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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)
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!
Computer Stupidities Their stupid tech support section probably fits this article best.
What if this signature were clever?
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
"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.
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...
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...
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.
"Oh, that's perfectly normal; the computer just has to get used to the software."
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
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.
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".
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.
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 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
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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?"
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."
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
I haven't worked tech support, but I've worked at companies that provide tech support. And let me tell you, the worst user is the "advanced" user. Sure, the user may think you know what he's talking about, but in the end it just makes him arrogant and unwilling to listen. Heck, I've been that guy, only to feel completely sheepish when I realized my mistake.
Yes, you know the hard drive has failed. But for each user like you, there are ten users that THINK the hard drive has failed, when it really turned out to be something else. It's much cheaper to make everyone go through basic troubleshooting than to replace everyone's hard drives.
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.
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 understand, I know plenty of people who have had to work in tech support and gotten some pretty crazy calls (like the "Internet doesn't work" when the customer doesn't have their modem or NIC plugged in, or even better, no modem or NIC in their computer). I just management then would let you find out if the customer was competent, then switch to a different set of troubleshooting. Like when a hard drive went bad in a Dell I had, and the email I sent sounded like I knew what I was talking about, they quickly just asked me to run this diagnostic software they have and then report the results, not the usual run around. Or for my HP TC1000, when I called about some speaker noises and that I had tried everything, they just took my address and had it picked up. Those are the tech support calls I like, the kind where they adapt to how well you know the product you're calling about. But I can understand if management doesn't like it, they don't have to actually deal with the customers, so of course they should know what they are talking about.
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.
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.
Everything else has 'advanced user' setup. Why can't we have advanced tech support?
Because everyone will choose that. You may have to add a warning, "If you demonstrate that you aren't in fact at advanced user, you will be mocked mercilessly."
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
no, no, no, no, no! "The Earth's magnetic field is shifting. You will have to walk back to your dorm with your floppy disk wrapped in tin foil and hold it it least 6 feet above the ground."
bash: rtfm: command not found
"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.
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!
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.
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.
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! :)
That was probably because you had Dell.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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
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.
>|<*:=
Secretary calls me up and says that there is a problem with the server and I need to fix it because she has some important document to work on.
I ask her what makes her think the server isn't working (she did not use a server).
She says that the little box on the screen is moving around like it always does before she logs in (Windows NT) but that it says "No Server Input".
I say: huh?
I've never seen Windows show that screen before...
So, I try to pull up the machine via PC Anywhere... no go.
I try to ping it... no go.
I ask her to describe it again. She says it looks like it always does, but it says "No Server Input".
Frustrated... I climb into the car and drive to her site.
When I look at the monitor, well... it looks nothinkg like a Windows dialog box (which is usually grey in color).
It is a nice colorful Red-Blue-Green "rainbow" colored box... that says "No Signal Input".
You guessed it (I hope)... the monitor is on, but the computer isn't.
So, I boot the computer and all is fine.
When she asks me what I did to fix it (she disapeared as soon as I got there, like most of them do... especially if you need their password)... I told her that I had to reboot the server.
Didn't have the heart to tell her...
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
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."
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.
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 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 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.
Actually, the DVD format has a weird rule that there is supposed to be at least 1 gig of data on it, minimum, even if it's just padding. Almost all readers will still be able to anyhow.
As far as I know, though, CDs don't have this restriction.
- 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.
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.
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.
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
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 :)
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'd have cussed him out in Atheism. Which is pretty hard, because none of the words exist.
paintball
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let me guess... English goes to India?
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
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.
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.
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". =)
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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!?!?!
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)".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.