How I learned that you can brick iPads by cheating on popular apps. Tech Support |
- How I learned that you can brick iPads by cheating on popular apps.
- Sometimes a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing...
- Why doesn’t this air mouse work?
- It's tickets like these that really make it worthwhile
- The master becomes the student
- I'm getting an error message
- That One Story... (LPT & a kinda funny story)
| How I learned that you can brick iPads by cheating on popular apps. Posted: 02 Jul 2019 03:00 AM PDT OK, here we go: It's a story I've been meaning to tell to you guys for a while now. It's not technically tech support, so if it doesn't fit this sub please let me know. I used to work for a fairly large tech retail chain in the Netherlands like 3 - 4 years ago. We sold tablets, laptops, smartphones, stuff like that, also Apple products. It was a quiet afternoon, weekday, so not much to do but stand around and watch wacky videos on our 4k iMacs. Cue a dad walking in with his I think about 10-years-old son. They approached me and politely asked for help.
My boss was in the store as well, so I told him I'd be busy with this customer and started looking into what the issue could be. The kid was right. Every time you tried to start an app or even get into the settings menu or whatever, the iPad would instantly close the app and return to the home screen. There was no visible damage to the device. It even had one of those huge foam covers around it.
I took the iPad to the back. First order of business was, af course: Google the problem. Lo and behold: one of the first results I found was a page explaining how some kid had bricked his iPad trying to cheat a popular app about crushing various colours of candy. Turns out that by not starting the app for a while, you could get points you needed to buy lives and stuff. By reverting the years on the device way back, waiting for the battery to die, and then restarting your device and putting it on the current date and time you could trick the app into giving you a whole heap of points because it thought you hadn't launched it in years. Turns out this kid tried to take that cheat to max level and reverted his iPad to the earliest possible date; Jan 1st, 1970 - causing the infamous 1970 iPad bug. I returned to the store to find the dad and kid impatiently waiting for me.
They leave the store after paying the fee, the dad still angrily mumbling to the son, never to be seen again. My boss gives me the side-eye, I explain what happens. We both have a good laugh about it for a few minutes and go about our work. EDIT: Formatting [link] [comments]  |
| Sometimes a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing... Posted: 02 Jul 2019 01:28 AM PDT So I work for a major Telecom. Customer calls about wanting to know if i'm familiar with "rooting", I'm going "another PC tech call, sigh." in my head. But no, dear reader, this is so much more. See this user's internet was a bit spotty, which is normal in some areas that are a bit more remote then others(like the user's!). it sucks, but you chose the boonies where it's hard to maintain some of the hardware. So he started researching and heard about malicious software that could have implanted itself in his computer. Well our dear user is a very learned individual so it was definitely not anything he did yhat caused his PC to slow down. Instead he started looking at his equipment from us. Which included going into the user settings of his DVR box, and a cursory google search led him to understand that some of the open source software we used, something he gleaned from reading the software licenses, could allow people to remotely access his device. You know, like how we roll out updates for the box or his services? but no, he called me because he wanted help removing the rather necessary software from the dvr box as he was certain someone had maliciously tampered with it and it was slowing his internet. In the end he will be going to the local outlet and swapping it for a "safer" box that lacks the dvr capability. [link] [comments]  |
| Why doesn’t this air mouse work? Posted: 01 Jul 2019 07:17 AM PDT This isn't my story, it's my mom's. She works in administration at a medical facility. One of her close friends was a nurse there for decades who switched to the office side of things toward the end of her career. Though my mom isn't tech support, she had to be that for her friend who'd never really used a mouse on a desktop computer before. Mom said she walked into the friend's office and she has the mouse in the air aimed at the computer screen and moving it around, so she watches for a second. Then, she starts furiously left and right clicking, so mom finally asks her what I'm the world she's doing. She said she couldn't get the mouse to work, that she has it in the air aimed at "the arrow" on the screen, but when she tries to drag it one way or the other it just stayed still. She told my mom the thing just doesn't work! After laughing hysterically (not making her friend feel bad, they enjoy laughing at the expense of each other) and her friend joining in, realizing the laughter means she doesn't have a clue as to what she's doing, my mom explained it to her. They laughed even harder after that. I always found that to be a really funny story. Oh, and computers were by no means new at this point in time. It was sometime between 2005-2010. Hopefully this will give someone a chuckle. [link] [comments]  |
| It's tickets like these that really make it worthwhile Posted: 02 Jul 2019 04:10 AM PDT I work in second line support generally for a Law Firmn, but am covering 1st line support as my colleague left a few months ago. Yesterday i get an email "Hi I.T, i'm working from home today and trying to produce a will, but when i click the button, no template appears in my list" (we use a case management system, customised to each area of law. inside are buttons that start a workflow. in this case, the user clicks the button, it asks them a question, and produces a Will based on the answer the user gives). I respond to the user, asking to shadow their remote session and ask them to demonstrate. they click the button, answer the question that pops up, and the workflow ends abruptly. i ask them to wait a minute while i look at the workflow. The workflow goes line by line. so line 1 is the question, line two is 'if 1 = a, go to line 10'. at line 10 it says 'produce letter WILLA. it goes on for WILLB, WILLC etc. imagine my utter joy when i see that the problem template is WILLE. it is not being produced because it has been deleted. I email back "i'm guessing you were wanting WILLE? i'm sorry, it has been removed" unfortunately she totally missed the joke, but i still chuckled like a small child for the rest of the day. [link] [comments]  |
