Tech Stories

2. The makings of a Eunuch Alas, I returned home from work today to find my desk cleansed. The cause of this was a unfamiliar bright light adjacent to my keyboard. It seems that my two year old took a liking to the trusty trackball of many years and absconded with the shiny red orb. The lady has cleaned my desk, the living room, the bedroom and playroom with no recovery of said orb. This means that my trackball is now without balls. In response to what to do now, I had but to utter this soft reply: Yes, I want a new mouse. [By: PolarCoyote] Comment on Story Comments Mothers bored and daddy was a Unix? -ecoli I move house the beginning of the month and I thought this was the perfect time to clean the subwoofer ( there always something knocking in it and I also heared a toy car ) - found a trackball that we lost years ago, which I think the little one placed in the hole. and soprry it's gone again. -CSurfer just pulled out 65 cents and a cd that was jammed in the WII - how on earth do you load a slot load cd tray so that the cd won't eject? The DVD player got the same surgery 2 weeks ago (4 cd's slid under the tray and 35 cents). The Xbox is now completely out of reach of munchkins. Isn't having kids fun? -frprinterwiz To paraphrase Twain - Children should be placed in a large barrel at birth and fed through the bung hold until puberty, then plug the hole. -AussieFoot Said to me by a friend after the birth of my first child: You will spend two years teaching him to walk and talk.... and the rest of your life telling him to sit down and shut up. Turns out... my friend was right... :-) -virtualchoirboy "I always hear couples say 'We want to have a baby.' I never hear them say 'We want to have a teenager.'" -VoiceOfSanity Fresh, new balls! http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=36858&sk=MC71419#page=page-1 -Kid My sister once, at the age of four, threw a fit because her favorite computer games (on CD-ROM) were missing and the computer wouldn't work. My father opened the case to discover the CD-ROMs, with teethmarks in them, shoved between sections of computer. He was not pleased. -AnneBWalsh Poor old Goebbels... -lineswine BALLS! BALLS! BALLS! BALLS! BALLS! BALLS! BALLS of STEEL! < Duke Nuke'Em > ( Balls of Steel Soundboard Link: http://www.unitednothing.net/content/soundboards/ballsofsteel.html ) -Necros

3. NT/OT RIP Patrick and Bea Good journeys Bea Arthur and Patrick Swayze. [By: PolarCoyote] Comment on Story Comments You beat me to it. God bless to both. -PCChaos May the Great Bird of the Galaxy shelter them under Its mighty wings... -AdmiralLaurie Uhm--Bea Arthur passed away almost six months ago. -vacuumtubes What is more cardinal sin to the Univers: Dividing by zero, or putting Baby in the corner? -Seamus He is now a real ghost, free from the suffering of this mortal flesh. Farewell Mr. Swayze. -TheGhost My first article for my high school newspaper was a review of "Dirty Dancing". I didn't see much of his work after that until his TV show "The Beast", which was fun to watch. Plot: C Acting: A++++++++. He'll be missed. -thx1138 thx, you should see Ghost, Road House and "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" when you get a chance. Goodbye Mr. Swayze, we will miss you. -ecoli Road House, fuck yeah. Dirty Dancing, fuck yeah. Also, don't forget Next of Kin, Red Dawn, and especially North & South. My favorite role of his was Orry Main. Helluva talented actor. Vaya con Dios, Patrick. -MadJack Best actor I have EVER seen in drag! he will be missed, but he lived his life as he wanted. -Harm He went to the big road house in the sky. St. peters job as door-man/bouncer is in jepordy. -putahtek Yup, Keith Floyd kicked the bucket on the same day. Chances are, he had a glass of red wine in his hand at the time. -lineswine

