computers and people

[Dest]

As my second work, mainly to get extra moneys, I usually assist other people with any problem they might have with their pc: from a simple format to more complex tasks. Now, in these years I have met a lot of people: judges, medics, lawyers, teachers, students and so on.

These are some of the most hilarious situations happened to me.

First one was about a customer who I met when I was working in Apple Center. His problem was that his modfied Wii wasn't reading illegal applications he downloaded. And he payed 90euro to modify it!!!111 XD

Now where was the problem? He showed me that, after he downloaded the .rar or .zip files he burned them directly into a dvd without extracting the .iso file. There were even 2 or 3 games in one DVD. As result, Wii wasn't able to read anything. I spent two hours telling him how to burn the iso but at the end he just gave up and started to buy original games. It was way too hard for him to extract a rar file and burn the iso.

I am wondering why software-houses keep to use drm...








Another awesome one, I did help to setup a server for a little bank in my city. Of course since the tech guy who was supposed to be there never showed, they used to call me for everything. Every month they needed to use a dos command to compact database.

Problem:This server was located in a little room protected by glass doors: only bank director had keys but since server was controlled by a wireless keyboard they never had problems.

Last november they called me. The poor woman who called was kinda in a desperate status, she was going to kill herself because they weren't able to acces server.

customer: Greetings, we have a problem with the keyboard, it doesn't work and we can't access the server. Keyboard isn't working.

As always, because it's a common mistake, I asked her: Did you insert batteries correctly?

In one second, I heard the anger coming, Arthas was nothing compared to her. She yelled at me: "LISTEN!! WE ARE PAYING YOU TO ASSIST US, NOT TO BUBBLE AT PHONE! NOW COME HERE OR I CAN'T GO HOME UNTIL TOMORROW!".

Now this bank is on the other side of city and of course no one is paying me travel's costs: anyway, I went there under rain, stuck in traffic and missing university (and wsg week while we are at it) . I reached bank in one hour, after being stuck traffic: I came, I went, I did take keyboard, opened power slot and, yes, I changed batteries pole that were inverted. And now, OH GOD, keyboard is working again. God be praised!


Then the woman looked at me and said: "I apologise but try to understand us, I had no idea about what to do and it was an important task".

I said: "it's ok, don't worry: it was question number two. Now you just need to pay me both travel costs and urgent manteinance, as contract". At the end I made something like 200 euro to switch two batteries from positive to negative pole...







Now the best one:

a company I was assisting had its own domain and it own email addresses linked to an ISP. I made something like 20 email addresses, following their instructions. To summarise, it was  name.surname@domain.it .I suggested them to don't use it for privacy reasons and names lenght but that's not the point.

As asked, I told all workers to don't use these email for personal stuff: I made a quick guide for everyone and, as told by their boss, I made a master mail account that was receiving every mail sent from these addresses. This way, even if something went wrong while sending mail (wrong address or something) they had still a copy of that mail they could use. Now what happens? One day, while checking master server for manteinance I noticed some weird mails sent from one pc, offering swingers service, yes swingers! (I hope it's the right word to explain change of couples in a sexy way)


I stared at monitor for something like 30mins without knowing if I should have cryed or laught. I then found the worker and told him he was using the wrong address when he registered to website, he was using surname.name@domain.it and not the correct one. I also made him a google mail account so he could use the company's mail only for work tasks.


At the end, he spent one hour saying thanks and that he was so worried no one liked him and his wife, they really wanted to have a swingers party...
His pc is the only one where I wash my hands with alchool after using it.

[Coraie]

change of couples in a sexy way

I lolled =P

[stonah]

Having been doing support for the last 7 or so years, I know what it's like.

Could probably write a book on this sort of thing. Wouldn't know where to start...

[Garland]

That was a really funny read (especially in this quiet class >_> ) thanks Dest 

[Pryda]

I fix computers, help out with multimedia, etc too.. most stupid thing I ever encountered was similar to your battery problem.

I drove 250km to his place.. just to plug in his power cable (I asked him on the phone if something was not plugged in and he said that was not possible), which his wife had unplugged to use the vacuum cleaner .

I charge 25ct/km for long distances and EUR 50 initial fee when I walk in. 250 x 2 x .25 + 50 = EUR 175,00 earned in 4 hours.

[Dest]

One of the best happened to me when I was working in Apple Center.

An old man, probably around 50, came with a MacBook out of warranty in his hands and said:

"My mac is broken, this morning I was angry with my wife and I did throw it at her. Now when I turn it on, it shuts down after two minutes".

