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ComputerWorld's Help Form Elicits Some Laughs
PetManimal writes "Like many websites, Computerworld has a 'help' Web form for users to submit website-related questions. The page asks people not to ask about general Web problems, or other issues not related to Computerworld, but that hasn't stopped a regular stream of funny submissions, ranging from a question about using a computer to watch soap operas, to questions about troubleshooting printer problems."
Did those make anyone else really sad? I was feeling pretty good a minute ago, but now I think I'm going to go lay down for a while.
Programming is race between Programmers, to produce idiot proof apps, and God, to create better idiots.
So far God is winning.
hilarious
I have my email address on my web site as well as a FAQ for a certain model of cell phone. I get all sorts of drivel as email.
Just yesterday I got someone asking about functionality for a different model. The message stream looked something like this:
Him: How do I foo with model 5000?
Me: I don't know. I only have a 200.
Him: So how do I do it with the 5000?
Me: Quote first email. Point out again that I don't know as I only have a 200.
Him: I have a 5000.
At that point I gave up.
Ok, ok! We're sorry. We wouldn't have said all those mean things if we had known. We had no idea that you wrote one of the questions.
One time I went into a computer store with my brother. I was checking out a computer, and the screen was laid out in a manner that made it look like a touch screen monitor. Stupid me, I was sitting their tapping the screen trying to make it load an app. After a brief moment, I'm thinking that this touch screen is broken, and then it hit me that it wasn't a touch screen at all. At this point, I'm looking around, praying that nobody saw me sitting there poking the screen like a freaking idiot.
Another true story. A person I work with is a degreed mechanical engineer, and in school he had to help design a rocket. We were trying to do something and he was wondering aloud why he couldn't get a screw to start with a cordless drill. I was looking at the situation from the opposite side at the moment, but I could see that the drill was in reverse, and I was thinking to myself, "well, I might not be a rocket scientist, but I know why that freaking screw isn't starting."
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
me: Thanks for calling AOL, how may I help you? ...um, yeah.
guy: I want to start an online business.
me: Try keyword Busines, just type...
guy: Actually first I wanted to check out other businesses first.
me: O-Kay...
guy: The most successful online business are porn aren't they...
me:
guy: Soo.. I was wondering if you could help me find some...
"mistaken identity emails"
I wish I'd known earlier. About 10 years ago I used to work with a guy called Kemp Watson and he asked me to grab watson.com for him. I did and handled mail for him.
I'd get bounces for such-and-such@watson.com from IBM and it was obvious that wonks at ibm were sending to @watson.com not @watson.ibm.com (the IBM Thomas Watson research center).
I kept writing to IBM to ask them to wake the fuck up, no no avail.
Finally when I got one that was about nuclear secrets, for your eyes only etc, I got a call back, explaied the problem and never saw another one, ever.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Well for one, I'm not a fucking moron. From an email in the article:
That's barely even English. I'm surprised that dumbass can even breath. My 6 year old neice writes better than that. That guy shouldn't be allowed to operate a fork, much less a computer.
And you know what the difference between brain surgery and using a computer is? Billions of fucking idiots think they're fully qualified to use a computer. They should consider themselves lucky they're only being mocked, cause it should be illegal to be that stupid.
Maybe not
Nowadays, most people can type faster than they can write and have access to all manner of spelling and grammar checkers but just look at the messages on that site (and many others) and it's quite shocking to witness the poor quality of what they've written, excluding the minority where English perhaps isn't their first language.
Maybe some of this change for the worse is down to poorer quality teaching nowadays but I feel it's probably more attributable to simple downright laziness on the part of the writers who just cannot be bothered to take a little more time to communicate effectively.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
FP sold a kid's outdoor tent for a while and a woman called to report that there were bees in her tent. First rule: Take everything seriously until you know for sure what's going on. It's not inconcievable that she bought a product and opened it to find bees. Strange things happen in warehouses.
So I ask "do you have any idea how they got in there?"She replied "It's in the back yard and the kid must have left it open. How do I get them out?!"
"Well, I would carefully unzip the door and open it, and maybe go to the other side of the tent and try to shake it and shoo them out, or just leave it until they leave by themselves."
"OK, I'll try that! Thanks!" she said breathlessly and sincerely.
Then there was the time a woman called to complain about a toy crescent wrench and bolt. That's all it was, a wrench and a bolt, sold as an accessory for a toy workbench. Her complaint? The wrench and bolt didn't come with instructions. I spent about 15 minutes trying to explain to her how to use a wrench on a bolt, how it fits on it. She couldn't comprehend it. She insisted that we were negligent for not including instructions.
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