4. Eat them up Yum... I recently got a small gift box of chocolate. My wifes comment was sorry, they only come in rasberry. (I hate rasberries) http://www.godiva.com/godivaCollection/chocolate_piece.asp?id=7 [By: PolarCoyote] Comment on Story Comments You *must* be talking about the raspberry starfish! -purplelinguist Was I the only one to think of the old song "Fish Heads"? -uranid10t I took a starfish to see a movie... -Evilturnip Didn't have to pay to get it in... -flapjackboy think of it??? I HAVE the original recording... as annoying as badger badger badger -srteach *drool* -valkyrja I'm with you, not a berry fan though Godiva is damn fine. And I too thought of Barnes & Barnes.... "they don't play drums." -Mushroom HA! I love that song! It's right there with "Dead Puppies" and "Tosat" -RA Actually, I was listening to Demento's 20th anniversary when I posted. -PolarCoyote Doea ANYONE have a copy of Barnes& Bsarnes track called "Love Tap"? I've only come across it once - on a BBC 'interal use only' Christmas tape that contained bloopers you could NEVER broadcast, e.g. Childrens TV 'squeaky clean' presenters sayinhg "fuck it!" when they repeatedly make a balls of a take (Sarah Greene, if anyone is interested). -lineswine I do have fisheads on an mp3 somewhere if there is anyone who wants it. -strider Damn that Bill Mumy--every time I hear that Fish Heads song, it sticks in my craw for days! -vacuumtubes Let's guess - your wife likes raspberries... -technaround I also thought about the song fish heads, and have been puking for the last 8 hours...thanks for the help:) -saneagain Only one person would DARE give me the rasberry...LONE STAR! </Dark Helmet> -wolfman

5. Wacky tabbacky at Target Marijuana for sale at Target.com. I've heard about limited availability in some states but personnally I think this is a joke item. http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-5842547-7425430?asin=0823916839 [By: PolarCoyote] Comment on Story Comments When they say that they want to have the store packed to the gills all day, they really *mean* it! I even saw yesterday where they gave customers "wake up calls" at their homes at 6 AM, so that they wouldn't miss any sales... -LinuXtreme Shipping info from the site: "Estimated Ship Dimensions : 956 hundredths-inches length x 672 hundredths-inches width x 41 hundredths-inches height." For $25.25? I can do a better than that and still get it delivered. -chefque holy schizt, i hope they ship to iraq. I will get my ticket out of here!!! -SGTARKyTEK Mmh, it would have to be shipped into the Uk and have a Customs Declaration on it. . . Who do I hate enough to cough up that much dough? -Zoomer man, that Target dog *CAN* get anything for you..... -leonine PS....should have put that on our wedding registry, lol -leonine Didn't that dog used to work for Lycos ? "Lycos! Go get it!" ;-) -Necros 9.5" x 6.7" x .4" ??? $25.25? C'mon, it's a book, not the real thing. (Of course, maybe in Nevada after the next election. Came close this year to being legalized there and Alaska.) -Captain Trips it can't be good quality.. not for that price. -Harm

