"Can I have my cat photo back on my desktop please?" Tech Support |
- "Can I have my cat photo back on my desktop please?"
- "what's mine is mine" but isn't.
- The printer that wont print on the sides
- Plug it in...or nit.
| "Can I have my cat photo back on my desktop please?" Posted: 31 May 2020 11:16 PM PDT I just randomly thought about this story and decided to post it here. Long time lurker, first time poster. This happened about a year ago when I worked at a small non-profit health clinic as a help desk technician. My company had recently brought in a MSP to help upgrade the IT infrastructure at the clinic (I would say that they did s---to improve but that's another story). "Fun" thing about this MSP, is that they never tell me or the rest of the in-house help desk team when they were going to push out major updates, where when Monday comes around we get a flood of calls or tickets in the morning about something that was changed or had broken because of said update and not knowing how to fix it because we weren't informed until later in the afternoon. One of the changes that they made, albeit minor, was that they changed the desktop background from the regular Windows logo to an all light blue background with their logo, help desk number, and computer name at the bottom right of the screen. Truthfully not many people mind it, plus it made it easier for the user to give us the computer name whenever they called, but we did get calls from one or two from managers that had already had a background photo saved as their wallpaper. In comes the director of the behavioral health department. Now the BH director was a nice old woman, but was also computer illiterate. I never had no problem with her since she was always patient and didn't throw a fuse when we couldn't fix something right away. She did though had a wallpaper of her cat that she loved so much on her desktop. My other co-workers that have been there longer already know of the cat and said she would on and on about it. Come Monday when the update was pushed out and I get a call from director saying that her cat photo "disappear". Can't remember the conversation per Baum, but it went something like this: Me: Me BH: BH Director Me: "IT neb93 speaking" BH: Hi, this is the director. I logged in to my computer this morning and I can't find my cat photo on the desktop. Can you help me find it? Me: Sure, give me one moment BH: Thank you I remoted into her computer and low and behold, I see the light blue wallpaper on the screen. She showed the picture of her cat in her photos folder, right click on the photo, set it as desktop background, went back to the desktop screen and no luck. Tried some other stuff and still no luck. I was the only in the tech in the office (we did help desk and onsite work) so I didn't know what to do. Me: Hello, director? Let get in contact with our MSP and see they did over the weekend and I will call you back. BH: Ok, thank you. I really want my cat photo back Me: I'll see what I can do I got in contact with the MSP through slack and told them the situation, and just as I thought, the virtual CIO said that this was part of group policy and cannot be changed. So I called the BH director and told her the bad news. BH: So there no way for you to get my cat photo back? Me: I'm sorry but no. This is a part of our new policy now and I cannot change it BH: Oh ok then. *I sense a little sadness in her voice* Thank you trying anyway Me: No problem, sorry I couldn't help you out further We ended the call there and I went about my day. I thought that was the end of it until she called every few days for the next two weeks with the same question, and me and the other two techs told her the same thing. It became a regular thing where we started to joke about it, "the case of the missing cat photo". Even the virtual CIO and the MSP started to get on to the joke. The BH director never brought it up again after that until two-three months before she retired. Other than that, when it was her last day, our virtual CIO made a remark. "I guess we weren't able to find her cat photos after all" tl;dr Group Policy update was pushed out to standardize the desktop background screen, BH director called wanting the background of her cat back on her desktop, kept calling for the next two weeks thinking our answer was going to change. [link] [comments]  |
| "what's mine is mine" but isn't. Posted: 01 Jun 2020 01:29 AM PDT The cat picture post (title) reminded me of a case when I was a handyman/IT support for a small company; This was a few years ago (2015/16), we'd had a run of issues where the ageing fleet of enterprise desktops (win xp) were starting to fall over with updates. Company issues notice to all employees that we've been having problems and that any important data must be backed into the server and/or another suitable device, and stressed that the server should not be used to store personal information or 'private/personal' files. Few weeks later there was another casualty and the user demanded (fairly impolitely, like shouting at the top of her voice, impolitely) that the machine be replaced right away because they had important work to be getting on with. Drop everything. Replace the computer. Get her up to speed on the new machine. All the while being regaled about how this sort of thing shouldn't be happening, and if we were doing our jobs... you get the picture. A number of days later, the same user shrieks at the top of her lungs then starts blubbering incoherently and wailing at the top of her voice. That got our attention. Then the chair turns around and a face of pure murderous intent shrieks "what did you do!? You deleted them didn't you!" The fu...? Turned out she had family photos stored locally on her work computer with absolutely no backup anywhere on this earth. You felt sorry for her; losing something so apparently important, but then also you didn't because if they were that important having only one copy on a computer that doesn't belong to you. Particularly when that person reminds you of the company policy to physically destroy the hard drive "to ensure the company data can't be stolen" and adds the "see if you can at least get that right". Particularly when after that person derides and berates a junior operator for not saving work regularly enough and losing about 20 minutes of test data (which we could easily recover) to the point the girl was in tears and shaking (she didn't show up again after that) then circulates the email reminding people to back key data up and that personal files shouldn't be stored on company computers. But that wasn't a company computer (it was) that was their computer. [link] [comments]  |
