The touch of death

I work in a medical facility where we run a few procedure rooms for operations, etc.  The PCs in the room are outfitted with a large 40″ medical grade LCD screen for viewing high-resolution diagnostic images and/or X-Rays.

At the time of this story, the screens were about 6 years old, and they have seen their share of operation (pun intended) over the years it has been in service.  The displays are always on, even when in standby mode, so the physical power switches don’t get much use.

In any case, we have third-party equipment support techs come into the ORs to insure their equipment works properly during an arthroscopic procedure (for example).  These support guys are often standing at the ready during these procedures, so sometimes they are there waiting for something to happen.

Apparently, wanting to be helpful, this equipment support tech decides that they needed to stream some Pandora into the OR.  Rather than maybe using a mobile phone, or asking IT to set it up, he just searches the Internet for Pandora.  And, instead of going to Pandora.com, he clicks on the first link he sees, not Pandora.com, which brings the OR screen to a site that loads up a browser hijacker, various porn pop-ups and fake AV – all in the middle of a procedure with a patient lying on the table.

So, a picture of a well-endowed naked woman pops (and I’m told filled the screen) up on the 40″ LCD and no one knows what to do.  The surgeon just tells him to switch it off, which he does.

However, since this power switch hadn’t seen action in…who knows how long – - the daughterboard for the switch completely fizzled out and killed the monitor for the next two months (due to other issues, we had troubles getting a repair done).

As a result, we locked the PCs down, installed Logitech Squeezeboxes in all our ORs and forbade third-parties from touching our computer equipment.

Picture Source: [JeremyMcWilliams (CC)]

 

Did my mom and dad just call you?

Right after I graduated college, I was an EasyTech Expert at Staples for about 9 months. I received some rather amusing visits and telephone calls, but one man stands out.

I received a phone call from a gentleman who needed help with some printing, and “didn’t know who to call”. I was happy to help him, even though I wasn’t sure if he had purchased his printer from us, or to be honest, how we were connected with the issue at all. We don’t do printer repairs or services at Staples – we only sell them. I go through the normal process – checking that the printer had ink cartridges, paper, was powered on, connected via usb or wirelessly, that his computer had the drivers installed… all of that jazz. He confirmed that his wife was printing from it that morning. We were able to print a test sheet to confirm that it was operational, but he was still unable to print an email.

I repeatedly go through the printing steps, in much more detail:

Go to File->Print, or Control+P

A Print Dialog window should appear – verify that your printer is selected correctly and click Print.

Watch for errors – if none appear, grab your document.

After about 45 minutes, he still can’t get it to print. I have a customer who appears confused buying printer ink cartridges and a rather pissed off store manager staring at me, so I have to put him on hold for a few minutes to spin damage control. I’ve been running computer scans while helping the guy, but since I’m not making a sale, my manager is a bit pissed at me. When I return, he still can’t get the document to print. I repeat the full list of steps again, and he decides to keep me on the phone chatting for about 10 minutes while he waits to see if the printer pops out anything new. Nothing happens, so I go through each step with a ridiculous amount of detail, asking him to confirm everything I say with the action he performs. I can hear his wife asking him if she can use the phone in the background.

Everything seems perfect but it just isn’t working. It has been about an hour and a half since I began to talk to the gentleman. I conclude the call with asking him to bring in his computer (and if possible, printer) to our store and I’d be happy to take a look at it on our service desk. He asks me politely if we can try again, so I go through the steps one more time. When he walks to stand in front of the printer to wait for his document, I hear his wife yell in an annoyed tone, “OH FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, HE’S NOT HITTING OK IN THE PRINT WINDOW.”

via: [Reddit\TalesFromTechSupport]
Picture Source: [ragesoss (CC)]

“There’s a hacker in the parking lot, go find him”

I’m a know-nothing-fresh out of college kid in his first week at an actual IT job. Immediately we have a security issue. My boss says that there is an unknown device attached to our wireless network (he found the suspicious device name in DNS). He had me search the parking lot for someone “hacking” from their car. I’m sweating bullets. Is this what IT is like? Hackers everywhere trying to do me harm?

My boss finds this $700 product on, I kid you not, Sharper Image, that can pinpoint where wireless clients hide. You would have sworn we were on a James Bond mission.

Long story short, the “tracking device” basically blinked random lights, and the “rogue device” was a cell phone…that belonged to my boss. I learned that common sense is about 90% of IT.

via:
Download Spiceworks

Apologies from Rob

Hey FailDeskers, I wanted to apologize for the sparse quantity of posts lately.  I had (not me personally) a family medical emergency that had come up at the beginning of the week.  As such, I’ve been out of the office; Scott is handling double his usual workload (I don’t know how you multiple 0 by 2 and get something more than 0, but I digress!).

In any case, normal posts should resume  toward the end of the week…

Scott is doing all he can – in all seriousness, he’s a busy guy.

-Rob

Picture Source: [butupa (CC)]

My tip: Stop complaining and buy another keyboard

NSFW language embedded in the pic (totally understandable, tho’).

I’m not sure what language keyboard this is (see the secondary characters on the main letter keys), but no matter – - who would put a sleep command on the F5 key on a keyboard, NO MATTER WHAT LANGUAGE it is?

Any keyboard that requires me to hit a Fn key to get to a primary function is worthless – hence, it will be broken over my knee – much like Bane breaking Batman’s back in #497 of Batman, dousing my desk in a hailstorm of loose – and useless – keys.

via: [Reddit\TechSupportGore]