6. Breach of contract Here's an interesting asshat of a story for you, You may need to create a free login. http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_101104WABtotaledcarKC.22448936.html [By: PolarCoyote] Comment on Story Comments If someone wants to post a summary, I'm not keen on giving out my personal info. -NightSteel Who says you have to give out *your* personal info ? :P -modeski Car totaled while in repair shop 05:54 AM PDT on Tuesday, October 12, 2004 By LINDA BYRON / KING 5 News TACOMA, Wash. – Kimberly Booker still can't believe the 2000 Mitsubishi she bought just two months ago is a crumpled mess. It was hit on the freeway when it was supposed to be at a Tacoma repair shop. "I'm very upset," she said. "His business is still open. He still has a car to drive. I have to find a ride everywhere I go." Kimberly Booker still can't believe this is her new car now. The Spanaway mother of three had taken her car to Farwest Collision in Tacoma to have her car door repaired after it was sideswiped. Saturday afternoon she got a call from Farwest, telling her that her car was totaled in an accident on the freeway and asking for her insurance information. Booker wondered why anyone was driving her car on the freeway. Farwest runs a cab company in addition to its collision business. Operations manager Charles McGuire said the owner borrowed Booker's car to pick up a stranded cab driver and was caught in the big I-5 pileup that was triggered by two cars racing on the freeway. McGuire said the owner made a huge mistake. "We arrested the person for DUI and that's not the end of it. We may also have possession of stolen property first-degree charges to deal with as well," said Johnny Alexander, Washington State Patrol. Booker's car should never have left the repair lot. Police are still looking for the drivers of the two vehicles that caused the big freeway pileup. They were racing at speeds of more than 100 mph. -MaxarRe Summary: lady took 2 month old car to shop for ding repair. Owner of shop used car too pick up other employee and got in freeway wreck totaling car. -PolarCoyote http://www.mailinator.com is your friend. -LaserGuru http://www.bugmenot.com - logins from other people, so you can use their info -madonnac Hey! I worked with a gal who had the same problem happen to her, same auto shop! Wow...she wasn't kidding?? -snowcrash This is why you ALWAYS check mileage before and after taking a car to the shop. You also ask the shop what sort of test driving they do, if any. Finally, if something DOES happen, your insurance should not have anything to do with it. You pay to insure yourself as the driver of your car, not someone else. If the shop decides to drive your car, I believe their insurance should pick up the tab. -virtualchoirboy I take my car to a friends shop and I know he drives my car around (he tells me so) -DedSysOp LG and madonnac, y'all rock! *adds sites to faves list* I had a fortunately minor problem like this. I took my car to a tranny shop to have the 5-speed rebuilt (200K miles and the clutch went out). I picked up the car (with wife and my 2 toddlers), got about a mile from the shop, and kept hearing a rattle. Pulled over, couldn't find it, so I decide to take it back to the shop. Get half-way back, going thru a major intersection, doing about 10 MPH, and my front-left wheel all-of-a-sudden goes flying across the street!!! No warning, nothing, except the rattle that, of course, stopped when the car did. (lug nuts weren't properly tightened). Needless to say, I'm "not happy", so I walk across the street to a Whataburger, and a lady let's me use her cell. Long story short, the shop helps me put the tire back on, but I almost had to hire a lawyer to get them to repair the car. Lesson learned, but on the bright side, they did do a good job on the tranny. -missourimule Got my truck back from AAMCO after having clutch replaced. Upon arriving home I look under the hood and the bolts holding the tranny to the engine were only 1/2 way in. I'll never go there again or recommend them. -Grembo

7. The Middle one.... A coworker had a SF complaining that a feature in a product dialog was not working correctly. This dialog has twelve buttons in 2 columns of six. When asked which one was not working correctly she responded with "The middle one". Over the last two weeks she has become our "Favorite" SF as she calls in several times a day for help doing simple tasks to get her job done. She doesn't want to learn how to do it, just have us do it for her. And yes, she paid for the how to service. [By: PolarCoyote] Comment on Story Comments When she asks how to do something, say "The other one". Hang up giggling. -teivrann RTFM!!!!!! -UrbanMonkey

