Here is a blatant cut and paste from PCPro. I love stories like this as they educate PC users around the world.
I was going to contribute to Stewart Mitchell’s request for horror stories about computer repair people; then I was completely diverted by a panic phone call from an old friend, which helped me to realise that I was far more of a repairer than a customer of repairers.
That 72 hours of raw-edged panic was quite enough for me to focus on the sins of those who come and ask for help, which can be every bit as difficult as the sins of the fixers. So pardon me while I abuse the Pro blogs to let my friend know how I felt about her approach to the whole sorry matter.
Dear Mildred (name changed to protect the innocent here),
It was delightful to hear about your holiday in Kuala Lumpur, for 20 minutes, before you got around to mentioning that you had brought back a DVD burned for you by a charismatic local photographer and thrown it in that laptop you obtained from me six months or more ago. It was sadly not surprising to hear that once that DVD had been introduced to the laptop, you had laid yourself wide open to every hacker and script kiddie on the planet. The parts I did find surprising then came so thick and fast that I was barely able to assemble a coherent reply, so let’s unpack all your assumptions and deal with them item by item, now that facts can take precedence over emotional blackmail.
- No, it doesn’t matter how you imagine viruses work: they will not be amenable to persuasion, they will do what they like. Responses like “that seems a bit far-fetched” won’t get your laptop fixed, or keep the hackers away. After the initial, invisible infection has granted the underworld open access to your PC, they are unlikely to steal your personal data – you’re not rich enough – but they will sell off access to your machine, for a relative pittance, to much less accomplished hackers. It’s their lesser efforts you can see, and they’re just evidence of the basic high-quality infection.
- No, you can’t sue AVG. You put a physical piece of storage in your DVD drive and clicked on various dialog boxes, some of which you neither understood, nor can now remember, because you wanted to get at the content on the disk. Once you do that, it’s game over.
- No, I am not responsible for everything that befalls something I once owned. It is now your laptop and your responsibility. Curiously, I am not sitting around at home doing nothing waiting for machines to die, and there is no way that you can cajole, seduce or otherwise influence me to “just spend ten minutes on it”. There are two reasons for this. One is that it’s perfectly clear that if I do touch it, I will never hear the end of the matter for as long as I live. The other is that once you stuck that DVD in there and started saying “yes, OK” to every resulting dialog box, you sank the whole thing. It doesn’t take 10 minutes to sort that out; it requires a complete machine reload to properly guarantee the infection is history.
- No, there is no neat and handy way I’ve been keeping secret that allows you to retain your extensive collection of stolen software licences loaded on that laptop. It’s even possible (but unlikely) that one of those copies you downloaded from total strangers via BitTorrent was actually the source of infection, not the DVD from that far-off and well-known training school for global cybercrime supercriminals. But you don’t believe that possibility either, so that’s me told good and proper. I personally remember all those nights in the 90’s when your standard response to any creative suggestion was “that’s great, but don’t tell anyone else so they can’t steal your idea” – rampant hypocrisy always offends me, especially when the software you’ve stolen is used to maintain your creative business. Perhaps you wouldn’t be in this dire situation if you had actually paid for the things you use (and therefore could reinstall them), even paying for a decent image-based backup program would have saved your bacon. Just because I use one and recommend it to everyone doesn’t mean it must therefore be nerdy and incomprehensible so you shouldn’t touch it.
- Don’t worry. I don’t propose to identify the specific products you don’t have licences for, mainly because I think the whole business of what’s free and what’s not is now so murky and confused that I don’t think you are even doing anything special these days. It’s not something I will involve myself in, though, which is in part why I am more tilted towards the hardware business, than software, these days. I have gone about as far as I can here to make it clear why your approach to the way your laptop drives your business, mixed with your approach to the way that people in the computer business sell things to you, adds up to a disaster waiting to happen. And I do disaster recovery, not disaster participation.
