All about the pentiums (Confessions pt 3)
It's difficult doing IT on occasion because people are very self conscious when they consider themselves "not a computer person." I imagine this is similar to the feeling that I have when going to a mechanic or listening to people talking about hunting/shooting/guns.
A lot of the time I fix things that are really simple fixes that the user, in a panic, didn't take the time to think about or they were simply out of their comfort zone and contacted me about it. I'm fine with this 99% of the time since this is how I make my living.
I've driven hours one way to plug in a power cord, or flip on a switch, add paper to a printer tray, and sometimes merely to press a button. Keep in mind this was the only button on the entire computer and it was bright blue and dead center. This is also after 3 different people had verified that said button/switch/cord was flipped/plugged in, etc.
I once drove almost 2 hours to a branch because a manager was adamant that their drive thru PC was down and that they had the busiest drive thru in the region, a claim made by every manager in the region. He also was so busy that he didn't have time to verify that everything was plugged in and powered on properly. So he had time to talk to me, time to wait 2 hours for me to arrive, but did not have the roughly 60 seconds it would take to look at the surge protector.
I got there walked up to the drive thru, leaned over the desk, and then proceeded to move the power switch on the surge protector from off to on. Voila! The PC booted up and the day was saved. Then comes the awkward conversation.
*Keep in mind as you read this that arrogance and sarcasm come naturally to me. Also, people tell me that I make tendency to make them feel stupid. Usually this is not intentional and if I have done so to you I apologize.*
Me: Ok, It's working now.
Manager: What was wrong?
Me: The surge protector was turned off. I turned it on.
Manager: Well how was I supposed to know that?
Me: There's a switch and one side says "Off" and the other says "On". I moved it from Off to On.
Manager: Well I don't like your attitude and I"m reporting you to your boss.
Me: Ok. Here is their contact information. Do you need anything else?
Manager: Not from you!
About an hour later I'm in a conference call with my manager, the regional manger and the branch manager and apologize to all of them. This has happened a lot in my career. So I developed a better answer than I plugged it in/turned it on/put paper in the tray.
Me: Good news! I was able to fix it.
Manager: How?
Me: *dramatic pause* I AM A GREAT AND POWERFUL MAGICIAN!
*Manager contemplates this briefly*
Manager: I believe it! Thanks for fixing it so quickly. Please help yourself to food in the break room!
Me: Sweet!
So, the other day when I ran across the below on the Google machine I laughed multiple times. This was not written by me but by the talented and witty Mike Lacher. It was taken in it's entirety from the below link.
Enjoy! - Glen
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfriends-grandparents-wifi-and-am-hailed-as-a-conquering-hero
"Lo, in the twilight days of the second year of the second decade of the third millennium did a great darkness descend over the wireless internet connectivity of the people of 276 Ferndale Street in the North-Central lands of Iowa. For many years, the gentlefolk of these lands basked in a wireless network overflowing with speed and ample internet, flowing like a river into their Compaq Presario. Many happy days did the people spend checking Hotmail and reading USAToday.com.
But then one gray morning did Internet Explorer 6 no longer load The Google. Refresh was clicked, again and again, but still did Internet Explorer 6 not load The Google. Perhaps The Google was broken, the people thought, but then The Yahoo too did not load. Nor did Hotmail. Nor USAToday.com. The land was thrown into panic. Internet Explorer 6 was minimized then maximized. The Compaq Presario was unplugged then plugged back in. The old mouse was brought out and plugged in beside the new mouse. Still, The Google did not load.
Some in the kingdom thought the cause of the darkness must be the Router. Little was known of the Router, legend told it had been installed behind the recliner long ago by a shadowy organization known as Comcast. Others in the kingdom believed it was brought by a distant cousin many feasts ago. Concluding the trouble must lie deep within the microchips, the people of 276 Ferndale Street did despair and resign themselves to defeat.
But with the dawn of the feast of Christmas did a beacon of hope manifest itself upon the inky horizon. Riding in upon a teal Ford Focus came a great warrior, a suitor of the gentlefolks’ granddaughter. Word had spread through the kingdom that this warrior worked with computers and perhaps even knew the true nature of the Router.
The people did beseech the warrior to aid them. They were a simple people, capable only of rewarding him with gratitude and a larger-than-normal serving of Jell-O salad. The warrior considered the possible battles before him. While others may have shirked the duties, forcing the good people of Ferndale Street to prostrate themselves before the tyrants of Comcast, Linksys, and Geek Squad, the warrior could not chill his heart to these depths. He accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.
Deep, deep behind the recliner did the warrior crawl, over great mountains of National Geographic magazines and deep chasms of TV Guides. At last he reached a gnarled thicket of cords, a terrifying knot of gray and white and black and blue threatening to ensnare all who ventured further. The warrior charged ahead. Weaker men would have lost their minds in the madness: telephone cords plugged into Ethernet jacks, AC adapters plugged into phone jacks, a lone VGA cable wrapped in a firm knot around an Ethernet cord. But the warrior bested the thicket, ripping away the vestigial cords and swiftly untangling the deadly trap.
And at last the warrior arrived at the Router. It was a dusty black box with an array of shimmering green lights, blinking on and off, as if to taunt him to come any further. The warrior swiftly maneuvered to the rear of the router and verified what he had feared, what he had heard whispered in his ear from spirits beyond: all the cords were securely in place.
The warrior closed his eyes, summoning the power of his ancestors, long departed but watchful still. And then with the echoing beep of his digital watch, he moved with deadly speed, wrapping his battle-hardened hands around the power cord at the back of the Router.
Gripping it tightly, he pulled with all his force, dislodging the cord from the Router. The heavens roared. The earth wailed. The green lights turned off. Silently the warrior counted. One. Two. Three. And just as swiftly, the warrior plugged the cord back into the router. Great crashes of blood-red lightning boomed overhead. Murders of crows blackened the skies. The Power light came on solid green. The seas rolled. The WLAN light blinked on. The forests ignited. A dark fog rolled over the land and suddenly all was silent. The warrior stared at the Internet light, waiting, waiting. And then, as the world around him seemed all but dead, the Internet light began to blink.
The warrior darted out back over the mountains of National Geographic magazines and made haste to the Compaq Presario. He woke up Windows XP from sleep mode and deftly defeated twelve notifications to update Norton AntiVirus. With a resounding click he opened Internet Explorer 6 and gazed deep into its depths, past the Yahoo toolbar, the MSN toolbar, the Ask.com toolbar, and the AOL toolbar. And then did he see, at long last, that The Google did load.
And so the good people of the kingdom were delighted and did heap laurels and Jell-O salad at the warrior’s feet, for now again they could have their Hotmail as the wireless internet did flow freely to their Compaq Presario. The warrior ate his Jell-O salad, thanked the gentlefolk, and then went to the basement because the TiVo was doing something weird with the VCR." - Mike Lacher
