Experiences with non-techies

[Tomataso]

Here come some personal ones:

 

+ One time in my university (Business School)(I am also a software student), someone flip down the screen (Ctrl+ up arrow) of the class PC that the profesor needs in other to show his PTT. And we waste 3 hours of class trying to fix it (I was the only one who knew what was happening), and then the class was suspended (The I.T guy was sick that day so GG EZ accounting class...)

 

+ In my first job, I worked at a company with average cow workers age of 50 years. The things that I saw there.... oh boy... for saving a word document into pdf they print the paper and later proceed to scan the document (what a waste of paper). To storage things, they buy USB flash drive (they use them like they were folders), so they have like 1550 usb in one looker... and in other to search thins you would need a paper index, with the "number code" of the flash drive. Some USB has only one word document (was a 2G flash drive).  So one day i back up all the data in a external hard drive (it was less than 5G of data), and that was how i get that day free "because my good work". The next day, the continue using fucking flash drives... I try showing google drive or Dropbox... but man.... I think they love to waste money buying flash drives. 

 

+ And for the last one: Me and my friend went to a company to do a work for the university, were the I.T. department at 1 pm (they start working on 9 am and have to work until 5 o 6 pm) or even earlier, every time, they said to the boss "We need to wait, the program is compiling " and them proceed do nothing... just wait in their desk or go out to do something more. (Obviously they know that a small program, or a query in a DB don´t freeze your PC) they only took advantage of their boss... hahaha Five days to do a simple register hahaha because "the program is compiling ".

[GilmourD]

On 9/12/2019 at 11:39 AM, Bananasplit_00 said:

just nab it once it hits the container

It won't ever hit the container. It has to be handled by a licensed and certified recycler contracted through and approved by the board of education.

[GilmourD]

On 9/12/2019 at 1:03 PM, GrockleTD said:

Wow your school sounds about 98% more people interesting than mine

I think his school is fanfic.

[GilmourD]

On 9/12/2019 at 1:23 PM, wkdpaul said:

Back in my days, we actually forced the IT department to up their game in the security department ; we realized that when they created users, they always used the same password ... for everyone!

 

The next batch of students got a surprise ; we found out the new users usernames, logged into their accounts (there was no prompt to change the password) and dropped a batch file in the start folder that opened 20 browser Windows(if I remember right) another 20 video files (hidden on a server somewhere) and a few other things.

 

Needless to say the IT dept. wasn't happy ... at all! That had the effect to crash part of the network when all 25 or so new students tried to login!

 

But at least it had the effect of them not using one initial password on new accounts! lol

Sounds like a wimpy network. Maybe I'm just spoiled by my network in the school district where I work.

[WkdPaul]

Client entered a ticket about emails being blocked and marked as spam.

 

I reached out to get the email / domain so that I can add them to our safe list, only to realize he was talking about HIS emails being blocked by one of his client's firewall ... he didn't understood why I couldn't help! As if I have control over every firewalls and safe / block lists around the world!!!

 

*sigh*

[Theminecraftaddict555]

Customer tells us the system won't POST, turns outs it just won't boot into windows & just loops on the windows 10 loading screen. I think everybody that works in the IT-field (help desk, computer technician etc.) has experienced this or something similar to this. 

 

Another "rare" but funny experience was when a customer was complaining why his old gaming rig couldn't play arma 3 at high settings at 50+ fps. Turns out he was playing on an old pentium cpu and playing on a gt 730. Yeah.........

[GrockleTD]

10 minutes ago, Theminecraftaddict555 said:

Turns out he was playing on an old pentium cpu and playing on a gt 730. Yeah.........

Expectations, meet reality.

[rEkmAInc1csBnlM6C85H]

My Aunt keeps getting different cell phones, and tablets from different brands, and with different cloud systems because Telus keeps up-selling here these obsolete pieces of e-waste.

 

It's the same thing every time...

1. Show up against my will because someone else volunteered me, and I want to be polite.
2. She can't remember any passwords to access anything.
3. Sleuth through no less than 3 random notes to get the right password.
4. Export the contacts off the old device.
5. Import to the new device.
6. Have to explain for 1 hour that duplicate and incompatible contacts were removed and nothing was lost. And that a literal 1500 becoming 1200 is not a big deal.
7. Get wrangled into having to fix a WIFI printer that she or her husband broke my configurations on for the 7th time.
8. Get wrangled into having to fix her smart TV because Youtube is slow and blurry.
9. Have to explain for 1 hour that having the slowest internet option available and 6 devices connected constantly at all time will cause this. (She will say something like "But it can't be the internet this is a TV")
10. Get back into my car and drive home wondering why I do this, for free no less.

Long story short I refuse to do this now and if anyone tries to volunteer me I laugh and tell them good luck.

[mcbaes72]

^^Andrew, 

 

I hear you, no matter how many times we help others, they don't listen, break something or whatever, and contact us to fix it for free. Yeah, I finally stopped as well. Otherwise, it'll never end. 

[eth_jones]

When I worked in first line support, I had a user call me who was based on the other end of the country. She told me that she had lost her laptop.

 

"Do you know where it is?", she asked me.

