Experiences with non-techies

[OmicronNeon]

My "favorite" is when I get customer's asking me to do something we don't or calling in to have me get into one of their accounts or phone as if I have instant access. When they cannot understand why I cannot, I then have to explain to them that these things are not actively open for security and their privacy. At this point, some of them have hung up in a huff.

A recent instance involved a guy (I was working at AT&T advanced technical support at this point) who called in to have his email fixed on his phone. For starters, his iPhone didn't have the right password saved and his email was an outlook email which I did not have access to (nor could I pull it up online because our location blocked most sites they considered "out of scope"). In short, he wanted me to fix the password and then push the fix to his phone while he was at work and expected me to do this without him having do anything and insisted that we could do. The trouble is, we had no access at our location for remote access to iPhones (which requires iTunes to do) and outlook wasn't an email we serviced. If someone had done this for him in the past, it wasn't us. He said he keep calling back until he got someone who could help him.

 

My truly favorites are the ones who came to me about their phone making no sounds (iPhone) and they failed to check the silent switch on the left-hand side. At least these ones didn't get mad at me, they just acted embarrassed.

[Godlygamer23]

On 2/1/2017 at 0:22 PM, themctipers said:

listen to the video i linked you  

i dont see screen tearing, and vsync is really annoying.

Dislike of V-Sync doesn't imply that playing beyond your refresh rate makes a difference. You can simply turn off V-Sync and use a frame rate limiter. There is literally no reason to render beyond the display's refresh rate. Your monitor will only display 60 images per second. If the GPU is rendering beyond that, the extra frames are either lost or they're displayed alongside others, resulting in the tearing effect.

 

In fact, this is how NVIDIA's "Fast" technology works. The GPU renders as many frames as it can(similar to turning off V-Sync), but drops the extras so tearing doesn't occur, and you get no additional input lag that would occur from V-Sync. 

[Seamonster420]

19 hours ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Not this guy again:

 

 

His next video will probably be a twenty minute rant where he complains about all the dead pixels on his screen.

[DocSwag]

16 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Dislike of V-Sync doesn't imply that playing beyond your refresh rate makes a difference. You can simply turn off V-Sync and use a frame rate limiter. There is literally no reason to render beyond the display's refresh rate. Your monitor will only display 60 images per second. If the GPU is rendering beyond that, the extra frames are either lost or they're displayed alongside others, resulting in the tearing effect.

 

In fact, this is how NVIDIA's "Fast" technology works. The GPU renders as many frames as it can(similar to turning off V-Sync), but drops the extras so tearing doesn't occur, and you get no additional input lag that would occur from V-Sync. 

If you have a 60 hz monitor and your GPU constantly outputs at 120 fps though the frame time will be much lower reducing the delay.

[Godlygamer23]

26 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

If you have a 60 hz monitor and your GPU constantly outputs at 120 fps though the frame time will be much lower reducing the delay.

The monitor is still only refreshing 60 times per second. Your comment seems to ignore the monitor's capabilities.

[DocSwag]

6 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

The monitor is still only refreshing 60 times per second. Your comment seems to ignore the monitor's capabilities.

No no that's not what I'm saying.

 

If you have your GPU outputting at 60 fps, the time between each frame is about 16.67 ms. However, if your GPU is outputting at 120 fps the time between each frame is about 8.33 ms. At 60 fps, your 60 hz monitor could be outputting a frame that is up to 16.67 ms late (the GPU might have outputted a frame right after the monitor refreshed, so the image the GPU outputted wouldn't get displayed until the next refresh, 16.67 ms later, but if your GPU is running at 120 fps your 60 hz monitor could be outputting a frame that is only up to 8.33 ms late (in the worst case scenario the GPU outputted a frame right after the monitor refreshed, but 8.33 ms later it outputted a frame again hence why 8.33 ms is the max delay). So what I'm saying is the delay would be less at 120 fps than 60 fps even on a 60 hz monitor.

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, DocSwag said:

No no that's not what I'm saying.

