Tell a funny IT story...

I'm not the most technical guy by a long shot, but for me and my surroundings Isomehow find myself the friggin call center for the family, friends etc.

I do find some of the story's hysterical.

I remember the first PC I got. Was a Gateway. Dude first PC ever, just seen some article about a Medieval Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Yeah they were originally called MMORPG. ;)

I pulled up at the "gateway store" with my best-friend "guru", boom butterfly's. Stomach all queezy, head all dizzy. Got the bag from Best Buy in the backseat. DAoC wrapped in yellow bag... Can't wait.

Get the rig home, slam it together like it's friggin Lego's, mash that power button. Heart in my throat.

Call Guru.

"All set bro?"

"Let's rock!"

"OK Login, you'll have to patch for like 10-15 minutes."

"Cool"<-- Reclis..

HEEEEEEEEE-HAWWWWWWWWW

"Dude was that friggin dial-up?"

"Yeah why? That a problem?"<-- Reclis

"Noob"<-- Guru

Share one if you got one...

Many years ago on my father old PC, pre-dating Pentiums, I needed to format a floppy disc. How to I do it? after guessing i figured I'd try /format C. Low and behold it worked, but man it nearly 3 hours to format the floppy disc. Go to boot up the computer and nothing.....oops I formated the OS. I am a Dead man.... Good came out of it though, we got or first 486i computer with color monitor. Let the games begin :)

Once upon a time in a company far far away, the Benjamin had a coworker who was sooooo up tight about how Windows owned all and nothing could ever compair. We'll Benjamin being the tricky little fellow he is devised a plan to swap his GUI on his PC with a Icon Pack / Interface mod that turned this once ugly Windows 2000 box into what resembled to be a MAC OS 9 machine. Low and behold said coworker returned from lunch and with a room silencing "What the..." Rhymes with Duck. Followed by a room of laughter and a couple IT guys sitting in the corner snickering. That will show him :P.

» Edited on: 2010-12-07 15:58:00

heh... years ago i was working on the IT department of a company, technical suport branch. Mind you, it was a NGO big enough to have represantations in most cities in Brazil. Problem is, said company has as goal support commerce and enterprise on all levels, specially the low, independent, tiny scale one. That said, this episode happened in the mid 80s, when the best computer we could hope to get was a mighty... PC AT 80286... *twitch* *twitch* One day, mr. Takamatsu (that would be me) was there, sitting on his desk, trying his best to ressurect a defunct PC XT 8086 when the phone rings. It was the IT supervisor of a minor branch in the ass end of a backwater city in one of the most remote regions of the nation (yes, in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Literally.) Guy was complaining disc 4 of the copy of MS Word we sent him wasn't reading (no wonder, considering it was those crappy Verbatim 5 1/4" floppies. double density, to make it worse.) Std proceedure. Mate, send us the copies of the defective software and we'll send you a new one. Since they needed it to implement the office, instead of waiting for the defective copy to arrive, i sent a new copy at high priority, all with the knowledge and agreement from the boss, of course. So, one week goes by, and no mail. Two weeks goes by, nothing. Three weeks goes by and there was poor Takamatsu about to load up a legal ram and point it towards the mentioned supervisor's ass, when comes the mailman with this thick and large brown paper parcel. And heavy, to boot. Almost 1.3 pounds. WTF, thought me? After all, it was supposed to have only eight 5 1/4" floppies... When i opened, i got torn between laughing and buying a ticket to murder the guy. True to his word, he sent the copies of the floppies. Photocopies... From BOTH sides, after all, it was a double density floppy, so you had data recorded on both sides... oh... and photocopies of the manual as well... In the end, we settled for laughing at the matter, bumping it to the boss and have him yell at the guy. :)

» Edited on: 2010-12-08 04:12:14

Lol! Friggin hysterical! Great way to start my day! Keep em coming!!

