Outlook?

Me: "Hi, my user can't connect to the web VPN with her MacBook Air".
Main Office Tech: "Uh, is she using Outlook?"


This, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of how NOT to try and fix a problem. Don't listen to the person on the other end, and when you don't hear a word they said, instead of asking them to repeat it, ask about Outlook. I mean, I know Outlook is the primary cause of quite a bit of technical difficulties, but seriously, did you even hear me say "MacBook"???

Dude, you're getting f&*ked!

So that particular company that produces PC machines and uses the "dooood" guy--what a week with them! In just two days, I had the following insane conversations:

Me:  "I have a hard drive that is failing and needs to be replaced. Checkdisk shows that there is a large portion of the drive sectors that are damaged and unrepairable."
Dood-Company Tech: "Oh, well, you know, you can fix bad sectors by reformatting the drive."
Me: "HAHAHAHAAAAAA!!! Oh MY! Can I quote you on that?"
Dood-Company Tech: "Uh, my supervisor says I can swap this hard drive out for a replacement."


Me: "Hi, I received this hardware encrypted HD, and didn't get the software for it. Can you tell me if there is somewhere I can download it from?"
Dood-Company Tech: "No, I'm in the software department. You'll have to speak to someone in Hardware."


For the last one, this is just all kinds of extra-special. I received a laptop computer for a new-hire several weeks ago. On removing it from the shipping materials, I immediately noticed that it was missing 3 case screws, including the one that holds the DVD burner in place. When I tried to build the machine, the sound card failed. I immediately contacted our district sales manager, who assured me that there was going to be a new machine built and shipped to me within 5 days. 20 days and 37 *yes, 37 at that point* emails later, I still didn't have the machine, and there was no ETA for the build to even be completed. Then the most special part--the sales manager sent me the wrong email. He was trying to send virtually the same excuses to another user, in a completely different part of the state. He copied me on the ENTIRE email thread, some of which I've copied and pasted here. Someone, ANYONE needs to stand up and not only fire the sales manager, but also the tech who sent the original emails to this user:

The first part involves the user asking for a lemon-law replacement (30 days from date of purchase in CA). I'm posting all of the responses from the thread after this (these are unedited, please note the spelling and lack of grammar or punctuation. The only thing removed is the signatures and names of the innocent and guilty. Use spell-check for F&*ks sake people!):

Dood-Company Tech (DCT from here on out):

Friday April 16th

Good Morning, Madam

I am back to work so I need to confirm to you if you will process the return of the system? Or the exchange since today is the only day that you have to return the system since your 21 days return policy done today please let me know before the day done so that I am able to process the return for you or the exchange. If we process the return let me know if you will like labels t your e-mail account which can arrive within 24 hours or through the regular mail which will be deliver in less than 7 days please let me know.

Thank you so much for your patient

DCT

Poor User (referred to as PU):

Monday, April 19th

Please forward this issue to a supervisor, as I find it dishearting that a simple accommodation cannot be made, especially in the face of a horrible, essentially DOA product.

However, if that is not possible, please send me a replacement as soon as possible.

 DCT:  

Monday, April 19th

Good morning I will be processing the exchange for you it will arrive within 7-10 business days if you do not agree with this terms let me know so that we can process the return please do it as soon as possible since you have already run out of time thank you. If we issued the exchange it will be similar product

PU:
Thursday, April 29th
I have not received the replacement laptop.  Can you please let me know the status?

 DCT:  

 Friday, April 30th
Thank you for your re-ply let me go ahead and explain to you your system will arrive to you as I stated within 7-10 business days since we did not agree on nothing on the previous e-mail until today I send the request for the exc.  From here Mam if there is anything else you need assistance on please call 1800-624-9897 since I will be out of the  office for 2 week thank you.

PU:

Monday, May 10th

Good Afternoon,

After much ado about this exchange and your two assurances that a replacement system is on the way,  I still have not received the new laptop.

Additionally, when I phoned the number you gave, there is no record of this return in process.

Please explain what is the status of this return.

At this point the district sales manager screws up and sends me this email, rather than the one that applies to me. *sigh* This certainly engenders little confidence that my missing machine will EVER arrive.

Illusions (or delusions) of Nerd Grandeur

Ok, if you get queasy at the thought of a wannabe hacker douche, please look away now.

A very good friend asked me to fix her sister's boyfriend's infected computer (referred to hereafter as SB.) She had warned me that he was an idiot, but I was completely unprepared for what I found.

I spent a couple hours trying to clean up the data in a VM environment. Cleared off literally hundreds of infections (all sorts of trojans, viruses, and assorted malware) with a variety of tools. Still not clean. Called my friend, explained that I could wipe and restore the system in less than an hour. She checked with the SB, he said no, he had never backed anything up. I'm thinking to myself "Ok, pretty much the stupidest move possible." I tell her I'll continue to try to clean it, but no promises of actually recovering anything. Apparently when she relayed this message, SB actually cried. SB demanded that his data be restored. Again, I made no promises.

