The New Guy Chronicles - Episode 9: The Sound of an Empty Head Tech Support |
- The New Guy Chronicles - Episode 9: The Sound of an Empty Head
- vibe testing the beast
- Laptop Webcam - PLS FIX
- Tech support is blind
| The New Guy Chronicles - Episode 9: The Sound of an Empty Head Posted: 28 Sep 2021 11:18 AM PDT These are the stories of the New Guy. All of what you are about to read is true. I write you these tales of mirth and woe, of entertainment and anger with as much accuracy and as little embellishment as I can manage. Many conversations are written as best I can remember them from my notes and memories about the incidents they describe, but the heart of what you are about to read is as true as I can make it. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. And the guilty. The cast: Jordan - FNG Thomas - Me, the manager and network admin John - The older of my two other reports, primarily responsible for server maintenance, major application upgrades, and supporting our smaller off-site locations and their specific applications Daniel - The younger of my two original employees, though here for the same amount of time as John. Both longer than me, actually. Desktop and server support, document management and phone system support, phenomenal people skills. What is happiness? No such thing exists in this forsaken place. All is barren wasteland, void of hope and meaning. Woe. Woe upon all you who dare tread here. Heed my warnings and flee from this place of desolation. All is- Alas, I suppose you are here for another tale of Jordan the empty-headed and not my pleas for this company to be bathed in the cleansing fires of ruin and destruction. Well, let us take a voyage back in time to... DAY 99 - The Sound of an Empty Head A ticket comes in for [department]. They're having trouble watching (actual) training videos on our intranet system. They can't hear any sound. Jordan has yet to visit this department in his time here. It's a little weird because they're actually a separate company that contracts to perform some services for us, but we support their IT needs in this location. I inform him of the issue and take him down with me to visit. Me: "Hey, [user], having some trouble?" User: "Yeah, we can't hear sound when we play videos." Me: looking at the desk "Ah, no speakers. That explains that. We'll go grab you a set." We leave the office to head back to ours. Jordan: "So what's the problem?" Me: "What do you mean?" Jordan: "Well, do you think it's an internal problem or something?" Me: "What? No." Jordan: "Then what's the problem?" Me: visible confusion "Do you not know what the problem is?" Jordan: "Well they said the speakers weren't working, but you said there were no speakers." Me: visible confusion intensifies "OK..." Jordan: "Isn't there an internal speaker?" Me: "No." we enter our office Jordan: "So what's the problem with it?" Bewildered. Confused. Mystified. I could empty a thesaurus into this story and not have the words to adequately describe the feeling of my brain doing a hard reset in that moment. Jordan has lied, he's misunderstood, he's failed to follow instructions, wasted countless hours, driven users from his presence with his awkwardness, and otherwise proved himself incapable of faithfully discharging his duties. But this? This is a new low. This is an unprecedented, heretofore never seen level of incapacity. This, in the moment, I cannot handle. Blinking away my stupor I turn wordlessly from Jordan to our back storeroom. I fetch a pair of speakers in a box and place them in his hands. Me: "Just... go install these." I turn from him, averting my eyes from the dull look upon his face. Silently weeping with the knowledge that humanity could produce a 20-year-old ostensibly normal adult incapable of understanding "computer with no noise-maker no make noise" I slunk back to my office. He managed to install the speakers. The speakers managed to produce sounds. I do not know if he managed to understand the connection. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2021 07:47 PM PDT apologies if this fails to meet every requirement in my favorite sub. i remember staring, rapt, over my father's shoulder as he used the solder gun in the back of our tv in 1962. i have been in tech support since age 5, whether i know what i'm doin or not. so now i'm standing in a ring of big brains and extremely capable experts the day before we put a defense department apogee engine into risk. my boss stood across the ring from me, he taught me how to protect a thruster during the vibe operations. i knew he had my back. hell, he taught me how cryo-press the four teflon valve seats and let me handwind the four valve solenoids that were attached in series feeding the 200 pound thrust engine. boss had trained me to perfection on those processes. i was the last asked to speak during this meet. two foci for these critical vibe runs, the vibe commander must conform to the vibe profiles...sine, random...etc. while i will be hand placing 2 million dollars onto the vibe fixture, then vibe commander and i binding dozens of bolts to 55 foot pounds, then hooking up pressure, then measuring pressure, using very old apollo era leak detection technology. this was gonna be very difficult inside the vibe containment. not much space to set up the sight glass/gas board as they called it back in the last century. i am so scared of what may go wrong, as i might be the obvious cause i had heard they want to hook up equipment i had not used before. i said i don't feel good about hooking up this brand new untested gear to flight hardware. then i said i need to be trained how to operate this valve