So, I sent in the collection, I almost immediately got an email back saying that my system was dumping core when it was rebooting, and that was the source of the problem! When trying to explain, they included "proof" by including some the text from
May 18 18:11:34 SERVER genunix: [ID 454863 kern.info] dump on {Partition} size 1280 MB
When I read that I wanted to reach through the terminal and strangle the guy, but for some reason, I patiently explained that that message was NORMAL.
That was typical of their support staff. We never got our problem resolved after numerous attempts, until we purchased a completely different software package.
you actually get an explanation?? I just get put on hold, and then lose the connection when battery on my wireless phone poops out. Hint: Use a speaker phone.
What?
Since you have said yourself that 1 Byte/sec = 8 Bits/sec. So how then does 1 Byte/sec = 9 to 11 Bits/sec? that's like saying 1Byte/sec = 1.5Bytes/sec.
It doesn't work. What I think you REALLY mean is it takes about 1.5Bytes of traffic to send 1Byte of payload. So in order to get 1 Byte of a file transfered you must actually send 1.5 Bytes of data.
But then when we go further you say:
8 is optimal, which doesn't happen much
Of course it would be optimal to send 8 bits of payload with only 8 bits of traffic. The part that bothers me is "that doesn't happen much" It doesn't ever happen when sending data over the internet. So unless you're talking about swapping punchcards, I don't know what you're talking about.
The fact that you seem to be totally oblivious to the inner workings of TCP and the principles of reliable, stateful, data transport over lossy, state-less protocols/lines/technologies just adds to the cluelessness. (Just in case you're interested in becoming clued someday, what i'm saying is that you're totally overlooking lossed packets, which by design TCP hides from applications using it).
A few years back someone convinced my mother that people nationwide were unable to use IE at the moment, so everyone in her office had downloaded Netscape to get by with until IE was available again. I tried to explain to her how ludicrous that was, and the whole time I was really curious as to how such an idea had come about, since most things like this have some horribly misunderstood basis in fact.
This is the first time I've come across any other reference to said outage. Odd.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Good story, but not related to grandparent who was told to disconnect printer because of a problem with his DSL. Computer locks up, sure, check peripherals, but not getting lights on a cable modem? What next - "Okay, sir, next step is to open and close your garage door. Then reboot the modem again."
You must die. Would you please do so right now?
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
You should try Fry's sometime. People will buy something, put something entirely different in the box, and return it. Then, without even opening the box, they will shrinkwrap it and put it back on the shelf. Once I bought what appeared to be their last initio LVD SCSI controller and ended up with an ISA SCSI-FAST card. Needless to say I was pretty fucking pissed off.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
*** Email begins ***
-----Original Message-----
From: ************@Dell.com
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 8:05 PM
To: j*****@*****.com
Subject: Dell tech support
Hello mr.J*** B*** my name is C****** I am ha dell tech you call and spoke to me I have to tell you that I am going to change your damage system to ha new system because I read your case and I speak whit my manager and he approve the exg but I have to tell you are going to get ha new branded sytem the model is going to be ha latitude D400 Sr. I well like you sen me ha responde for this email to my email.
My email is *******@dell.com
Sorry for the problem you get whit the system but I am going to correct the problem thas wy Dell is the number one because we have customer like you very special please wen you email back sen ha phone number so I cant call you back.
C**** H***
Latitude Tech Support
WTF is a usian?
If you need a term to refer to a United States of America citizen, you can use some abbreviation of United States of America, append citizen, or just call us Americans.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
"Anybody that actually says either of those words [kibibyte and gibibyte] in my presence is getting bitchslapped, no doubt, and probably sent packing during the next set of layoffs."
Many thanks. Could you include the people who divide by 1000000 in their programs to get MB, amongst those to be laid-off.
Quite a number of years ago, I (foolishly) purchased a $5,000 notebook PC (brand and retailer omitted). After several months, the removable CD drive stopped working. I called the tech support number where I was greeted by what sounded like a 14-year-old reading from a cue card. I explained to him the problem and that I had 10 years of experience in PC support and repair. I told him all of the things I had done to determine (positively) that the drive was dead. He began:
TSR: "Turn the computer off."
Me: "OK."
TSR: "Turn the computer on."
Me: "OK."
TSR: "Is it working now?"
Me: "Uh, no. It didn't work the last 25 times I started the computer either."
TSR: "OK. Turn the computer off."
Me: "OK."
TSR: "Turn the computer on."
Me: "I think I know where you're going, but I've got nothing better to do right now..."
TSR: "Is it working now?"
Me: "No!"
TSR: "OK. Turn the computer off, but don't turn it back on again."
Me: "Woo-hoo. That game was getting boring."
TSR: "OK, eject the CD Drive from the bay."
Me: "OK."
TSR: "OK, now slam it back in."
Me: "Huh? Excuse me?"
TSR: "Slam it back into the bay."
Me: "S-L-A-M?"
TSR: "That's right"
Me: "You realize that I paid $5,000 for this?"
TSR: "It's OK. Just slam the drive into the bay. Really hard."
Me: "...click..."
$5,000 notebook PC went back to the store for a full refund...