 

If you have your GPU outputting at 60 fps, the time between each frame is about 16.67 ms. However, if your GPU is outputting at 120 fps the time between each frame is about 8.33 ms. At 60 fps, your 60 hz monitor could be outputting a frame that is up to 16.67 ms late (the GPU might have outputted a frame right after the monitor refreshed, so the image the GPU outputted wouldn't get displayed until the next refresh, 16.67 ms later, but if your GPU is running at 120 fps your 60 hz monitor could be outputting a frame that is only up to 8.33 ms late (in the worst case scenario the GPU outputted a frame right after the monitor refreshed, but 8.33 ms later it outputted a frame again hence why 8.33 ms is the max delay). So what I'm saying is the delay would be less at 120 fps than 60 fps even on a 60 hz monitor.

But the problem is...you are probably going to encounter tearing, and you are not getting new information per se - if you have a tear line occur at the half way point of the display, you will see one half of one image, and the other half of another. If you get no tearing lines, you are simply losing frames. As far as I'm concerned, the increase in the snappiness of the game is due to disabling V-Sync, and not actually because the user is seeing more frames(other than what I stated at the outset of this post). And for this reason, I bet this is why NVIDIA developed their Fast technology. It makes the GPU behave as if V-Sync is disabled(and it is), but it drops all the unnecessary frames when outputting to the display. 

 

But I would also like to see objective data on this. Have two displays side-by-side on separate machines. One display would be 60Hz displaying 60 images per second, and the other would be also 60Hz, but displaying 120 frames per second. I want to see if we can objectively see if the game is actually faster, and if it actually makes a difference for people to play without V-Sync with no placebo effects involved. 

[DocSwag]

59 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

But the problem is...you are probably going to encounter tearing, and you are not getting new information per se - if you have a tear line occur at the half way point of the display, you will see one half of one image, and the other half of another. If you get no tearing lines, you are simply losing frames. As far as I'm concerned, the increase in the snappiness of the game is due to disabling V-Sync, and not actually because the user is seeing more frames(other than what I stated at the outset of this post). And for this reason, I bet this is why NVIDIA developed their Fast technology. It makes the GPU behave as if V-Sync is disabled(and it is), but it drops all the unnecessary frames when outputting to the display. 

 

But I would also like to see objective data on this. Have two displays side-by-side on separate machines. One display would be 60Hz displaying 60 images per second, and the other would be also 60Hz, but displaying 120 frames per second. I want to see if we can objectively see if the game is actually faster, and if it actually makes a difference for people to play without V-Sync with no placebo effects involved. 

True, I guess there would be a likelihood of tearing happening. On a side note, I'm too lazy to search it up but does only Pascal have fast sync?

[PCGuy_5960]

2 hours ago, Seamonster420 said:

His next video will probably be a twenty minute rant where he complains about all the dead pixels on his screen.

And let's forget that this will be Windows' fault

[Godlygamer23]

1 hour ago, DocSwag said:

True, I guess there would be a likelihood of tearing happening. On a side note, I'm too lazy to search it up but does only Pascal have fast sync?

By default, yeah I think so. But using NVIDIA Inspector, you can unlock the setting for older cards. I used it myself with my 970. 

[DocSwag]

19 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

By default, yeah I think so. But using NVIDIA Inspector, you can unlock the setting for older cards. I used it myself with my 970. 

Ooo I should do that then  

[Guest]

On 3/10/2017 at 8:21 AM, deXxterlab97 said:

It supports 4K 60hz

Do the math, 1080p is the same or less bandwith or whateverthefuck it is

Um, there's no math to it, HDMI doesn't support 144hz, 1080p or not.

[Guest]

Just now, checkitimawesome said:

Um, there's no math to it, HDMI doesn't support 144hz, 1080p or not.

@Glenwing

[Guest]

1 minute ago, deXxterlab97 said:

@Glenwing

Okay, I get it, this dude is a monitor expert, where does he say that HDMI outputs 144hz?

[Glenwing]

3 minutes ago, checkitimawesome said:

Okay, I get it, this dude is a monitor expert, where does he say that HDMI outputs 144hz?

Here, under "Connecting to a 120+ Hz Monitor" https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/729232-guide-to-display-cables-adapters-v20/

Or a more detailed explanation can be found by putting "HDMI" in the Output dropdown.

