One of our users phoned up with problems reading their e-mails, so I connected to their PC expecting the usual of wrong password, popup blocker or even logging on to the wrong site. Turns out this user had a genuine issue, one that persisted after a reboot too.
I’m sure you’ve worked with a company like this Conversation with the field engineer from the vendor of our POS software (means Point Of Sale. No, really, that’s what means. What else would it mean?) “I have a theory about how your company writes software. It involves a room full of monkeys and a lot [...]
With extra special thanks to EvilRouters for permission to re-publish these. If you’ve ever played any games via the Steam network, you know what these are. As we go throughout the struggles of banal, the frustrating, the mind-numbing and inane every day…sometimes we feel like the only satisfaction we can get is the chance of [...]
One of my users requested that she get a new keyboard, preferably an ergonomic keyboard. We had one in stock so I replaced her old one and told her to try the new one out. If she liked it she could keep it. Two days later I receive an email from her saying that she [...]
Back in 2001 I was lucky enough to be sent to a conference in Las Vegas for a computer security training session called ‘Detecting and Preventing Computer Related Fraud and Abuse.’ After 3 days of a boring lecture on how easy it is to steal information from computers, the instructors had a little surprise for [...]
I support about a dozen and a half retail stores. Our busiest location called on day to inform me that the main computer in their office won’t boot, and is making a high pitched screeching sound. The assistant manager imitated a sound that sounded plausibly like a physical hard drive crash. So off I drove [...]
I had a user ask me to assist her in finding a document that she wrote several months prior. She said that she could not find it and needed a copy in order to prove or disprove something related to a customer complaint that had been made against her. She sat down at a computer [...]
You just can’t make things like this up. A user came by my desk yesterday and said she was having issues putting a file into a network drive. She tried to explain it but it just didn’t sound right so I walked over to her desk. Turns out she was copying the text from a [...]
If it has a hard drive, it should have it’s oil changed, right? At one of my previous jobs, Fridays were usually pretty easy days. If someone had a problem with their home pc, they could bring it in and I’d work on it then. Our plant engineer brought in his tower saying something was [...]
Years ago when I still worked support, I was working for a large insurance company that was helping its agents computerize their field offices. We would receive the computers in house, color code everything for the agents and then have the machines shipped to the agent. They would hook everything up and power everything through [...]