I had an RM (Research Machines - read Microsoft Mk 2 for all UK schools) engineer come in to set up a brand new server that would run a new network of sixteen computers.
Bloke arrived late, after I'd been hanging round for an hour waiting for him. Spent 30 minutes opening boxes because I'd been instructed not to open anything. Asked me to lend him a screwdriver. Previously, I'd had to unpack, cable up and position 16 PC's because of course they wouldn't do that for us, even though the whole lot came from them and the engineer was in the place all day.
He unpacked server, connected cables, turned it on. When pre-installed OS booted up to a script where he had to type in the settings, I went to phone an RM bloke to ask for some of the settings because the engineer's little reminder sheet didn't have the settings I thought it ahould.
Bloke on phone talks to RM engineer, says I was right, tells him different IP numbers. Engineer types in new numbers, clicks a single button and it starts going through an hour's worth of set up scripts which were pre-installed. He typed about fifty characters tops, from a pre-prepared sheet.
Half way through, phone call from RM saying they'd given him the wrong settings, gave him a third set of different addreses. Now he's buggered because the process is already half-way through. Has to dig out his manual to see what has to be changed.
Wanted to know what IP a printer server was getting from DHCP and neither of us knew (I only work at the school, they set this stuff up). He seemed baffled so I said just wait and then we can lookup the MAC address of the printer server which was printed on the bottom. Might as well have told him to flugalarize the canton sprocket.
Oh, and he point-blank refused to install the latest service pack for the machine which had arrived in a seperate envelope the day before and required the machine to reboot, so the next month we caught Sasser and all sorts because it hadn't been patched and we couldn't take it down in the meantime as people had been using it all the time.
All in all, a complete balls up.
When two thirds of Americans have home internet access? I guess brake and clutch are jargon terms too. Computers are pervasive throughout American society. Basics terms are not jargon.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
DVDA might be mistaken for DVD-Audio? or something to do with DVDA?
Besides which, kilobyte and megabyte and gigabyte is not jargon. It is a computer term.
Uhh, Jargon is defined in more than one way. It can mean:
The specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group.
OR
Nonsensical, incoherent, or meaningless talk.
Think about both those definitions. They're the exact same definition, just seen from both sides of the technical support check-in desk.
Words. some of them are meaningless to some people no matter what, and insider terms are present in every industry. I don't think you can really defer a word's validity simply because its definition can't be universally inferred.
in fact, doesn't that expressly qualify these words AS jargon?
There can be no forgetting that one. It took weeks for them the cuts to heal to the point where they could take out the stitches.
Then they wouldn't let me come back to *work*! I had to take a job as an MCSE instructor in Seattle just to get by.
Bastard!
Not an explanation I have been given, but instead gave to someone of whom I later told it was a joke. An employee at the office I was working out of had to get his laptop on the network and it would not get an address. Well, the line was showing good to the tester but I went ahead and re-terminated it as a crossover instead. This ended up fixing the problem (the wall plate had been terminated wrong) but he was not in the office when I fixed it. I glanced behind his desk and there was a whole bundle of CAT5 back there, I pulled out a particular strand of it and when he came back in to ask the problem I told him the line was kinked and the electrons couldn't get through, just like a water hose when it is kinked. He bought it even though he use to be a service tech at an RF amplifier company! Couldn't stop laughing for half the day. I did tell him the real problem afterwards.
I'm seeing this story from another point of view.
Often when I call tech support I have a idiot at the other end of the line.
In your case you had someone:
- that was able to solve a routing problem himself, without having to escalate the problem to someone else.
- that was enough self-confindent to evaluate to 1 minute the time to solve the problem.
And you don't trust in a company that have high level tech support people?
Besides which, kilobyte and megabyte and gigabyte is not jargon. It is a computer term. Sorry but your attempt to revise history has failed.
Jargon. Specialized technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject.
Not being jargon but a computer term sounds not so right. Just a thought.
Recently I bought one of those Virtually indestructible keyboards. When I hooked it up, it didn't really work well, and blinked a few times. Being a PS2 keyboard, I tried it in bios and some keys worked and some didn't, so I wondered if it was a special keyboard with special logic and if maybe I could wake it from it's stupor. So I figured, what the heck call tech support, worst case they tell me what I already assumed which is bad keyboard. What he told me was completely unexpected.
"Bios is a bad place to test it, boot into windows so we can see if it's installed right."
To which I replied: "Installed.... Installed? -- This is a ps2 keyboard you know..."
To which I got the stupified answer "Yeah, we need to make sure the driver installed correctly."
*Sigh*. And they wonder why people dread calling tech support. And you know why now your entire family calls YOU for tech support.
Oh, and I returned and got a new keyboard and it works great. I hope that tech support guy eventually figures out that PS2 keyboards, and 'legacy' USB keyboards are controlled by bios. As they should be.
- Brett
Hmm, thellabyte mellabyte trellabyte quellabyte...
You may have something there! I say we all just jump ship and adopt this new naming system. It sounds pretty cool...
Sapere aude!
You are aware that a USB extension cable has a different connector than the A-B cable that is packaged with the hubs, right?
