Experiences with non-techies

[tkitch]

updated a computer at work, and amongst other changes, swapped the super shitty e-waste keyboard that flexed from a single finger touch, to a new mechanical keyboard.

Helping the user when he's back:  
"Now I just need to find the Enter Key"

....  It's in the exact same place as the old keyboard.

30 seconds later:
"Now where's the caps lock key"

....  again, it's in the /exact/ same place it was before.

 

(Yes, you should be crying for me here)

[soldier_ph]

The best is when you get paid lots for doing really simple Stuff you don't even have to look up:

[tkitch]

"My coworker doesn't have <APP> on his computer, and he needs it!"
Yes he does, the icon is on his fuckin' desktop.
"No it's not, he has this other one."
<Me remotes into that co-worker's PC and minimizes everything to the desktop>
*points at the fuckin' icon on the screen*
"Is that <coworker's> computer?"
Yup!  The icon is RIGHT NEXT TO the one you were clicking on.
"I'll have to look when I go back down there and see if its there."

[Bitter]

[da na]

Almost to page 1337!

 

There was a big storm last night, lightning hit close to my building. Had a guy come to me this morning asking me to repair his laptop, absolutely insistent that something was wrong with the laptop.

"What's wrong with it?"
"Lightning hit it."

"I see. But what's wrong, will it not charge, not turn on... etc?"

"Nothing's wrong, but lightning hit it"

"So the laptop's fine? It doesn't need any repair then."

"Yeah but lightning hit it."

[Avocado Diaboli]

• A couple of our internal apps stop working.
• I inform IT, they put the updated apps into our internal app store.
• I download them and check that everything works. I notice that one of them has trouble logging in, so I restart my phone and everything works fine after that.
• Given the hiccup and knowing the complete lack of tech affinity among my coworkers, I decide to write a short guide on how to go about downloading and installing the apps in question with plenty of screenshots and mention that in order for them to work properly again, they might have to restart their phones too.
• I send an E-Mail to everybody in my department with all the information.
• A couple of minutes pass and someone asks me for help with the steps I clearly outlined in that little guide.
• More people come by asking for help doing the things I outlined in the guide.
• One person managed to nuke her enrollment in our corporate MDM entirely.
• I reevaluate my will to live and question why I even bother writing guides for people who are either too stupid to follow them or too disrespectful to put in the effort before consulting me.

[Bitter]

14 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

• A couple of our internal apps stop working.
• I inform IT, they put the updated apps into our internal app store.
• I download them and check that everything works. I notice that one of them has trouble logging in, so I restart my phone and everything works fine after that.
• Given the hiccup and knowing the complete lack of tech affinity among my coworkers, I decide to write a short guide on how to go about downloading and installing the apps in question with plenty of screenshots and mention that in order for them to work properly again, they might have to restart their phones too.
• I send an E-Mail to everybody in my department with all the information.
• A couple of minutes pass and someone asks me for help with the steps I clearly outlined in that little guide.
• More people come by asking for help doing the things I outlined in the guide.
• One person managed to nuke her enrollment in our corporate MDM entirely.
• I reevaluate my will to live and question why I even bother writing guides for people who are either too stupid to follow them or too disrespectful to put in the effort before consulting me.

 

[da na]

Love handing people a laptop with a lid latch, sitting back and watching them struggle. Wouldn't think it would be so hard to figure out.

[Average Nerd]

24 minutes ago, da na said:

Love handing people a laptop with a lid latch, sitting back and watching them struggle. Wouldn't think it would be so hard to figure out.

How old are these people?

I didn't think a lid latch is so incomprehensible.

[da na]

28 minutes ago, Average Nerd said:

How old are these people?

I didn't think a lid latch is so incomprehensible.

15-20. People often figure out the sliding kind, but the button variety tends to take a while because the buttons are often hidden rather well.

[da na]

Just witnessed one of my professors shred a 20-page document to pieces and jam our copier in the process by putting a pretty hefty stack of stapled paper into the auto feeder and walking away.

I've done this with two or three page documents before on my little scanner, usually the roller pulls the top page in, then the corner of the next page comes with it and then the scanner recognizes there's a jam and stops. But it doesn't look like the copier stopped pulling the paper at any point here. Not much of the packet came out on the other end of the tray but there sure was quite a lot stuck inside the scanner mechanism.

And of course, that 20-page packet was the only copy. 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

On 4/23/2024 at 1:35 AM, da na said:

And of course, that 20-page packet was the only copy. 

Nobel prize delayed by printer malfunction, totally not user related.

[Bitter]

Two Russian guys up the alley from my work pounced on me as I'm walking to get lunch.

You Ruski?

No no sorry

Is ok I speak, car from auction does not run, you look at 5 minutes.

Oh uh I'm grabbing lunch

Is just 5 minutes come look come look

 

Long story short it's a Chevy Volt that won't start or come out of park with all the warning lights on, told them we can look at it but it has to be at the shop I don't do side work but might need the dealer. They asked where I lived that wanted to tow it to me to do discount side work, I don't do that. Asked me what kind of car I drive. Ended up trying to rent me their spare room 'is so close you save money yes to pay for the new car is expensive yes'.