Love and kisses,
Steve
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Mar 9, 2011
Oct 15, 2010
Aug 24, 2010
Go Daddy Coughs Up $1 .Com Domain Names [Dealzmodo]
Go Daddy Coughs Up $1 .Com Domain Names [Dealzmodo]: "
For any aspiring website entrepreneurs/squatters out there, Go Daddy's running a promotion through August 31st that gets you one .com domain for $1 for one year. Just enter SCHOOL99 at checkout, and fartzzz.com is yours for a buck! You can't buy in bulk, but it looks like you can go back and snap up individual domains as many times as you want—a tedious but cost-effective way to carve out your own little corner of the internet. More »
For any aspiring website entrepreneurs/squatters out there, Go Daddy's running a promotion through August 31st that gets you one .com domain for $1 for one year. Just enter SCHOOL99 at checkout, and fartzzz.com is yours for a buck! You can't buy in bulk, but it looks like you can go back and snap up individual domains as many times as you want—a tedious but cost-effective way to carve out your own little corner of the internet. More »
Jul 30, 2010
Jun 12, 2010
Ipad Classic
iPad Gets Encased in a Macintosh Classic:
There are plenty of iPad stands to choose from, but none quite like this gutted Macintosh Classic that houses the futuristic iPad in its vintage case. Although the Mac's display area is almost the same size as the iPad's, the tablet's resolution totally clobbers that of the old computer from 1990. 1990 doesn't seem like that long ago, but look how far we've come! Obviously, this modded case is not the best idea for travel, but it is perfect for watching movies, or TV shows at home, since you can sit back, relax, and not have to hold the iPad yourself.
However, this isn't the only amazing iPad case mod that we've seen. Check out a few other notables - including a few DIY iBook and Macintosh Plus mods, a healthy kitchen cabinet project, and of course, the April Fool's joke heard 'round the world - in the gallery below!
There are plenty of iPad stands to choose from, but none quite like this gutted Macintosh Classic that houses the futuristic iPad in its vintage case. Although the Mac's display area is almost the same size as the iPad's, the tablet's resolution totally clobbers that of the old computer from 1990. 1990 doesn't seem like that long ago, but look how far we've come! Obviously, this modded case is not the best idea for travel, but it is perfect for watching movies, or TV shows at home, since you can sit back, relax, and not have to hold the iPad yourself.
However, this isn't the only amazing iPad case mod that we've seen. Check out a few other notables - including a few DIY iBook and Macintosh Plus mods, a healthy kitchen cabinet project, and of course, the April Fool's joke heard 'round the world - in the gallery below!
May 21, 2010
Infrastructures
I really don't like posting back-to-back XKCD cartoons but this is just too good. I hate to say it but a lot of people saw this whole Facebook thing coming a mile away.
May 20, 2010
Scholarship FAIL
Got this spam the other day. Uh, maybe we won't be sending him any money.
Subject: I WONT TO WINE THIS SCHOLARSHIP
My name is Surafel Ashenafi.i am student of Addis Ababa university
faculity of technology in the department of chemical engineering.But this
department is not my interist.I wont to study mechnical engineering if i
get a chance.
I wont to know what is your criteria for this opportunity?
THNK YOU !!
May 19, 2010
Mar 24, 2010
Feb 25, 2010
Support Stories
The Daily WTF often has some great stories. Here is one that I can really relate to. Back in the day, I fixed PCs and I remember actually fixing a down machine before discovering I was at the wrong location.
Here are 3 great stories of tech support nightmares.
Problematic Problem (from Ben)
Way back when, I was responsible for doing on-site support for a fairly complex ERP solution that our company sold. My support radius was 100 miles, which meant I was on the road a lot and traveled to places I wasn't all that familiar with. My trusty navigation aide was a compass and a Rand McNally map book. Fancy, online mapping services weren't around yet, let alone super-fancy GPS units.
One day, I was assigned to visit a customer on the far end of my region (99.9999999 miles), first thing in the morning. It meant that, not only would I need to battle rush-hour traffic through the city, but then drive another 60 miles once that cleared. I was not a fan of early mornings, and getting that client on that wintry day meant a 5:30A departure with a 2.5 hour commute.