Still, it's all in the marketing. If you need that particular cable, the store knows this and will price it accordingly.
"Oh...I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you...it only works for the pure of heart"
What I found surprising was the number of people who said:
"How did it know???"
Do stories about failing to qualify as Dumb-ass tech support reps count?
...and no my name is not Daryl.
I interviewed at Novell a long time ago when I thought I knew a lot about computers. During the group interview, one of the guys asked me to describe the Windows Registry.
Clueless as to the correct answer, I took my best shot at it. Said I: "Isn't that where you send your card back to Microsoft to register the copy of Windows that you just bought?"
Years later, I now understand why one guy at the table nearly spewed his drink through his nose...
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Saying "This is why I run X" and flashing up some stats doesn't prove anything.
Of course not. But it made me feel better, you insensitive clod!
bash: rtfm: command not found
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I had a cable modem from Shaw a few years back and it often dropped all packets for a few seconds every couple minutes. I tracked it down to some machine on their network and explained to this Guy on the phone that I had ping logs from an external machine that proved the problem was outside of my home. He told me that by pinging so much (every second for many minutes) I was "ping flooding" their server. I wanted to explain that I was sending 32 bytes per second but I was so stupefied all I could do was say "oh" and hang up. Only later I thought of snappy answers ("32 bytes per second is flooding your server? Oh! I think I found the problem! You should upgrade the 300 baud modems you're using!").
Some days later they accepted there was a problem, and changed all the cabling in my house to see if that would fix it.
Idiots.
This reminds of my experience @ best buy a year or so ago, shopping for a firewall. My worst case of tech support ever.
Me [then-14 yr old geek]: do you know where the firewalls are at ?
employee [teenage jock]: *confused* uhhh....Don't you mean 'firewire' ?
Me: No...Firewalls...
employee: ohh....we don't have them here. You can go buy them at Lowe's...
[FYI: Lowe's is a national home improvement store chain in the USA]
> Actually calling 1024 'kilo' and 1024^2 'mega' has always been insider jargon
All of the terms in question, "bit", "byte", "nybble", "word", "double word",
"quadword", "kilobyte", "megabyte", "gigabyte", "terabyte", and so on and
so forth, are *all* inherently jargon. End users don't have any clue what
any of them mean (and shouldn't have to, in this era of hard drives large
enough to store more documents than you have time to create before the sizes
have inflated so much that your drive is so hopelessly tiny it belongs in a
museum). Just because they're jargon terms is no reason to change their
meaning.
> What 1024 bytes are _really_ called now is a Kibibyte
*WAY* fewer people use that terminology than the traditional terminology.
The 1000-byte "kilobyte" and the million-byte "megabyte" were devised by hard
drive manufacturers who want to inflate their size numbers. No operating
system by *any* vendor uses this type of "kilobyte" or "megabyte", nor does
any bandwidth provider of which I'm aware, nor any common throughput-measuring
software or device, nor any popular application software I'm aware of. Pretty
much just the hard-drive manufacturers.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
My IBM workstation takes Registered ECC ram. Crucial and Kingston both told me to buy non registered ram, which would fry my northbridge. It isn't funny, but it is bad advice.
I remember when I was getting DSL, and was going to hook up an old box with Linux installed on it to the connection to route for the rest of my machines.
I was informed very quickly that when I was asked what operating system I was using, to say a Mac. Because if you say Windows, you get a lot of proprietary Windows stuff, like an internal DSL modem that only works in Windows.
So, if you say "Mac" then they send you a router, and the Mac instructions are clear enough, that if you're accustomed to using Linux, you can glean your needed information from the Mac help.
To this day, I continue to say that. Even though my server (running Linux) is going to be connected to the real connection, I tell them that I'm using a Mac (and I have a Powerbook, just in case I need to "prove" it). And if the connection works for my Mac, it'll darn well work for my server.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Ok, this really isn't a tech support issue. My friend was staying in this apartment complex where they have centrally controlled AC/Heater. Summer had arrived - it was June in Phoenix, Arizona and so it was pretty hot. For some reason, the apartment complex hadn't turned on the AC yet. When my friend went to the office and asked them why they hadn't turned it on, the lady there gave her a blank look and then after a while said: "We can't turn on the AC because we have been using the same pipes for heating over winter. The pipes have to cool down before we can turn on the AC". WTF?! I'm not even sure what that means. The did turn on the AC the next week though. I guess the pipes cooled down.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
that for various reasons, 8 bits may not equal a byte.
Due to the tcp/ip overhead and whatnot, you end up actually transmitting 12 bits for every byte of data; this is straight off a Microsoft exam, so take that with a grain of salt.
A more accurate example is serial with parity protocols. Basically, a serial communication requires some kind of error checking built in. Some serial standards do it with checksums, as in "I'll send you 32bytes and then expect one byte of hash data. If your hash matches mine, let me know and I'll send the next block. Otherwise I'll just keep sending this one..."
