Experiences with non-techies

[Grant M]

1 minute ago, IkeaGnome said:

And some people put ram in the wrong slots and call the wrong slots the wrong channels. 
 

Everyone makes dumb mistakes. 

seems oddly familiar. lol.

[IkeaGnome]

Just now, Grant M said:

seems oddly familiar. lol.

That was the point. Post history. 

[Grant M]

Just now, IkeaGnome said:

That was the point. Post history. 

yeah. ive helped quite a few of my friends out with the same issue. Looking back on it was a rather stupid, yet simple mistake that had me confused for so long.

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, Grant M said:

yeah. ive helped quite a few of my friends out with the same issue. Looking back on it was a rather stupid, yet simple mistake that had me confused for so long.

My first posts on here was trying to find programs from cloning windows because I couldn’t be bothered to reinstall for a full platform upgrade. Then not being able to figure out how to use the program. 
 

We live. We learn. Picking on people for it won’t accomplish anything but make the place seem more hostile to new people or people actually trying to learn. 

[Grant M]

3 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

My first posts on here was trying to find programs from cloning windows because I couldn’t be bothered to reinstall for a full platform upgrade. Then not being able to figure out how to use the program. 
 

We live. We learn. Picking on people for it won’t accomplish anything but make the place seem more hostile to new people or people actually trying to learn. 

original intention wasnt to pick on them, but looking at it now i guess i was. Just thought the situation was funny. We have all been there and thats why it was funny to me. Definitely should have worded the title differently.

[Middcore]

Obvious troll post.

 

Lol I was talking about the OOP on Toms Hardware

[emothxughts]

Time to talk about my own non-techie moment: (TL;DR: NVME SSD in M.2 SATA slot)

 

I have an Asrock B450M Steel Legend mobo. It has two M.2 slots. I installed one NVME SSD on one of them, that is where I install my Win 10. One day I decided I wanted more storage, and since the other M.2 slot is empty, I decided to buy a new NVME SSD.

To my disappointment, the PC could not detect the new SSD at all. The reason in the end was that the 2nd M.2 slot is a...SATA M.2 slot. I legit thought that all M.2 slots are NVME slots and that all M.2 form factor SSDs are NVME.

 

In the end, I salvaged the new SSD by putting it in a USB enclosure. Slower than putting it in an NVME slot, but better than not being installed at all and collecting dust. I can even play games off of it.

[Godlygamer23]

30 minutes ago, emothxughts said:

Time to talk about my own non-techie moment: (TL;DR: NVME SSD in M.2 SATA slot)

 

I have an Asrock B450M Steel Legend mobo. It has two M.2 slots. I installed one NVME SSD on one of them, that is where I install my Win 10. One day I decided I wanted more storage, and since the other M.2 slot is empty, I decided to buy a new NVME SSD.

To my disappointment, the PC could not detect the new SSD at all. The reason in the end was that the 2nd M.2 slot is a...SATA M.2 slot. I legit thought that all M.2 slots are NVME slots and that all M.2 form factor SSDs are NVME.

 

In the end, I salvaged the new SSD by putting it in a USB enclosure. Slower than putting it in an NVME slot, but better than not being installed at all and collecting dust. I can even play games off of it.

Yup, I myself have an M.2 SSD that is SATA. I also have a M.2 to SATA adapter(allows fitting of two M.2 SSDs) that's only for M.2 SATA SSDs, and a USB enclosure that only works with NVMe drives. 

 

In your case, I'm somewhat surprised the M.2 SATA SSD even fit because there are slots that are keyed based on the type of drive that they're able to accept. I'm guessing your motherboard uses a combo slot that's able to accept both, even if it's only usable for M.2 SATA drives.

[Avocado Diaboli]

One of our departments had the need for workers who spend a lot of time outside to submit short reports directly from the field. Instead of first asking our IT department or anyone else about it if we already had something like that, they decided to do their own thing. So they sought out a survey platform, signed up for it and created the few forms they wanted to use. All well and good.