Trying to don't laugh, I  opened the mac and I noticed cpu fans was damaged: after few minutes the laptop shutted down itself to protect cpu. Now, while I was telling to this person I needed some time to repair and order a new fan (it was an old MacBook model, out of warrant also), this guy told me: "Listen now, I need to take a train in one hour, hurry! Repair it fast: I need to bring it with me".


I just told the guy: "Take it now then, good day to you, sir!".






This one, I don't know why but sometimes certain women can be quite amusing. To use a pc you need just one thing, a brain, then comes knowledge but as long you have the first, you'll do just fine.

Now this woman: she has a laptop, toshiba iirc but I am not sure. She turns it on with a simple idea in mind, you can turn EVERY pc in the world in same way.

She presses ON (and until here, it's ok), then, while booting, appears a message saying "Press F10 to access BIOS". She does press F10 and another message appears, it says: "Press ESC to keep booting or F10 to enter bios". She does press esc and everything goes fine.



Now where is the problem? She visited a friend of her, she has an HP laptop. At start it has different options: "Press ESC to boot, F1 for Bios and F10 for System Restore". Do I have to tell you the rest? XD

Of course she does press F10, she chooses italian as language, which is supposed to be her native tongue, and a new message, in italian, comes: "Warning! By proceeding all datas on computer will be ERASED and System will be restored to its original status". She has to confirm with a yes or not, and what she can do? Of course she presses yes!!

When she told me, I couldn't believe her at first. Then I asked: "You don't need to press anything while booting. However, when you boot your Toshiba laptop, usually bios is pretty fast to boot, you can't tell me you have always had time to press F10. Didn't you notice your latop booted itself alone sometimes?"

She answered: "Well, you see, I have always thought someone clicked buttons for me".

Speechless....


Anyway, thank god they had an online backup software linked to HP: I called HP assistance and when they stopped to laugh they helped me to restore all lost data.

[Kenzorc]

My brother in law is a PC repair guy and he once had this old lady trying to learn how to work with a computer and she called him asking why she couldn't insert any CD's so he said possibly you have no CD-driver and she said when I bought it, somewhere it said CD-Rom included, did they cheat me?

And he said okay madam, I'll come and have a look at it.
He saw a CD drive and said madam, what do you think this is? And she responded Oh, I opened that every morning and tought that was a cup holder.

She was putting cups in there to hold her drinks :O


I also had a man coming in a café where I usually go, and he asked me : You know stuff about a computer... I don't seem to have acces to my wireless internet... When I plug in the cable, it works, when I go wifi on my laptop it doesn't.

So I went to his house, and noticed his router was installed correctly and he needed a password to enter Wireless internet.
So I said, this is probably the issue in here. You should've received a password from your provider or when someone installed a password in your router, he should've told you. And then he said yeah the password is the name of my dog. (His dog named Rambo or something) so I entered that and it didn't work.
So I said the password is incorrect, are you sure? He said yeah, when I go to Users (on his comp) I had to make a password for my own user and made it my dogs name...
I said that has nothing to do with your wifi, and he said oh crap... I tought it was, I threw away all the other papers, thinking I'd never need them anymore. (Since he was going to buy a new router).
At that moment he was very lucky that I didn't say : Okay I'll have to leave this with you, plug in a cable everytime and have fun.
He had a same router like I used to have like 2 years ago, and if you install password protected WiFi, it makes the same password for every router. So I tried that and it worked. I wrote it down on a piece of paper, and told him : Keep this safe, don't throw it away or you'll never have WiFi connection again as you're lucky I knew this password.

[MyOnions]

How about this one that happened to me...

(A Female colleague rings my extension)
Colleague: "i've lost my document!"
Me: "ok, what exactly have you lost?"
Colleague: "I've lost it! It's Gone! I spent hours on it. The system is shit!"
Me: "okie dokie, hold on - i'll pop over"
(I arrive at her desk)
Colleague: "Everything is gone!"
Me: "Define 'Everything'"
Colleague: "I spent hours on this document and it's gone. The system is shit".
(I looked at her screen)
Me: "Was it a word document?"
Colleague: "yes! and it's gone"

I clicked on the taskbar...where MS Word was minimised!

I just clicked on it which restored the window, including her document and walked away as she tried to speak...

Hahahaha what a spastic!

[Dest]

For weird reasons some people seem to go in panic when something on their screen goes wrong. It's funny that everyone keep to yell and smash their head against desk.