But some serial protocols use parity and mark. Basically, parity are extra bits inserted into the stream as error checks. Parity can have values of odd or even; I forget exactly what that means, but I know that it takes 2 bits per byte... that makes the protocol require 10 bits to send every byte. Mark (or space) is simply having a standard-sized pause in between bytes; kind of like the retrace interval on a monitor. In my old RS-232 days, mark could be anything between 0 and 2, in half-integer increments; that was the number of bits to not send either 0s or 1s.
Point being, ethernet is also a serial standard... so is DSL... so your bits and bytes rates might differ due to protocol overhead...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Is acre farming jargon? Is fuse electrical jargon? At least two thirds of the US have home internet access. Computers are too widespread for basic terms to be jargon.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
As a Best Buy employee I feel a bit obligated to defend my employer a bit. Well..actually...I don't give a shit about the company, just the people I work with. There are a few basic problems that contribute to this ignorance referenced here. First of all, whoever said that the training consists of "if you don't know something, make it up" was basically right. That's what they tell us during the department training. Well..recently it's been, "if you don't know, make something up, then ask ****" (where ****=yours truly). Second, we know that the markup is absurd, we can't help it, yes I think it's stupid to pay $15 extra for gold plated USB cable, but we risk losing our jobs if we tell them to buy the regular cable (which I often do). However, I'm just a teenager and live in a financially stable home. Some of the employees (a lot in my store) are putting themselves through college and wouldn't be able to pursue an education if they didn't keep their jobs. Will BestBuy fire employees for not selling the more expensive "accessories" as they call them? You bet they will. I hope that some of you may consider that the saying "hey, I just work here" does carry some weight. However, these employees should be more honest and just find someone who knows their shit (like me, not to toot my own horn, but I know the stuff), instead of trying to bullshit a customer. In addition, to the employee who said "you shouldn't even be in best buy!"...god bless you, yet if you had your way, I wouldn't have ANYONE interesting to talk to! Now, to spin it the other way, a few moronic CUSTOMERS I've had. Customer: Ya so I want to install Linux. Me: OK, what distribution do you want to run? Customer: You know...Windows Linux Me: Linux isn't made by Microsoft Customer: Well I want the one that will run on Windows XP. Now I could have gone into dual booting, but I didn't want to have to clean up if his head exploded. Another great one Customer: Where are the cameras? Me: You Just Walked Past Them. Customer: You Mean Those?! Me: Yes...next to the huge sign marked "Cameras" yes I was rude...cut me some slack...this isn't a rare occurance. And my personal favorite, asking the network guy (me) if I can help her buy a refrigerator. I hope I've at least cleared up a few things, and to those of you that deal with moron employees when you to bestbuy remember...I deal with them 8 hours a day 4 or 5 days a week... Touche! --- Buffer
i had just moved from one us coast to the other, and called mindspring for the local dialup numbers in boston. i was told "that information is available on our website" :)
We can borrow a precedent from existing units. There are metric tons, long tons, short tons - the latter two a little over and a little under a metric ton.
I already heard the term "vendor gigabyte" and "true gigabyte" when refering to disk capacities. Why not use this or similar nomenclature that's intuitive, instead of making new units that are incomprehensible for the outsiders and laughter-inducing for the insiders?
Nothing against neologisms that make sense, being it blog or plog or moblog - but kibibyte is just WAY too much.
- Microsoft Tech Support re: MS Word problem
lets give credit where it's due: i used to work at one hour photo lab (which is a much worse job than tech support) we had an old fuji minilab that was on its way out, and required nearly weekly calls to fuji support to keep it propped on its last legs fuji support is unbelievable! yes, the hold times are long you might wait 6 hours for a call back, but, when you got a tech, you knew your problem was solved, and quickly. i'd be deep in the guts of the machine, phone pinched between ear and shoulder, with needle nose pliers in one hand and screw driver in the other, talking to the tech: tech: "you see the L-shaped bracket holding the CB212 circuit board to the lens deck?" me: "yes" tech: "thats one the you remove to get to the nerps underneath the deck" ...
they would hapily walk you throught the whole disassembly, they were just great, and, they had trust! after they'd gotten you through the hard part it would be "just reset the nerps with a ballpoint pen and reassemble in reverse of the disasembly"
me: "thanks!"
tech: "just call if you have any problems!"
it was cool
and there really was a part on the machine called a nerp (plurarl: the nerps) :)
About a month later, we were experiencing a problem that prevented us from having a connection.
I called GTE and spoke to someone about the problem. They kept giving me a bunch of BS. When they asked which operating system I was using, I said Linux, and they said that wasn't supported. So on the third or fourth phone call, I said Windows, and when they told me which networking window to go into, I typed the commands into the CLI that would yield the same result. But all of this was to no avail.
Finally, after spending some time checking my settings and the network, I came to the conclusion that our side of the connection was fine and that GTE's DHCP server was down or otherwise not responding to us. We weren't being assigned an IP address, and therefore our connection appeared to be down. I called their number again and told their tech support people that they need to check the status of their server. Of course, they were all some minimum wage folks reading off some screen, so I begged and pleaded to be put through to someone technical, which was finally, after countless arguments, granted. I told their tech guy what I thought about their DHCP server. He checked, and sure enough, I was right. He punched something in, and we were back in business. Oh, and I got their direct phone number, in case of future bullshit.