That morning, traffic was even worse than I anticipated. And to make matters worse, I had a terrible time finding the place. Fortunately, a kind fellow at the gas station pointed me in the right direction, and I was able to ring the client from the nearest pay phone to let them know I was running behind.
When I arrived, everything seemed to be downhill from there. I went to the receptionist, tacked on my visitor badge, headed over to the server room, set my briefcase down, and got to work. Before I could even try logging in, someone walked up to me and said, "hey, I know this isn't really your thing, but I'm desperate, and reeeeaaaallly need some help getting this report for our PM meeting."
It certainly wasn't my thing, but given that I was 30 minutes late, a little goodwill towards helping a company executive could only help. So I followed her to her office and helped troubleshoot the problem. An hour-and-a-half later, we had the report running, no problem. She was thrilled, and I headed back to the server room.
For some reason, I couldn't log-in to the server console, but the generous IT guy helped me past that hurdle by logging in with his credentials. But then I had another problem: I couldn't access any of the servers listed on my sheet. In fact, I couldn't even find a server that looked anything like ours.
I called the IT guy over again and asked him where our ERP server was. He shot a confused look to me, and said that he's pretty sure they don't have an ERP server. I assured him that they did, so he went back and looked into things on his end. Thirty minutes later, he assured me that they absolutely, positively, definitely don't have an ERP server.
We were both utterly confused. And then something dawned on me, and I silently prayed it wasn't true. I pulled out my sheet, showed it to the IT guy, and pointed towards the customer address heading. "That's you guys, right?"
As it turned out, not so much. Our actual customer was down the street, in another un-marked office building.
Problem supply (from Brendan)
Working as a coder for a small company that operates worldwide, I was on the team that deployed a project to China. Now I realize that my English is far from perfect, but dealing with Chinese customers in English has been quite the experience. One day, four months after going live with the new system, I received this mail from our Chinese client:
A Text-Destroying Problem (from Esko Tanakka)
Back in 1999, I was just beginning my career and worked at a small store that built and configured computers for the public. Occasionally, I'd have to answer customer calls and help people with general computing problems.
One day, a man called in and immediately started complaining about how we sell utter crap, that we should take responsibility for our problems, and that he was owed money back because of the problems we caused.
I begged him to calm down and explain specifically what was wrong. He told me that our computer is destroying his text, and that something had to be done. At first, I thought his files were disappearing, but after more investigation, I discovered what his actual problem was: typing text in Microsoft Word overwrote previous text.
I told him that he simply had the INSERT key on, but he insisted that he never pressed that key, and that pressing the key did nothing. Running out of phone-support options, I told him he’d need to bring in his computer. But first, I needed his warranty information.
Well, it turned out that he bought the computer seven years earlier, then had another company install Windows 95 and the Corel Office Suite. After hearing that, I told him that I obviously couldn't take the machine in. That just made him more angry, and he accused me of working for "Satan and his minions", and threw all sorts of other ridiculous insults at me. But then all of a sudden, he calmed down. Apparently, he actually tried pressing the INSERT key (as I asked him to do before), and his computer stopped destroying his text.
Here are 3 great stories of tech support nightmares.
Problematic Problem (from Ben)
Way back when, I was responsible for doing on-site support for a fairly complex ERP solution that our company sold. My support radius was 100 miles, which meant I was on the road a lot and traveled to places I wasn't all that familiar with. My trusty navigation aide was a compass and a Rand McNally map book. Fancy, online mapping services weren't around yet, let alone super-fancy GPS units.
One day, I was assigned to visit a customer on the far end of my region (99.9999999 miles), first thing in the morning. It meant that, not only would I need to battle rush-hour traffic through the city, but then drive another 60 miles once that cleared. I was not a fan of early mornings, and getting that client on that wintry day meant a 5:30A departure with a 2.5 hour commute.
That morning, traffic was even worse than I anticipated. And to make matters worse, I had a terrible time finding the place. Fortunately, a kind fellow at the gas station pointed me in the right direction, and I was able to ring the client from the nearest pay phone to let them know I was running behind.
