I'm A Luddite And Proud Of It!

I find modern technology boring and uninspiring.

I do not need to know bits and bytes, GIGs and RAM?

Intel inside? You'd beter, it rained on Friday!

Pentium? So what!

Operating system? I ain't no surgeon!

So when my computer crashes what do I do?

Fix it myself!

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I tossed a newspaper in the floor and ran over it with my office chair.

As I turned around, with the keyboard in my lap..the CPU flops over and everything is lost. My internet radio, my report and the monitor blacks out.

I pick up the unit, turn it off and on again.


It starts to beep like a wounded computer and the fan sounds like the wind thru your open window on the freeway.

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1 I am in trouble, I just killed the darn thing.

2 I'll have to call the system administrator, who despite the fact she has a IT
certificate, who will not touch the machine but will, look and listen to the machine and tell me to call "The Help Line".

A total waste of the human brain, that one! :rolleyes:

3 The HELP line is a place where you call and tell them what is wrong, they write out a "ticket", then use the computer to send that ticket to the local IT department. (This means you have to call an office 40 miles away, they take the message and send it back, another 40 miles, where it is ignored for most of the day...you get a call at 4:59 p.m. and they tell you they will see you at 11 the next day.)

4 The local IT department is staffed with the most unrelialble set of men and women on the planet. YoU will get a call that goes like this...

Hello?

(Monotone voice) You got a computer problem?

AH, Yeah....

This is Dopey from IT, what is the problem?

I knocked over the CPU and knocked the thing silly, the screen went dark.
I shut it down and then turned it on and nothing happened.
(I refuse to reboot, save, open a dialogue box or use any of the silly commands IT people want to hear.)

And what happened then?

Well, the fan on the machine sounds like a vacumn cleaner and it beeps like a wounded R2D2.

Dude, I loved Star Wars.....

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Finding an IT guy here is like looking for a cop......the cool IT guy looks like Billy Dee Williams (IT ALWAYS GOES BACK TO STAR WARS, EH?), Dresses like Puff Crappy, Smells like the Giorgio factory and ALWAYS has a foam coffee cup in his hand.

USELESS....You stop to ask him a question and he answers with,

HAVE YOU CALLED THE HELP LINE?

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Soooo,

what do I do?


I open the CPU up, Slap the fan unit. Hit and jiggle the power unit box and
voila'...My computer works again....It took me five minutes, I called no one and just had to rerun my report...

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The moral of the story?

All the magical, electical, technical BS that people think will fix a problem usually doesn't. It just takes an understanding of what gravity does to the innards of a CPU put together by the IT department people.

They are bound to jury-rig a computer that they will never use or see again.

I mean how much attention can you possible put towards your job while dreaming of Dungeons and Dragons or trying to figure out how to get to the fifth level of HALO?
:rolleyes:

I had the responsibility of being the IT person for my unit while we were activated. I've never been more frustrated with a help desk than when I had to call Dell for a replacement part for a computer.

Me: I need a replacement #......... for service tag #.......

Help line: How do you know that's what you need (launching into a looooong discussion of what the machine is doing)

Help Line: Well, according to my script here, you're supposed to:

Me: Already done, here's the part I need

back and forth for 30 minutes, finally requested another employee, 5 minutes later they were shipping me a new hard drive, which is what I asked for when I originally called. 45 minutes of arguing for something that should have taken 5 minutes.

LH:
At work all of us have Dell computers and I've never had a problem with them. Very often, I'll do the grunt work first then call and after giving them the PC identification I go into this long speech on what's wrong with it and what I have done to try and problem-solve. If it needs a new part, we get it the next day, or if it's the motherboard, a techie will come onsite the next day to do the replacement.

Richard:
Let me get this straight. You have a problem with your PC you have to place a call to a remote site which then reroutes it to your local IT Dept??? That's nothing short of dumb. Heck, fly me down there and I'll fix it.

PEBCAK

Every heard of it????

It's a famous IT term "Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard". :D :D

Also....hey that's an ID 10T problem. :D :D

If I've learned two things in the corporate jungle, its to be nice to two people at work. Not your boss or their boss, but to the receptionist and the IT help person. :eek:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lady's Human

Help line: How do you know that's what you need (launching into a looooong discussion of what the machine is doing)

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LOL...

These ID 10 ts are our own company nitwits.....


"I need a printer cable..."

"Why? what's the matter with the old one?"

"It does not work...."

"have you checked the drivers?"

"No, I don't need to"

"Well, you HAVE TO...that's the way you know it's not the cable."

"I know it's the cable without looking at the drivers..."

"You can't tell it's the cable unless you check the machine!"

"Oh, So the copper of the cables SHOULD be visible?"

(The cable was draped over the edge if the desk near a drawer, after a few thousand times of getting caught in between the drawer and the desk front, the insulation wore away and the cord finally pinched off....)

And because I am the end user, I do not have the brains to tell you what I need for my machine!

Slick,
You forgot a step,

I have to talk to the SA who has no idea about what is wrong with the machine, and have her stare at the machine for about twenty minutes...


THE PART I REALLY HATE IS WHEN YOU TELL THEM EVERYTHING YOU DID, and they have to sit down and do exactly what you did, then they get P.O.ed when you stand there and tell them, "That's exactly what I did..."

I forgot they have magic powers and should never be questioned about their brains...... :D ;)

As Julie says.....be nice to IT people.

With the "flip of a finger" and we can bring ya down.....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by slick

As Julie says.....be nice to IT people.

With the "flip of a finger" and we can bring ya down.....

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I am only beholden to the Power of the Power Company....IT people can make it work..


The Guys in the Hard Hats and Tall Ladders make then run.

Without Electricity You Ain't ---! ;) :D :rolleyes:

Slick, my problem wasn't with the Dell machines themselves, it was with the support ID10T's on the other end of the phone. The Army pays big $ to dell for the support contracts, but getting parts out of them is like pulling teeth sometimes. I like the machines, I just have an issue with some of their support people. My favorite was I got an error message telling me that the EIDE driver had a hardware error, and the person on the other end of the phone wanted to know if I had checked to make sure the cable was connected to the drive. Excuse me? It's a laptop, there's no cable, it plugs into a slot on the motherboard. Well, just check the cable to be sure! :rolleyes: It's cutting through the first layer of people who are reading a flowchart (if this then do this) to the people who can actually HELP that's painful.