The clueless tech support people are just there to help equally clueless users set up simple stuff in Windows. From that moment forth, I always figured out and solved my own problems. (Increasingly, it's this way with my cars and other equipment... Most people just don't know what they're doing.)
Quite true. Kibibytes sounds (to me, at least) like some type of dog food.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I built a new whitebox system for a friend, all new parts and *hiss* Win XP.
Put all the bits together, powered on, got lots of beeps from the bios, and a grinding noise from the hard drive. Hmmm, hard drives fscked methinks. Problem is I got the hd from Ebuyer. So I go to the ebuyer site to get an RMA number to return it.
"In order to accept returns of Maxtor Hard Drives, you must first visit the Maxtor Website, and download the Win32 only Hard disk diagnostic software, run it on the affected machine, and post the results in the TT on Ebuyer."
Only then will they issue a RMA number.
Call me childish, but I didn't feel like doing that with a drive that had no os installed on it, let alone won't get through POST !
Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing on the ebuyer TT, I get them to accept that the drive was DOA and to give me a RMA number.
(I drove to another town and picked up the exact same drive and had XP running an hour later - Have never used ebuyer since. I actually had to threaten them under the trades descriptions act , UK, which states that I can return something within 14 days for any reason if it was ordered remotely. Especially if it was not Fit for the Purpose it was intended for.) W*nkers.
I could use a DVD player...
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
Not having seen the screen in question I'd have to say that this is the correct answer. Measurement of asynchronous systems (such as dial-up) generally refers to BPS (bits per second) and includes the start bit, stop bit and parity bit (if applicable). This means that to send 8 bits of data, you need at least 10 bits (to include the start and stop bit). Or 11 bits if you include parity. Parity bit is optional, and stop bit may be 1, 1.5 or 2 bits. If you include the overhead of a protocol (TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, etc.), then the overhead is considerably more. Tech support answer clearly BOGUS. (Kind of like the guy at Radio Shack that said I couldn't use rechargable batteries in a wireless microphone because they needed two positive terminals.) Marty R. Milette Custom Toolbars
This reminds me of something I once heard. Somebody actually called a Futureshop and asked them how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty.
old farts who spread outdated information.
Good thing I just used my mod points, so I can reply for a good number of "old farts".
STFU, noob.
Or, Byte me.
*G*
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
i ordered cable internet last week. the tech who came over asked me what OS i was running.
i told him linux. he asked me how i liked it. i told him i had been using for 5 years and it was great.
he then said it sounds like a good OS, but to bad that it was dying and wasn't going to be around soon.....
i just started laughing.
Many of the manufacturers allow you to use online chat for tech support. It is great because every time they ask you the same question over and over again, you can cut and paste the same response.
//server no longers brings up a webpage. Also can no longer see the efg with the setup utility
Here is my last tech chat session with Linksys on a problem we had with the EFG80 NAS.
case id 2624601
MastenZales: Suddenly my dual hd efg80 shows duplicate sharess with ie folders public and public~1 AND the
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Thank you for contacting Linksys chat support. How may I assist you?
MastenZales: hello thanks for answering
MastenZales: As you can see, we cannot get to a web interface on our efg80. It has been working flawlessly for over a year but today we noticed that we cannot access the web admin and that there are dual shares
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: You may try to unplug the power from the efg80.
MastenZales: I have powered off but not unplugged it . does it matter?
MastenZales: i just now downed and unplugged and is now powereing up
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Okay.
MastenZales: it did not fix it
MastenZales: is it possible that the web configuation is corrupted?> How do I get it back? Where is it stored?
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Try to access the web-interface of the efg80.
MastenZales: Yes, that is why i contacted tech support. I cannot access the web interface.
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: You may also try to reset the device.
MastenZales: how do I reset it?
MastenZales: and what will I loose in the process?
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: In doing that, all the settings that you set on it will be back to the default value.
MastenZales: ip and everything? Will I loose my data and shares?
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Yes, but before doing that try to unplug the power from the efg80 for about a minute.
MastenZales: ok
MastenZales: reset is a bit distructive It holds lots of company data.
MastenZales: it is unplugged
MastenZales: where is the config info kept? Is it possible to get access to it?
MastenZales: ok powering it backup
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Thrn try to access the web-interface of the device.
MastenZales: the web interface does not appear.
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Did you changed the IP address on the efg80?
MastenZales: I cannot get to an interface to change the ip. As i explained before, the setup wizard will not access the unit, i cannot access the webinterface. How do you suggest we change the ip?
MastenZales: plus i can access the data with \\server but i see duplicate share names
MastenZales: It must be becase the mirror is broken
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Try to launch your internet explorer and on the address field type http://192.168.0.2.
MastenZales: yes, I do that but i cannot get the web interface to work.
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Are you using a router?
MastenZales: my ip are different but i can see the shares, ping and everything else.
MastenZales: no it is on the local lan
MastenZales: and on the same subnet
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: What is the IP address?
MastenZales: 10.10.10.20
MastenZales: subnetted 255.255.255.0
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: That is the IP address on the efg80?
MastenZales: yes
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: And that still doesn't work?
MastenZales: yes it does not work!
