'True' Tech Illiteracy Stories #5 


A user complained that he had saved a file on a disk and
it was no longer there. I checked everything. Was the disk
write-protected? Is the disk all the way in the drive?
After several minutes, I asked if it was the same disk. He
replied, "It has to be the same disk?"


A customer installed Win95, and the hd kept crashing. I spent 4 hours
restoring a machine back to Win 3.1. After we finally got done, he
asked if it would be ok to try and install Win95 again. I told him to
feel free, but to wait till after the two hours I had on my shift before
calling back so he could spend another 4 hours with someone else
when he needed to get his machine working again.


Our salesforce is equipped with laptops. They dial into our
minicomputer to receive file updates. System works fine. One lady
was having a great deal of difficulty connecting to the modem pool.
No other sales people were having that problem. We replaced her
modem. We replaced her laptop. We replaced the pig-tail for the modem.
We finally found out why she was having problems. She would call the
modem pool with a normal phone, and when she heard the modem pool
answer, she would quickly disconnect the RJ-11 connector from her
phone, and click it into the pig-tail, then hit the key to dial.


I set up a multi-user database for a client. The customer called me
because he couldn't get multi-user working. Everything seemed okay in his
setup, but he couldn't use both "machines" at once because the other user
kept "messing up the screen." Turns out that he just plugged two keyboards
into the same Macintosh and thought that meant multi-user.


I had a secretary with a three letter power-on password. She forgot it
after our one week vacation over the Christmas holiday. I keep a master
list of passwords locked in a file cabinet, organized by building, room,
and initials. Next to her three letter initials was her three letter
password. Need I say more.


The customer kept saying that the disks we sent were unreadable.
We decided to go back and start from scratch, in case they had missed
something obvious (you know, is it plugged in?). First, we asked, "so, what
kind of Mac is this?" "I don't know", the customer replied, "just a regular
one, I guess, it says 'Dell' on the front, does that help?" Yes, you got it,
they were trying to use the Mac disk in a PC and, of course, it was
unreadable. Now, the disk says "Macintosh Version" on it, but the customer
just wasn't aware of the differences between Macs and PCs (thinking,
evidently, that a Mac was just another type of PC). The problem was so
basic, none of the regular tech support people had been able to catch it.


One user could not edit their document in WordPerfect. She said she had
loaded the document in and was able to see the words, but she couldn't
edit the text. I was puzzled until she told me she had scanned in the
document; we do not have any OCR software, and she had inserted the bitmap
image of what she had scanned in into the file. I tried to explain, but she
did not listen and kept on trying.


CUST: Where can I get a BIOS upgrade for by 286 computer?
TECH: The unit should have been shipped with the latest bios.
CUST: Well I upgraded the processor myself, and my computer won't work.
TECH: What did you upgrade the processor to?
CUST: I upgraded it to a 486DX-50.
TECH: Sir, the 286 chip is soldered on the motherboard!
CUST: I know, I took out my handy soldering iron and took it out and put
 the 486 on myself.
TECH: Sir, the 486 is bigger than the 286.
CUST: I know, I had to use quite a bit of solder to solder the extra
 pins together.


A call came in and the customer said that his computer was acting funny. He
didn't know why he was having these problems, since the computer was reading
that it was "Ok". The tech pondered a moment, and came to the realization
that the display actually was "zero K"-the customer's disk was full!


One user was having problems getting the 3.5" disk into the disk drive. It
would only go about half-way. I proceeded to check to see if there was
already another disk in the drive and also used a paper clip to see if
somehow the drive had gotten into the down position. I was stumped, until I
looked down at the disk and realized that she had put the disk label
completely on the front of the disk. In the process she had literally taped
the metal door shut so it wouldn't open when she tried to put the disk in.
She had labeled a whole pack of disks that way.


The computer was having problems reading a disk. I checked the disk and
found that it had a coffee ring on it. I asked who set their coffee cup on
it and one guy raised his hand. I asked why, and he said, "Well, I didn't
want to hurt the table."