 

Unfortunately, they didn't consider how they'd evaluate the data. The built-in dashboard is horrendously unsuited for evaluating data. So I was asked to create a corresponding Excel file that could import that data and make it navigable and turn it into charts if needed. Here's the second roadblock: The CSV file the platform exports is abysmally designed and doesn't follow any discernible CSV convention I've seen to date. I've managed to create an import routine but it wasn't as easy as it should've been. Make note that at this point, once I was part of the project, I told them that I had my reservations about the usability of this tool but was struck down.

 

Then came the third strike. The survey had a few drop downs. And to make it visually more appealing, the guys who wrote the survey put in a few cosmetic entries like this:

 

Entry 1

Entry 2

----------

Entry 3

Entry 4

 

They didn't foresee that anyone would actually use the dash entries if they couldn't decide which other element to choose or if any of the other entries didn't apply. So you had a bunch of garbage data in there. But that's not even the worst of it. When they took out those dash entries, the results of the already recorded surveys changed retroactively. It's my assumptions that the tool doesn't actually save the text of whatever you choose from the drop down, but the numeric reference of which line the entry is on. I tried it by adding a new entry at the very top and sure enough, every completed survey had that question's answer shifted around.

 

At this point, since I already asked our IT department for a general survey platform a couple of times and was ignored every time, I just went ahead and created a dummy Google account to have access to Google drive and forms (don't worry, there's no mission critical data or even anything especially spicy in there, it's just "we went there at this date and time and saw X Y and Z"). I recreated the two forms in like 10 minutes, turned on the option to have the outputs directly written into a sheets file and made sure Google weren't dumb enough to only store line references from the drop downs instead of the actual text you choose. All that hassle to create a CSV import that makes the data pretty to look at and they could've had that for free, had they only asked and listened to what I said.

[Bitter]

Honestly I'd have told them that whatever garbage it spit out was all it could be translated to and that they'd need to hire someone to go through and fix it manually.

[Avocado Diaboli]

Remember that time when my boss came up with an asinine way of scheduling meeting room reservations in the worst possible way?

 

 

It bit him in the ass recently when he forgot how to do the reservations himself via that "master" calendar. He scheduled a meeting, put the meeting room in the location directly and didn't realize that the room's calendar automatically declined all invites that don't come from the master calendar. Someone else came along, scheduled a meeting correctly for the same time and blocked off that meeting room.

 

Cue me saying "I told you so".

 

Now I get to tell IT to revert all that bullshit configuration back to stock and just allow everybody to schedule appointments for the individual rooms directly. I'm actually surprised it only took 4 months this time. Usually I have to wait a few years before telling everybody "I told you so". 

[Avocado Diaboli]

I swear I'm surrounded by idiots.

 

We have access to federal databases. To log in, we have to use certificates stored on smart cards in addition to using a password. You know, MFA and shit, something you have and something you know, yaddayadda. We recently started deploying laptops with built-in card readers to every employee. So obviously, someone came up with the brilliant idea of sticking his smart card into the card reader and chopping off the bit that sticks out, to keep the card permanently stuck in his laptop, since the important bit is just the chip in the card. The rest is just plastic. Thereby totally defeating the purpose of even storing the certificate somewhere other than the device itself. And the best part is, those cards aren't ours. They're still owned by the federal government. I look forward to the meltdown when they get wind of this.

[soldier_ph]

3 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

those cards aren't ours.

I hope that who ever did that will have to pay for the Smart Card and will also be fined a good amount. Destruction of Government property, what an Idiot.

 

This is the same type of User who would take a Hammer to their USB Wireless receiver from a Peripheral which is plugged into their Notebook for that flush look.

[Average Nerd]

Just now, soldier_ph said:

This is the same type of User who would take a Hammer to their USB Wireless receiver from a Peripheral which is plugged into their Notebook for that flush look.