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: How about using the 192.168.0.2 IP address?
MastenZales: it is not set to that ip and if it was , my shares would not be visible from the 10.x subnet
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: You may try to set a static IP address to your pc.
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: Set it on the same IP segment of your network.
MastenZales: I have the same problem on all my office pc's
MastenZales: I do not think it is ip related I has to be a failure on the system
LinksysTechSupport Padillo: You may still try to set a static IP address to the pc and try to run the cd.
MastenZales: that d
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"What utter rubbish."
I know you are, but what am I?
I was on the phone with Apple tech support about some issue or another, and after describing the problem I was told, "There are a million possible points of failure."
My response: "Well, let's start with the first one and go from there. I've got lots of time."
I called MSN to report a problem with an expired DNS cache entry. The representative I talked to kindly informed me that they did not use DNS servers.
I desperately wanted to joke about having to download a 1GB hosts file or typing IP addresses by hand (What is the IP address of Google, again?) but it shows you what some techs know.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
My horror story of tech support is from APC, from whom I solemnly vow *never*
to buy or recommend *anything*. We had an ongoing issue for *months* with the
software for one of their UPS units. I'm home ATM and don't recall the exact
model number. The issue was an annoying intermittent one, wherein from time
to time the software would decide for no particular reason that the UPS was
operating on battery power (when in fact it was not) and activate five-minute
automatic shutdown sequence. This was happening at night, causing many of
our overnight backups to fail, and it was happening first thing in the morning
when I (the only IT person on staff) am not normally there, causing a lot of
panic among the staff (this system is *the* computer, the *one* that matters,
the single mission-critical point of failure that CANNOT be down during the
day), and I was told in no uncertain terms this had to be fixed *NOW*, but
APC was totally unhelpful. I must have spent a hundred hours on the phone
with them. Every *single* time I called, I had to wait while the tech
support rep did a web search to find out what VMS was. On more than one
occasion I was told that the product we were using (PowerChute for OpenVMS)
did not exist, and that VMS was not supported. Also, despite that the
trouble ticket CLEARLY stated the problem was with PowerChute for OpenVMS,
were were told that we would have to purchase PowerChute for OpenVMS, since
the problem we were having was due to having the Windows version of
PowerChute installed on VMS, which was not supported. I was given Windows
instructions and on one occasion Unix commands to follow. I was told that
the problem was with the city's power grid. I was told that the problem
was with our application software. Various people told me that they would
research the issue and get back to me, but the only one who ever did told
me that the problem must be the PC's serial port, despite that I had already
explained numerous times to numerous people that the cable from the UPS plugs
into LTA16, an RJ45 port on a DECServer terminal server. I called and I
called and I called and I got *nowhere* every single time. I asked on one
occasion to please speak to someone who knows VMS, but it never happened.
We ran for weeks at a time on several occasions with the PowerChute software
disabled, meaning that if the power went out at night we'd have an unclean
shutdown -- unacceptable, but far less likely than the problems we were
having with PowerChute enabled. The problem was never properly resolved.
Needless to say, I will never buy an APC product again, and neither will
the library as long as I work there.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I refuse to use them on the grounds that that is just bending over for the marketing types, when the correct response is a good old-fashioned class-action lawsuit. If the hard drive manufacturers were actually on some high-and-mighty mission to use proper SI units, then they wouldn't define a GB = 1000 MB with MB still defined as 2**20 bytes. This is deceptive advertising, plain and simple.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Because it is backwards the way it was written. The person wrote bits/sec = bytes/sec * 8. This is like saying feet per hour equals miles per hour times 5280.
Which is wrong. That would mean if you have 4 bits, you have 32 bytes, or if you 2 feet, you have 10560 miles which is backwards.
This is the proper way to do it. There are 8 bits per byte, right?
8 bits/1 byte (and we don't need to write the 1)
Say we have 4 bytes/second, how many bits would it be? Since we know what bits/byte is, we can multiply.
4 bytes/second * 8 bits/byte
Divided out the bytes and we are left with bits/second
Then we have 4 * 8 bits/second = 32 bits/second.
No, he continued after that to say:
;)
Shouldn't it be bits/sec = bytes/sec * 8?
That is what I was saying is wrong, because it is wrong. It should be bytes/sec = bits/sec * 8. Those who don't agree are stupid morons and should go back to math class.
And while I'm on it, this equation is also garbage.
bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14
The reason this statement is wrong is because 1 byte = 8 bits. I'm not the one nitpicking here, he is. It's like saying 2 + 2 basically equals 5, I mean c'mon. I get his point (the one he completely failed to mention, that they commonly measure different things) but some people are replying as if it is literally true. This makes me think there is a case of "utter stupidity induced by technojargon" going around. Common in newb-nerds. 8 bits is 1 byte. It's called binary mathematics, not Micro$hiat XPMath 3000!
What are they teaching Kids in schools these days?
They're teaching kids that kilo means 1000, and kibi means 1024. That's the whole point of the metric system, so it works all across the board! Like how 1 g of water = 1 cm^3 = 1 mL. Or how E=mc^2 and that's all you need to figure it out. x J = y kg * speed of light m^2/s^2. No converting of calories and feet and pounds. F = ma, PV = nRt. It is exactly one billion times easier to calculate this when you use metric and kilo always means the same thing.
