Never assume anything, not even that you and your interlocutor are talking about the same app.

[1]Obligatory XKCD

[1] https://xkcd.com/1339/

That is f$%^&*^ing briliant , have a friday pint!

I hate it when some dickwad starts on that shit every time the word "assume" comes up , regardless of context.

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credit too to the author obvs , whose great - i bought his "what if" book

There is a bridge website that hosts individual games for free but charges for entry in competitions. Some bridge players were getting a very poor exchange rate. The solution is to put the correct URL into bookmarks, show users how to get to their bridge site from a bookmark and explain that if they ever use a search engine to find a similar looking site they will pay for their mistake.

I once got a very worried phone call during the day from someone telling me that the computer was asking for a password, so what should she do?

Thinking that something was amiss, I went round to see the user to try to work out what it was. After all, this was the Finance department, so...

I was confronted with the standard Windows 98 network logon box. When I asked the user what had happened beforehand, she mentioned that the computer ran updates and did a restart, but she wasn't sure if she should put her password in. I stayed with her while she put it in and confirmed that, yes, it was just standard updates.

So, don't always assume.

I had a similar one once. A user in the next office over came in and said that she had a strange error on her machine and could I take a look at it. I figured it was only in the next office and would be easier all-round if I just went to take a look.

I can't remember what the exact "error" message was. It wasn't quite as bad as "Do you want to save your changes? YES / NO", but not by much. I took great care in not letting my expression change, then asked the woman the exact question that the dialogue box asked. She said Yes. "Then click Yes." I replied. I nodded, walked out, and facepalmed as soon as I was back at my desk.

For all that her job involved constantly working with a PC, she was terrified of doing anything with it for fear of breaking something.

I would welcome that attitude over the far more common " I have no clue what this is, so I shall run/break/delete/discard it. "

The medical analogy to this is the person who comes through the door saying "I have this pain in my chest. I've had it before, but just wanted to get it checked out."

Sometimes the sixth time is a heart attack, even after the Cardiologist said it probably isn't.

ah the days when you would go through a door and see a medical professional . in person . sigh ...

My local doctors has a limited 8.am morning lottery for a phone chat that day, and thats about it

Manny thinks not. “The moral of the story is that no matter how bad your hardware or software, always check for PEBCAK – Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard."

You can always bank on the users to mess things up...

They never change...

Something to take note of...

You can build a system that gives a million-to-one chance of a user screwing up, but they will achieve it nine times out of ten.

There's a million to one chance of this happening to any given user today.

We have 20 million users.

We're going to need a bigger boat helpdesk.

"Windows XP for Embedded Systems license key and 4GB of RAM (new models usually get 32GB)"

This is a bit suspect to me. I don't think I ever saw any version of XP with 32GB of RAM. 32Gb=4GB maybe, but even that was exotic on the desktop.

Other than that, I think we all saw the problem. If user ID is rejected, despite confirming it, it's probably being checked against a different database.

I don't think XP Embedded was ever released in anything other than a 32bit version, so anything over 4GB of RAM would be pointless.

Besides, why would an ATM require more than 4GB of RAM? I'm old enough to remember numerous ATMs running OS2 quite happily with a fraction of that amount of RAM. I'm assuming a bit of confusion here. Still a decent On Call, this aside.

This is a common mistake in remembering/anonymising old system specs, I think. Especially if you were around when 32 _megabytes_ was a lot of RAM!

I remember a colleague of mine proudly announcing "I've got 32mb because I'm a power user "

Please, please tell us that your "power user" was the one that said "mb" i.e. milli-bits!

There's the point when you can't remember if 32mb was the memory requirements or the file size...

32MB - that was a large hard disk for a PC, never mind memory or file size!

My first home PC (80286, 1MB memory) came with a 20MB drive but I "acquired" an RLL* controller which pushed it up to around 32MB.

*Run Length Limited - the bit density on the track was by length rather than angle as in MFM drives. ACT had achieved similar with 5 1/4" floppies by varying the rotation speed as the head moved in and out, hence their musical disk drives.

Thats up there with :

"I rebooted it with the on off button on the monitor " or " theres a power cut right now"

Shit you just dont think of until you get more experience , or you hear the stories from places like the Reg

PEBKAC

Clunkiest stupidest acronym ever , no wonder the author got it wrong in the article title .

Especially when there's that other one that means exactly the same thing but is far more fluid and rolls off the tongue easier

It escapes me right now ...

{edit}

Seems PEBCAK is also valid , but equally clunky imho when there is there much more palatable PICNIC - "problem in chair not in computer"

"Clunky" can be a better descriptor for the problem.

Customer: My internet is broken!

Me: Mine is working fine.

A colleague was in the room and told me after the call "Maybe you should not be saying this". Seconds later he says "Heck, just keep doing it." I did, but only with a very small number of high maintenance customers that were particularly annoying.

"I stuck my neck out to help this guy, and then that happened. If that won't turn me into the grizzled, gruff, and uncharitable sysadmin of yore, I don't know what will."

Embracing the PICNIC-first mindset has meant that I am that grizzled, gruff, uncharitable person who deals with people's problems. So much so now I'm told I'm too miserable, it's something I should change. Be the "friendly face of IT".

Change it I would, but my PICNIC brethren need to stop being so fucking stupid first before I become happy. While everyone has the capacity for change, there are some aspects of a personality that can't be. And for as long as being the PICNIC person in a company, I can't be happy.

> Be the "friendly face of IT".

Trust me, this _is_ the friendly face of IT.

Like young Wednesday, you don't want to see me when I'm smiling, as I enforce the company policy on your server directory.

You may even hear me give a friendly chuckle - although I am under strict instruction to hold that in until I'm alone in the server room, something to do with the PFY and PTSD.

Rule one: never believe the client, always verify that what they think is true is actually true.

Years ago, when broadband was a newfangled thing, I was summoned to help set up an NTL cable connection that just wouldn't play. The guy had been trying for days, but nothing.

I went round, redid the setup, nothing. Confirmed with him that he was using a crossover cable, he assured me that he was. Called NTL, spent ages on the phone with them who were equally mystified.

Eventually decided to check the cable myself, despite his assurances. It wasn't a crossover. A quick cable swap later, and all was good. If I hadn't believed the bugger and had checked it myself, I could have gone home hours earlier.

Heres a quick fix for you :

If you get a call from the helpdesk , who are not waiting for you to read the ticket , or from the PA of someone high up .....

Its really urgent!!! The top brass are having a big pow wow in the executive meeting room and everything just went dead , suddenly , in the middle of the meeting.... immediate assistance needed!

.

.

.

.

then just calmly tell them to flick the switch on the power socket that the laptop is plugged into.

every. single. time . smh.

I have been struggling to get my solar installation sorted for over 5 months now (Senergy Direct).

At the last visit by their experts, I insisted that we started from basics and asked them to double-check that the load-balancers that they were struggling to connect to were actually fitted.

Once you knew what you were looking for, you could see from ground level that they had not been fitted!