8. No EXE No Launchy Just got off another wonderful mac call were the SF tried to drag their Application Icon to the dock and lost it. Searching the drive can't locate it. So I trash the program folder and reinstall. Then I teach them the proper way to dock an application: Launch the application. CTRL click the dock icon Select keep in dock. I just wish they stop accidentally dropping it in their trash. [By: PolarCoyote] Comment on Story Comments My customers does that all the time. I make a special point of showing them how they can put something back in their dock if they "accidentally" remove something from their dock. The main problem with the OS in regards to that issue is that there is not enough time delay after the first mouse click. The OS easily allows them to drag that program shortcut from their dock. Apple needs to refine that so there is at least a 1 second delay from clicking an application in the dock and subsequent dragging to differeniate between accidental deletion and removing from the dock on purpose. -mccallister Sorry for the poor grammar and spelling. -mccallister For those of you who have no idea what Polar and I are talking about, if you drag a program onto the dock (think windows task bar) it creates a shortcut to that program in their dock. So all they have to do in the future is click on the shortcut once and the program launches. The problem arises in that to remove a shortcut from the dock you drag it off onto your desktop. Too many users instead of clicking, click and drag that icon onto their desktop. Voila! Shortcut is now missing from the dock and Mr. SF has no idea on how to recreate it. There needs to be a delay on click/drag action to differentiate between accidental deletion of the shortcut and purposeful deletion of the shortcut. -mccallister See http://othello.alma.edu/~mccallister/machelp/add_app_to_dock.html for a quick demonstration of this shortcut principle I made for my customers (quicktime required) -mccallister Actually, in this case the SF was trying to drag the application icon to the dock to make the alias. I've notice that on my dock, when I drag an icon to the dock it tends to autoplace it over the trash icon. Methinks the SF doesn't noticed and dropped the actual app in the trash -PolarCoyote It might help some confused folks if you guys used the word MAC someplace in this conversation! <BEG> -LaserGuru Sixth word, second line. -PolarCoyote "Just got off another wonderful mac call" that was my first and only clue -jard

Customer Misconceptions

2. Actually corporate misconception. Corporate obviously knows better than we do what is in the store even though they are three states away. We have an inventory scan gun that we use weekly to update/correct the on-hand inventory database. We have several products that we have an overabundance of due to shipping labels being applied to the wrong cases by the Distribution Center drones. We have three specific items that we have been correcting for the last 8 weeks. Gun says we have 3-8 of each. We have 60-90 of each. On Monday of every week, we get an email from corporate that we must have counted wrong for the last two months and the on hand inventories have been corrected to match what was on file prior to the update we submitted. But it is our fault that the inventory count is wrong when the 3rd party counters do the annual inventory. [2010-12-07]

3. Actually retailer misconception: I want a plain basic frigging keyboard. no multimedia, no special function keys, I'd prefer not to have the windows key. It's for a toddler to play games with. The games capture and use the basic 105 keyset until a specific 4 button combo is pressed to open the parental menu. The multimedia/special function keys bypass this lockout so the toddler can launch other apps or shutdown the computer. these special function keys are not remappable/disableable. The local stores can special order a basic keyboard for an extra $15. I can have one shipped for less than $10. [2010-10-04]

4. Corporate Misconception: Multi department Helpdesk is a good idea. Due to job dearth, I'm working in a retail store. The stores computer systems have been having multiple issues since beginning of December. Due to the corporate structuring of the helpdesk we have six active trouble tickets in different departments for the various failures/errors that break out like so: Errors with store open/close - Register Helpdesk, Errors with report generation - Reporting Helpdesk, Errors accessing management systems - Portal Helpdesk, Errors with inventory PDT equipment - Tools Helpdesk, Errors with debit machines - ETF Helpdesk. Hardware wise there are 2 computers slaved off a central computer that relays to the corporate server using a frame relay connection. All of the error messages simplify to Database or communication errors At every stage of the helpdesk troubleshooting, the different errors prevented the L1/L2 from continuing until the error was fixed by a different department. Most of the techs failed to record the error message that halted their TS steps causing a TS wash, rinse, repeat as we were bounced between departments. The daily/weekly reports are transmitted by an automated script that runs afterhours with no staff in the building. The same script prints our reports locally. Friday none of the hourly staff (including me) were paid for the first week of the pay period as our hours weren't recieved by corporate. The discussion wsa reported to go something like: Store Manager(SM) My staff didn't get paid for the first week of the pay period. (HR) Your store had no hours reported for that week. You should have called us when the payroll report failed to print. (SM) The payroll report did print. (HR) Then you should have noticed it had no hours on it. (SM) There are 135 hours on the report. (HR) The report wasn't uploaded to us so it must not have printed. (SM) I just faxed a copy of the report to you for the missing hours. (HR) We can't fix it until next pay period. You should have sent this to us when it failed to transmit. (SM) How would I know it failed to transmit? (HR) When it failed to print automatically. (SM) But it did print automatically. (HR) You should have recieved an email when we failed to recieve the report on time. (SM) I haven't been able to access my email for 3 weeks. It's reported on ticket *******. (HR) You need to submit a ticket for that issue to the payroll helpdesk. Here is their number. (click) The payroll helpdesk pulled up all the existing tickets and us to expect a call from an L3 tech who can handle multidepartment errors in the next two days. He called yesterday (Sunday) when the store manager was off. Only the Store manager has the access permissions to allow a remote access connection to the primary system without shutting down both registers. It's only taken a month of calls and lost revenue to get to the L3 who has a chance of fixing this remotely. [2010-01-11]

