So an end user called our first level support this morning to have the time and time zone changed on his laptop. Really??
...the first level support tech escalates it to second level support. Yeah...really. I called the user thinking there had to be more to it. Nope. Walked the user through changing his settings. The user says "that was it??" yep...here's your sign.
Wow...just wow

I'm thinking there's no way his computer has rebooted that fast. I reconnect and realize he is talking about the blue background in Word when it doesn't have a document open. NOTE: never tell a tech you have a blue screen unless your computer just crashed.

Today, the same user calls still having some problems. I remotely control his computer and try to open a document. He tells me he has a blue screen. So... I disconnect from his system and literally 10 seconds later he says "ok, it's open." WTF??

So yesterday I was on the phone with an end user for over an hour. He told me he couldn't open any of his attachments. After finally remotely controlling his computer I realize he isn't talking about email attachments, he is talking about files in his documents folder.

Not exactly IT related...

My office is across the street from one of the local DMV locations. We always have trouble with people parking in front of our building or in our parking lot, as well as the local "dumpster divers" scavaging through our dumpsters looking for treasure. Our shipping lady saw a man going through one of the dumpsters and went out and ran him off. A few minutes later, one of the other ladies looked out and told her "There goes another one." So the shipping lady runs outside, goes around the corner and see's this 19 or 20 year old kid standing with his pants almost down to his knees...peeing on our roll-up door that goes to our docking area. WTF??

She starts going off on him. A few of the guys hear her and go out to see what's going on. Now these two guys aren't exactly small. In fact, they are 2 of the 3 biggest guys in the office. The poor kid takes off running...followed quickly by the 2, now very angry, techs. Of course the techs stopped at the end of our building but the poor kid ran all the way to the DMV parking lot, jumped in his car, and sped off.

I don't know who I laughed at more...the irate shipping lady who was busy yelling at the kid telling him "I've got kids older than you! I should whoop your butt! Where's your mom??" Or the two techs trying to be heroes!

An uneventful day

In the office, some techs tend to throw other techs under the bus. So the guys came up with a solution. Someone printed out a picture of a yellow school bus. When a tech throws someone under the bus...they get the picture taped to their desk. Pretty good idea...the bus just seems to be staying on the same desk...and no...not mine...lol

Yeah that was kind of weak, but it was a pretty uneventful day. Tomorrow being Friday, I'm hoping for much better results. :)

Blast from the past

We've all heard the stories about the "cupholders" and such not working on computers, but this one actually happened to me when I first started in the IT industry.

I was working for a small company that made POS (point of sale) software for restaurants as a helpdesk tech. Our system booted up using 5.25" floppy disks (yes I'm showing my age here) and was specific to each customer. One day a lady calls having issues with the disk. It seemed one of the files wasn't putting the correct information on the screen. I asked her to make a copy of the disk and send it to me. The next day I received a FedEx envelope from her. I opened the envelope and found a single piece of paper...an actual photocopy of the disk...

Yes...it actually happened.

Where to start

I've been in the IT industry for many years now and have always said I should write a book about the funny, stupid, and weird things I have run into during my career. This afternoon I jokingly posted my status on Facebook as "I should start a blog about stupid user stunts." The more I thought about it, the more I thought what the hell. So here goes nothing.

Yesterday I was working with one of my users in Canada who was having some issues with his laptop. It seemed like a simple software issue that I had corrected many times over the past couple of years. All I needed to do was connect to his system remotely, take control, and install the fix. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get connected to his system and instructed him to ship it to me. This morning I received what looked like a wine bottle box from this particular user. I opened it to find a piece of bubble wrap just kind of hanging out in the box, not wrapped around anything, just folded and laying there. The partitions that originally held bottles were folded flat against the sides, and the laptop was lying loose inside.

This is what I saw when I opened the box:



This was actually shipped internationally. The funny part...it booted up perfectly and the only problem was the actual problem it was shipped in for. I was really tempted to return it to the user in the same box, but decided to send it back a little more secure along with a note suggesting he retain the box in case he needed to ship his system in the future. He must have had the luck of the Irish today :)

Happy St Patrick's Day!