Next episode of Yet Another Tech Podcast: Tech Support Gore
Calling all sys/net admins! What's your best story?
@Cando ....why would anyone need to connect two keyboards at once if they're using EXCEL?
@brandon This question often keeps me awake at night.
@Cando @brandon GTE Internet support - still dial-up days. Caller couldn't pull up a web page. Went through eleven circles of hell troubleshooting painstakingly. Finally, after about an hour, I dropped down to a lower-level of troubleshooting, leaving all presumptions behind. I had him spell out the URL.
http - ok
:
- at this point I specifically mentioned two vertical periods. Nope, he had a period and a comma.
______________________
I then introduced him to the amazing shift key.
True story.
@donblanco @Cando ....it hurts...oh what is this fresh hell XD
@donblanco @Cando Then again, this is still dial up days :P Still had typing classes
@brandon I recall one when I was in college in Montana were a guy working for our housing group called us getting an error saying, "Invalid System Disk". This meant one of two things. Either your HD was toast, or there as a floppy in the disk drive. It was almost always the latter.
I told him to check the disk drive and eject a disk if it was there. He said there wasn't one. "Please double check." "No floppy".
*sigh*
It was a close to 1 mile walk and it was close to -20F (-29C) at the time.
@brandon So, I put on all my winter gear, trudged through snow and cold to get to his office, and then waited for him to finish a meeting he was in. I then walked into his office, ejected the disk that was in his drive and hit the Enter key. The computer booted fine, and I put all my winter gear back on and trudged all the way back in the cold.
@mike
Was this the time where floppies was the standard? 😂
@brandon
Yep, back in the 90s.
@mike
That's a fantastic story! 😂
@mike
But also, sorry you had to go through that, I've never had to leave the house in less than -22 here in Canada
@cigarBGuitarEfx @mike @brandon likewise for "our forklift won't start".
Drive to site, put in neutral, start it up. Drive back to workshop. Charge an hour.
"My boss will lose his shit, he was here for 2 minutes!"
Yes sir, that's the idea. Minimum charge. Maybe you'll check the basics before picking up the phone.
@brandon used to do support for company that ran gambling for horse racing in pubs. Pub called up from far west Queensland (think Aussie Outback) saying that they couldnt get their betting terminal to work... during a thunderstorm that had knocked out the power.
Pub: Definitely nothing we can do without electricity
Me: ...No...
@mattmcnutt Well hell no, of course none of that's gonna work without electricity! I'm not surprised at a power outage, I know that Australia has power issues, right?
@brandon metro areas are fine and even in the remote places it's not too bad. Thunderstorms can still knock over power lines
@mattmcnutt
Aaah well I'm glad it's gotten better, I've just heard of like random power outages on REALLY good days and whatnot because of load placed on the power network
@brandon South Australia had a poor network, the government there partnered with Tesla and built some massive battery system that can fill the gaps
@mattmcnutt didn't Musk commit to completing it in something crazy like 90 days, or it was free?
As I understand it, they completed it in like 89 days or something.
@kev
Yeah exactly! It was really cool to see that 👌
@mattmcnutt
@brandon another one - was working for a company in Central Queensland with site offices about an hour and a half drive. Each site had a server that ran as a domain controller and a file server. Files were hosted on a USB drive plugged into the server. Site called saying no one could see the share on the server. Remoted in no drive. Got them to check the USB and Power cable was plugged in. Yes they said.
No
I drove an hour and a half to the site... to plug in a USB cable
@mattmcnutt ughhh, yeah I hope I don't have to travel that far just for that :/
@brandon One of my survival instincts is to forget those storys before I can process what happend.
One of my favorites in short:
Coworker: Excel doesn't work. Lost control. Send help.
After couple of minutes I figured out that he had connected 2 keyboards at once. One was laying on the table, the other beneath a huge pile of bags. It either pressed Tab or Enter continuously.
I'd cried for 10 more minutes anywehre alone.