When I arrived, everything seemed to be downhill from there. I went to the receptionist, tacked on my visitor badge, headed over to the server room, set my briefcase down, and got to work. Before I could even try logging in, someone walked up to me and said, "hey, I know this isn't really your thing, but I'm desperate, and reeeeaaaallly need some help getting this report for our PM meeting."
It certainly wasn't my thing, but given that I was 30 minutes late, a little goodwill towards helping a company executive could only help. So I followed her to her office and helped troubleshoot the problem. An hour-and-a-half later, we had the report running, no problem. She was thrilled, and I headed back to the server room.
For some reason, I couldn't log-in to the server console, but the generous IT guy helped me past that hurdle by logging in with his credentials. But then I had another problem: I couldn't access any of the servers listed on my sheet. In fact, I couldn't even find a server that looked anything like ours.
I called the IT guy over again and asked him where our ERP server was. He shot a confused look to me, and said that he's pretty sure they don't have an ERP server. I assured him that they did, so he went back and looked into things on his end. Thirty minutes later, he assured me that they absolutely, positively, definitely don't have an ERP server.
We were both utterly confused. And then something dawned on me, and I silently prayed it wasn't true. I pulled out my sheet, showed it to the IT guy, and pointed towards the customer address heading. "That's you guys, right?"
As it turned out, not so much. Our actual customer was down the street, in another un-marked office building.
Problem supply (from Brendan)
Working as a coder for a small company that operates worldwide, I was on the team that deployed a project to China. Now I realize that my English is far from perfect, but dealing with Chinese customers in English has been quite the experience. One day, four months after going live with the new system, I received this mail from our Chinese client:
From: Louis ChangAh, the lingo of the busisness... I can imagine that you'd have the faintest idea what he was talking about... but don't worry, neither did I. So I replied to him, hoping to get a better description of his issue:
To: Brendan ******
Subject: Problem supply
_____________________________________________________
Hi Brendan,
Sorry disturbing you. There is a problem with supply programme on the
button. Please advice?
Regards,
Lou Chang
From: Louis ChangI didn't have to wait long for his clarification, as his problem seemed to be really urgent.
To: Brendan ******
Subject: RE: Problem supply
_____________________________________________________
Hi Lou,
Could you please state your problem more clearly?
Thanks,
Brendan
From: Louis ChangYup. Much better. Thanks.
To: Brendan ******
Subject: RE: Problem supply
_____________________________________________________
There is a problem
with supply
programme on
the button.
Please advice?
A Text-Destroying Problem (from Esko Tanakka)
Back in 1999, I was just beginning my career and worked at a small store that built and configured computers for the public. Occasionally, I'd have to answer customer calls and help people with general computing problems.
One day, a man called in and immediately started complaining about how we sell utter crap, that we should take responsibility for our problems, and that he was owed money back because of the problems we caused.
I begged him to calm down and explain specifically what was wrong. He told me that our computer is destroying his text, and that something had to be done. At first, I thought his files were disappearing, but after more investigation, I discovered what his actual problem was: typing text in Microsoft Word overwrote previous text.
I told him that he simply had the INSERT key on, but he insisted that he never pressed that key, and that pressing the key did nothing. Running out of phone-support options, I told him he’d need to bring in his computer. But first, I needed his warranty information.
Well, it turned out that he bought the computer seven years earlier, then had another company install Windows 95 and the Corel Office Suite. After hearing that, I told him that I obviously couldn't take the machine in. That just made him more angry, and he accused me of working for "Satan and his minions", and threw all sorts of other ridiculous insults at me. But then all of a sudden, he calmed down. Apparently, he actually tried pressing the INSERT key (as I asked him to do before), and his computer stopped destroying his text.
Aug 24, 2009
Tech Support Cheat Sheet
I think the big problem is the box about "Google". Most people are so intimidated by "Googling something" that they refuse and would rather have their hand held. The rest have no idea how to read the results of a Google search. Let's face it, there is an art to "Googling" something and the even more difficult part of reading the results.
Tech Support Cheat Sheet
Tech Support Cheat Sheet
Oct 22, 2008
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