| The printer that wont print on the sides Posted: 31 May 2020 12:21 PM PDT I am not a tech support guy, I am just that kid that parents and all their friends rely on to show them the basics and solve whatever issue they get. Do I know how to solve those issues? Usually no, but through trial and error all things can be solved. Its sometime early 2020 and I get a call. Moms friend, nice guy, drops me some coins for my troubles so I don't have complaints. Apparently his printer will not print on sides of the page, cuts off two centimeters on both sides while he needs an entire page. Months ago he had that issue before and it was simply wrong printing settings. So I expected it to be 1.go there 2.set page margins to 0. 3.done, in and out 20 minute adventure. After I arrived there he demonstrated the issue, he printed a PDF file using adobes reader and of course two centimeters on both sides are blank, the text is cut off. So I do my thing and set page margins to zero. Aaaaaand... The issue is solv.. No it still wont print on the sides. Great... What else can I try? Maybe its adobe readers fault. I'll just use firefox to print this out and it will be good. Nope, still no good. Ok I got nothing, lets google for it. He made a comment on me googling for solutions
derp Well thats a bruh moment, eh, he doesnt mean it. Its fine. So internet pages say 1. check the program (tried that). 2. check the drivers. So lets get some drivers (OS is windows vista (in 2020)..sigh) By now I am also helping with his phone, but thats a boring story (migrating data from android 2.0 that somehow survived a decade to modern xiaomi device), just being more distracted from figuring out the printer. I find the proper driver, install it and print the test page. The test page comes without the sides as well. Ok thats it, it must be mechanical failure. Time to open up the printer and look inside. Its cartridge must be jammed or something. I suggest to the man that we should open it up, check for faults and clean it. Maybe its cartridge is stuck on something. He was skeptical.
I am also doubting myself, after all this is a laser printer. I had inkjets jam up and fail to reach sides of the page, but laser printers don't move that way, there is no reason for it not to reach sides of the page. Still, I am out of options, I tried everything I can think of on the software side by then. I press on. <Hey lets just open it up, maybe if we pull out the cartridge and put it back in it will clear whatever jam it picked up. He submits and opens up his printer, pulls out packaging foam, pulls out the cartridge, blows some air into it to clean the dust off. Inserts the cartridge back into the printer, puts the white packaging foam back inside, closes the printer. Runs a print and edges still fail to print. ... HOL UP! Why is there packaging foam inside the printer, why did you put packaging foam inside the printer??? Pull that stuff out! Printer starts working normally AWWWHHHHH YESSHHHHH FINALLYYY
<Well turns out the issue was not in software this time. Why did you put packaging foam inside printer?
<hm.. yes how do I know? its all so complex inside with so many pieces that do god knows what. Well never-mind that, now you'll know these cubes of packaging foam are not part of the printer. Soon after I figured out how to copy phone numbers from android 2.0 to Xiaomi's android 9 system (while juggling other issues like no wifi and lost cables), arrange music just how he liked it and it was time to leave. As I walked home my mind wandered... How do we know what is and what is not part of the printer? Is it the contrast between white foam and black plastic? Is it the texture? Perhaps the softness of the material? How exactly I managed to clear a printer jam by setting print margins to zero months ago? Or maybe the foam came with the cartridge and was placed inside with the new cartridge? Did the printer print for a month without an issue while jammed or were the cubes inserted later and he failed to make the connection? And how is that android 2.0 phone still alive? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2020 06:54 AM PDT LTL, FTP, on mobile. Ok, so this just happened. Some quick background, I live with my wife and mother in law and serve as the tech support for the family. Yesterday afternoon, the power was very unstable, probably because of the aircons running for the first time in the neighborhood. So, your friendly tech unplugged the computers to protect them before spending the next ten minutes getting enough power scrapped together between all the brief blackouts downing the apartment building to melt some cheese on his brunch bagel bullseye. Well, once brunch was over, power was stable again, so fast forward a few hours, and the computer was plugged back in before retiring for the evening. This morning, an hour or two before I was planning to wake up, in comes mother in law, rousing us both to plug her computer back in. slow blinks, confused, not awake yet I shambled sleepily into the living room, sans glasses, and pressed the unlit power button on the side of the tower.
Going back to sleep now. Good nap to you all! Edit 1: 250 upvotes in 3 hours. Wow, this blew up! Thank you. :) Edit 2: 500 upvotes in 8 hours. [link] [comments]  |
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