Ok, this isn't IT related, but its computer related... My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, and I built it from a kit. (The "81" in the name is a good hint of the year I got it... I was still in High School). Anyway this computer had 1k of memory, and used a cassette tape deck to load programs. I later added a memory expansion that bumped it up to 16k of memory. It used a black-and-white TV for a monitor, and the funny thing to me was that it had a choice - It could process info OR run the monitor... but not both. So, if you told it to do something, it would turn off the monitor - then think - then turn the monitor back on... Believe it or not, even with that tiny amount of memory, it could play a pretty decent game of chess... Unfortunately I had to wait 12 hours between moves... heh heh.. About the only thing "useful" I ever used it for was for playing Dungeons and Dragons. I was typically our groups dungeon master, and I wrote a "random NPC generator" program for times when I was unprepared and had to wing-it... heh heh...

back in the days of dial up. I was working VPN support and a customer called in from a hotel. She could not get her dialer to connect. So I had her turn on the volume and listen as it tried to connect. From the speak we hear an operator pick up the phone and say 911, please state the nature of your emergency. Turns out she manually added a 1 to the dialing number and the system automatically dialed one for the 800 number. So while I was still on the phone fixing it, there was a loud knock on the door. It was hotel security responding to the 911 call.

» Edited on: 2010-12-08 08:54:47

lol

Lol! I've heard some good urban legend style story's too. I think my favorite was the guy who called customer service to complain he couldn't access the upper portion of his desktop. After a long while of troubleshooting the caller finally just belted out, "damn it! If only my mouse pad was a little bit bigger!" Guru used to tell me that was an ID 10T error message.

ID 10T.... [grin]

This just in from a British lass friend of mine straight off her facebook :D. was just sitting in the living room discussing the future with a friend and I said, “I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.” He got up, unplugged the computer, and threw out my vodka. The little bugger.....

Ahahahaha!!! I'd have to kill him...

Seeing all these mainframe CLI commands just reminded me of one case that happened to me, back in the early 80s. 83, if i`m not mistaken. I got a call from a friend who used to do tech support to a small office, saying he was tired of trying to make sense of what the secretary was saying. Mind you, the lady had a very poor educational level, her domain of the english language tended to zero. From the right side of the dot. AND to boot, people with some IT knowledge outside of the mainframe crew was numbered on a few thousands all over the country. That said, there went i, your trully paragon of patience (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT) to try the impossible mission of decyphering what this lady was saying. This office had a top spec PC at the time, a PC AT 80286, what for i never found out. No games installed. None at all. The box was used just to type text on wordstar... but, anyway. Once i got there, i turned it on and was greeted with the familiar and friendly DOS prompt. Did the initial checks and... nothing. The computer was working just fine. MS-DOS considered, that is. Then came the lady, late for work, as usual. She came in with a relief look on her face, exclaiming that finally someone came that would get the computer's C ducky back. yeah... C ducky... I asked, very loudly at that, the same thing some of you must be thinking now. WTF is a C ducky!? Then i understood why my friend, whos a very patient person, gave up. The woman was as smart as a sliding door (normal doors does makes curves. She was bright enough for her intelligence curve to be a perfect x parallel) and as expressive as a shruberry, despite chattering non stop. After half an hour of frustratingly trying to decrypt wtf was this lady talking about it struck me... C:\> C Ducky... -_- All this noise was because the prompt was displaying the date and time... not the stardard C:\> The owner had purposefully changed it to display the date and time so said lady would get over getting overdue on her tasks. Anyway... solution to the issue? prompt $p$g -_- And a very inventive string in fluent sailorspeak...

» Edited on: 2010-12-09 03:31:07

» Edited on: 2010-12-10 10:35:46

C ducky, lol, love it! Had to stop at my ma's house last night to beat up my nephews a bit (my job as uncle is to toughen em up)(they're 3 and 2) Now ma is completely new to computers as a whole, but I gotta say she caught on quick. I walk in the door and notice she's got the desktop on the desktop. Heh, curious, when I set it up for her it was on the floor. I asked her wadup wit dat? She proceeds to open the dvd drive and puts her ashtray on it. I thought it was funny.

» Edited on: 2010-12-09 06:26:19

omfg... That reminded me of yet another episode that happened to me, doing independent tech maintenance... I think everyone here remembers, on the begginings of the open internet (you usenet guys shush), when someone made a "Coca-Cola cup holder" app, that just ejected the CD tray. Well, for those not acquinted, it was a jest mail sent a while ago, that said something along the lines of Coke company sent you a free cup hold. Click on the app to receive it. Well... i got a call from this guys complaining his Coca-Cola cup holder was closing on its own...

Haha..I remember that 'cup holder' cel!

I'm not IT, but even I remember the cup holder! I had a friend back in the 90's who taught me how to build my own PCs way back then, and he sent me that. I have to admit that it took me awhile to understand it, though. "All this does is open the CD drive... cup holder... wha?" DOH!