5. HR drone misconception: technology doesn't change that much. assessment test for helpdesk position had the following questions. How many contacts are on a SIMM? How many contacts are on a DIMM? What is a parity bit? How many devices could be connected to a SCSI-1? When I mentioned that that was older tech they said that it was a relevent test. I'm not sure I want to work there now. [2009-04-14]

6. That should read Corporate instead of Customer: That it is a good idea to migrate the support team from group policy to active directory without warning or testing. Especially when the AD system has: a) assigned new logins to a portion of the team. (employee ID instead of user name) b) Is a different domain name. c) Does not have any of our software that is reinstalled weekly whitelisted. d) Is applied to our testing labs where we require debug access (IE edit access of the registry, event viewer, program folders, etc.) e) migrated our previous domain accounts that are stored on the local machine to use the new domain causing the old domain login to create a new user account. f) Disabled access to our network share drives. g) Does not allow access to our in house maintained file servers. h) These changes perpetuate to the users randomly mid shift causing system reboots. i) The group responsible for modifying all access rights is three timezones earlier and only responds to trouble tickets between 10am and 3pm their time. j) Half the management team who are the only ones that can submit trouble tickets are out of office this week. On Tuesday when we logged into work all of our personal configurations were lost because we weren't told about the account migrations. We have to manually edit the local user configuration files for several apps to allow them to perform outside of their retail configurations. One of the apps has to have the user have full access to it's configuration data stored in the program folder. 3 days later we now have our share drives back. But are still 'discussing' with corporate about how to allow full admin rights on the lab stations since no-one locally has admin rights anymore. They are also stating that team servers are not permitted by company policy even though ours are specified as a client contract requirement so they won't allow them to be visible on the AD domain. [2008-05-23]

7. That I will believe that you are an imaging professional if I have to explain any of the following terms: Sharpening, Re-sampling, Resolution. [2008-05-09]

8. Manglement misconception - Nothing works so tech support still needs to. Got up this morning to white ice on the roads. Got to work after the slow crawl traffic to find that awatermain had burst outside the building. This means no water for the building - No restrooms, no Coffee, not even vending machine coffee. Tried to log in and our customer database tool is taking 5 minutes to pop the login screen. And I get chewed on for not doing my job of answwering emai;ls via the customer database. If everything else has stopped working why do I have to. They finally got a set of bathrooms working at 9 am and a coffee machine going about 11am [2008-01-28]

9. Threatening to not upgrade to the newest version because i won't support your version that doesn't even qualify for an upgrade discount towards the latest version will change my companies support policy from current version and one version back. The discount is available for the three previous versions. [2007-08-24]

10. That we will still support a piece of software that was last patched for win95, discontinued 10 years ago and help you install it on Vista. It's so old, the archive was purged of it's discontinuation script. And calling back will get you a tech that actually supported that software even though the vendor has switched outsourcers twice since it was discontinued. [2007-08-14]