Flash forward 10 more hours of cleaning. In the process I noticed he had multiple P2P software installed, including LimeWire, Kazaa, etc. He also has a very substantial collection of porn. I try to salvage everything I can. The problem started when his Symantec went out of subscription and he failed to renew it, update it, or even go get a different free anti-virus program.

Then I put the drive back in and try to boot it. I got the following screen:

You might notice that the profile name is called Lone Wolf. Ok, pretty douchey, but still, I've seen far worse. Now look at the bottom left corner of the screen. Yes, that does say "Turn off Hacking Computer"

I saw that and panicked. OMG, after all the work on this thing so far and its still hosed! I quickly snap a photo with my crackberry in case anyone has seen this sort of thing before. I forward it to my friend, who sends it on to SB.

A few hours later I get a text back from my friend "SB says he actually NAMED his computer Hacking Computer". Uh, wow. I call her back and we're both laughing so hard we nearly pee ourselves. We were both happily picturing every REAL hacker in the world busting into this computer and anally-raping SB over and over through the Internet, just to show him what real hacking is.

Please feel free to renumber this into your own order of stupidity. Here's mine:

1. Naming computer Hacking Computer
2. Not ever backing up ANY data...for 5 years. Yeah, 5. (this is based on age of the machine and dates of files)
3. Installing P2P and porn
4. Not keeping at least one up-to-date anti-virus program running.
5. Not knowing how to clean the computer after it got infected.
6. Not just saying "Ok, I guess I'm going to lose everything" and accepting the loss as a result of your own direct stupidity.

There are also the additional segments of dumb like disabling the firewall, allowing sharing of his entire hard drive through LimeWire, etc, but you can add or delete those as you feel like. 

Power Failure

Okay, I just have to let this one out. Somebody in accounting got a phone call from a person who said he was from the power company, and wanted to let us know that we're going to have a power outage during the day tomorrow. They forwarded the call to IT (why?) and the power company guy (if he really was) left a message on our help desk voice mail.

Seeing some potential for ugliness, I alerted my boss and the guy who's in charge of facilities. There was some back-and-forth, from which I politely excused myself, leaving this for those in charge to deal with.

Later in the afternoon my boss sends me an email with the subject line "Power outage." The entire text of the message is "send an email to all staff." He's in a meeting where I can't contact him. I answer the email with "OK, but what should I say?" Of course, no answer. I decide to wait 15 minutes, as it's getting late in the day. No answer. So, I send out an all-staff email that basically says we have been warned of a power outage and have no further details.

And so, an email comes back from one of the Leaders of the Org. that asks "does this mean no lights, and no computers?"

So far I have restrained myself from answering it. If no one else replies to it, I guess I'll just say "yes."

This is what is known as a Career Limiting Opportunity (CLO).

What I Like About Monday, So Far

One of our largest PITA (that ain't bread) users is giving a presentation in a conference room with her laptop hooked up to the projector in there. A large part of her show is to play a DVD for the people, no doubt the most intelligent part of the whole disaster. So, she starts playing the DVD, and there's no sound. Hm. Leave the room, run and get Me.

Have you ever played this DVD in this computer before? No. Any DVD? No. Of course this is 1-1/2 hours into a 2-hour dog&pony joke, I'm in there with 35 babbling audience members watching me trying to figure out why Windoze Media Player won't squeeze sound out of this disc.

Personally, I like to make sure stuff is going to work BEFORE I'm in front of the audience, but that's just me...

Technical Support Request

So, yesterday afternoon I was sitting behind my desk, forgot to lock and seal the door and turn all the lights off, and one of our particularly interesting users appeared in the doorway like the face of doom. She was waving a piece of paper, which, from where I was sitting, looked blank.

"Is there some way that I can write a letter and then save it so that I could use the same letter, perhaps with a few minor changes, at a later date?" (This is not an accurate quote. The real question was much more obtuse, vague, and hard to understand. I am sparing you, dear reader, many details that would cause pain.)

So, I took a deep breath and gave a general explanation of how to create and save a document, and suggested she could simply rename it each time with the date, or something like that. That seemed to interest her, but I could tell she was not satisfied.

"But when I try to type the letter, if I hit 'tab,' it goes into another one of those blocks."

Blocks?

"Are you using Word to write your letter?"

"Yes -- er, no. Excel."

So, here at the org. we are saddled with something called "[redacted]," which the boys and girls are supposed to use for continuing education credits, to maintain various contract requirements with the gummint. [redacted] provides a website where someone with basic computer/InterWeb skills could possibly log in and navigate to an area where he/she could receive some learnin' and take a test to prove that he/she had acquired said learnin'.

Okay, so there's problems with this. First, we got that InterWeb. Apparently you gotta have the InterWeb on your computer to use this. And then there's the skills. And the navigatin'.

Lucky for us we have college-educated users with advanced degrees. Certainly such people would be familiar with basic use of the tubes, yes?

No.

The Human Racehorses department provided (via e-mail) the users with a link to the site. One of our managers replied:

neither BING nor Google could find [URL for redacted].

This is not uncommon. People come to us all the time having put something like our SSL Citrix login address into Yahoo! or AltaVista or whatever they're using, telling us that "the system is down."

I love the smell of dropped packets in the morning.