Ugh.

[Avocado Diaboli]

Bigwig: "Hey Avocado, I got this external hard drive. Someone brushed past it and dropped it off a table while it was plugged in. Think you can fix it? It's got some data on it that I need."

Me: "Maybe, depending on the drive I may have an adapter, if the drive itself has the typical SATA interface."

Samsung: "Hold my beer"

 

Yep, that's a broken off USB port that's soldered directly to the PCB of the harddrive. And this is why I keep telling people to ask me first before they go out and buy this stuff, because I would've told them to just buy an internal drive and stick it in an enclosure. But no, bigwigs need to just go out and buy whatever. And of course, the data on it is nowhere on the corporate network, because people still insist on bringing their shit on physical media and never back up anything. So yeah, time to buy a replacement PCB and pray to any deity willing to listen that there are no other security or lockout measures that prevent simple swapping.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Bigwig: "Hey Avocado, I got this external hard drive. Someone brushed past it and dropped it off a table while it was plugged in. Think you can fix it? It's got some data on it that I need."

Me: "Maybe, depending on the drive I may have an adapter, if the drive itself has the typical SATA interface."

Samsung: "Hold my beer"

 

Yep, that's a broken off USB port that's soldered directly to the PCB of the harddrive. And this is why I keep telling people to ask me first before they go out and buy this stuff, because I would've told them to just buy an internal drive and stick it in an enclosure. But no, bigwigs need to just go out and buy whatever. And of course, the data on it is nowhere on the corporate network, because people still insist on bringing their shit on physical media and never back up anything. So yeah, time to buy a replacement PCB and pray to any deity willing to listen that there are no other security or lockout measures that prevent simple swapping.

Toshitba was awful with this, soldering those fragile USB connectors straight to the HDD board.

Sometimes you can replace the controller board on the HDD with one with a SATA port.

[Bitter]

It's probably using some dogshit encryption, looks like you might be able to get 4 fly leads soldered to the remaining bits of board contact to connect a USB port or cable directly to the board and get the data off. Looks like it's a USB 2.0 drive even, less wires to solder!

[Kilrah]

WD still does it... Seagate tends to have regular SATA drives.

 

But yeah, soldering wires and using a breakout as temporary connector the time to get the data out would be the solution. PCB replacement is much less trivial.

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Bigwig: "Hey Avocado, I got this external hard drive. Someone brushed past it and dropped it off a table while it was plugged in. Think you can fix it? It's got some data on it that I need."

Me: "Maybe, depending on the drive I may have an adapter, if the drive itself has the typical SATA interface."

Samsung: "Hold my beer"

 

Yep, that's a broken off USB port that's soldered directly to the PCB of the harddrive. And this is why I keep telling people to ask me first before they go out and buy this stuff, because I would've told them to just buy an internal drive and stick it in an enclosure. But no, bigwigs need to just go out and buy whatever. And of course, the data on it is nowhere on the corporate network, because people still insist on bringing their shit on physical media and never back up anything. So yeah, time to buy a replacement PCB and pray to any deity willing to listen that there are no other security or lockout measures that prevent simple swapping.

that looks awful, but its just 5 pads you can solder another usb header to, and the two pads that look ripped out have the trace right there you can solder to elsewhere no? No need for a replacement PCB

[Avocado Diaboli]

3 hours ago, Kilrah said:

But yeah, soldering wires and using a breakout as temporary connector the time to get the data out would be the solution. PCB replacement is much less trivial.

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

that looks awful, but its just 5 pads you can solder another usb header to, and the two pads that look ripped out have the trace right there you can solder to elsewhere no? No need for a replacement PCB

 

I looked up the PCB and all the replacement vendors mentioned that I would've had to swap the BIOS IC anyway. Since the board was pretty much useless the way it was, I tried soldering the wires from a sacrificial USB chord I had lying around directly to the PCB. The data pads were completely beyond repair, at least for my skill level, so I had to go for the traces. In fact, you can tell that I had to bypass that one surface mount components (I'm guessing it's a resistor) because I couldn't attach it from the port side and just hoped that it works. I'm terrible at soldering and I probably also don't have a soldering iron suited to working with small stuff like this, but I managed to wrangle the wires in place for the connection to stick and get all the data off of the drive successfully after securing it all with a bit of hot glue.

 

 

 

[Bitter]

Awesome work!

[da na]

Amusing how people struggle with old single-point or resistive touchscreens, or old touchpads.

Being used to mouse input and not using a smartphone, I'm quite used to only one point of input. But these kids these days, always on those damn phones - I'll show someone an image or document on my '07 HP TouchSmart and they'll try pinching and scrolling with two fingers, which just sends the cursor flying or makes it jitter all over the place. Humans didn't evolve to have five fingers on each hand until 2012, so of course it doesn't have multitouch capability.

Similar with old touchpads, no-one knows how to use a non-multitouch trackpad with edge scrolling (or different buttons for left/right click). Granted, a profound lack of Synaptics ClickPad aptitude will certainly never hamper a single individual's computer abilities going forward; they were already going out of style when the first Core i- chips launched.