 

Or if my word is good enough, I own a 144 Hz monitor which gets 144 Hz over HDMI without any overclocking or whatever. Works fine right out of the box. On a GTX 780 Ti which only supports HDMI 1.4a.

 

[C34A]

On 3/10/2017 at 0:55 PM, Space Reptile said:

as my tech teach used to say , sometimes the person infront of the computer is the source of the issue

P.E.B.K.A.C. : Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

[rainbrodash666]

today I had another amazing interaction with someone from Comcast, we were having trouble getting only snow and the guide menu with no information on the tv, we call in after checking the connections and power cycling everything and after a while of troubleshooting questions they ask how we have the cable box hooked to the tv, I reply HDMI, and the lady on the phone says, "oh well there is the problem you don't have HD tv service so you can't connect the cable box with HDMI" she wanted me to hook the cable box to my tv with coaxial cable because I don't get HD tv service... the cable came back on 15 minutes later because we just hung up and hoped to get a more qualified technician, did and got our cable fixed and a month of hbo.

[keenhydra]

My best story isn't actually my story but from a friend who worked at a tech help desk at her local city hall.

 

She would get in calls daily of people with keyboards and mice and screens not working properly and asking her to come over and fix it.

 

After a while she got the hang of it and her first line when getting a malfunctioning keyboard or mouse was; "pick it up, take 6 steps back." If her client did that and wondered what the next step was she would just reply with; "now plug it back in".

 

Imagine getting 10 to 15 of these calls a day and everyone wanting you to come over and help you.. would drive me insane..

[DocSwag]

9 hours ago, rainbrodash666 said:

today I had another amazing interaction with someone from Comcast, we were having trouble getting only snow and the guide menu with no information on the tv, we call in after checking the connections and power cycling everything and after a while of troubleshooting questions they ask how we have the cable box hooked to the tv, I reply HDMI, and the lady on the phone says, "oh well there is the problem you don't have HD tv service so you can't connect the cable box with HDMI" she wanted me to hook the cable box to my tv with coaxial cable because I don't get HD tv service... the cable came back on 15 minutes later because we just hung up and hoped to get a more qualified technician, did and got our cable fixed and a month of hbo.

No way... Could it really be rainbrodash, the original poster of the women with the 2tb hdd?!?

[Bananasplit_00]

1 hour ago, DocSwag said:

No way... Could it really be rainbrodash, the original poster of the women with the 2tb hdd?!?

holy shit it is... i didnt even realise

[themctipers]

3 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

holy shit it is... i didnt even realise

ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ i Don't even know the story , was digging through history to see it

[Lurick]

I love when someone asks a question about a specific problem and the next three responses are from people just spouting off crap without reading anything more than the title, because who needs context when you can get post count -.-

[Prokott94]

I work as a broadband technician, which is just fancy talk for cable guy, anyway i heard a story from a co-worker that had me laughing. He was working at a customers house and the man was very uncooperative and insisted he needed an "Amp". Amps are used when signal isn't strong enough. They require power from an outlet and are used as a last resort. The customer kept insisting he wanted an amp. Until finally the tech had an idea. He went to his van and grabbed a Gel splice used to keep water out of an underground cable splice. It says "AMP" on it because that is the brand. He told the customer that it loops the signal with magnets inside the gel and powers the line.The customer was absolutely joyed that he got his way. Here's some pictures for you to help explain.

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Lurick said:

I love when someone asks a question about a specific problem and the next three responses are from people just spouting off crap without reading anything more than the title, because who needs context when you can get post count -.-

Or request additional information which is absolutely irrelevant. 

 

"How to disable Cortana in Windows 10?"

 

"Specs?"

[Guest Darth Revan]

On 10.03.2017 at 10:52 PM, PCGuy_5960 said:

Not this guy again:

 

To be fair, he does have a point. The User Account Control feature is annoying and useless.

On 10.03.2017 at 10:55 PM, Space Reptile said:

as my tech teach used to say , sometimes the person infront of the computer is the source of the issue

He was a smart teacher.