Kibi and Mebi have nothing to do with computers and all to do with binary. They are powers of 2, whereas kilo and mega are powers of 10.
Complain all you want that it is stupid and how new terms frighten and confuse you, but it is too ****ing late! This is how it is. Kibi is a factor of 2^10. Should you choose to use that to represent 1024, that's your choice. I think the words are lame, but there's nothing to argue about. Someone made up this way to represent powers of 2. Use it or not however you deem fit.
Judging from a Google search, DVDA, despite the naughtier alternative meaning, does in fact seem to be commonly used as an abbreviation for DVD Audio.
Blind people have fantastic hearing, are you blind?
No, wait... how can anything run on one SIMM? It thought SIMMS had to be paired no matter what?
SIG: HUP
Usually a byte was used to represent a character, but that hasn't always been true, and Unicode means we're getting used to multi-byte characters again.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
One should be careful of calling others morons, when you are, yourself, wrong.
No people, bytes/sec = bits/sec * 8 is absolutely an incorrect statement, in any context. And it has nothing to do with math class, and everything to do with basic computer science.
A bit is a Binary digIT. It is a single digit having only one of two values, either 0 or 1. It is the smallest possible element of computer data.
Commonly, in current computer systems, we group 8 of these bits together to form a byte. So, for every byte of data transmitted, there are 8 bits that have been transmitted. If you send 1 byte/sec, then you have sent 8 bits/sec.
Therefore, to compute the bits/sec from bytes/sec, you would need to multiply the bytes/sec by 8 (since 8 bits are sent for each byte, 8 times as many bits transferred as bytes).
So, the correct equations would be:
8 * (bytes/sec) = bits/sec
OR
bytes/sec = (bits/sec)/8.
And, for those wishing to further pick nits, I am ignoring any overhead for protocols, etc. This is more about the incorrect math everyone seems so confused about, than accounting for every bit. Consider this as applying only to data transferred.
I'm posting this Anonymously, as I am an Earthlink employee. I can tell you for a fact that (a) Earthlink's Live Chat is actually answered by a person, although most people would swear it's an Eliza bot, and (b) the techs who handle it are all based out of India, and the reason for the Eliza-ish response is the fact that some of these techs have a very loose understanding of English, and as such they have several pre-canned responses handy.
Yep. That's exactly what I'm talking about. It was such a common thing back when I did tech support that we made it one of the very first things we'd try (just after "is it plugged in" and "do you see an Apple in the upper left corner of the screen?" :-) ).
In the future we will have a less confusing standard. It takes 10 doggits to transfer 1 cubit of dots from one box to another. It can never take more or less doggits to transfer 1 cubit of dots from any box to another box. Taking anymore doggits results in a fine for confusing the end-users. 1 brain stick can hold 100 cubits of dots... no more, no less. Access to the wire does not cost anything because everyone works for the betterment of society. Transfers will always take 10 doggits for every cubit. You can only transfer an even number of cubits because there is no way to measure less than a whole cubit... and all transfers must be measured, so you know it takes exactly 10 doggits to finish each cubit.
So this one could have been correct? Damn.
The ISP in question had some issues with that particular point of presence that got solved later. It would have been nice for this to be true though!
Anyway, well deserved "Interesting" score!
I actually agree with most of what you wrote, with at least one exception.
:) - did not 'usurp' the kilo- and mega prefixes.
'We' - the computer industry, I had nothing to do with it
I could be entirely mistaken, but I understand that kilo- as a prefix means 1000 of what ever the next thing is - kilograms means 1000 grams, for example. However, kilobytes - one word with part of the word that (unfortunately) looks like another word that means 1000 - has never meant 1000 bytes, it was originally and has continually meant 1024 bytes.
Same with mega- and megabytes. 'Megabyte' was defined and has always meant 1024*1024 bytes. Note that when hard drive makers and marketers use the word to mean 'mega-' (1,000*1,000) bytes they specify that they are using the term in a non-standard way in small print somewhere.
Again, my point is that the terms used in the computer industry mean specific thing to those in the computer industry and should not have to be changed to conform to expectations from those not in the computer industry. I also think non-standard usage (your example of the 250 gig drive that won't hold 250 gigs is excellent example - unless using 'raw volumns' unformatted capacity is useless information.) as a marketing term is deceptive advertising and should not be allowed. Instead of advertising a 250Gig hard drive that only has 232.8Gigs available, advertise it as what it is, a 232.8G hard drive. If all the drive sellers were honest in their advertising, then we would still have apples-to-apples comparisons and could make informed choices.
As it currently stands, marketing knows you would rather have a 250Gig hard drive than a 232.8Gig hard drive - even if they are the same drive. And as long as vendor A is willing to sell you the 232.8Gig hard drive as a 250Gig hard drive, vendors B, C,and D have to use the same marketing slight-of-hand to inflate the storage capacity or lose the sale to vendor A - just as 21" screens now specify that there is only 19" viewable but are not sold as 19" screens as they should be.