A customer saw me handling some floppies, and remarked: "How do they get the
words small enough to fit on there?"


"I tried sending email to 1.404.123.4567 but the emailer wouldn't let me."
That's a phone number!


Caller: You've sent me a disk but it doesn't seem to fit into the drive. It
 seems to be an inch too long.
Me: In order to make the disk fit into the drive, you have to make sure that
 the metal shield is towards the computer, and that the round wheel is
 downwards.
Caller: Ah. That's better, but it still doesn't work.
Me: You have to push the disk in until the blue button pops out.
Caller: Oh God, now it works! How come you can't read that anywhere?


If I had to hear this man tell me ONE MORE TIME "We ignorant about
 this sorta thing...whut duya mean by that?" I was gonna flip.
I was like, "3.5 inches, sir. Do you have a tape measure?"


Back when the PS/2 first came out, I was setting up a bunch 'o machines.
Management did not want their users having floppy drives because that was
just another hole for a virus to enter their network. The funny thing
about those old PS/2's is that the front of the CPU had the disk slot
and eject mechanism even if there was no drive in the bay (later fixed,
of course). Thus, we sent email out to everyone describing this anomaly
and put tape over the disk slot. Needless to say, nearly every CPU had
disks laying on the motherboard after only a month!


I thought my old SE was having some major problems one night. I kept
looking at the screen and periodically it would jiggle. I ran Mactools,
I ran RAM checker software. I could not figure it out. I looked for
electrical interference, everything. I could not get it to do it
consistently at all, it was very intermittent. After 30 minutes of
struggling with this, I called my brother who is an Apple certified tech.
I asked him, and he went through the promptings. Then he noticed that I
was eating some chips. He asked "How long have you been munching?" I
said, "about 45 minutes or so." He said, "Stop munching." Every time you
chew something crunchy the monitor will appear to jiggle. He was right.
Boy was I embarrassed.


I have a Mac friend that convinced the IBM people at his company that when
the token ring network went down, it was because someone removed the cable
and the token fell out. He actually had businessmen on the floor looking for
it. I think he eventually said he found it himself to avoid getting lynched.


I work at the computer store on a campus. A few weeks ago, we had a customer
call in and ask, "I'd like to buy the Internet. Do you know how much it is?"


A few months ago, a lady started to call our tech support department over and
over again. She couldn't get a DXF file to import into our 3d program. After
exhausting the tech pool, I was asked to see if I could help this
lady. I promptly asked her to send me the file that she wanted to bring into
our 3d program. After receiving the file I looked at it and found that it was
a 2d DXF file. I called this woman to inform her that she could not import a
2d file. She responded by screaming that she wanted her money back if our
program couldn't automatically make a 3d object out of her 2d CAD drawings.


"I'm having trouble with WordPerfect. I was just typing along, and suddenly,
 the words went away."
"What does your screen look like now?"
"Nothing. It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type."
"Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?"
"How do I tell?"
"Can you see the C:\> prompt on the screen?"
"What's a sea-prompt?"
"Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?"
"There isn't any cursor."
"Does your monitor have a power indicator?"
"What's a monitor?"
"It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a
 little light that tells you when it's on?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord
 goes into it. Can you see that? Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me
 if it's plugged into the wall."
"Yes, it is."
"When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables
 plugged into the back of it, not just one?"
"No."
"Well, there are. Look back there again and find the other cable."
"Okay, here it is."
"Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of
 your computer."
"I can't reach."
"Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?"
"No. Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle-it's because it's
 dark in here."
"Dark?"
"Yes-the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in
 from the window."
"Well, turn on the office light then."
"I can't."
"No? Why not?"
"Because there's a power outage."
[ARGH!]


 ___  __  __  ___    __    _  _  _  _  ____
/ __)(  )(  )(_  )  /__\  ( \( )( \( )( ___) Suzanne Cook
\__ \ )(__)(  / /  /(__)\  )  (  )  (  )__)  
(___/(______)(___)(__)(__)(_)\_)(_)\_)(____) http://www.cs.utah.edu/~scook/