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Your Favorite Support Anecdote
Most of us have had the unfortunate opportunity to have worked tech support at some point, whether it was for a paycheck or for a relative. The Register has offered up a vote for several of their favorite support stories but I'm sure there are many more out there to be had. My favorite horror story was while working a tech support call for a governmental employee, when asked to take her mouse and click on the "start" button all I could hear over the phone is what I later found out was the user banging her mouse against the monitor. What other horror stories have people seen from the trenches?
Around my school I get asked all kinds of questions. As I have used linux since '98 and OS X since 2002, and our windows machines at school are locked down, I honestly haven;t used windows since circa Win98. I know very little of XP at all. People assume that since I do alot of development that I'm some computer guru. They are most shocked that I honestly can't answer simple questions about windows. I usually explain that I don't have that problem in linux or OS X. I am polite, but sincere. I explain that what I need to do on a computer is much more difficult (LAMP, java, etc.), or impossible, on windows.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Ahh, the difference between cable and antenna. Here is how it goes IIRC.
In antenna, the first 13 channels are in the VHF band, and the rest are in the UHF band. So when you get to channel 14 (if that is what it is) then instead of looking at the frequency right after 13, you look at a whole new frequency that is much higer. Channel 15 is channel 14's frequency + offset.
In cable, you aren't dealing with it being sent over the air. It is much simpler to send every channel in the same frequency range. This means that channel 13 is frequency X (the normal frequency). Channel 14 is frequency X + offset, 15 is X + offset * 2, etc. They all line up. This way the wires only have to carry one set of frequencies.
Try it out on your TV. The cable/antenna setting doesn't make a difference when you are looking at channel 5. When you want to watch channel 40 though, it's important.
So as you can see, Cable really did kill UHF. *rimshot*
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
>WWJD? Well, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't buy an SUV. But if He did, I bet He'd know how to use the turn signal.
Actually, I figure he'd get a pretty big SUV.
One or two SUVs is more fuel efficient for moving him and 12 disciples around, than using a dozen greener vehicles.
Plus he went to alot of places that didn't have paved roads where having off-road capabilities built in might be handy
=-)
have a pet theory that the reason our grandparents can't handle
_____________________________________
ahem.
I know the exception doesn't disprove the rule [entirely], but my grandmother (retired 1st-grade/kindergarden teacher) will be eighty-nine in another three or four months and grew up the spouse of a chicken farmer. (my parents are the first generation of either side who wasn't in farming) She is largely self-taught on the PC (Windows). If I send email (during reasonable hours), I'll generally get a reasonably quick response and it's not just a sentence or two. It's not because she's sitting there by the window, waiting for someone to send something. She's usually busy. She's got surfing & browsing to a science, as much for research as anything, and is using the literacy skills which go lacking in places such as this to document family things - pictures, antiques, etc. There's a massive family history she's put together which blends better than just a biography. If it's things she's been affiliated with; e.g., at a gathering with photos, she documents who else was there, perhaps why they weren't in a picture, if someone showed an injury (cast for a broken bone), how it happened, any complications, etc. Everything she can remember, she's put through the keyboard and when something doesn't come to her or she knows someone who remembers more, she reaches out to them. They may not be tech savvy, but a relative relatively chose will be and will get the information to her.
When she's not busy doing that, she's outside doing greenery. She left her old house for a zero property-line, thinking it would relieve her of mowing, although my cousins have occasionally stepped in if they catch her at it. She didn't stay there long because there wasn't enough room for all of the rhubarb, raspberries, etc. she started putting together. Considering it takes 3-4 years for rhubarb starts to grow to something useful, she didn't lose much time because of the transition.
And...she does manage to squeeze in daily exercise. She's walked three miles (minimum) every day for years, including about two years ago when she had both knees replaced (she lives in the orthpedic capital of the world - Zimmer, Biomet, Depuy, Othy, et al. and the orthopods are more than familiar with the local product). She didn't do them at the same time. Just far enough apart to recover from the first one. I made sure she asked the doc in advance if there was anything she could do physically; i.e., get certain muscles toned, to make PT (physical therapy) easier, making recovery easier. He told her that if all of his patients were walking three miles daily they either wouldn't have joint issues, or, if they were like her and did need them, the general recovery time for all patients would be a small fraction of what it normally is. He only let her walk the inside of her house at first and relented when he found out she was measuring her time walking instead of how many steps. If the weather prevents walking, she hops on the stationary bike and puts twenty miles (minimum) on it.
Now, for a support anecdote. Many years of experience as a systems programmer & tech support mainframes as well as dealing with executives & general mangement on an office automative system (pre-Microsoft Office) of 235 users should produce scads.
A couple in particular come to mind, but I could some up with some real rib-breakers if I greased the brain first. The ones I like the best are:
It was my first job after college. I'd had my own business during summer & school breaks and had more than enough clients to sock away some money by staying very busy working and coaching a client's kids' soccer team (this was the '80-'84 timeframe, so soccer was coming into vogue with kids. Those of us who were playing in college & willing to coach kids were considered premium meat & treated like gold. My team's parents finally got used to seeing me sit on the gro
I've started buying exclusively Belkin cat5/6 cables, because they have little protective plastic bits to keep the clip from breaking off when you drag the cable across the floor, but the protective plastic bits don't actually cover the clip, so you can still easily unplug them without a pair of pliers.
Never thought I'd shop for a specific brand of network cables, but I haven't found another manufacturer that does this.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;