11. So I fixed the issue using these steps. I then uninstalled and reinstalled the software to see if the fix would hold. It's broken again, Help! For reference, the error is caused by the inability to create a registry key for the applications class ID due to permission problems. The 12 keys have to have the owner manually reassigned during the installation. [2007-06-22]

12. That you can call the Tech Support line to reach all departments. Our software has an activation process after installation as an anti-piracy measure. This Quebecois looked up the Tech Support number online when the internet activation failed and gave him the phone activation screen. It has the number for the Customer Service department that deals with this at the top of the bloody screen in 48 point font. He then started yelling at me in french when I told him that he had dialed the wrong department. [2007-04-12]

13. Gotta love medical workers: I've got a doctor that needs to use your product on his tablet PC which has 1024x768 screen size. but when he toggles it to tablet display which rotates the screen display 90 degrees your product's display gets corrupted. -------Yeah, when the sys req says a minimum res of 1024x768 it will work great on 768x1024. Sorry, the window has a minimum width of 1024 pixels. these dimensions are not interchangeable. [2006-02-17]

14. When told that she may need to Reinstall her OS, SF replied, "I already did that." Your reformatted your hdd already? A reinstall of the OS doesn't require the HDD to be formated! [2005-01-14]

Tech Rules

Customer Types

2. Halloween Starfish I had a starfish incident last night while handing out candy. I opened my door to the expected knock There were 4 youngsters on my porch between the ages of 8 and 12. We stood there looking at each other for a minute, their young faces eager, their bags wide open. After looking at each other for a bit, the eldest one piped up "trick or treat" at which the rest echoed her. I then doled out the sugary snack they had sought. As they were leaving i overheard one of them ask: "You mean we have to say that at every house we go to?" I fear for my childrens future. [2004-11-01]

Co-Worker Types

2. Escalation Policy Nazi This individual won't allow a policy bypass when the system info can't be gathered using traditional means. Had the USB keyboard and receipt printer on a POS register fail causing the system to stall after XP Embedded loaded but before the POS UI loaded. The box only has 2 USB ports. Both devices have been flaky for a few weeks with false errors. Called corporate support and swapped devices with secondary register where they work correctly. Devices swapped to malfunctioning register are nonfunctional. POS has secondary PS2 keyboard that is sales functions only. L1 suspects either driver or USB hardware on 6 year old register. Can't access the system at all due to lack of working keyboard. L1 can't remote in but L2 can. Requests escalation for L2 to check drivers. L2 won't authorize without required driver info that we can't access. Had to call back an hour later when secondary register threw an insert boot device error. As store only has two registers, we got passed straight to an L2 because we were closed during business hours. This L2 bitched about the first error not being approved for escalation during the first call. A see an Otis introduction in the near future. The boot device error was caused by a midday network update that lost the primary and secondary terminal ids. It would have self resolved if the original terminal could have finished the POS load to be designation as secondary. [2011-04-13]

3. Idiot DB Admin This DB admin based our auto replenishment system on item sales not items on hand. Our stores are supposedly on a zero backstock system meaning it comes on the truck and goes on the floor. Nothing held in the stockroom. Except that when we are overstocked for promotional sales, we keep getting replacements for the overstock until the warehouse runs out of that item allowing us to sell out. There are several items that we know exactly how many we have to sell to get a new case. We get reamed for having the overstock because it's our fault we have 3 times the quantity the shelf can hold. [2011-04-03]

Customer E-mails

2. Subject: They need a new mouse... More like a circulatory mail but here's a link to the video I received: http://scottrope.typepad.com/scott_rope/files/NewMouse.wmv It looks like a spin off of the Blockbuster advert campaign. Let the puns roll on... [2005-08-21]

EUPOTD (End User Phrase of the Day)

2. Not mine but a coworkers call : Where's the Num lock key? By the way, we're software suport. [2006-04-25]

3. We support editing software, the issue the SF has is: "I can't type on a file.I wont let me" [2004-08-27]