As much as I want to believe that people like that are a meme and don't actually exist, I just know that someone has done that.

 

[soldier_ph]

3 minutes ago, Average Nerd said:

I just know that someone has done that.

I'd be disappointed in Humanity if it weren't a thing:

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupportgore/s/VNLaAzOZgP

 

At this point I'm just rooting for Idiots to do dumber and dumber things everyday.

[Average Nerd]

3 minutes ago, soldier_ph said:

At this point I'm just rooting for Idiots to do dumber and dumber things everyday.

Same.

 

One of my friends (the same one with the display cable in the wrong port) actually managed to stab his computer with a sword. I don't know how he managed to fail that hard, but now his front panel has a hole.

[Kilrah]

5 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Thereby totally defeating the purpose of even storing the certificate somewhere other than the device itself.

Software that uses smart cards for authentication should require "witnessing" an insertion event, i.e. if the card was already in when it's first started and/or at some interval, require removing and reinserting so that people can't just leave it in all the time. 

[da na]

The eBay store I often buy old gear from had a huuuge oopsie.

It's a large organization with multiple employees and it seems they may have had some new hires lately who perhaps are a little inexperienced - lately they've been leaving in HDDs full of personal data and other similar things indicative of a general lack of training.

 

I bought an HP computer from them listed as a Dell. "Dell TouchSmart IQ770". In the eBay photos, the inventory tracking sticker reading "Dell TouchSmart" was literally right next to the HP logo on the system, so whoever took inventory of the system when it first arrived at their warehouse certainly was not paying the most attention.

I paid for it over a week and a half ago, it still hasn't shipped as of today.

 

Yesterday I got a message from the seller saying they no longer had the Dell I purchased in their warehouse and aren't sure what happened to it, but they do have a similar HP system if I would like that instead. They then proceeded to attach photos of the exact same HP unit I bought 10 days ago.

 

So that means for over a week, some poor intern was running around the warehouse looking for a "Dell" computer covered in HP logos from a product line Dell never manufactured

[da na]

I hate seeing "x32". That's not what 32-bit is called.

The dropdown on your driver download page should not list "Windows 7 x32"

[Quackers101]

16 hours ago, da na said:

I hate seeing "x32". That's not what 32-bit is called.

The dropdown on your driver download page should not list "Windows 7 x32"

gotta love that x86 and x32, wait which one is that I should have? oh the x420

[Bitter]

16 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

gotta love that x86 and x32, wait which one is that I should have? oh the x420

No no it's that new rapper, what's his name... Oh yeah x69.

[HanZie82]

3 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

gotta love that x86 and x32, wait which one is that I should have? oh the x420

More is better right?!

[BADESTPIE1]

helping a friend update drivers over Google Meet.

 

A friend of mine asked me how to update his driver since a game was screaming at him to do it. I had to first explain not only how to find his laptop GPU model in Task Manager but also tell him how to open a .exe file. he took 20 minutes to find the drivers for his Vega 3 GPU chip.

 

Why over Google Meet? he uses android, I use iphone

yes we both hate sms

[TJ10]

My grandpa always seems to have a doubt on his phone and wants me to help him. I am very happy to help him with it.

But it has turned into a point where he expects me to do all the work on his phone when I'm around him, it gets annoying fast. 

 

What's more annoying? He always asks me the same doubts he had earlier and pretends like he does not know how things work but does the same things when I'm not around him. I don't get the psychology behind it???

[starsmine]

On 3/8/2024 at 1:16 PM, da na said:

I hate seeing "x32". That's not what 32-bit is called.

The dropdown on your driver download page should not list "Windows 7 x32"

it’s not called x86 either. Why we did that initially baffles me. There are x86 chips that are only 16 bit as well, as well as the weird 8088 that was some 8 bit hybrid thing. 
 

and 64 is called AMD64, not x64.

IA 64 (or x86-64) isn’t used at all.

 

using x86 for 32 bit is far more confusing the x32 honestly