I also agre that if the original creators of the terms had used more imagination with their naming this would not have been a problem. If they had originally used words other than ones that already had meanings in other areas like Kilo- and Mega- then this confusion would have been avoided.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
I had once a bad experience with my local phone company, Bell Canada.
The line was cutting repetedly (like, every 10 secondes) and some distortion was audible on the line. Not to mention my adsl connection wasn't functionning.
We used to pay for some "line quality assurance", a kind of disguised tax on my phone bill. Well, that time, the quality hasn't being assured.
It took 11 days before I could get a tech to look at the problem. 11 days without internet connection, and with a sound of something that sounded like Slayer's songs playing backward in the background. Charming, believe me. When the guy came, he told me the "little delay" has been caused by all that particulary bad weather lately. A rainy 45F isn't particulary bad weather. Not in Québec.
The guy look at some cable outside the house, shakked 'em a little, took the phone for 15 secondes and leaved qithout saying a word. I runned to ask him what the problem was: "I don'T know, I guess it's working fine now." I told him I had to see if I could connect to the internet: "I'm not here to repair your internet, i'm here to repair the phone line. If you can have a conversation ver the line, my job's done."
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance." Isaac Asimov
I went through a similar level of tech-support hell with eBay last year.
I had an eBay account for many years, although I only used it 2 or 3 times. I decided that I wanted to start using it again, but my registered e-mail address was the address of an ISP account that I stopped using several years ago.
So, I went to change the address, and eBay says that I need to give them a credit card number. What gives? I read through their help pages, and they say that they request this from free/anonymous e-mail services, and that I should use an address from a paid-up ISP account to avoid having to give them a CC#.
But my address is a paid-up ISP account. So I e-mail them to try and resolve this. They first tell me that my ISP is a free-mail service. It's not (I'm using Earthlink with an address in the mindspring.com domain.) Then they tell me that Earthlink also offers a free-mail service, which is why their database lists it as such.
I phone up Earthlink and ask about this. They tell me that EL does not, and never has, provided free mail access. I ask them if they can talk to eBay about correcting this. EL says that this isn't their problem, and they won't make the call.
So I contact eBay again. I tell them everything EL told me and asked them to review their database entry for EL/mindspring, since it is obviously wrong. The response I get back was basically "we don't make mistakes, you are a con-artist trying to defeat our security, give us the CC# or go away." Not in so many words, but that was the impression I got after several more rounds of attempted communication.
I gave up in disgust. I changed my eBay password to a random string that I made no attemt to remember, to make sure I will never be tempted to use their service again. Then I sent their corporate management a snail-mail letter telling them exactly why I will never do business with them or any of their subsidiary companies again.
They never replied. Probably never will.
This isn't the only such incident, but it was the worst.
More recently, I tried to convince The Motley Fool to stop spamming me. Every time I get a mailing from them, I follow the unsubscribe links. I get another mailing a week later, and when I follow the links, I find that they "helpfully" re-subscribed me. Direct mail to the people suppsedly in charge doesn't even get me a form letter in reply. I ended having to change my registered e-mail address to a bogus address in order to make the mailings go away. Which also locked out all access to my account - good riddance.
Ditto for Fry's Electronics/Outpost.com. They spam me every month and they ignore all their unsubscribe requests. Direct mail to their customer support addresses and corporate offices accomplished absolutely nothing. I'm just glad I gave them my spam-trap mailbox when I ordered that hard drive last year, so I don't have to see their junk in my real mailbox.
These corporations just don't give a damn about their customers. They've dropped all pretense of even pretending to care. Unfortunately, this kind of behavior is typical of everybody these days. The corproation that actually takes an interest in customer concerns is extremely rare, and growing more rare evevry day.
You're writing 8x bytes = x bits. If you solve for x = 8, you get (8)(8) bytes = 8 bits. 64 bytes = 8 bits. Which is wrong.
I wrote x bytes = 8x bits. If you solve for x, you get 8 bytes = (8)(8) bits. 8 bytes = 64 bits. Which is right.
However, in progamming, you WOULD write it the first way: bytes = bits / 8 or bits = bytes * 8.
There is important differences between both the assignment operator and comparison operators in progamming and mathematicial equality . (and if anyone wants to explain it in depth, feel free. I've demonstrated it, and that's all I have the energy to do right now.).
Bonus Algebra info!
If you have 8x bytes = y bits, then if you solve for say, x = 20, you get (8)(20) bytes = y bits, 160 bytes = y bits. Which gets you nowhere. If you say, solve for y = 160, you get 8x bytes = 160 bits, then you end up with x bytes = 20 bits. Which, similarily gets you nowhere (even though the answer is staring you in the face).
The way you can solve the equation is to say that x bytes = y bits and you are given the information that 1 byte = 8 bits. Therefore, 1 = 8 bits/byte.
Solve for x = 20.
x bytes = y bits
20 bytes = y bits
20 bytes * 1 = y bits
20 bytes * 8 bits/bytes = y bits
20 * 8 bits = y bits
160 bits = y bits
160 = y
Therefore, 20 bytes = 160 bits.
bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump + 5 informative AAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHh