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What business does she have opening the "Files and Settings Transfer Wizard"? Well, minimizing *does* make it go away. Sort of.
I could have taken her advice: "maybe we should just delete the WINDOWS directory and start over". I know she was half-joking, but it makes me wonder if she's tried that before.
I'm not an IT help person. But I do know that you can't fix things by picking up the machine and shaking it. Which is metaphorically what was happening.
(sigh)
I apologize for venting here. I don't do it often. It's cathartic.
But I do know that you can't fix things by picking up the machine and shaking it.
I was (and sometimes still am) an IT help person, and I approve this message.
maybe we should just delete the WINDOWS directory and start over
I was helping a friend install some freeware anti-virus once and the connection was pitifully slow. The download took forever and the installation was going at a snails pace and she asked me in all seriousness, "What do you do when this happens?"
I said, "We'll sometimes I just smack the **** out of it, give it a little adjustment."
She says, in equal seriousness, "Where? Where do you hit it at?" thinking maybe this was some sort of vacuum cleaner with too much cat hair wrapped around the beater bar.
I swear...
She had dialog boxes open that I've never seen before. I look at the taskbar and see a docked group labeled [(16) In...] and there behold are 16 copies of Internet Explorer minimized down there, all happily displaying her home page (Facebook. go figure).
How long have you been in Arkansas?
That sounds just like the gal I was trying to help. I finally gave it up, there's not enough patience in me to deal with that sort of stuff on a regular basis.
Some will "get it", some won't, and others can't.
That of course is the user who perpetually complains that everything runs slowly.
:P
All true, but those folks usually get laid more
If I couldn't figure it out, my standard pick-up line was, "Lets just reformat and be done with it, are you free tonight?"
It occasionally even worked.
Never sell nerds short.
The majority of webmasters I know are the rock-star tattooed&pierced snowboarding gamer-dude type, not the socially dorky personalities you'd call a "nerd". Meanwhile, the real nerds tend to gravitate into jobs involving hardware and engineering.
Of course, there are exceptions...
Perhaps I'm putting too fine a curve on that nerd scale
Perhaps I'm putting too fine a curve on that nerd scale
Makes ya really wonder when you work in a fair sized office what others are doing....
Did not have the heart to embarrass her over the phone... just asked her to bring it into the shop (back when I had a shop).
@httpwebwitch - yep, tattoos, beer drinking, hip hop loving, concert going, freaking webmaster.
used to take part in uhhh... "green" days and such...
so no, not all webmasters are geeky nerds..
Btw
a nerd, knows about the specific technology subject front and back, but you may not know he/she does by their exterior.
a geek, acts and dresses like he knows... remember Arvid from that show "head of the class" in the 80's?
But I do know that you can't fix things by picking up the machine and shaking it.
decided to sit on the edge of that table and in the process managed to depress just the right combination of keys that turned the screen display upside-down
i've had this particular laptop for 3 years or more.
just yesterday my cat stretched out and hit the right combination of keys to reveal a feature i never knew existed.
suddenly my display was tilted 90 degrees.
after setting it down sideways and some searching i figured out how to spin it around.
today someone tweeted an article of weird software titles including one which protects your computer from "the cat walking across your keyboard".
rock-star tattooed&pierced snowboarding gamer-dude type
It's not worth it, now I let them pay to have their machines cleaned up.
I also learnt that it's unwise to let anyone know you're half decent with a computer. Let them fight their own battles.
One place I worked had a receptionist we called the "Solitaire Queen" for the simple fact all we ever caught her doing with Windows was playing, yes, you're quick, Solitaire.
One day I had a brilliant idea, I modified the binary copy of Solitaire and physically swapped all the Kings to different suits so you could never end the game, assuming this bit of terrifying Solitaire trauma would stop her incessant play.
Waited until she wasn't at her desk, uploaded it quickly, ran off to lunch.
Came back and she had the IT guy reinstalling her entire Windows operating system claiming it was having "unexplained errors" that she couldn't reproduce for him.
I pulled him aside and told him what we'd done to her Solitaire game and the look on his face about being duped into reinstalling her Windows just to fix Solitaire was absolutely priceless.
Guess I should've clued him in from the beginning but it didn't occur to me ;)
I used to fix computers for friends and family - then I started to get accused of "breaking" their machines and I'd have to run out to their homes and fix what they broke... again.It's not worth it, now I let them pay to have their machines cleaned up.
My wife and I manage our parents PC's remotely using Mikogo as they are both in different states.
Makes it quick and easy to go live on their machine and fix it in seconds opposed to trying to figure it out over the phone with someone that doesn't know how to explain what they're looking at or how they got there in the first place.
My sister (who's "in marketing") had let her toddler play with her laptop to keep the toddler busy while she got ready for a meeting.
The toddler had got bored of the closed laptop quickly, and wandered off to wreak havoc somewhere else..
After getting dressed she came out of the bedroom and planted a six inch spiked heel through the monitor, keyboard, and directly onto the case of the hard drive. It was a stunningly accurate strike.
The meeting, for which my sister had all the presentation materials on the laptop, didn't go well.
But I do know that you can't fix things by picking up the machine and shaking it.
Get them an Etch-A-Sketch and tell them it is their new laptop?
I also learnt that it's unwise to let anyone know you're half decent with a computer. Let them fight their own battles.
"Calculated Ignorance" - be careful what you get good at...
Since my wife doesn't come here, let me share.
She has over 25 years experience in computing systems with over 18 as a UNIX system administrator. Currently, she is an upper manager for a not-to-be-named company. She manages business critical software applications for Forbes 500 companies.
I swear, right now she has over thirty applications running on her painfully slow and outdated pc. There is a brand new pc not 3 feet from her lying prominently on the piano waiting to replace the four year old overloaded pc – not!
Oh ya, she has multiple degrees in computer science and mechanical engineering
Client calls office in panic:
Client: Our website is down we need it back up.
Us:(after loading up the website in browser).... Your website is up I just confirmed it.
Client: Well we aren't seeing it here.
Us: Can you load up Google?
Client: Nope, that seems to be down too.
I swear no less then 5 times a year I used to get this... sometimes even from the same client.
After explaining to them that they have to contact their ISP to troubleshoot their connection it is often met with an attitude of "Well why can't you just fix it since you know what the problem is?"
That is what sends me over the edge. I have actually charged a client my full development rate to go to their office and sit on hold with their ISP to resolve a connection issue.
The level of hand holding some require when it comes to their computers astounds me.
I know people that have spent over $3000 on a desktop and then have no idea how to use it... if I spend $3000 on something you better belief I take the time to learn how to operate it.
I don't understand the attitude of not learning how to use something you pay top dollar for.
I would hate to meet a carpenter who asks you how HIS bandsaw works.
Client: Our website is down we need it back up.Ussadafter loading up the website in browser).... Your website is up I just confirmed it.
Client: Well we aren't seeing it here.
Us: Can you load up Google?
Client: Nope, that seems to be down too.
OMG - I forgot all about this nonsense.
I used to have a customer who had the worse connection on the planet, his site was ALWAYS down.
What I did was give him a proxy URL to use to check his website.
I told him if you can't get to the proxy URL, it's your ISP having a problem.
If you can get to this proxy and it can't get to our site, it could be our problem.
The proxy?
Google Translator :)
Me: long, pregnant pause, waiting for more, then finally, "Well, was there an error message?"
Client: "Lemme go look"
After a few minutes, client returns, says, "Yeah, there's one"
Me: long, pregnant pause, waiting for more, then finally, "Well, what does it say?"
Client: "Lemme go look"