control box. nobody contradicted me customer program manager had audited our vibes for his other goodies before. he stood up for me and said we shall do these extra steps. then we made another good one, vibe commander and me, we passed the three day vibe. with excellent help from customer program manager [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2021 08:47 AM PDT We live in the day and age now where online meetings have become common place. In the Before Times, my company was just beginning its transition to Teams and that was quickly expedited as we started to work from home. Of course, everyone and their mother needed a webcam because god help us if we cant see someone in a meeting. From what I understand if you arent on webcam you dont exist and cant contribute, or something like that, given the severity users seem to treat camera issues with. Whatever. I soldier on, continue my duties, including new hires during the pandemic. Eventually bring on two laptop users, one of which is the $User in question. Give them their thinkpads, give them the IT walkthrough, explain all the usual shit to them ect ect, no problem. They seem competent. Eventually I get a ticket from $HR: $User's webcam is broken and doesnt work, please repair immediately. Alright fine whatever, its not critical but Ill get pestered endlessly until I at least address this one. I connect with $User's PC, and camera isnt working as expected. Driver updates, all the usual, nothing at all. Doesnt even show black - just doesnt appear to be there. So I get an idea: $Me - $User, is the cover over the webcam? $User - No, no cover $Me - Do you see a little slide there at the top? $User - No slide, no cover, sorry I'm sure you can guess where it's going. He deals with it for a little until we can both be in the office. He calls me over, and as soon as I see the laptop, I see the slide is in fact: there, and over his camera. I slide it open and walk away to sounds of astonished thanks. Thinkpad camera covers arent just covers - they hard disable the webcam when in place. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2021 11:48 AM PDT I'm the family tech support for my parents. My dad is blind and my mom needs to explicitly told to press the button that says "Continue" or "Enter" when trying to use a new app. My dad has a website for his law practice. I've done light work over the past decade to help him keep his website up to date. His hosting service offered him a deal where he can get a new website package at less than current monthly cost, which mean he just needs to migrate over the content. Which means *I* need to migrate over his content. Rather than try to find the information I need in his emails, he figured it would be easier for me to log into his email and get the info myself. It was not. I tried to log into his Gmail on my computer. "This device is not recognized". It prompted me to confirm from his phone that I'm allowed to access his email. Of course, I don't have his phone with me. I called him and told him about the security measure and what he had to do. I had to explain about 5 times why having his username and password wasn't enough and that he had to verify I wasn't a hacker. He doesn't get it, but he gives my mom his phone to figure out what to do. I tell them multiple times, "Download the Gmail app. Open the app. Press the YES prompt that pops up. Then enter the number xx". This turns into a screaming match between my mom and dad, the night is ruined, and I give up for the night with no access to his email. The next day, I decide to try again. He asks me to walk him through what to do again, and I tell him I literally can't walk him through any clearer than I did last night. He says his clerk is able to help him today, and is more technically proficient than mom (low bar). I text him a screenshot of the instructions. He asks me to text it to his clerk. Me: I don't have your clerk's number. Just show it to her on your phone. Dad: I can have her send you a text so that you have her number and can text it to her Me: Just show her your phone! Dad: She is home sick today but I can have her text you and you can tell her the instructions Me: ....Then she cannot help you today. She cannot help if she does not literally have your phone in her hands. I give up on getting into his email, and decide to try a different approach. Let's just see if I can log into his website portal. I have the URL for the portal, but need his new credentials, so I give him a call. Me: I'm trying to log into your website, but I don't remember your password. Dad: It's 12345678 Me: That didn't work.... OK so I'm putting in Username xxx, pass-- Dad: No, they changed how you log in. Me: OK... so what's the username? Dad: 123455678 Me: Then what's the password?! Dad: I don't have a password. They told me I can change it. Me: *Bangs my head on my desk until I die* Then I need access to your email. I can't change your password without getting into your email. He wanted to try resetting his password himself, so I left him to it, but it's been 20 minutes and I haven't heard back yet. As frustrating as it is doing tech support for my parents I'm honestly really annoyed with Gmail for making it so difficult for a person with disabilities to get into their account (or technically, have someone else get into their account to assist them). I tried alternative methods to recover his gmail account, but it literally won't let me in in any way without having access to his phone, and he can't do the phone part without help. I'm sure he's as frustrated as I am. [link] [comments]  |
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