| The master becomes the student Posted: 02 Jul 2019 05:26 AM PDT So this happened at the weekend and I'm only over the embarrassment (nearly!) now. My girlfriend planned a surprise trip for my birthday last weekend and off we went to a lovely hotel. Very nice room with the added benefit of the room having a smart tv to access my netflix account, YouTube etc. that had a mini-router / mains plug attached for WiFi and took an ethernet feed from a wall socket. All working fine on Friday so music playing away as we got ready for dinner and drinks and all good for the Saturday morning hangover. Came back from lunch and nada - wifi seems fine but lan is dead. No great stress as we were chilling out before getting ready for dinner but of course I try to look knowledgable and pull my superman pants on! Oh how fickle the fates are.... I turned everything on and off, pulled all rj45 cables and reseated them a couple of times (in case housekeeping knocked something loose), checked the tv apps for ethernet connectivity checks on. The tv was wall mounted and on a movable fixture so was very easy to get in and around. Nothing - dead still. Tried all of that again but still no wired connection showing - only WiFi. Thinking that maybe the connection was compromised at the hotel main box I called reception and spoke to a very pleasant receptionist who (of course) asked me to turn everything off and then on again and if that didn't work then he'd come up to the room. I thought maybe the IT gremlins would take that as tribute enough and so turned all off and on again a couple of times but still no joy. So I rang reception and sure enough the patient receptionist agreed to call up. I sweat the following is verbatim the truth - may I blue screen every day if I'm lying. He walked in, used the light on his phone to look at the cables and fixtures, switched the router off and on again at the mains (not even a reset) and once it booted up it connected perfectly. I was happy to thank him and was genuinely appreciative but my girlfriend couldn't resist informing him that obviously my 20 years in IT wasn't up to his insider knowledge. Honest to gods - he wasn't in the room for a full 60 seconds but the embarrassment will linger for years. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Jul 2019 07:46 AM PDT This is how I started my day: User: Hey I'm having a problem where the system will not let me authorize this file...Is there anything I can do to fix this problem. Me: Is it giving you an error message or anything? User: Yes Me: .... User: .... Me: (In my head: are you going to make me guess the error or will you tell me?) Also Me: (Also in my head) (I can see from the chat log what your name is...but you really haven't given me any indication of who you are or where you are from.... oh that's right - you are my ONLY client....) I log into their instance - the file is authorized. Me: Your boss authorized this file already.. User: Ok - sorry for wasting your time. user has left the chat. [link] [comments]  |
| That One Story... (LPT & a kinda funny story) Posted: 01 Jul 2019 08:20 AM PDT I've worked in IT for over a decade now and I used to think about going back to school so I could advance my career more, but to be honest I really didn't think that the extra responsibility and mountain of student debt would be worth it at this stage in my life (change my mind?). At this point though, I've got a decent paying job ($46k/yr NON-salary w/ benefits for a T1 gig and I'm getting bumped up to $54k/yr in a month or so because they're giving me a promotion whether I want it or not), with a great shift (3.5 12hr overnight shifts per week), and the ability to work remote if I ever decide to move out of state. I also have an offer to work doing desktop support for a city department making the same amount of money w/ all the other benefits and a union, so yay! For a while there I had problems getting positions that paid what I know my experience is worth in the area I live in though, until I came across a LPT I thought I'd share with the folks here: get a story. Let me explain... In this field you're typically interviewed once on an HR basis to make sure you haven't been fired before and can show up to work on time, etc. (can't really help you out with this one, but there are plenty of posts/advice columns out there that can help), and then again by the actual IT folks who know what the job actually entails. Now in most fields having over a decade's worth of experience working the same types of jobs makes this seem more like a formality than anything, but in IT they typically want to see that you're looking to eventually advance to more technical positions so hopefully you'll move up and they don't have to take a chance at hiring someone to be a Sys Admin that ends up being unreliable/doesn't know WTF they're doing. But looking at it from a strictly statistical standpoint (try saying that 3x fast), then well... there's probably 10x more T1 positions than there are those more technical positions, so at some point it becomes an effort & responsibility vs. pay equation that moving up just doesn't seem to benefit me as well. So how do I market myself to those IT interviewers in order to not have them looking at my lack of programming languages or intricacies of networking, as negatives to keep from hiring me? I just tell them a story that I probably should've posted here ages ago about a customer I once had: Be me. "Ummmm... sir, can you tell me who the manufacturer of the card is, please?" Long story, shortened (at least a little) I got the model of the phone he had purchased, checked the website for the store where they had bought it, checked the price they had paid and was able to find a wireless card they claimed to have in stock for about the same/less than he had paid for the phone, gave him the model number and the SKU, gave him the number for the OEM's tech support, and made the disclaimer about how I couldn't guarantee that Wal-Mart would take back the phone since it had been opened already. Moral of the story: Customer service skills are still about 90% of the job and if you can incorporate that into a story where you're going above and beyond to help a user to get their issue resolved in the most idiot-proof way possible WITHOUT making it sound like you think the user IS an idiot, or losing your temper, then you're worth your weight in gold to most customer-facing tech positions. Bonus points if you can make it kinda funny. [link] [comments]  |
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