 

Take that in for a moment.... At least 300 miles away from me, never met her before, never been in her office at all.

 

"Do you know where it is?"

 

She called back roughly 30 mins later and told me she had worked it was in the cupboard, but it was locked.

 

"How do I open the cupboard?"

[GrockleTD]

2 minutes ago, eth_jones said:

When I worked in first line support, I had a user call me who was based on the other end of the country. She told me that she had lost her laptop.

 

"Do you know where it is?", she asked me.

 

Take that in for a moment.... At least 300 miles away from me, never met her before, never been in her office at all.

 

"Do you know where it is?"

 

She called back roughly 30 mins later and told me she had worked it was in the cupboard, but it was locked.

 

"How do I open the cupboard?"

Call back, be like, “why you dumb?”

[eth_jones]

1 minute ago, GrockleTD said:

Call back, be like, “why you dumb?”

LOL, I mean, I know some companies will put tracking software on their devices and stuff like that, but she had apparently worked for the company for over a decade so she would've known we didn't do that. But then the cupboard.... oh my days I mean come on man seriously

[mcbaes72]

This is more of a "cool story, bro". 

 

I took a vacation day off work to be a guest speaker at my son's middle school. I taught several classes of 6th and 7th graders on desktop PC parts and how to build them. 

 

First, I gave a PowerPoint presentation to discuss the various parts and their role/purpose. Then, after a Q&A session, I had enough time to give about half of the class some hands-on training (after school, I showed the teacher how to assemble and disassemble so she could help the other students the next day who didn't get a chance). Using old Dell and HP desktop PCs from the XP and Vista days, I showed them how to remove the heatsink/fan, CPU, motherboard, RAM, and HDD. There was no GPU. Also, for safety reasons, I removed the power supply in advance. After assisting them on how to take it apart, I let them take turns putting it back together. 

 

Other than a couple of students who were obviously bored, majority of them were excited and learned pretty quickly. It was a fun day to teach them something I enjoyed doing. 

[Bitter]

16 minutes ago, mcbaes72 said:

This is more of a "cool story, bro". 

 

I took a vacation day off work to be a guest speaker at my son's middle school. I taught several classes of 6th and 7th graders on desktop PC parts and how to build them. 

 

First, I gave a PowerPoint presentation to discuss the various parts and their role/purpose. Then, after a Q&A session, I had enough time to give about half of the class some hands-on training. Using an old Dell and HP desktop from (Win98 and Vista days), I showed them how to remove the heatsink and fan, how to remove the CPU, how to remove the motherboard, and HDD. There was no GPU and for safety reasons, I removed the PSU. After showing them how to take it apart, I let them take turns putting them back together. 

 

Other than a couple of students who were obviously bored, majority of them were excited and were quick learners. It was a fun day to teach them something I enjoyed doing. 

How would a GPU be a safety concern?

[mcbaes72]

7 minutes ago, Bitter said:

How would a GPU be a safety concern?

I revised my post. I meant the power supply was removed in the advance before the kids started building. 

[Windows7ge]

12 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

Also, this fiasco. It involved a school district using the webcams on school-issued laptops to take pics of students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District

WTF? Why? Why did they think this was a good idea?

[GilmourD]

On 9/20/2019 at 10:05 PM, Schnoz said:

Also, this fiasco. It involved a school district using the webcams on school-issued laptops to take pics of students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District

Oh, jeez, that's not legal...

[Gegger]

2 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

snipity schnoz

why is there a hole in the IHS

[Gegger]

1 minute ago, Schnoz said:

I think that's something like a breathing hole to cope with changes in external air pressure. It's still present in Intel and AMD CPU's, where there's a spot where silicon glue is not applied to IHS.

why does the bottom left of the pcb part look like it's wood

[sandvich64]

my dad can barley use windows ive tried teaching him to actually explore the os using the mouse but hes fixated on only using it whether or not he has a task

[The King of the Undead]

11 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

windows 10 is for dummies.

[sandvich64]

2 minutes ago, will4623 said:

windows 10 is for dummies.

that makes it even worse when you just wanna play some games but you're forced to look like a baby using windows

[Mr. Budget]

9 minutes ago, will4623 said:

windows 10 is for dummies.

I'd personally take any Linux OS (but preferably Ubuntu) over Windows but for ease-of-use in terms of downloading games I stay with windows.

[Donut417]

6 minutes ago, Kaloob said:

I just like convenience.

Only convenient when it works. Seems like MS is going a piss poor job on updates and breaking shit every 10 seconds. I gave up on Windows and moved to Linux. Sure, I cant play most of my Steam games, but I rather have a system that works then one that is flat out broken most of the time. 

[Mr. Budget]

1 hour ago, Kaloob said:

Luckily I've never had an update cause me grief.

I've personally had an update I could never go thru recently. Update required a restart and if I didn't update my version of Windows would lose support within 2 months. Obviously I try the update and after the restart it was stuck on a black screen. I had to shut down and turn it back on to save it, took like 5 minutes to boot then finally worked again, however lost the update. I'd rather lose support than lose my device in general at this point.
Note: Happened a month ago.